War and glory

The raids and battles of the tense, packed day all go surprisingly well - it almost seems like a miracle. Their reunion is teary-eyed and giggly and just the smallest bit light-headed with relief, with hands tangled in hair and haphazard kisses. But there are no injuries to speak of, seven eager new recruits are joining the ranks of the Crystal Gems, and Pearl is humming at Rose's side with a happy bounce to her step. Keeping the compliments coming is the easiest thing Rose has done in a long while.

"Oh, and I loved that little flourish you did at the end there, with your swords? Very precise and imposing, good for sending a message and leaving a lasting impression." Pearl preens at that, and Rose is all too happy to continue and drive it home. "It was all very charming, too. You are charming."

"Y-yeah? I am?"

The little sideways looks Pearl keeps shooting her are irresistible, and easily drive away any remaining doubt regarding that statement Rose might have had. "Absolutely. Look at me, I am charmed, completely won over. Can't you tell?"

"Well, I do try to be at my best… It's, uh… I just don't like to presume…"

"I know you don't," Rose softly cuts into the reluctant stammer, punctuating her point with a peck to the hand that had been on its way to cover Pearl's increasingly blue face before she soundly captured it in hers. "But please always presume this. Look at you. What more could I possibly want?"

"Well, a few more quartz battalions surely wouldn't come amiss," Pearl starts only half-jokingly before Rose pulls her into her arms.

"I'd rather have you than a thousand of them."

Believing her is the easiest thing Pearl has done in a long while.

—

Reinvention

It's the quiet right afterwards that hits the worst.

Right after-

The Earth is never quiet, always busy and changing and shifting and teeming with life. It was something they all learned very early on. The thousands of Gems on it were never quiet, either, be it in anger or battle or grief or revelry - the last becoming more and more common in recent days, brightening Rose's smile, letting Garnet settle into herself, making Pearl's head and feet both feel feather-light. The thought that they could actually do it, that the retreat was a real possibility and Homeworld was on the run, that they could win - are winning - have won-?

The sound of it was nothing like Pearl had ever heard, the glare of cruel merciless blue-white-yellow given audible form… then the strange, distorted, shattered screams tearing from thousands of former throats. Something she knows will never quite stop ringing in her ears.

And then the scattering, and the quiet.

She trembles, still held in Rose's iron grip, still underneath the shield - protected from the blast, protected from- monsters? Former allies, comrades, friends?

Her head refuses to wrap around it. Ruby speaks up, barely louder than the heavy silence, a spot of warmth pressed against Pearl's side. "We- we're the only ones left."

Pearl swallows, dry, scratchy, dusty, and decides not to dwell on the obvious. "Rose…" her voice shakes even as she doesn't want it to, can't allow it to - she's seen the look on Rose's face and she needs to be strong for her, but- "Rose, what do we do?"

Tears still drip down Rose's cheeks, jaw, neck, useless and futile and not healing anyone. Sapphire's gem is whole and safe, clutched tightly to Ruby's chest, but the others -

Rose lets her shield drop and then vanish, but she doesn't let go of them.

"We are still the Crystal Gems. We protect the Earth."

—

Fusion

Rainbow Quartz sits and gazes at her almost-namesake, scattered among the mist and droplets of a waterfall, ethereal and blinking in and out of existence - much like her, lately, and isn't that really the problem at hand?

"I wish you two would sort it out," she grumbles to herself, rubbing an annoyed hand right under the gem on her forehead. "You've been no fun at all. I swear that man drives me up the wall- ugh. No, we're not splitting apart and I'm not going anywhere! If I leave it to you two it'll never get resolved and then where'll I be? Oh, please."

She lets her hands clench into fists. "I'll always have time for you. Yeah, right. No, listen, it's good to get things out in the open, to talk about things, and Garnet always says… well, Garnet's not here! I am!"

She is, she realises, and it's enough to feel good for a while. And what is the problem, anyway? This isn't anything new, they've all done this what feels like hundreds of times. It isn't worth getting upset over - they've never gotten this upset over it, the old game somehow isn't fun anymore, and it's all unsettling. But the damp grass surrounding the pool feels lovely under her bare feet and she settles back into being herself, at least for a little while.

"Remember the first time we found this place?" A sudden bright spot in the middle of one of the worst stretches of the war, a harrowing retreat landing them in what was to become one of their favourite sanctuaries.

