Viridescent
[ adjective: viridescent
1. greenish or becoming green. ]
The first time Yellow saw Blue, she was taken aback - there was no other word for it.
It was something about the way she moved, how she spoke from underneath her veil when surrounded by her court, a lustrous kind of allure only a Diamond could own, like her long sweeping hair and the hand that rose to move the heavy veil from her eyes when she looked up.
She was beautiful, with the remnants of a shattered gem falling from her palm, the ice-coldness of her sapphires standing in line behind her, the graceful way in which she moved around in the halls of Homeworld.
She was gorgeous turning away from the last hollowed out planet on her moon base, never stopping to rest. There was an unspoken competition between them back then, in the beginning – whom of them could conquer the most planets in the shortest time and create the most advanced colonies and new lines of perfect subordinate gems and win White's favor.
Yellow and Blue stood side by side in those early days and looked at their murals next to White's, new planets being added once every few centuries, the image of complete perfection that all the gems would bow for and admire. Yet she found Blue staring at her a bit too long sometimes, and when Yellow turned her head to inquire what was on her mind, Blue's lips would part ever so little and the shadow of a blush would linger on her pale face, before she turned her eyes away.
Hundreds of years could pass between the times they saw each other in person, too caught up in their work, but when they did that same little smile always lit up Blue's face.
Yellow found herself wanting to see that smile more often, but she was a reasonable gem - the most perfectly reasonable of them all, in fact, and she kept herself in line. There was no use of making up excuses so she could see Blue more often, but truly, a few indulgences now and then could be allowed.
Then, thousands of years later, from the rich crust of a dying planet, Pink Diamond emerged and something took a turn.
Pink was loud and lively, her tripping steps filling the hallways of the palace at Homeworld. The first thousand years of her life White kept her there, for safekeeping - or to guard her. Pink climbed the gem statues and talked to lower class gems. She laughed and complained loudly and asked about every little detail.
She was beautiful like only a Diamond could be – surely Blue thought so most of them all.
She completed them, with her rosy face and unruly hair, she brought glitter and blushes and color and warmth to their world. She was so small, deep-cut they could not stop themselves from thinking, but it was of no importance – Yellow and Blue were there to show her the ways of the Authority. Her existence blossomed life into Yellow and Blue's forms too, and they had reasons to spend more time together.
But the youngest Diamond was small and impatient, noisy and ignorant on a good day. Yet Blue always kept her close, spoke to her gently and with patience, taught her about the worlds. Yellow tried to do the same, as much as her own patience allowed.
But Pink wouldn't follow the order of the cosmos and the perfect plan White had created.
There was a sharp, dangerous gleam in White's eyes when she looked at Pink, and Blue found herself sweeping the little Diamond behind herself in White's presence.
.
Ever since the first time she opens her eyes, she is fascinated by the beings that surround her.
The first time Pink holds gem shards in her hands, the remains of a being who will never reform, she cries. Yellow and Blue look at the scene and frowns before turning away, and none of them notice how Pink's tears make the shards glimmer faintly.
Blue strokes her cheek with the same hand she uses to crush gemstones of unruly subordinates, and a thick feeling of discomfort grows in Pink as she watches the trials and punishments that regularly falls upon those who acted outside their designated purpose or against a Diamond's orders.
Yellow and Blue tell her that she's different, that she's one of them.
In her early days she accompanies Yellow and Blue to a special facility, filled with bubbles. She is immensely curious about this new prospect. The bubbles in the enormous quartz room are huge, filled with glimmering gem shards in different colors and shapes, and her immediate reaction is the same wonder as when she discovers something new.
Who created the bubbles out of nothing? Are those gems still incubating, waiting to appear? Her eyes are wide with wonder. Are those shattered gems that are healing to be whole again?
Yellow and Blue are outside the room, listening to the status of the operation from the gems assigned to it, and Pink reaches out her small arms to the nearest bubble - will it be hard and smooth like a gem, or soft like the ones she used to create when she had nothing else to do?
It pops when she takes it in her arms - she is too careless or the bubble too frail - and the clustered gem shards fall to the floor. She stares at them for a moment, seeing the shards pieced together.
Before she has time to think, a monstrous being emerges from the shards, bursting out and bellowing with despair, without a face and no voice of reason.
It towers over her, formless like a dark cloud with mass, breaking more bubbles in the process, causing a chain reactions of monsters emerging from the shards.
