Chorus
Note: I have the overwhelming urge to strike while the iron's hot and before any new episodes further skew my headcanon, but it was always my intention to do this once Breaking Down was finished. Also, as I am on leave from hospital at the moment and still a mushy-headed invalid, if I make mistakes please don't hesitate to point them out.
Note to new readers: You should read A String of Pearls, an earlier work of mine, before reading this. It's not a requirement but it will make more sense if you do. Might also want to have a look at Bits and Pieces for characters that appear in this story.
Last note: As always, I'm going to add a link to my novel, if you enjoy what I do in fanon you might like my original work.
US link: dp/B07BGSPPBY
UK link: . /dp/B07BGSPPBY
Chapter One
Mute
In those first few hours, the worst part of it all was realizing just how long Pearl had been missing before they really noticed.
She didn't usually wander far from the temple as Amethyst did, sometimes for days at a time, and she didn't tend to go off on long solo missions the way Garnet did, but she did have something of a life outside the temple (although what that life entailed she didn't usually talk much about) so for her to be gone for a few hours wasn't that strange.
The mood in the temple had been subdued anyway, since that happened.
(That being the thing Pearl was physically incapable of talking about, and the others just plain unwilling to discuss.)
It was natural for them to want to give each other some space, right?
Steven hung out with his Dad at the carwash, had dinner at Fish Stew Pizza, slept over at Connie's and came back to find his shirts were exactly where he'd dropped them on the floor. Unusual, because Pearl would have folded them away, but he didn't think anything of it. Maybe she was busy.
Steven went to visit the spot where the barn used to be, played some arcade games with Buck and Sour Cream, chilled at the Big Donut for a few hours chatting to regular customers and came home to find dishes piling up in the sink. Garnet was back, but she went straight into the temple after tossing a casual greeting his way. Shrugging, Steven rolled up his sleeves and did the dishes himself. Pearl was probably getting sick of always cleaning up after him.
Four days in, he was really starting to worry. He'd seen Amethyst and Garnet multiple times, even just in passing, but it was like Pearl had dropped off the face of the earth. He'd gone looking for her in all of her usual favourite spots but there was no sign she'd been anywhere near them in a while. He asked around town if anyone had seen her recently, but nobody had.
She's just taking some time for herself. Everyone has to do that sometimes.
As much as Steven wanted to believe that, he knew Pearl wouldn't just leave like that without telling anyone.
Eventually, sick to his stomach, he asked Garnet. That's when they figured out she'd been missing for a week.
…..
"Don't worry so much," Amethyst said with a careless shrug. "She'll turn up. She probably just got stuck somewhere really dumb and was too embarrassed to ask for help."
Amethyst was trying to act casual, but Steven could tell she was as worried as any of them. She had that little line of tension across the bridge of her nose she always got when something really bothered her.
"Yeah, probably," Steven laughed feebly anyway.
Garnet beamed in a moment later. Outwardly she looked as unruffled as always, but there was a strange energy crackling around her that betrayed how stressed she really was. They were all trying to put a brave face on and failing.
"Did you find anything?" Steven asked, hopeful even though he knew the answer.
"Nothing," Garnet admitted, sinking onto the couch. "Not a trace."
"That means she's still on the planet, at least," Amethyst offered.
"No, that just means she didn't warp anywhere," Garnet growled. "She could have been picked up by something else. Someone."
A grim silence washed over them. They didn't want to say it, but their greatest fear was that she had been picked up by Homeworld agents without them knowing, making rescue pretty much impossible.
We would have gotten a message from Homeworld if they did get her. They'd call with demands. Wouldn't they?
"We've delayed our missions for too long," Garnet sighed at last. "We have places to investigate..."
"You're giving up?" Steven cried. Hot angry tears spiked the edge of his vision.
"We've looked everywhere, Steven," Garnet answered, sounding on the verge of tears herself. "All we can do now is wait. We have a duty to protect the people of earth, we need to carry out our missions. With or without Pearl."
They left him at home, which saved him the bother of digging in his heels and refusing to go. With their luck, Pearl would probably show up needing help as soon as they beamed away.
They can't have tried everywhere. What did they miss?
Lion, sleeping in the corner, yawned and stretched.
Aha!
…..
"I don't think it's broken," Lars groaned sourly. "Maybe try stepping on it a little harder next time, huh?"
He massaged his nose as Steven gave him a half-hearted apology and launched into the reason why he had come to them. The off-colour gems listened intently, turning away from their respective consoles.
"I thought maybe you had seen her?" he asked, although he could tell from their exchanging awkward glances they hadn't. "Or maybe picked up a transmission about a captured Pearl or something...anything?"
"Steven will injure the captain's nose," Padparascha gasped.
"It's unlikely they'd put out a transmission for a captured pearl," Rhodonite said, fidgeting in her seat. "Technically that comes under stolen property..."
"We haven't heard of any ships entering Earth's atmosphere these last few orbits," the left Rutile chipped in. "There's a fuel shortage, apparently."
"Oh," Steven sighed. There went his last hope...
"Um," Rhodonite piped up, fidgeting even more. "I have to ask...if you know...what string did she come from?"
"I don't know," Steven admitted. "Why?"
Rhodonite struggled to talk, grasped at her own hands, then finally sighed and melted. Her two components split apart and tripped over each other, and shakily got to their feet. The Ruby looked almost identical to the Ruby that made up half of Garnet, but the pearl...
