Goodbye
Sorry for the long delay on this one, folks! Basically I hit a stream of inspiration with my original work and it kept me going for a few weeks. As it keeps up, I won't update as often as I did before, but I will get back to normal at some point and produce as much fic as I can manage.
Note: Don't listen to Purple Rain while you're reading this, unless you want to end up a blubbering mess. RIP Prince.
…..
"Farewell has a sweet sound of reluctance. Good-bye is short and final, a word with teeth sharp to bite through the string that ties past to the future."
-The Winter of our Discontent, John Steinbeck
Her holocast was blinking furiously.
It would continue blinking, because she was ignoring it.
A cursory glance at the screen would reveal dozens of calls and messages from her fellow Diamonds, from their staff, from Emerald's co-workers, from panicking Kunzites analysing her remains. There hadn't been a corrupted gem on Homeworld since before the war; they'd be stupid not to be worried.
But all that meant nothing to Rose. Three cycles had passed, and Pearl was still in her gem, reluctant (terrified) to come out.
There was only one gem she would take a message from now, and that person had not been in touch yet.
Rose filled in the waiting time trying to talk to Pearl through the gem. She'd never been forced to retreat to her own gem fully conscious and wasn't quite sure if it was possible to hear voices through the gem, (gem scientists were still conflicted over that issue) but she did it anyway. She tried to explain why she had acted the way she did towards the Amethysts, why it was necessary for both of their sakes...
She had said I love you a hundred times.
She had said please forgive me a thousand times.
"Please come back to me," she begged as Homeworld's suns went down. "I'm nothing without you."
Finally, the message she had been waiting for came. There were no words, just a map of a district that had sustained heavy fire damage in recent times. An old sulphide shipment hangar, abandoned when sulphide was no longer in use.
Rose cradled Pearl's gem in the crook of her arm and journeyed there immediately.
…..
"This is incredible," Sodalite gasped, turning Pearl's gem over in her hands. "I always thought it was possible, I never thought I'd see it for myself."
"It's not important right now," Rose cut in.
"Not important? You resurrected a gem art that's been lost for aeons - by accident, no less – and it's not important?"
"Not to me," Rose said. "Why isn't she coming out? Could she be broken on the inside?"
"No, I gave her a full scan," Sodalite responded. "She looks brand new. Mentally, though...they take it hard when they've got the spikes to keep them distracted. Your Pearl got a full dose of barracks pearl treatment without the spike. I have no idea what she'll be like when she comes back. If she comes back."
That little if made her stomach lurch painfully.
"Concentrate on doing something useful for now," Sodalite advised. "Can you cry for me now? I could see about repairing some of the others."
Tears came easily; all she had to do was recall that little if, and they flowed with no effort.
…..
Finally, after two full quadrants of numbly filling test tubes for Sodalite, Pearl's gem glowed and shook. She materialized where she was, on the operating table. Rose rushed to her side, but even before she had finished reforming she could tell something was off.
Everything was there; arms, legs, her eye were back where they should be, as whole as they had ever been. But her eyes were glassy and unfocused, and her limbs were unnaturally still. She had not reformed in the blue dress, instead wearing a loose tunic and stockings, both white. Her feet were bare. It was like she had been reset in some way.
"Pearl?" Rose called hesitantly, and placed a hand on her shoulder.
Pearl flinched violently, snapped out of whatever trance she'd been under, and shrank away from Rose's touch.
She hates me.
The thought came unbidden to her mind. Sodalite approached too, and gingerly reached out to check her gem. Pearl shrank away from her just as she had Rose.
"That's about normal," Sodalite sighed. "For pearls, anyway."
"How long will she be like this?" Rose asked.
"Who knows?" Sodalite shrugged.
She leaned in close, but didn't touch Pearl.
"Can you understand me?" she asked.
Pearl nodded, slowly.
"Good. Any pain anywhere?"
Pearl's eyes flicked to Rose's face, and back. She shook her head.
She hates me.
The thought floated by again. Why wouldn't Pearl hate her? She had been taken and tortured because of Rose's underground activities, denied by Rose when she was most vulnerable, and still she had not given up any of Rose's secrets. The most loyal soldier that had fought by her side during the war had not given her so much.
"I'm sorry," Rose sobbed, to her own surprise. She hadn't realized she was crying. "I'm so sorry. I didn't mean what I said about you...I just wanted them to give you back to me...I'm sorry..."
Sodalite watched her, but it hardly mattered. Pearl needed to hear it from her. Her tears blinded her, and muffled her words, but she kept on.
She only stopped when she felt Pearl's hand on hers.
It was truly amazing how a pearl could speak without opening their mouth to utter a single sound.
It's okay. I understand. I forgive you.
Sodalite cut in with her usual matter-of-fact manner.
"Can you tell me what limbs you lost before you reformed?" she asked Pearl.
Pearl opened her mouth, but no sound came out. She took a deep breath and tried again, but nothing happened. Distressed, she tried to talk with her hands instead.