There are souls reaching for her everywhere in the large chamber, half-way shattered, their light forms twisted and distorted. They try to pull the little Diamond in, reaching for the other pieces of themselves that will never be found, wanting to be whole, to reform – but not like this, not together with the remains of other broken gems. Wrong, they sing, this is wrong, I am not whole! I am distorted!
Pink is frozen in her place, as the corrupted fusions spread in front of her. Arms and legs and limbs in one mess, reaching for her, reaching for something.
She cannot back down, does not even defend herself – is she defect after all? – she has no weapons like the other Diamonds. The closest monster takes hold of her and she wonders if she will lose her form or crack under the pressure. The being holding her is so broken, she wants to comfort it. She wants to weep for the sake of its suffering.
The fusion tightens her grip around her, it's painful, as if it's trying to tear her apart in agony and fury.
Someone is screaming her name, it cuts through the wheezing sounds from the fusions, and she realizes it's Blue. She cannot see the other Diamonds in the towering mass that melt together into even bigger creatures when they make contact, until there is a flash of color.
One enormous being tears apart the mass of fusions with a claw-like hand, a sharp snarl leaves her lips and she bares her teeth when she captures the fusion monster and squeezes it until it disappears in a cloud of smoke.
She hovers protectively over Pink, who tries to stand - it still feels like she has been squeezed near to the point of cracking. She has never before seen the enormous green gem with the long, sharp hair, wide mouth, the high heels and long cloak - and two enormous Diamonds side by side on her chest.
The stranger's emerald eyes are focused on the fusion monsters with a hostile expression - and suddenly sharp, green ice appears from the ground, shooting up like clusters of venom, immediately taking out several of the fusions. Pink raises her arms to protect herself and tries to move away, but Green Diamond grabs her with one of her four hands and puts her down on the surface of a broken pillar.
Pink does not snap out of it until Green melts apart and Yellow crushes the nearest monster with her bare hand and together with Blue proceeds to destroy the remaining forms of the monsters surrounding them. Soon there are mostly dust of shards left.
Blue holds Pink close and scolds her gently, and Yellow tells her that she wasted materials and resources with her irresponsibility. They inspect her gemstone for damage and are relieved to find she is unharmed.
White will put her in her room for this, but it doesn't concern her at the moment.
"Who was that?" she whispers, and the same wonder defeats the shock of what she just has witnessed - the prospect of something new to discover.
Blue turns her eyes away, her face turning into a worried little grimace. Yellow's face is closed off and distant.
"Let's head back."
.
"I can't believe we did that," Blue mumbles later when they're alone, hands clasped in front of her as if in prayer. "If she knew..."
"It was for Pink," Yellow calms her, stroking a few strands of hair out of Blue's face, remembering when it was shimmering emerald and sharp like the points of White's hair, and it was her own too.
"I couldn't think straight," Blue continues, absorbed in her worry as if already practicing her amendment speech, "I saw those monstrous beings and they were going to shatter her..."
"None of us thought clearly in that moment," Yellow cuts off, a sharp undertone to her voice. "Pink is safe and thus it the right decision."
The rest of their words remain unsaid, or in the aura realm, it can never happen again. Fusion is for weak gems, and Diamonds are flawless.
.
Long after a trial against a group of Homeworld rebels is finished, Pink is still on her knees, holding shards in her hands, and she tries to find that difference again. The difference that makes her own missteps acceptable and her words the law which her gems abide, that makes off-colors and cross fusions sentenced to shattering.
The warm sensation burns her, spreading from her gem and filling her entire form. She can't heal the shards, there is nothing she can do.
She gets a colony at last, but Pearl shows her the truth that none of the other Diamonds ever told her. As she gazes over the kindergarten of incubating gems she knows it, that her entire existence has been a lie. They are creating life by taking life. Sucking out the core of the planet, hollowing it out from the inside.
"Don't speak of that nonsense," Yellow Diamond says when Pink demands to shut down the operation.
"What's the difference between them and us? There are sentient beings on Earth! This is their planet!" Pink leans forward, small fists clenched against the crystallized control panel of her moon base. "Please!"
Yellow rises to her feet and stares Pink down, her hand on the bridge of her nose in exasperation. Her eyes are as cold and hard as her gem. The relentless eyes of a ruler of solar systems who has never before been opposed.
"We will speak no more of this. Now finish what you started."
