Warning for slavery and horrible Homeworld fascism. Also some kind of fantasy racism + ableism + classism combo.
Her posture is perfect, her hair is just right, her voice could be less grating, she's told, but serviceable enough all the same. She doesn't smile too much or talk too much or frown at all, she's so so careful. She's good for this job; she was made for it. It's always been the things she couldn't help, that have been a part of her for as long as she was, that mark her so clearly as less than she should be.
She sees a mess and she fixes it, and that's fine. She finds ways to make things prettier, and that's fine. It's her job to keep things orderly and clean and good looking. The problem is that everything she does is too noticeable.
She didn't mend the splintered vocal transmitter base; she reconstructed it, shaping it to be more flexible and hopefully withstand higher voltage. She didn't destroy the corrupted files; she cleaned them up, and organized them, and uploaded them to the backup server.
She wasn't disobeying any orders, technically; 'Take care of that' is frankly rather open to interpretation. But it is assumed that a pearl wouldn't interpret. It is assumed that a pearl would know how to be unobtrusive without being told. But this is what has always been wrong with her: she doesn't see what she's expected not to do. All she sees is what could be done. She's always trying, trying to parse what assumption is being made, to anticipate what expectation isn't verbalized, to imitate what another pearl would already, intrinsically, implicitly, know. She always gets it almost right, but not quite.
"That's your problem," a colleague told her once, well meaning but devastatingly bleak. "You think too much about it. Don't try to analyze, we aren't good at that. Think small and trust your instincts."
She can't. She can't trust her instincts, because her instincts are always wrong. She can't stop trying to analyze, because even though she's bad at it, it's the only thing she's capable of. And she can't stop thinking, because her thoughts are all she is.
.
Pearls don't require socializing; pearls can't get bored. She tells herself this all the time, trying to scold or reason herself into compliance. She isn't aching with an unbearable yearning for a puzzle to solve or someone to talk to, because it is impossible for her to be. And so when she finds herself physically leaning in the direction of a conversation taking place, mentally constructing fully fleshed out arguments, she is so quick to straighten herself up and direct her mind elsewhere (nowhere). Surely, if this longing were genuine, if this need were real, she'd be that much slower, more reluctant. But she isn't; she's quick and efficient; she even suppresses the urge to laugh at herself, and stays quiet.
She's fine; she was made for this. And if sometimes she almost does things she wasn't made for, she's always right enough to stop herself, eventually. That has to be sufficient. It's all she can do.
.
"You're humming," a coworker tells her pointedly, when their supervisors (owners) are working on a joint project and the two of them have been standing together in the same room, looking at the same wall, for longer than is convenient to keep track of.
Pearl stops abruptly, purses her lips, turns her nose up. But now the coworker is looking at her foot, and Pearl realizes she's tapping it.
"There's no harm in that," Pearl says, less neutrally than she intends. "We aren't needed right now."
The other pearl looks at her, skeptical and judgmental and something else that she can't quite identify, but doesn't argue. Arguing, Pearl reminds herself, isn't within a pearl's purview.
But for a brief moment a bit before their superiors return, the other pearl's fingers seem to twitch in something that could be mistaken for a sort of rhythm.
.
"I wish I could be a bit like you," the coworker whispers to her in the evening, when all the pearls in the building are lining the walls, quiet shadows on standby, unheeding and unheeded. "But it's better that I'm not, of course."
"I know." Pearl can stop humming, but can't stop her hands from fidgeting, can't stop her silly imperfect brain from assembling pieces of things she's seen, ideas she's heard, turning them, changing them. "I know."
But the pearl touches her hand, light, steady, and leans closer, barely felt and horribly improper. "Still," she breathes, so near Pearl could turn and graze her cheek on the point of her nose. "I wish I could."
Pearl holds her breath, and her coworker straightens up and moves away, eyes fixed and silent again. And Pearl folds her own arms behind her back and locks her knees and manages to stop trmbling, and they're both perfectly appropriate.
But she can't shake the sudden, clear, terrifying thought that maybe she isn't the only one. Maybe she isn't the only one who yearns. Maybe she isn't the only one who wants to talk and argue and tinker and repurpose. Maybe she isn't the only one who gets restless sometimes, and tired, and lonely, who can't force herself not to notice things that can be done, to stand and see without acting.
And if she isn't, then, maybe, it's not impossible to think and feel and want the things she does. Maybe it isn't impossible to imagine, to learn, to try things she wasn't made for.
Hesitantly, carefully, she smiles at the pearl next to her. Silently, subtly, the pearl smiles back.