This was originally supposed to be very short, and morphed into something long by accident. What if Pearls needed instruction to survive? What if, without Rose to command her or to dedicate herself to, Pearl needs someone else to tell her what to do?
What if neither she nor Garnet knows what to do with this?
Sometime after Rose's passing, Pearl had felt the shift.
It was a programmable quirk; something Pearls had built-in as a failsafe, to prevent unseemly things like independence and free thought. Apparently the Gem that had ordered her creation had thought to ensure that she would always seek instruction, seek dominance, ownership by another Gem. Pearl didn't like it one bit, but she felt the pull in her Gem, felt it in the way her eyes learned to track Garnet's movements.
Garnet was the new leader of the Crystal Gems—which made Garnet an ideal owner.
The word put a rotten taste on her tongue, and thinking it made her pull a face when she knew no one was looking. She hadn't felt this sort of pulling in her in centuries; Rose had made it very clear that there were boundaries, and those boundaries involved Pearl breaking away from her programming, ignoring her conditioning, and obeying Rose's wishes that she find her own way, her own happiness. And she had—in watching over Rose's happiness, in keeping her entertained with things she could tell Rose would enjoy watching. Pearl had been able to trick her programming then, work around centuries of schooling, because in the end Rose's smile and appraisal were no different than she would have sought to earn on Homeworld.
This wasn't Homeworld.
And Garnet wasn't Rose.
They worked on the house together, and Pearl sometimes sang to herself while she fitted roof tiles and made sure that beams were at perfect ninety-degree angles. She asked Garnet for advice on the building's floor plan, warned her before she went out of sight for more than a few moments, and prayed to every Goddess above that the Fusion didn't notice.
It should have been Steven, after all; he had Rose's Gem. But he was a child, five-years-old and still living with Greg. He visited—they both did—but Steven had no instructions for her, no orders or requests, not even questions. The child was shy, and Pearl feared he would never be anything like his mother—and that would be both terrible and wonderful. Pearl tried not to think about it.
At least it hadn't been Amethyst, she thought, balancing precariously while she made sure the center beam she was perched on was perfectly level. She'd felt so sure during sanding, but now she worried that her efforts had been wasted, lost to a few centimeters of misalignment. Pearl frowned deeply. Amethyst had been an absolute nightmare since Rose… gave her physical form up, and besides, was much too young. She couldn't imagine belonging to someone she had helped polish. Amethyst wasn't a child—though Rose had babied her—but she was the youngest, save for Steven.
So it was… good, in the end, that Garnet was her new owner. Even if Garnet didn't know it yet. Pearl didn't expect her to take it well if she did find out; everything about Garnet was Earth, down to her heady scent and low voice, and to find out that she was bound by Homeworld's rules after everything they had fought for and against…
The alabaster Gem scowled at the level in her hands, daring the bubble to move even a fraction further from the middle. No, Garnet must never find out. She would keep it secret. Keep Garnet out of the loop.
That approach worked for less than two weeks before Garnet confronted her about it.
Missions were far less frequent now, and Pearl hadn't lost her edge, but Garnet's leading style was… difficult to settle into. Being told to do her thing, when the knight's instinct was to protect Rose at all costs, save explicit instruction contrary, left something to be desired with their current Roseless formation. Pearl was still quick and light on her feet, but throwing herself between Garnet and a corrupted Gem beast gave her away—and nearly cost her her physical form.
"Boiler Room. Immediately," Garnet had said through clenched teeth, once the monster was bubbled and sent away, and Amethyst hadn't teased Pearl for the first time in weeks. Pearl met Garnet in the Temple basement after returning to base, and her companion was waiting for her, standing arms akimbo, with the lava pit bubbling dangerously behind her.
"You've been acting—wrong," Garnet's voice caught as though she'd had something else she wanted to say, and Pearl didn't meet her eyes. "For weeks. What's going on?"