Blue is colder where she sits in her palanquin, never quick to anger like Yellow, and Pink kneels in front of her like a lower standing gem would, hands clasped, pleading for understanding. But a hand is raised, dismissively, to tell her a million things - a Diamond doesn't kneel, and also I won't change my mind.
The burning feeling gives Pink no rest, scorches her from the inside, makes her gem glow bright with anger.
I.
CAN'T.
STAND IT.
As much as she loves the other Diamonds, the truth is heavier, like the pressure underground for thousands of years.
They don't care about anything but the colonies. And their Pearls – standing there with lowered heads and hushed voices, saying "Yes, My Diamond." Mindless, not like her Pearl.
So Pink starts getting reckless, much to the worry of her Pearl and the Diamond Authority.
When the battle for Earth begins she is braver than before, as Rose Quartz, protecting Pearl and Garnet and Bismuth and all of the gems she has come to call her own. They're risking everything for her and she risks everything for them. None of them knows, of course, that she is their biggest enemy.
.
The rebellion eventually spread to Homeworld, like an invasion, Yellow says, like those organic parasites that multiply and infest everything in their way.
After an important court meeting, an uprising starts right in the room among gems. Blue and Yellow never partake in mere fighting of this kind - that's what their quartz and ruby soldiers are for.
"Let's go," Yellow says dismissively, turning around. She has been colder than usual to Pink lately, after their last argument. Blue gives Pink one glance, then walks ahead, as her long cloak glides around her.
Pink stays behind, head lowered and fists clenched as the Homeworld gems battles the rebels, quickly winning. She is supposed to stand there and let her soldiers on both sides take each other out, she is a Diamond, their words ring in her mind, they are made to fight and die for her.
She makes her decision in the blink of an eye, driven by anger and desperation and the weight of the helplessness. She needs to stand up, the consequences be damned, and moves forward amidst the chaos. No one notices her as first, being no bigger than a quartz. Her Pearl, the secret Renegade Pearl follows her stride without questioning, but the doubt is shining in her large eyes.
The rebels recognize her, the ultimate threat to the Earth, the bratty, ice-cold young ruler herself, who, legend says, laughed in Rose Quartz' face. Pink has no weapons to fight with without her sword, but as she is about to call off the fighting, she is struck by a heavy weapon - piercing her back from behind and her form is torn apart.
"Pink Diamond!" the Homeworld gems calls in a panic, and Blue and Yellow's attention turns back to the fight.
There's a cloud of dust and then, the sound of a gemstone falling to the floor.
A pink, deep cut diamond.
Blue's scream is louder than last time, she moves through the gems like a whirlwind, and then she is on the floor, cupping her large hands around the diamond, tears of fury filling her eyes. From Yellow explodes lightning, tearing into the forms of the gems surrounding them. The Homeworld gems deserves punishment just as much as the rebels do, for not keeping their Diamond safe.
Blue stands in her full height next to Yellow, and when she leans into her their shoulders touch. The tears on her face turns into sharp, emerald-gleaming ice that falls heavily to the floor when the enormous fusion comes to life.
Green Diamond leaves nothing but dust behind of the other gems.
.
Centuries pass and Pink does not reform. They have told her the importance of not rushing her regeneration before, but this is too long, even for a Diamond.
Blue turns more withdrawn and Yellow more irritable. Time passes fast for a diamond, but the last five hundred years without Pink have been so empty. Blue cradles her gemstone every day, carries it close to her own gem, whispering her words of sorrow and regret, guarding her, and she is no longer the one Yellow recognized from before.
At last, Yellow and Blue sit in silence, working on their holographic screens - they rarely part nowadays. Yellow tells herself she needs to witness such a grand regeneration, but in truth, and she does not lie to herself, she does not want to leave Blue alone. Pink's Pearl stands by the wall next to the other two Pearls, waiting.
"What if she can't reform?" Blue whispers suddenly, her voice trembling again.
"Her gem is intact," Yellow says, softer than usual. "She is not broken."
A large tear falls down Blue's face and Yellow wants to reach out and wipe it away.
"What if she doesn't... want to?" the other Diamond continues, eyes suddenly wide and open. She picks up Pink again and whispers her repeated apologies.
"Just come back," Blue mumbles, "Please, come back."
Yellow walks over to her chair and stands behind it, putting her hand on her shoulders and letting her lips touch her hair gently.
In front of their eyes, the gemstone lights up and float.
