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When Amethyst first laid eyes on Pearl, she was fresh out of the Kindergarten and a little confused as to why the only home she’d ever known was being invaded by three tall strangers. The pink one in the frilly dress had approached her first, saying hello and crouching down a few paces away from Amethyst’s hole to reassure her that she didn’t mean any harm. The second one, with the visor that hid her eyes, didn’t say much but stood there with a small smile and reached out a hand—gem in her palm—to Amethyst once she crawled out. The third, smallest of the three and so thin she looked like she might snap in two if she wasn’t careful, had a sharp spear in her hand and a frown on her face.
“Garnet, be careful, we don’t know anything about her.”
“She’s alright,” Garnet said.
“But—”
“Pearl,” the first gem interrupted kindly, “she’s not like the others. Right?” She smiled down at Amethyst, eyes bright and curious, though there was a hint of Pearl’s wariness there.
“What others?” Amethyst asked blankly. “You mean all those?” She waved her hand towards the walls of the Kindergarten and the hundreds of empty holes she had never seen anyone emerge from.
“You haven’t been here very long, have you?”
Amethyst shrugged. She watched the sun come and go above her, but she’d never really bothered to keep track of how many times it passed overhead. “Uh, I guess?” She looked between Garnet and the pink one uncomfortably. “What are you guys doing here?”
“Just visiting,” she said softly, something shadowy in her wide eyes. “Amethyst, would you like to come back to the temple with us?”
“Temple?”
“Rose,” Pearl hissed. “She’s still an Amethyst; she’s still one of theirs.”
“Hey!” Amethyst interrupted before Rose could say anything. “I’m right here!”
Pearl looked down her nose. “Yes, you are.”
“What are you talking about?” she demanded. “How come being Amethyst is bad?”
The other gem faltered, her eyes dropping to the dead earth beneath their feet. “It isn’t,” she said wearily. “It isn’t.” She slid her spear back into the gem on her forehead and crouched down, balancing on her tiptoes so she was nearer Amethyst’s height. “It doesn’t matter what kind of gem you are. I’m sorry.”
Amethyst nodded warily.
“Would you like to come with us?”
“Can you show me how to make a spear too?” she asked, pointing at the gem on her own chest.
Pearl’s eyebrows lifted in surprise, but a half-smile found her lips a moment later. “I suppose I can show you how to summon a weapon, but it won’t be a spear.”
“Yes, it will,” Amethyst retorted. “It’ll be a really awesome spear too, just like yours!”
Pearl’s face tinged blue and she glared at Garnet and Rose, who were unsuccessfully hiding their giggles. “Come along then,” she said, exasperated, standing and beckoning Amethyst forward.
Farther along the line, she’d find Pearl’s strange petal speech to be the most boring lecture yet and it’d be second nature to summon her whip once she stopped trying to follow Pearl’s advice. But even with the familiar whip that lied in her hands and how easy it felt to lash it through the air, she still wished every now and then that she’d been able to summon a weapon like Pearl’s.
It was hard not to be amazed by the way she danced through her battles, twirling her spear and attacking with precise, beautiful strikes.
It was hard not to wonder what she’d been before, when nothing suited her like frayed hair and fiery eyes and war-hardened strength.
It was hard not to laugh when she cleaned up meticulously after every battle and acted like that was the real chore.
It was hard to see her as anything less than perfect.
Amethyst saw Pearl at her worst, and then saw her at something worse than that.
She saw the steady decline when Rose and Greg started spending time together. She saw the tears Pearl tried to hide for Rose’s sake, saw how petty she got sometimes when it came to Greg, and then saw how she fell apart and hid away from everyone, thinking that it was her fault, her fault for not being enough for Rose and her fault for being unable to understand why Rose would ever give up her own existence for a half-human child—her fault even though she’d been supportive of Rose’s decision all the way through the confusion and to the end.
They all grieved, and sometimes it was okay because they were together. And sometimes everything went horribly, tremendously wrong. Bickering turned to real insults, knife-like words spiked on both ends.
She’d admit that she’d come close to hating Pearl sometimes, especially with the way she closed in on herself and left Amethyst drifting between old remnants of their life with Rose and an outdated TV with the person she wanted to blame and the tiny little child who cried like he knew how much everyone else was hurting.
Even after Amethyst screwed things up with Greg, she could never really hate him or Steven for what happened. It wasn’t their fault the Crystal Gems were falling apart.
And they were falling apart, until they weren’t. They were separate trips on warp pads and wanderings to memory-filled battlefields, until it got to be too much and Amethyst came back from Vidalia’s to find Pearl sobbing her eyes out on the beach and Garnet holding her so tight she thought Pearl might burst. Amethyst just stood there, watching, until Pearl dragged herself and Garnet over and threw her arms around her and whispered “I’m sorry” over and over and over.