"Can't we… can't we just enjoy ourselves now?"

They do, for a time, as strands weave in and out of focus.

Whatever happens, we'll always have this.

Whatever they have with her, they'll never have this.

—

Freedom

What they call freedom tastes sweet, like Rose's kisses, and the touch of the Earth's yellow sun, and the gentle brush of fingers before they knit together, and the freshness carried on the ocean breeze, and the loud, uninhibited giggles and guffaws after an exhilarating spar or race or swim-

Like Rose, scooping her up into her arms and jumping from dizzying heights, landing feather-light and unharmed, their gazes still locked, refusing to stray from each other's faces.

It feels like such a simple answer to so many questions.

She offers promises of devotion and oaths on bended knee, and she gives them because she wants to, because they are hers to give and nobody else's, because Rose is worthy of them, because her cause is important and just, because there is so much here to fight for, and to protect (not least of all Rose herself).

Pearl is growing used to waiting for it, every time: the fall, the derision, for it to finally be over in a shower of the familiar and beloved tinkling laugh - "A knight? You can't be my knight, because you're a pearl."

It never comes.

—

Her attention

Pink Diamond's celebrated quartz general catches her eye whenever she walks past on her way to the throne room and Pearl doesn't know what to make of it at all. It isn't a harsh, judging glance, like what she's come to expect from Gems, and high-ranking quartzes in particular - the kind that makes her feel like she's been judged and found severely wanting, even for the irrelevant little trinket she's supposed to be.

This gaze feels searching, almost knowing, and Pearl can't help but wonder… does she know? How could she? Of course, that would be absurd, but… does she see, somehow, is there a tell? Are the beginnings of callouses on Pearl's fingers so obvious to her? Does Pearl clasp her hands in supplication differently now that she's tried holding a sword - or, well, whatever substitute for one she has readily available? Is there something about her stance, is it more sturdy, more balanced, better prepared to react and readjust? Could she have actually seen Pearl's carefully hidden attempts at practise?

The general - a rose quartz, and a truly imposing, magnificent one at that - chooses not to walk right past her one day, but instead strolls over, brushes a hand against Pearl's shoulder to fully draw her attention, and leans down to her height to whisper: "I'd like to show you something."

Later on, after centuries of war, they return to where so much of it started, and reduce it to shards.

—

Potential

"Where in the world did she go…?"

"Oh, leave it. It's just a pearl, who cares."

"It's not just any cheap servant pearl, you dull clump of dirt! Look! It's her! This is the renegade pearl last seen with Rose Quartz! The one with a bounty on her gem, and, better yet, the one who might lead us to Rose Quartz herself! How hard could it be to get the hideout location out of her? I've dealt with pearls before, and let me tell you-"

She never does get a chance to tell, as one exceedingly precise sword strike later her rant is interrupted in a puff of smoke, and her gem joins that of her fellow carnelian on the ground.

"Oh, my, they seemed to have dropped these." Rose Quartz bends down to rummage through whatever it is the Gems' physical forms dissipating left scattered all over the clearing - and she stands up with an exclamation of amused delight. "Ah! Come see this, Pearl!"

Pearl interrupts her post-battle sword-cleaning routine to softly tread over. Rose has gathered up an armful of small holo-pads displaying both their likenesses, along with some rather dramatic warnings about the danger they pose to Gems and Gem society as a whole, and promises of rewards they both know none of the Diamonds would ever actually give.

"I really like how you look in this one, Pearl - an excellent smirk they captured there, and the chin angle? Very dashing. A shame they didn't show your swords. You know, for effect."

Pearl can't help but preen at the praise, and, well, Rose winked - what can one do? "Why, thank you! You know, I rather like how I look on it, too." She lets herself lean just the slightest bit against Rose's shoulder. "You, of course, look positively radiant. The most beautiful wanted traitor Homeworld has ever seen. Just how widely distributed do you think these are?"

Rose briefly hums in thought, dropping some of the pads in order to have an easier time of draping an arm around Pearl. "They look like standard order distribution modules - I remember handling endless amounts of them. I guarantee you every soldier on Earth has at least one by this point - well, I guess except for whoever this bunch was going to. And they're probably all over Homeworld, too."

All over Homeworld. There's a thought bubbling up in her that Pearl doesn't quite manage to keep to herself. "You know, I like…"

Rose is immediately intrigued, attention drawn away from checking how the two of them look when turned upside-down. "What do you like, Pearl?"

