A/N: Someone dared me to write a songfic a while back. I decided to take every line of the song as an inspiration for a series of loosely connected drabbles about the rebellion. The song I chose is Armor and Calla Lillies, by Cloud Cult. While at heart it's probably more of a tree-sitter song, sung with some decidedly 60's-throwback flair, in my head it's always the song that best fits rebellions. It's one of my favorite songs. Actually, Cloud Cult is one of my favorite bands. :)
All of the lyrics from the song have their own paragraph, and are denoted in italics. The format of this songfic is unorthodox, and I'm a little concerned that the storyline doesn't really flow through the drabbles, or that the connections between them aren't as clear as I think. If you have any feedback in that regard-good, bad, or indifferent-I'd absolutely love to hear it :)
And the people are made of legos and razorblades
One of the first things that Rose Quartz notices about humans is their innate need to build. Even nomadic tribes erect tents and shelters and cultural traditions as multifaceted as geodes. As her time on Earth extends, she begins to notice their log cabins and castles of stone. Humans love to stack things up and call them home.
They love slashing each other down, too. Be it with foot soldiers on large sprawls of land or one by one through deliberate selection and torture. Not even Homeworld could have scoffed at the systematic efficacy of the Spanish Inquisition. War, as gems know it, is defeating the dominant species on various planets so they can install Kindergartens. They don't fight amongst themselves the way that humans do; their programming would never allow for it.
It's such an interesting contradiction, Rose thinks, cutting down the fellows of your race just so you can build things on the land they used to stand on. How does humanity deal with having such a paradox hardwired into them?
To live this way you gotta kill off everything
Gem incubation and development affects every planet a little differently. In the case of Earth's Kindergarten, the land becomes brittle and barren. Even the air starts to taste stale and used up. Rose chose this locale for the Kindergarten because of the abundant life it used to boast—the very earth itself seemed alive. The first few gems to pop out of the ground appeared to have inherited that life; they were vibrant and lively, and they scarcely ever tired. Gem quality has steadily decreased since then. The more gems that incubate, the faster the lush greenery and plump mammals deteriorate and recede. Rose halted gem production on the most blackened and sickly areas a few centuries ago now, but nothing has come back. The flora she transplants there die before they can respond to her influence. She's starting to think that the land will never recover from being leeched this way.
In hindsight, it occurs to her that the other planets she's installed Kindergartens on have all looked this way in the end. The difference was simply never this dramatic.
"And I can't just step aside and watch all this happen."
The realization dawns upon her quietly at first, and then crashes around her with all of the cacophony of an avalanche as the concept gains momentum. Rose is a gem of creation—professionally, she constructs Kindergartens for the perpetuation of her own race, and on a more personal level her ability to coax life and sentience from carbon-based flora is something she excels and takes pride in. Truth be told, her ability has blossomed since arriving on Earth, and she has enjoyed it immensely. It's more than the simple power of it, though Rose must admit that does play a part; no, the way that the greenery on this planet responds to her has helped her to forge an intimate and emotional link to the very land itself. This sense of connection—of belonging—is a new feeling for her, and she is loathe to sever it.
How can she profess to feel this way, and yet continue a practice that saps the Earth of its very life force? It's a very human conundrum, admittedly, but Rose is no human. She is a gem through and through, a creature of order and algorithm and logic. Her philosophies must run parallel to her actions in order for her to look upon her existence and find it acceptable. She cannot live an existence of contradiction; to do so would be illogical.
Gems' programming does not allow for them to wage war amongst themselves, typically, but Rose is becoming rapidly convinced that there must be an exception to the rule.
So I dance all day on the shooting range
Gems with projectile weapons are particularly dangerous, and Homeworld seems to have an endless horde of them, because they're coming in continuous, semi-predictable waves. Rose feels as though she is constantly whirling out of range and trajectory. In Pearl's case, she actually is twirling.
Don't even get her started on the newly stable elemental models. There are only six of them (three rubies, three sapphires), but the havoc they reap is objectively phenomenal. Apparently, the fact there are six in the same solar system is unheard of, and a clear demonstration that Homeworld means to obliterate their little rebellion once and for all. The Ruby and Sapphire that make Commander Garnet are older models—less refined versions of the same experiment, as one Peridot scoffed—but without their personal expertise Rose doesn't think they would have stood a tactical chance.