Amethyst wasn’t sure what “I’m sorry” fixed, but she said it back and felt her own eyes start to sting as she grabbed onto Pearl and Garnet, her face pressed against the star on Pearl’s chest.
It was dark by the time they returned to the temple, all crowding into a corner of Amethyst’s room.
“No more of this,” Garnet said, voice quiet but firm. “We’re all that’s left, and we’re going to make sure Rose’s legacy survives.”
Pearl nodded, swiping at her eyes. “We can’t disappoint her.”
Amethyst let her bangs fall forward over her eyes. She hadn’t done anything but disappoint people lately. “As long as we’re together,” she said finally. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to handle it if they kept going like they had been.
“We are,” Pearl said, placing a hand on Amethyst’s head as Garnet murmured agreement. “I’m sorry.”
“Quit apologizing,” she said with a small smile. “I might start thinking you actually care.”
She had been aiming for some resurrection of the easy banter they used to be able to keep up without thinking, but instead she got dragged into the most painfully tight hug she’d ever experienced and had to remind herself that breathing wasn’t actually a vital function for gems.
“Heh. Trying to smother me, P?”
“Shush.” Pearl’s face pressed into her hair, and her fierce grip refused to loosen.
Amethyst let out a small sigh as her arms settled around Pearl’s waist. That was the thing about Pearl—she loved just as fiercely as she fought. And that wasn’t just directed at Rose, even though it had felt like it lately. It was all of them—Rose and Garnet and Amethyst and, almost certainly to be added to the list, Steven.
Amethyst saw Pearl at her worst and even at her worst she was never a lost cause.
Pearl loved fiercely, and Pearl grieved fiercely, and if there was anything she knew how to do, it was to pick herself up from the bottom and fight insurmountable obstacles to get back on her feet.
Amethyst just felt lucky to be able to stand beside her, and she was proud of the poised, gentle, smiling Crystal Gem that built a house and a home for Rose’s little boy and welcomed him in without an ounce of bitterness.
They weren’t the same as they used to be—it was rare that heart-to-hearts like that one night happened—but they weren’t lost anymore.
And though she didn’t know how to say it, Amethyst knew Rose would have been proud of the Pearl standing before her now, lecturing Amethyst on etiquette and smiling widely at the crayon scribble that had been pressed into her hand and turning her head towards the portrait on the wall as if to ask Am I doing okay?
Yeah, Amethyst decided, accidentally-on-purpose splashing some engine oil onto Pearl’s arm as she sloshed it over her sandwich and grinning as Pearl let out an undignified squawk. They were doing okay.
Steven brought a new dynamic to their group, and the shift was a good one. He wasn’t Rose and he was undeniably human, but he was also a Crystal Gem and he worked his way into their hearts and lives so fast even Garnet was surprised.
They’d loved him from the start, though. They’d just been too caught up in their pain to recognize it.
Amethyst watched Pearl hover and Garnet encourage and she wasn’t quite sure what her own place was but ended up falling quite naturally into it anyway. She was the fun one, and she liked that. She’d always enjoyed making people laugh, and Steven was no exception.
At first, his inexperience was all too evident when they went out on missions, but soon enough he was summoning his shield with ease and bubbling things without a second thought and had picked up Rose’s healing powers along the way as well. Full of surprises.
Pearl had to go through a process of realizing that she could protect Steven without going overboard with it, and that took time. Amethyst couldn’t fault her for wanting to protect him, since he was the last bit of Rose they really had left and they’d been entrusted with the task of keeping him safe, but she really did need to ease off.
Meanwhile, the two of them bickered a lot, and it seemed to bother Steven sometimes. It bothered Amethyst too, because there was still a disconnect and Pearl tended to whitewash the past for Steven’s sake, making Amethyst feel like she was just another mistake to be wiped clean from the slate.
That resulted in the long, emotionally exhausting day at the Kindergarten where Amethyst realized Pearl sometimes just didn’t get what other people were feeling if they didn’t speak up, and resolved to try and do a little better at talking to her instead of bottling it up. Meanwhile, Pearl whispered a promise to do better as well, stumbling awkwardly over the words of love and acceptance that poured out of her mouth and soothed Amethyst’s heart in a way she hadn’t known she’d needed.
They spent the evening curled up on the sofa together and their lips brushed once but mostly they just clung to each other and worked through half-sentences and broken phrases until they’d figured out some semblance of communication.
Pearl could talk for ages, and Amethyst craved the attentive words more than she had known.
She’d missed this Pearl, the Pearl that held her and tried to teach her things, who’d disappeared for a while but had started to come back with Steven’s arrival.
Steven loved both of them, and he wanted them to love each other just as much, and Amethyst made sure to give him a big hug the next morning for knowing just who she’d needed to talk to.
