So. I've made a huge mistake. I've gotten attached to Peridot. And then I spent forty minutes in the middle of the night messaging a friend a hypothetical redemption arc for my precious green wife. And this friend had the lovely idea of saying to me "You should write it!" (Now this was before Steven found Peridot's escape pod.)

So I started to write it. And here is chapter one.

I'm usually pretty iffy on having any story focused on an OC, but Peridot needs someone to help her find redemption.

Also, until Peridot is actually used to humans, much of the comparisons when the focus is on her will only be things she's familiar with.

"One cannot undo what has happened. But the inexorable march of time offers
the wise opportunities for redemption. I entreat you, do not escape.
Stay in this world and do your karma."
― Amish Tripathi, The Oath of the Vayuputras

Peridot let out a scream of rage. "I-" she thrashed to the side "-hate-" she pressed out against her bonds with her elbows "-those-" she threw herself back "-gems!" The whip around her did anything but loosen. In fact, it felt much more like it has constricted further around her.

She pushed the thought of her bonds aside and focused on her command console. She was falling and falling fast. Her escape pod was durable, but she would much rather have control of it as it careened toward the upper part of one of earth's larger land masses. By her estimates-which were rarely wrong-she had about thirty seconds before she hit the ground. She already knew it would not be with a splat. Her physical construct was much more metallic than fleshy. She was much more worried about the possible "crack" that could come with a gem's fall.

She managed to get a finger free, but it was a hard time getting it to the control screen when she can't maintain her balance. Mentally, she's screaming at that gem, that Amethyst, to take her whip back. But down to fifteen seconds left in her fall, she needed to figure something out, or she might end up going back to her gem. Her physical construct was hardy, but this was a crash at a speed impossible to avoid damage.

She fell back again and did her best to get a second finger out of her binds.

Ten seconds left.

Peridot wormed her way over to the control screen. It was mere seconds ticking down and she just managed to get a finger into the control screen. Data streams flood her eyes but it was pointless.

She crashed.

Ellie was tired. It was one of those rare nights she had where nightmares or otherwise wake her. It was got to be nearly three in the morning, but she found herself not caring. It was a beautiful night out, and sitting on her deck with a cup of tea was relaxing. Made even more so by the presence of her cat on her lap, a slim tuxedo with golden eyes. Ellie didn't have work the next day, so she wasn't too worried about being up so late.

Stars twinkled in the distance and she felt utterly at peace.

Until a flash lit up the sky, bright as day. Her cat hissed, digging claws into Ellie's thighs and sprinting back into the house. Ellie swore, her tea spilled onto her lap, and her fresh cat scratches sting and protest her movement. There was a boom in the distance.

"Okay. That definitely wasn't a star," she stated in a somewhat incredulous manner, eyes trained on the smoke rising in the distance. She continued to stare, mind slowly going over what just happened. She sighed. "If Men in Black has taught me anything, I'm going to die or become an agent if I go check that out…" She looked down at her ripped, tea soaked jeans. "I should probably change my pants first."

She headed inside, glancing at her cat hiding behind the couch. It was a fairly small house. The entrance was between the living room and the kitchen, with no dining room to speak of. Instead there was a small table to the side in the kitchen with three chairs at it. It was rare for her to use more than her usual chair. Next to the table was the pantry door and inside, besides her horde of different foods, was a door to the basement. Past the living room and down the hall was where she was headed. Her room was fairly small, but contained enough room for a dresser, a full size bed, and small book shelf. A hamper sat nestled in next to the closet and held her dirty clothes.

Ellie dug into the dresser and found a fresh pair of jeans, quickly stripping off the old ones and tossing them in the hamper. She slipped on her new ones, grabbed a back pack, threw a few "just in case" supplies in (a couple bottles of water, a map of the area, and an extra flashlight). Her main flashlight sat in her hand.

She bit her lip as she returned to the front door. "Well, at least it's something exciting."