That was a direct enough question. Pearl fidgeted with the sheer hem of her skirt, trying to draw words from the cloth without success. When staring into the lava pit made her eyes burn, she tore her gaze away. Her feet were interesting enough. "It was instinct," she said, dodging the question as best she could. "I won't do it again."
"Good—but I'm not talking about just now," Garnet snapped back, and Pearl could see her shadow pacing. The Fusion must have been much more upset than she thought. That made sense; the stoicism was new, came with her most recent reformation. Ruby and Sapphire had split apart shortly after Steven's birth, grieved separately in their own ways for weeks, and returned as Garnet shortly after.
And this Garnet was new, and serious, and had some of Sapphire's icy demeanor. Pearl stood at attention, or some shadow of it, avoiding eye contact. Garnet stopped in front of her, and Pearl felt the Fusion's gaze boring into her.
"What's going on, Pearl?"
It wasn't voluntary, but Pearl took a step back, and Garnet stepped with her. "Oh… It's nothing!" Pearl's voice wavered with her lie, and Garnet continued to follow her backtracking until the alabaster Gem's back was against the wall. "It's nothing, Garnet, really…"
"Pearl…" Garnet's voice was a low rumble. Pearl's eyes stayed glued to the ground between them, the short distance between Garnet's feet and hers.
"No, really, I—" Pearl started, cut short by Garnet's hand abruptly slamming into the rock beside her face. She yelped, startled, and managed to look up at the Fusion finally.
It wasn't often that Garnet's visor was transparent, but she could see the vague shape of her eyes boring down on her in the dim light of the room. The Fusion's jaw was set, all three eyes narrowed, nostrils flared—she was furious, could see through her lies—and Pearl froze under her scrutiny.
They stayed like that, at a standstill for long moments, and Pearl knew it was her turn to come clean.
"I… Oh, Garnet, you'll be upset," Pearl protested weakly, "It's… it's ancient history, you don't want to know, I wanted to keep it from you…"
"Well, you can't," Garnet said, frowning deeply. "I don't want secrets. We can't afford secrets, Pearl." Not now. Not with only three of them.
Pearl was silent for a long moment. "How much do you know about Pearls?" she asked at length, earning a grunt of surprise from her companion. "About how we… I… function?" Garnet shook her head, and while Pearl wasn't surprised, she sorely wished that she did know. It would be so much easier than explaining. She drew in a shaky breath. "Ever since Rose…" she started, "…left, I've been… incomplete. Not—not in a… a romantic way." Although she certainly was that. Pearl's cheeks heated in embarrassment, and she wrung her hands. "I… we Pearls, we're meant to have instruction, and order, and… to be commanded. It's instinct. It's… it's programmed into us, into our Gems, just like anything else. And without Rose, my Gem wants me to follow… you."
That was not the response Garnet expected.
She stared back dumbly, and Pearl sucked her bottom lip between her teeth, worrying it hard enough to split the skin.
"I'm not Rose Quartz," Garnet said stiffly. Pearl nodded miserably, feeling tears prickling at the corners of her eyes. No one could ever be Rose Quartz, not even her child. Rose had been one of a kind. Garnet certainly couldn't be Rose.
"I know." Pearl's voice was small and shaky. She wanted to reach for Garnet, to explain herself, but she found that folding inward was easier. Garnet's visor darkened; Pearl dropped her gaze.
"You're not a robot."
Robots certainly wouldn't be on the verge of tears, Pearl thought bitterly, but she nodded all the same. Garnet was right; she wasn't an inorganic construct built on ones and zeros, with limited programming and no capacity for learning. She was a Gem; a highly sophisticated, intergalactic being made of light and magic. A Pearl.
"And this is Earth. You don't need my instruction," Garnet concluded, and the softness in her tone was lost on Pearl, whose shoulders took to trembling as she tried to keep from crying. Pearl tried to nod, even though her instincts screamed that Garnet was wrong. She needed instruction. She needed order. She needed to be owned and possessed, to belong to someone she could completely dedicate herself to. She needed Rose more than anything, and without her, she needed Garnet.