It takes a bit of effort to put into words, but it feels important, too, and Pearl perseveres. "I like that they know. That everybody knows. And I can't help but hope that… that there are pearls seeing this, too. I mean, of course they are, but… I hope that they're seeing it."

Rose's smile is small and gentle but very much there, and her hand on Pearl's shoulder is soft just as much as it is anchoring and reassuring. "I'm sure they are."

—

Bold

It isn't the first time one of Pink Diamond's patrols makes it dangerously close to their current base, and they both know it certainly won't be the last. But Pearl's diversion is extremely effective, if reckless, and she makes sure that she herself remains the only possible casualty of the day.

Rose hates it more than she can ever put into words.

"Rose…?" A tiny voice comes, along with a thin hand searching, and it provides a well-timed distraction - once again.

"I'm here," Rose says, attempting to pour as much reassurance and safety into those words as she can. She bends down and kisses Pearl's forehead, right above her gem, then takes hold of the hand, gentle and feather-light to avoid even the thought of further hurt. "I'm here, and I'm not going anywhere. You were… you were very brave."

Something dawns on Pearl's face at that, passionate, eager, but with a touch of that steely determination that Rose usually adores seeing in her.

Usually. "Don't ever do that again. Please."

Pearl's face falls, but soon enough she defiantly perks up again. "Not bad for my first real solo mission, though, right?"

She looks so proud of herself it breaks Rose's heart to tell her how much she wishes the first could be the last, too. It's impossible, she knows, on the road they've chosen for themselves, but the thought is a nice thing to hold on to. Pearl's failed attempt at biting back a whimper pulls her firmly out of the realm of thoughts and contemplation, however. "Oh, your poor leg. Let me see. What happened?"

"Well. One of them had… quite the grip."

Rose cringes. "Where are they now, anyway?"

"Completely wrong side of the peninsula! I led them away, stabbed the one that caught me and the others were too shocked to pursue, so net win for me, hah! Oh," Pearl winces, having gotten a bit too enthusiastic in the retelling, "ouch."

"Stay still for me, please. This'll only take a moment, and then you can indulge in as much reenactment as you want."

She is almost surprised at how easily the tears come.

—

Precise

The steps are the same as the ones she's spent countless stolen hours practising, only this time the sword is real, properly sized and hers, and she isn't anybody's - not unless she wants to be.

And she thinks, sometimes, or maybe often, about how she wants to be Rose's - Ah, pearl thinking, she can almost hear the other Crystal Gems tut, you can only get so far with them after all, the poor things.

But it's not like that at all, she knows… she knows because, if she lets herself admit it- she wants Rose to be hers, too. Or something like that. It's not her fault she can't find proper terminology to explain. It's not her fault half of it probably doesn't even exist, just like it isn't Garnet's fault when she can't get others to understand fundamental truths about her existence.

It feels like they tread new ground every day in every sense of the word revolutionary.

When all her hard work pays off in the form of a long, deadly spear drawn from the very core of her being, it feels like an unstoppably powerful statement, a defiant manifestation of her own self and everything she's chosen to stand for, and an extra few steps into the previously unknown that she's all too happy to take.

—

Experimental

It isn't easy, being the first.

"I can do it! Look, it's purely a matter of getting the mass and density of the projection right- not all that far removed from shapeshifting, really, just a matter of not changing yourself, but working with an extension-"

"But you detest shapeshifting," Rose offers, very unhelpfully, and Pearl blushes, clearing her throat.

"Yes, well. This is different. And I'm so close, I can feel it! So close to getting it just right."

The next hologram takes shape and sputters only slightly when Pearl knits her brows together and severs the connection between them. It flickers briefly, but stays.

"Oh, look at that! I knew you could do it!" Rose beams at her and Pearl, of course, beams right back - it's the only possible response, really, to the way Rose just entirely lights up. "What are you going to do with it?"

"Oh, so many things! So much potential-" Rose's smile is beautiful is an intrusive, but not exactly unwelcome thought that floods Pearl's mind and makes her lose track of whatever point she was trying to make. The most important eyes in the universe are on her and it's the gaze that always, always feels like the biggest burden and most incredibly freeing thing at the same time. "Ahem, I can… I can give you a presentation? If you have time, of course, I wouldn't want to presume…"

"Pearl," Rose interrupts her, rather more solemnly than Pearl is fond of or used to. "I'd love nothing more. And I always have time for you."