The Sardonyx Drama™ was tough on all of them. Amethyst did what she could to be there for Pearl and Garnet both, trying not to judge either of them when they were already judging each other and themselves enough to last a lifetime.
It was just another dark spot in their history soon enough, and they rebuilt their trust in the slow, steady way they had the last time. They still had a lot of learning to do, even though they’d thought they had it all figured out. Communication never came as easy as it should have after Rose left them, and they all had their own insecurities eating away at them—perhaps Pearl worst of all.
Sometimes Amethyst looked at Garnet and wondered how anyone could feel so content and at peace with herself, when it was something she and Pearl always seemed to have to work at so much harder. But even that—assuming Garnet was always okay because she looked like she had everything together—that was dangerous too.
Garnet wasn’t perfect, Pearl wasn’t perfect, and Amethyst wasn’t perfect.
And honestly, she was glad Steven was there to remind them that it was okay if they weren’t.
Sardonyx wouldn’t be making another appearance until they’d sorted things out—in late night visits to Pearl’s room because that’s where Pearl felt safest, in holding Garnet’s hands and reassuring her that she wasn’t just a tool to make them stronger, and in quiet apologies for sticking Amethyst right in the thick of it without ever considering that it hurt her just as much to see her two closest friends fight like that. But they kept trying, kept talking, kept checking in with each other until it became commonplace for Amethyst and Garnet to show up in Pearl’s room as soon as Steven was tucked into bed and spend the rest of the evening lounging around on top of the water towers together.
And Amethyst was proud of Pearl, who was true to her word and was trying not to slip back into that mindset of “just a Pearl”, trying to be strong for everyone’s sake and her own.
It helped Amethyst too, quieted some of the awfulness that liked to take root inside of her sometimes, reminded her that loving herself was important, that she was important to the team, and that she wasn’t just the garbage Homeworld had left behind after the devastation of the war. None of them were.
And if they danced together now, it wasn’t just a battle tactic or a necessity, it was all the little things that had slipped through the cracks when they’d been focused on the bigger threats. It was consent and conversation, it was the old CD player Amethyst dug out to play music none of them really recognized, it was laughter and embarrassing falls as they mimicked each other’s styles, it was rhythm and love and exhausted hugs.
Sardonyx was healing, Sugilite was starting to be a little less smash-y, and Alexandrite was an increasingly coherent mash-up of all of them.
And Opal…Opal had never felt more right.
Amethyst would forever count punching Peridot in the face as one of Pearl’s finest moments.
It wasn’t because she disliked Peridot—the green gem was actually pretty funny underneath all those Homeworld diatribes. It was just because it was the first time Amethyst had ever seen Pearl really push back against Homeworld’s thinking and own who she was without looking down on herself. She was proud of being a Pearl, proud of teaching herself to do so many things she was told she couldn’t. She was done with letting her feelings of inadequacy rule her, and she was beautiful as she stood up from the wreckage of her robot, smile on her face as she was surrounded by her family.
And while the first word Amethyst used to describe her was “hardcore”, she could think of a hundred others.
Strong. Like she’d always been, like Amethyst envied and admired. Strong from war and strong from love and strong all the way through.
Alive. In ways she hadn’t managed for quite some time after Rose left, in ways that only these specific circumstances—Earth and peace and Steven and Garnet and Amethyst—would allow. In ways Homeworld would have thought impossible.
There were lots of words for Pearl.
Amethyst helped her back inside, though she didn’t really need it, and wondered if perfect had ever really been the word for Pearl. She wasn’t, not by a long stretch. She was determined and precise and focused in a way that Amethyst never managed, but she was also the same gem that would jump headfirst into shoddy plans when she got emotional, didn't always know how to connect with the people around her, and had an unfortunate tendency to say the wrong things without thinking.
No, in a lot of ways, “perfect” didn’t fit Pearl at all. But in others—seeing how proud she was of her own skills, seeing how she indulged Steven’s ideas even when she thought they were silly, seeing how she refused to let anyone else define her—it did. Pearl was perfect when she was being herself, when she was loving herself as best she knew how, when she was loving everyone around her.
Pearl was perfect like this, beat up and tired with cheeks bright from praise she hadn’t expected.
And Amethyst would rather die than admit just how cool Pearl had been, but she couldn’t stop herself from indulging in a hug and offering to help Pearl clean up both herself and the mess left outside.
The favor was returned not long after, when their nightly meet-ups relocated to Amethyst’s room and Pearl held her close and Garnet played small projections from her palms the way she used to for Steven, with all the little happy memories they had together.
“You aren’t defective.”
“We wouldn’t change a thing about you.”
Pearl’s voice was soft, but there was hard edge hidden in there that made Amethyst think she was gearing up to go throw another punch—or five—Peridot’s way.