She stepped outside, moved across the deck to the small set of stairs leading down the back. Smoke still rose in the distance, so she took her map from her backpack, put a star where her house was and an arrow towards where she thought the smoke was. After stuffing it back in her back pack, she headed out.

Ellie lived fairly far into the woods, so it was a bit of a hike. She wasn't too worried about any larger wild animals, as they didn't show up too often around her house, except for the occasional deer. Years had passed since she had seen a moose around.

For the most part, the walk was peaceful—until a deer scared the shit out of her and she had to take a minute to find her breath again. But her walk continued after that, completely bear and moose free. It was a good hour until she started smelling smoke. Another five minutes after that, she found it.

A decent sized crater sat in the ground and bits of metal laid here and there. She noticed that every bit was green and wonders why. She honestly didn't remember seeing anything like it before. There was no sign that anything survived the crash, as nothing moved but a breeze through the trees. Half embedded in the soil in the center of the crater, she found what seemed to be a cockpit. There wasn't evidence of anything- alive or otherwise- there either.

Ellie stood, wondering if this could have been an elaborate stunt someone tried for some decent "UFO" photographs. But, looking at the twisted bits of… of whatever had crashed, she doubted someone would waste what seemed to be good material on something so meagre.

"Hello?" she tried. "Is anyone here?"

No reply.

So she took a slow walk around the crash, trying to find any clue to why it happened. A glimmer caught her eye under some ferns a small distance from the cockpit. She pushed the undergrowth back to find… Well, she wasn't sure what it is. It was triangular in shape, with softer corners and some thickness to it. Its entirety was a soft green colour. She bent and picked it off the ground. It was warm to the touch, as though it held something more, but besides that, it appeared to be a fairly average, though well cut, gemstone. Turning it over, she noticed a hairline crack in it. "I guess this was in whatever crashed," she murmured before slipping it into her pocket.

Ellie marked the area on her map, and turned back. "I'll be able to see better tomorrow," she hummed.

She moved on back towards her house. It began to rain as she walked back in the door, and she dropped her backpack on the couch before locking it behind her. She set the gemstone on the table, a reminder to take some sort of further action about the crash, and hung her jacket on the back of the chair.

If she was tired before, she was exhausted after all that walking. She stripped, set an alarm on her phone and fell into bed. She was asleep in seconds.

The next morning she woke up - eventually - after hitting snooze once or twice, and only because her cat had been meowing at her for food since the first snooze. "Alright, alright, Mochi. Calm down, I'll get you your breakfast." She threw on some clothing- shorts, a bra, and a loose flannel shirt.

She fed her cat, mocking his meows the whole while. She then put together her own breakfast: a bowl of cereal. As she moved to sit, she spotted the gem on the table.

"I wonder if I should report that crash," she spoke aloud to herself. She took a bite of cereal and chuckled. "Maybe it's an alien ship that was supposed to get rid of this thing for whatever reason. Or maybe it's a failed weapon that was supposed to detonate on landing and I just brought the most dangerous piece inside." She shrugged and finished her breakfast, eyes still examining the stone before her. It hadn't moved in the night, but she noticed, as she looked at it, that it was getting brighter. She reached out to touch it and jerked her hand back. It was burning hot. She stumbled out of her chair, backing away as the gem continued to grow brighter and lifted of the table.

The light shifted around it, forming multiple shapes before committing to one. It started out fairly small with no clear definition, and eventually formed what Ellie recognized as a body. She tripped backwards over the shoes she had discarded the night before, landing on her ass as she watched the spectacle. After a few moments, it solidified, and Ellie found herself facing, as far as she could tell, a woman.

"Uhm… Hi?"

Peridot's eyes narrowed as the human's greetings reached. She was disoriented, a strange feeling for any gem, and she was clueless as to where she had landed. She barely noticed the human scramble to stand.

"You! Human! Where am I?"

The human seemed nervous, she noted, but answered fairly quickly. "Ontario, Canada. Not too far from Pembroke."