"That's okay," Sodalite assured her. "I'll send in one of the others to talk to you. Rose, I need to speak to you outside."
There were only five pearls in the huddle when they entered the next room, and Sodalite sent one inside to talk to Pearl.
"Something did break," Rose pondered. "Can you fix it?"
"That's nothing to do with her gem, that's a mental block," Sodalite told her. "I don't know how pearls react to trauma inflicted when they're spikeless...but a few of the others are mute too. If she has any chance of getting over this, she needs to be with the others."
"I'll take her back here as often as I can..." Rose began.
"No, Rose," Sodalite cut her off. "She needs to stay here with the others. Permanently."
There was that lurch again, but this time it was body-wide.
"No!" she ground out. "She's coming home with me..."
"Rose, think about it," Sodalite said with a weary air. "She can't speak, that's going to make your friends and co-workers suspicious. If you're down here even more often than you were before, that's also going to make them suspicious and it puts my entire operation at risk, not to mention all the pearls I've rescued and will rescue. And she will not recover at your home, away from the others. All she'll do is fester and die."
Sodalite was making a lot of sense...but to leave Pearl behind...she might as well carve the centre from her own gem and leave it there too.
"I...," she murmured, as tears once again pricked the corners of her eyes. "I can't..."
"You want her to go with you for your own sake," Sodalite said sternly. "If you love her as much as you think you do, you'll leave her here."
She was right. It was awful, and painful, and it felt like her mass was going to splinter into a thousand pieces...but she had to do it.
"I need to say goodbye," said Rose, quietly, almost to herself.
"Of course," Sodalite agreed, opening the door. "We'll take good care of her."
Pearl looked up as Rose crossed the room, and even with that one look Rose wanted to scoop her up and carry her away, to hell with what Sodalite had said.
"You've been through a lot," she began, holding Pearl's hand as tight as she dared. "For my sake, and for that I'll always be grateful. I want you to know that you have been the light of my life, and I will always love you above all others."
Pearl was frowning now, because all of this sounded suspiciously final.
"You have to stay here with the others," Rose continued, choking a little on the words. "I've put you in danger and I don't ever want to see you suffer for my sake again. I don't know when I'll see you again..."
Pearl clutched at her hands now, mouth working furiously to form words that just weren't coming.
You can't leave me here!
"I've been so selfish," Rose sobbed, prying Pearl's hands away. "Please forgive me. I love you. Goodbye."
She pressed a hurried kiss to Pearl's gem, and threw herself out of the room. She didn't look back, but she knew instinctively that Pearl was trying to follow her and was being held back by Sodalite. If she looked back, she would change her mind.
She made it as far as the next district before she collapsed into hysterical tears.
…..
The tears dried, eventually. Rose felt like she would never cry again.
Dull anger filled her, and she finally dragged herself out of her apartment to go to her fellow Diamonds. All the while, her mind focused on Blue Diamond, to prevent her from thinking of Pearl.
Blue was talking to Emerald behind my back. Blue sent gems into my home to get information.
It seemed shockingly obvious, now. Her relationship with Blue had been notably frosty lately, and Blue was known for this kind of sneaky underhandedness. She had been chief of espionage during the war, masterminding the hive raids with as little gem death as possible.
And Blue had been the first to try and message her once Emerald's remains were found.
If she had just kept her nose out of my business, I would still have Pearl beside me.
It must have been fate that lead Blue Diamond to be the first Diamond she met, on the way to the meeting room.
"Pink," she said in that infuriatingly breathy way she had of speaking. "Where have you been? We've been beside ourselves with worry! Why didn't you answer any of our messages?"
"I'm in no mood to answer questions," Rose growled. "I want to know why you were speaking to Emerald."
"Emerald?" Blue said with a frown. "I wasn't..."
"Don't lie to me, I saw you!" Rose cried, so shrill that Blue jumped back in alarm.
"Rose, do we have to do this now? There were reports you shattered an Amethyst...and you were seen going into Emerald's apartment before her shards were found..."
"As if you didn't know," Rose scoffed. "Have you been watching me all this time? What did my good friend Emerald have to say about me?"
"She was worried about you," Blue ground out. "She came to ask me about you. Said you'd been obsessing over your Pearl for some reason. I said we might consider taking the damn thing away if..."
The shield was in her hand before she had finished speaking, and hurtled towards Blue Diamond's gem in that old practised flourish, the one that always cracked a zoatox carapace in two neat halves.
It did not crack the gem quite so cleanly. Blue had dodged at the last parsec, but she had taken a glancing blow anyway, and a series of veiny cracks crawled across her smooth gem. Her eyes bulged, she gasped for breath. One eye closed over into a slit.
Yellow and White came running out, having heard the crack. White knelt down beside Blue and inspected the damage.
"We need to get her patched immediately," she said grimly.
"Rose, what did you do?" Yellow asked.
Rose tried to answer, but could not bring herself to form words.