The little diamond's form shines and glows, and they are willing to forgive everything just to have her back, seeing her flicker through her very first forms, before she lands gracefully on the floor of the moon base.
Blue embraces her tightly and kisses the top of her head. "Thank the stars you're back," she mumbles, nuzzling Pink, but the smaller gem barely responds. Now it is her turn to turn away from them.
There is something dark in Pink's eyes when she says: "Why didn't you shatter me when you had the chance?"
The wide-eyed innocence is gone, the carelessness replaced by awareness.
Blue and Yellow look at her, bewildered.
"Shatter you?" Yellow echoes, her relief at having the younger Diamond back masked quickly with irritation - it took so long and she has missed her, too. "What are you talking about?"
Blue's face is distorted with emotion again. "Never speak of such things!"
"I'm leaving the Authority." Pink's small form turns away, as if she expected them to get rid of her for her statement. She knows White will - she cannot even think of what White will do, but it does not matter right now.
Exiting the enormous moon base overlooking some faraway planet, she considers her options - what is left now?
She stands on the moon, among enormous craters, and the wide open dark space surrounding her, stars blinking sleepily at her. Tears stream down her face because she has left both the Authority and the Rebellion behind.
White Diamond's razor sharp sing-song voice echoes in her head, and she wants nothing but to return to the Earth, or whatever is left of it after her absence, and stay there for the rest of her days. She closes her eyes, imagining the green fields and flower valleys, a peaceful place.
Maybe even she can turn soft at the edges, in a place like that. Maybe she'll feel like a human, seeing things grow and change, live and die. She presses her hands against her gem as she takes a step forward, wondering where her ship is and how she'll get to the Earth - will the cosmos' currents blow her away and take her somewhere?
She wants to follow them, find a new planet, a new place to live. Never another shattering. Never another war.
A tall hand grabs her suddenly and she yelps as she is pulled back into the moon base. She stares into the face of Green Diamond, four sharp eyes glares down at her.
"What do you think you're doing, Pink?" Green scolds, but her voice is laced with concern. "You know you'll get swept away if you bounce! What is this all about?"
She meets the eyes of the fusion calmly, still waiting to be crushed for her treason, but it doesn't happen. A large crystallized tear falls down Green's face and she wipes it away immediately with another hand. It shatters against the floor as she waits for a reply.
"I let everyone down," Pink whispers, at last.
Speaking to Green is easier than facing Blue or Yellow individually, but she looks down under the weight of her gaze. "I can't be a Diamond. I am not."
"You are you," Green points out and opens her hand to allow Pink more space in it. "You make the Authority complete. You are just as important as the rest of us."
"I'd rather be shattered than be a part of it," she says and sees the hurt create an almost visible crack in Green, it makes her sway before she composes herself. Her eyes are deeply shadowed, she is frowning, but she is listening.
"Don't go away again," the emerald Diamond mumbles, her voice so intense it's almost like an order, but Pink shakes it off.
"You can't stop me," she says resolutely, not paying any mind to the fact that she is standing in the palm of an enormous fusion, consisting of two Diamonds who are already so much stronger than her on their own. She has never feared them for her own sake.
"I exist because of you," Green mumbles after a moment.
Pink looks up, eyes wide in one last attempt. "Please, please, let me have my Earth for myself, and let it be. I can handle it."
Green's finger lifts her chin gently and she looks into the two pairs of eyes.
"Give me a chance to prove it," Pink whispers. "Or I will never be a Diamond again."
The fusion is weak for her wishes, and the fear of losing her is stronger now when they have already tasted it once. "There might still be rebels left. I can't just let you roam the planet freely."
"Then come with me," Pink pleads.
"Fine," Green says at last. "You might do as you please with that planet, if you handle it on your own."
Pink embraces the hand of the fusion tightly, and Green strokes her form ever so gently. Pink is back and Pink is safe, and right now it is her - their - only priority.
There is of course White. The thought flashes through them like a destabilizer and they slowly, reluctantly separate at the thought of what could happen if she found out that they had once again formed. Has she seen everything? Does she know? Only time will tell.
Blue gently puts Pink down on the ground and Yellow stands by her side. They exchange a look, Yellow and Blue, having been one complete being, it feels strange to be apart.
"Come on!" Pink calls. "I want to show you the Earth."
fin.
reviews are welcome!
many thanks to my dear friend Minai28 for allowing me to use her image of Green Diamond as cover art.