She was a Pearl, and she was a knight, and Garnet wasn't seeing that.
Instinct and grief stilled her tongue, and Pearl said nothing. Garnet's hand against the wall withdrew, and settled very briefly on her head before the Fusion drew away completely.
"You are your own Gem, Pearl," Garnet went on, "We're teammates. We're friends. Nothing more. There's no caste system here."
Some part of her understood that the words were meant to be encouraging. The rest of her felt gutted, and Pearl nodded again, bobbing her head mechanically. "I understand," she whispered, and Garnet frowned. Pearl wondered if it was the wrong answer, or if her inflection were the problem. She drew in a shaky sigh, pushed down her feelings into a sick, anxious knot in her stomach, and mustered up a terrible imitation of a smile. "I'm sorry, Garnet. I didn't mean to put something like this on you. It's fine."
Her placating tone needed work; the Fusion frowned deeply. "Pearl—"
"No, no," Pearl said hastily, gathering herself up to leave. She clenched her hands so tightly that her knuckles went blue. "You're right. This isn't Homeworld. It's fine."
Every future that flickered through Garnet's vision in that instant told her that was a lie—it wasn't fine, but she could think of nothing more to say. There were too many futures where Pearl became someone else entirely, where she doted and fawned out of obligation, and Garnet wouldn't suffer those. She wasn't Rose; she didn't want Pearl to fall back into centuries old habits. "If you're sure," Garnet said reluctantly. Pearl nodded more vigorously this time, with false certainty.
"I've got to get to work on the house," Pearl said, glad for the excuse to escape the boiler room. "Those hardwood floors won't prime themselves! Sorry, Garnet, I won't mess up on the next mission."
And like that, she was gone.
Garnet watched the door, knowing that Pearl wouldn't be returning the same way, and heaved a sigh. She thought, not for the first time, and certainly not for the last, of the weight Rose had left on her shoulders by passing on her mantle, and of how unprepared she felt for it all. Staring down at the paired Gems in her hands for guidance, Garnet sank down to sit at the edge of the lava pit.
Ruby knew nothing about Pearls on Homeworld; she'd seen them, but the once-terrifying renegade was the first she had ever spoken to. If there were some secret rule about passing Pearls between Gems, it was something the upper class did; not some common soldier.
Surprisingly, Sapphire was similarly uninformed. Blue Diamond's court kept Pearls; the matriarch herself had one, a lovely little blue thing that stood at attention and rarely, if ever, uttered a word. But Pearl was unlike any other she'd ever met, and Sapphire had never owned anyone. That had never been in her life plan before she jumped the track of fate.
Pearl had no reason to lie, Garnet supposed, but the entire idea felt sick—commanding her comrades felt strange enough in battle; she left her instructions deliberately open-ended, knowing that Pearl and Amethyst could fight at least as well as she could. Giving commands the way she remembered Rose doing, long ago, seemed blasphemous. Pearl was older and more experienced than she was, and perfectly capable on her own.
Garnet didn't understand much about Homeworld or its practices, and didn't feel the need to. She knew that mixed Fusion was forbidden, that her very existence went against the order they had fought tirelessly against for a thousand years. She knew that Pearl, for all her strengths, only had value in her beauty. She knew that Amethyst would have been shattered for being imperfect. She knew that Rose Quartz gave up a life unparalleled to fight for love, peace, and freedom on the planet Earth. Homeworld was wrong—and just like they had driven off the invading Gems from that awful place, everything it left behind ought to be left thousands of years in the past.
It was a long time before Garnet left the comfort of her hearth. When she did, she saw Pearl polishing away at the newly-installed hardwood floor, just as she'd said she would—and without a word of acknowledgment, the Fusion took to the warp, off to handle a smaller mission alone.
Normalcy was better.