Peridot pulled up her screen hand, frantically typing a message. It took her a moment to send it before she let out a frustrated noise. It wouldn't send. She focused her gem, her plan to amplify the signal. Her gem sparked and she cried out in pain. Panic flooded her as she realized her gem was cracked. She returned her screen to her hand only to hold it up to her gem.

She stared the human down. "What happened? Where's my escape pod?"

The human stepped back. Her body language read guarded and ready to run, Peridot realized. She was taller than Peridot by a good few inches and had darker skin, vaguely reminiscent of a gem named axinite. Her eyes were a sharp, ocean blue, with bags beneath them, showing recent exhaustion. Her hair was curly and a bit wild. Peridot wondered how civilized this human actually was. "Last night, it crashed down about a half mile from here. It's in shreds though. I can show you where."

"How did I get here?" Static, like that of a television without a signal, flashed over Peridot's eyes, but her gem twinged with pain at the same time.

The human gulped. "I found, uhm..." She gestured to Peridot's gem.

"My gem," Peridot filled in, anger thick in her voice.

The human nodded. "I didn't know that what I was picking up was, well, you. I carried your gem here, I guess is what I'm trying to say…"

"Did you have anything to do with this?" Peridot asked, gesturing to the small crack in her gem.

The human shook her head vigorously. "No! I found it that way!"

Peridot's gaze faltered and she brought her screen up again, desperate to see a "message sent" notification. It only read "ERROR" and complained at a lack of signal. She let out a frustrated noise before looking back at the human. "You. Do you have any sort of signal enhancer or similar?"

"Any service out here is pretty shitty. My cell phone doesn't get signal and where I tend to call is only a few miles away. There's no luck for farther than that." The human rubbed the back of her neck with a hand. "Do... Do you have a name, by the way?"

Peridot blinked. "I am Peridot."

"Is that what your gem is?"

"I am my gem."

"Are you the only... one like you on earth? Because, from what I know, we don't have any... anyone like you on earth." Ellie felt nervous. She had a strange... woman(?) in her home who obviously needed some sort of help getting back... wherever. Was it worth trying to help her? Or would it be Men in Black with Ellie ending up devoured and her skin being worn by this other worldly visitor to earth? She was really hoping not, on the skin stealing bit.

Peridot examined Ellie. Her facial expression still read nervous, but she had yet to turn hostile. Either way, it was unlikely a human could over power a gem, even a cracked one.

"There are others similar to me, but they would not help me. They are traitors to my kind."

"What is your kind?"

"Gems." She projected out a generic gem cut, but it was transparent, not nearly as strong as it should've been. "We have physical forms based on properties of the gems we are." The gem shrank as a humanoid figure surrounded it, centering the gem on the figure. Peridot stopped the projection.

"Is there any reason you were in your gem when I found you?" Ellie's expression was much more curiosity now, Peridot noticed. It was on the brink of annoying.

"A bad enough injury to a physical body causes the form to revert into the gem until it can reform later. Now enough with the questions," she answered in an agitated voice. "I have to find how I can get a message to the homeworld. I have to get home."

Ellie watched as Peridot, somewhat frantically, brought up her screen again.

"Maybe I can help?" Ellie spoke up suddenly. "Would you be able to make an enhancer, or whatever you need if I gave you some parts?"

Peridot weighed her options. She was alone, stuck in someplace called Canada, with no way to contact any gem, even the ally she brought to the planet (not that it was a pleasant idea to contact Jasper). She had only the timidly offered help of the human who found her. She'd been on other planets before, but never with life that has any sort of sentience. Humans, she'd already learned, were odd. There was that Steven in the kindergarten, and on the beach, who had somehow managed to get five gems on his side in what seemed to be a considerably small amount of time. Though, arguably, one of those gems was grown on earth and another was an outdated model. And Steven had also somehow come into the possession of Rose Quarts' gem, the biggest war criminal the Homeworld knew of. Peridot didn't want to think about that.