She looked enough like Pearl for it to hurt to look at her, but she was pale blue, almost white, and seemed so frail she could barely stand. She was holding onto Ruby for balance, but gave up standing after a moment and sank to her knees.
"Sorry," she mumbled. "We haven't been split for a while..."
"Don't apologize," Ruby insisted, stroking her hand.
"Why did you want to know about Pearl's...string?" Steven interrupted before they could get sidetracked by lovey-dovey stuff.
The pearl took a deep breath before she spoke in a tone as soft and wavering as a trickle of water.
"Some of the older pearls had tracking beams implanted in their gems," she explained, shrinking back from everyone's eyes on her to hide behind Ruby. "It was expensive though, so it was scrapped for other simpler tracking implants. They stopped making them after the seventeenth generation."
"You think she got beamed by a tracker?" the right Rutile asked with a confused frown. "How would that work?"
"I'm not even sure," Pearl said, curling in on herself even more. "I just know some of the older pearls had them. I was made after the restrictions, I don't even have a tracker..."
"It's okay, don't get worked up," Ruby soothed.
"If she did get beamed up," Steven asked gently, now horribly sure that this was the answer they'd been looking for, "how would we find out?"
"Trace memory," Pearl answered. "She would have left some memory behind...but you'd need a pearl to find it."
Trembling, she rose to her feet and stepped out from behind Ruby. Steven could see the barely-restrained panic in her eyes, but she seemed determined to hold it together.
"Show me where you last saw her."
…..
They spent most of the day following some invisible trail Pearl was picking up, it was slow progress because she freaked out at almost anything and required Ruby to calm her down, but Steven couldn't hold it against her. At least she was trying, which was more useful than anything that Garnet or Amethyst had managed.
Eventually, they stopped in front of the sapling Pearl had planted to replace the tree Holo-Pearl had destroyed so long ago.
"She was here for a while," Pearl mumbled, doing some weird fidgety thing with her hands. "She felt unwell."
She did say she had a headache. Last week, she asked me to turn down the TV because her head hurt.
"She got the pull here," Pearl gasped, sinking to her knees and running her hands over an unremarkable patch of grass. "She tried to hold onto the tree but it was too strong..."
"There were no ships in the atmosphere though," Ruby mused aloud. "How did it pull her up?"
"Ships aren't needed," Pearl said. "It's nanotech...it reduced her to nanobytes and pulled her through a microwarp."
"They can do that?" Steven gasped, though he barely understood a word Pearl had just said.
"They had the technology," Pearl explained. "But it was expensive, and they scrapped it. Your pearl might be the only living pearl that still has it. Most gems wouldn't even know how it works!"
"So what do we do now? Do you know where she is?"
"No, but if I had to guess I would say she's on Homeworld or one of the bigger colonies," Pearl sighed.
Crestfallen, Steven slumped to the ground. At least they knew a bit more, but there was nothing to be done with that information. Pearl was curling in on herself again, hand over her mouth in a way that made Steven want to cry until he had no tears left.
"You did what you could," Ruby whispered to her. "We can fuse again now, if you want..."
"No," she said, with sudden vehemence that made her seem like a completely different gem. "I can't do anything more, but I know a gem that can."
…..
Yellow Diamond?
The commlink beamed the stern face of Homeworld's leader to the ship, or at least Homeworld's leader if she'd gotten really into the punk scene and developed a habit of slouching.
"What's this about then?" the yellow gem drawled lazily. "I don't make a habit of showing my face, I hope you know..."
"Thank you for taking this call," Ruby said, Pearl cowering behind her. "We need some help with regards to a pearl..."
"I only remodel twice on the same model," the yellow gem said. "And I know that one has been done more than twice..."
"Oh, it's not for her," Ruby explained. Behind her, Pearl gingerly touched her closed eyes. "It's not a remodel job...this quartz is looking for a missing pearl."
Steven shuffled in front of the console and bore the scrutiny of the yellow gem. She cocked an eyebrow and smiled wryly.
"Unusual quartz that's able to afford a pearl," she drawled. "Especially one worth stealing. So tell me...why should I take this job?"
"Well, uh..."
Ruby stumbled over her words trying (and probably failing) to convince the yellow gem, and Steven's eyes wandered until he saw something he hadn't noticed. There was a pearl on the commlink, sitting on the yellow gem's left side, so still she blended into the mess of the workshop room. He'd noticed because she had moved, just barely.
Pearl slid out from behind Ruby, just a little, and her hands moved in that same fidgety way. Now, however, the other pearl's hands moved too. Much smaller, more graceful movements, but they mirrored each other in a strange way.
"We should take the job."
The yellow gem swung in her chair to stare with amusement at her pearl. The pearl, for her part, showed no emotion of any kind, just folded her hands on her lap and waited.
"We should, huh?" the yellow gem chuckled. "Who's we, exactly? Any reason why?"
The pearl said nothing, and for one awful moment Steven thought she was going to get in trouble with this strange non-diamond.
"Yeah, that's what I thought," the yellow gem shrugged and turned back towards the commlink. "Okay, I'll take it. Sounds interesting in any case. I'm going to give you some co-ordinates, meet me there and we can get down to business."
"Landing on Homeworld," Lars growled, finally speaking after watching this exchange with an air of boredom. "That's gonna be a trip..."
"No, just send the quartz," the yellow gem said. "I don't want to attract any unneeded attention."
Steven gulped. But what choice did he have?