They danced that night too—Opal forming with her arms wrapped tightly around herself and gratefully accepting Garnet’s embrace a few moments later.
“You’ll be alright,” Garnet said firmly.
“I know,” Opal replied with a small smile. “I’m getting there.”
“Would you like some time alone?”
“Not yet.”
Pearl and Amethyst didn’t unfuse until morning, and Amethyst came out of it feeling so relaxed that all she could do was hold onto Pearl loosely and appreciate the quiet, steady breathing next to her. Garnet had disappeared sometime in the middle of the night, leaving a little note in case they—or Opal—forgot where she’d gone somewhere amidst their emotional roller coaster.
“Are you alright?” Pearl asked in a whisper, nose poking the top of Amethyst’s head.
She sighed and pulled Pearl as close as she possibly could. “Yeah.”
Peridot’s confrontation with Yellow Diamond brought both relief and a whole new set of worries.
After the initial excitement, Pearl spent the rest of her day fretting over the drill and making sure everything was in working order. With Garnet and Steven keeping Peridot company, Amethyst wandered over to keep Pearl company, making her sit down and take a break when she seemed to be getting even more worked up than usual.
“It’s done, P, you’re good,” Amethyst said, catching her by the wrist. “C’mon.”
Pearl joined her reluctantly, taking off her welding mask.
“You okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“…Things are gonna get complicated from here on out, huh?” Amethyst asked, leaning against Pearl’s shoulder.
“It certainly seems like it,” she sighed. She wrapped an arm around Amethyst.
“We’ll be fine, y’know,” she said, curling into Pearl’s side.
“We're only five gems.” Pearl’s fingers clenched on Amethyst’s shoulder.
“Well, we’re five gems with a whole lot of fight in us,” she argued.
“A technician who only just defected, two Earthling Quartzes, a multi-gem fusion, and a Pearl. Oh stars, we sound like the beginning of one of those terrible human jokes Peridot kept trying to tell us.”
Amethyst snorted. “Don’t forget Lion.”
“I don’t know if that makes it better or worse.”
She laughed, nudging Pearl in the side. “Well, at least we’ll be a good joke. I mean, Steven’s got his shield all set to go, Garnet can punch things into infinity, Peridot can build stuff, and then, well, we’ve got you.”
Pearl looked at her askance. “What does that mean?”
“You know, just…” Amethyst gestured vaguely at Pearl, a faint blush rising to her cheeks. “You’re Pearl. You’re cool and smart and tough and I wanna see you spear Homeworld in the face.”
“I’m cool?” Pearl echoed blankly.
“Well, yeah,” Amethyst mumbled. “You’re just really, y’know…”
“You think I’m cool?” she asked, just to clarify.
“Yes!” she burst out, lifting her head to glare at Pearl. “You don’t have to look so smug about it!”
Pearl did look quite smug, but it was quickly turning into genuine, pleasant surprise. “Really?”
“Yes, really, P. Ugh.” Amethyst yanked on her sash. “I always thought you were cool.”
Her face went a bright blue and she pressed a hand to her mouth, unsuccessfully hiding the wide smile spreading across her face. “Oh, Amethyst…”
“Are you going to get all mushy on me?”
“I do not get mushy,” Pearl protested.
“Yeah, you do.”
“Just come here,” she huffed, wrapping her arms around Amethyst tightly. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, P,” Amethyst returned, unable to keep an embarrassed smile off her face as it was shoved towards Pearl’s chest.
“You left yourself off that list,” Pearl said after a moment. “You’re important as well.”
“Heh. Yeah, sorry,” she said, hands tightening at the small reminder. “Whaddaya say? You think I’m cool too?”
“Very,” she replied lightly, laughing breathily as she pulled away to look Amethyst in the eyes. “And much more than that as well.” She placed her fingers lightly against the top of Amethyst’s gem, leaning forward earnestly. “Amethyst?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you. For everything.” She brushed Amethyst’s hair out of her eyes. “May I…?”
She leaned in without any hesitation, meeting Pearl halfway for the kiss. It wasn’t their first, and it wasn’t unexpected, but it was new all the same in what it meant. They were here, together, years and miles from where they’d started, and they were ready now. They had both grown and changed, gotten lost and came back, made an effort to be better people for themselves and for their wonderfully atypical little family.
And somewhere between her first glimpse of the stranger at the Kindergarten and the soft, experienced lips pressed to hers she’d fallen hard for the stunning, powerful, beautiful Pearl who’d fought by her side all this time. It didn’t really matter when it happened or when she’d figured it out—she couldn’t remember anyway. It was just her and Pearl, and Opal in the spaces between them, and she’d never want it to happen any other way.
They never needed the words for “I love you” but they said them anyway, because it was far too important to go without.