Chapter Text
Gem scratched another tally mark on the wall – another day down until freedom. She felt insane counting down 15 years day-by-day but this was her life now apparently. Seven years down, eight more to go…She sighed and flopped down on her mattress.
“At least Pearl’s okay,” she muttered to herself, eyes tracing the edge of the water damage pattern on the ceiling. “Hope she’s not missing me too much…”
Too much to do something stupid…
* * *
“So, unfortunately for us, the prison is actually highly guarded, unlike the Firm building, so we can’t just sneak in at night like we did when we freed you guys…”
Pearl paced back and forth in front of the whiteboard that she totally didn’t buy only to plan a jailbreak and nothing else.
“How cool would it be if one of us could go invisible?” Grian asked absently.
“Pretty cool but unfortunately not very useful,” chimed in Cub, who unofficially became part of the group through his connection to Scar. “Empira Prison has tons of motion sensors everywhere. It’s practically impossible to sneak around without being detected.”
Grian groaned. “Damn, they thought of everything… Cunning bastards.”
Pearl heaved a heavy sigh and erased the word ‘Invisibility’ from the board with her sleeve. “So natural camouflage is probably not an option either, huh?” she asked Cub, who shook his head. “Great.”
“Maybe the best course of action is to…I dunno, wait it out?” Impulse suggested with an air of hopefulness.
“I agree!” said Mumbo. “Love Gem to pieces but you remember what we’re dealing with, right?”
“Not the Firm…” Jimmy mumbled. “I heard from Sausage that those guys haven’t even tried rebuilding so they’re probably fully done.”
“Not a chance we’re ‘waiting this out’!” Pearl exclaimed, putting angry air quotes around ‘wait it out.’ “I’ve been a part of planning one jailbreak, I can be a part of two.”
“I would hardly call the Firm escape mission a ‘jailbreak’.” Grian shrugged. “The Firm did a lot of hybrid catching, but they didn’t do a lot of hybrid guarding. I mean come on! Only one person on watch at night?! It’s like they wanted something like that to happen.”
“I just think it’s best to keep a bit of a low profile, and, uhm, not infiltrate anymore government buildings?” Impulse chimed in again, wringing his tail like his life depended on it. “I-I mean who knows! Mayoral elections are coming up, right? Maybe the new mayor who gets voted in will realize that anti-hybrid laws are total bull and they’ll pardon Gem on the spot.”
“That’s really optimistic of you, Impulse,” Cub mused.
“You always gotta hope for the best, y’know.” He stood up and walked over to Pearl, who was pushing the tip of the marker against the whiteboard so hard that it was beginning to disappear into the marker. “She’s been there, what, seven years? There’s still eight more years to see how things go.”
Pearl grumbled a string of curses and capped the now useless marker. “Seven years is seven too many.”
“I agree!” Impulse exclaimed, putting an empathetic hand on Pearl’s shoulder, which looked really awkward given their height difference. “But I genuinely think this one is out of our control.”
“I really don’t think it is, but I’ll drop it for now.” Pearl wiped away a tear that had snuck out. “But for the record, I think waiting 15 years to see someone you really care about is utter bullshit.”