"Ahem, well, here's one idea I had- initiate protocol T1."

"Training mode testing initiated. Draw your blade or fall where you stand, coward!"

Rose applauds.

—

Without her

It is a phenomenon Rose had certainly told her about during one or several of her many exposés on humanity, and something Pearl has herself observed among humans on separate occasions, especially following times of great hardship. At one point, one simply has to admit a certain kind of defeat and acknowledge that - due to some fundamental truths of the universe and laws of physics and mathematical axioms and perfectly logical rulesets - what one wants may be impossible, no matter how badly one craves it or how hard one works for it. But unlike simple surrender, with this rejection of focusing on an impossibility of how one wishes things could be comes a new sense of comfort with how things are, and the acknowledgement that they might not be so bad - or that they in fact might not be bad at all.

"Yeah, that's a whole famous thing, P," Amethyst drawls one languid afternoon, draped over the couch with her head on Pearl's lap, freshly done playing with the balls of yarn involved in Pearl's latest crafting project. "We've been calling it acceptance for a while now. Get with the times."

Acceptance, then, is the term humans have very inventively chosen to apply. Pearl hums thoughtfully while trying to determine how many pairs of knitting needles she can work at a time, and files this away for further consideration.

For example - she thinks later, as she folds her thirty-seventh bright yellow-starred shirt that day, still enjoying the texture and scent of the freshly softened fibre - there as a persistent ontological and highly metaphysical thorn in Pearl's side is the simple fact that she can never have both of them, and no amount of love or devotion on her part will ever be able to change this. Pearl wonders when she realised that indulging in fantasies and daydreams hurt more than it helped, if it had ever even done more than simply distract from the difficult truth. Wonders when she managed to let go of the twisted sort of pride that if she was dealing with it the worst, she must have loved Rose the most. This was the crux of the acceptance matter, perhaps.

Oh, Rose is still around, of course: her gem is right there, after all. But she also isn't, really, and probably never will be again - and for all her grief and yearning Pearl can do nothing but shudder at that again that reappears every so often, that creeping after that she's firmly resolved to keep out of her mind. Because somewhere along the line just thinking of a life without Steven became unbearable, so she prefers not to - even when she's at her worst while panicking for his safety she doesn't let herself truly go there. She's very pointedly never asked Garnet what would happen, should he ever… should he ever…

Pearl sticks to hoping they never, ever have to learn, and doubles down on the hope by doing everything in her power to ensure it.

She often wonders how Garnet does it, how she doesn't buckle under the weight of so many terrible, terrifying, very real possibilities that mercilessly hammer at her. A lot of strength can come from relatively simple but determined reframing, according to Garnet. There's the increasing certainty that her seeing these futures meant nobody would ever have to live them, as well as the satisfaction of watching the number of good futures slowly grow and overwhelm and outweigh the bad.

And Rose had known all along, of course, and so had Pearl, and for Garnet it probably became too hard to miss fairly early on. Rose Quartz knew she would never get to hold her son, or play with him, or sing to him, or teach him about the many wondrous things she'd seen and done. And yet she spent time learning and talking and dreaming about doing these very things - and so, by proxy, did Pearl.

It was simply natural by then, in the end - if Rose couldn't do something, Pearl would be there to do it for her. She could make sure Steven had the very best of care and the most love, as was only right and deserved.

Hateful remnants of other times and other worlds and other lives or no, Pearl knows she does exceptionally well when she has a purpose. She knows, too, she doesn't do very well at all without one. Her hands like having something to do, and her mind doesn't know how to be anything but busy, so directing it is absolutely necessary.

Steven coming to live with them was a gift in ways that still keep coming to light - so very many things to take care of, for one! So many tiny rituals to be completed every day, so many small but significant building blocks of a human lifespan. So many belongings to fix, to mend, to clean. So many touches to give out - loving, reassuring, playful, relieved; hugs and hair tousles and pats and kisses. So many things to learn, and so many things to teach.

The way time seems to move with Steven around is strange - it's been so long since Rose… left, but also barely the blink of an eye. And Pearl wishes Rose could be here doing it all with them, of course, more than anything.

And sometimes Pearl allows herself to forget to miss her.