And I'll make love all night while the bombs fall
It's becoming a tradition of sorts for Rose to wander into human villages between battles and strategic meetings. Things are so much simpler amongst beings that slice each other down just so they can build themselves up—and yet, she finds that the insight she gains from their perspective is valuable.
Their tales of romance are so foreign and captivating, Rose can't help wanting to have a few experiences of her own. The love she tries so hard to emulate is the finest escape from war that she has found. And she resembles a goddess of fertility, apparently, so she is never short of suitors.
Rose doesn't mind the comparisons, truthfully. She's always seen herself as a gem of creation, but lately she's been nothing but a source of destruction and chaos. Ironically, she is building up their potential for a flourishing existence by slashing down her own.
No wonder they like her so much. That's such a very human thing to do.
And I came to them with a tree house full of flowers
Garnet warns that the perceived banality of the gift will only hold if someone can keep Homeworld's sapphires too busy to look at it with any real scrutiny; their spies say that only one of them has reliable future vision, prescience being hard to cultivate and even tougher to master without becoming unstable and/or defective, but nobody can tell them apart so it's best to just keep them all out of it. If peace negotiations go well, then they never have to know that Rose could have animated the entire damn tree and sent it on a rampage. Having the one clairvoyant sapphire See a potentially traitorous outcome will dissolve the negotiations for sure.
Still, it's an aesthetically exceptional tree, the best she's ever raised. Rose is proud of it.
And they came to me with shotguns and bulldozers
Homeworld's sapphire, being the suspicious sort, had Seen their flowery Trojan horse coming a mile away, and 'negotiations' only lasted for as long as it took for the ambush to confirm everyone was in position and start picking them off accordingly.
In hindsight, Rose should have grown a bigger tree.
We're made of armor and calla lilies and they're closing in so fast around us
Garnet, also being the untrusting kind, had warned them this might happen. Between Garnet's brute strength and inside knowledge of the elemental gems' weaknesses, Pearl's agility, and Rose's blossoming tree monster, they manage to escape he ambush without casualties, but only barely.
"I don't know why," Rose says afterwards, sighing sadly. "But I really thought Yellow Diamond was willing to hear us out."
"It was a possibility," Garnet says. "Now you can't say we didn't try."
So we'll dance all day through the shooting range
And we'll make love all night while the bombs fall
The war rages on for years. Decades. Rose can feel herself falling into patterns of whirling pink fury during the day and whimsical romantic earth woman at night. Is this planet really worth giving up everything for? What is she trying to save, and for whom? Is she just trying to prove a point?
What good is trying to save this planet, if this rebellion only ever damages it more?
"You believe this planet is worth fighting for," says Pearl, gazing up at her with eyes as blue as the sky and as resolute as granite. "You want this land and these bipedal humans to live on. Isn't that enough?"
Rose smiles, and reaches out to thread their fingers together. "My Pearl. You always have such faith in me."
And I've loved you a million years
And I'll love you a million more
Pearl flushes the most endearing shade of blue. "That should be my line. Rose, you've opened my eyes. I never saw this planet as anything special until you showed me what it was capable of.
"And I'm not a warrior, but I can't let them do this."
The first corrupted gem emerges just after Homeworld's final strike has thundered over the land. A flourite's gem hovers as her shape glows white around it, easily discernable as humanoid.
Then the shape glitches. It flashes brighter, longer, taller. What's left of Flourite falls onto sharp spindly hooks that it uses to prop up its thin, suddenly crooked spine. It stands like an abstract piece of art, all hard corners and acute angles and razor sharp edges. A screech, high pitched and warbling, rips itself out of the creature's throat as it teeters on its new stilts, and then starts tilting Rose's way.
The next thing Rose knows Pearl's sword is parrying a gleam hooks, and Garnet is crashing down from the sky with gauntlets bared like the deadliest of meteors. There is another ululation, and then a poof. If her friends had not been there to protect her, that gem glittering on the harshly hacked up battlefield could have easily been Rose herself.
She stoops down and bubbles Fluorite. Her gem doesn't look corrupted. It doesn't look like there is anything wrong with her at all.
But there is something wrong. There's something very wrong with her, and Rose is a gem of creation. She can't just stand idly by while something or someone is being slashed down for the sake of progress. She isn't human, after all.
"Wait for me…"
Rose doesn't realize that she's speaking to the indifferently bubbled gem, but she is. She says, "I'll figure out how to get you back to normal again, I promise."