Peridot's thoughts turned to the human. From what Peridot had learned of human body language, this one seemed trustworthy enough. There were no obvious tells that could suggest that the human wanted to harm her. The human- based on her information of the human race- appeared to be what humans dictated as female. It was shaky ground for Peridot, as she didn't quite understand the concept of "gender". How could a being be placed in a notion of pre-conceived ideas on what one's body looked like? Especially when their knowledge of the human race hadn't been updated for some time. The role of a "female" changed in each society, though it was known that mostly as a person who could grow and carry the young, but not in all cultures. There were cultures she had seen where gender wasn't something followed strictly, and there were mainly feminine and masculine peoples. All in all, she found it ridiculous. Homeworld had no such thing as gender, and it was only after earth that "she" and "her" had become a popular pronoun that came with no sort of "gender" attached, simply what most gems had taken on - by accident, in most cases - do to their bodies fitting in what humans had found to be feminine forms. Humans had started a whole new fashion of body types on the homeworld. Peridot had even been swayed a bit by that. She would admit, though not readily, that the human feminine form was aesthetically pleasing.

That aside, Peridot was unsure what exactly to make of this human, whatever "gender" they were.

Unfortunately, she had little choice. Trusting a human to help was the last of her problems.

"Why would you offer assistance, human?" she asked warily.

The human shrugged. "You're far from home- I'm guessing - and are alone- another guess. But someone should help you." She gave an uneasy smile. "And my name is Ellie, by the way."

"You have parts at your disposal I could use to make a signal enhancer?"

"Well, sort of? I've got a few things I don't use anymore that you can dismantle and use whatever you'd like from. A broken laptop, an old television complete with antenna... oh, and a broken washing machine. I'm not sure why I haven't gotten rid of them, but if they can help, you can have them."

"They will have to do."

"Uh, this way then," Ellie replied and gestured to the pantry door. "Just follow me." She entered the pantry, pulling the cord to turn on the light. "They're down here." She opened the second door, showing only darkness behind it. Ellie went down without hesitation, but Peridot hesitated. Could she risk going down with no real prior knowledge? After a few seconds, light poured out of the door. "Coming down?" came Ellie's voice.

Cautiously, Peridot peered down the steps. The floor was simple concrete at the end of wooden stairs. There was a small carpet in the center of the room and a pile of boxes off to the side, mostly covering a desk and a large white machine. She followed Ellie down the stairs, deciding that perhaps she wouldn't be ambushed, and watched as the human pulled a box out from a small pile. From it, she dug out a large slab-like object that was a dull gray colour. Looking around, she seemed to spot a desk that was under some of the other boxes. She paused before returning the gray slab to the box and began to move the boxes off the desk. Once finished, she moved the desk to the center of the room and retrieved the gray slab and placed it on top. After that, she disappeared into the adjacent room before returning carrying a large, obviously heavy monitor-like object and placing it beside the desk. Peridot watched, fascinated. This human may not have been small, but she was still doing this all alone- Peridot wasn't sure if it would be rude or not to help, as the human customs she had briefly researched seemed incredibly contradictory. But the simple way Ellie seemed to be used to doing things alone.

Peridot thought it was odd humans would leave their own to fend for themselves.

Ellie moved to clear the boxes off of the machine. Once she was done, she looked at Peridot.

"Oh, well... You can use any of these three for parts." She gestured to the slab, the monitor, and then the large white machine. "And, uh, oh!" She disappeared into the side room once more, returning with a large box. "I've got a pretty good toolbox, too."

Peridot nodded. "Very well."

Ellie rubbed the back of her neck. "Alrighty. I'll be upstairs, if you need any help… And if you do contact them, could you warn me before a ship shows up outside my house?"

"Sounds like a reasonable request," Peridot spoke evenly. Ellie nodded and then disappeared up the stairs. Peridot turned to her new work station. It was time to get to work.

So I apologize if the writing style seems to vary, but I'm trying to put a lot of effort into this one. That means sometimes I can do it well, other times I can only do it well enough.

But hey, I'm trying.

Thank you for reading!