Motion
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This is for my frequent commentator, Anonymous2, who asked for a Pearl POV. If and when you get this, send me a private message please!
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Dance, when you're broken open. Dance, if you've torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance when you're perfectly free.
-Rumi
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Pearl was well aware that her fascination with the stars was confusing to Pink Diamond. If she'd been able to find the words through the endless jumble of thoughts that ran with incredible speed through her mind, free of the nothing, she could have told her that at the centre of every star was a burning core in perpetual motion, and watching them move helped her to find stillness.
But she could not say that, the words were scattered, and Pink Diamond did not speak in gestures.
When Pink Diamond called her over to choose her outfit, she heard it through a haze. Where before the nothing had sharpened an order into the only thing in the world, now it was mixed with all manner of white noise. Still, she did her best to comply, to obey that instinct to please her owner. That had never really been drowned out.
Only when she saw the alternatives presented and offered freely to her did she realize she hated the outfit Pink Diamond had chosen for her initially. The stiff curls of fabric moved to counter her at every turn, to scrape against her calves and pull at her skin; she had to push and smooth it in order to move at all. The long tendrils of hair were heavy and got in her way.
The word hate floated through her mind and was gone in an instant, leaving just a little shiver as evidence it had been there at all.
When the words to express her approval of the new outfit floated by, she seized them and wrestled them into place, to vocalize them. They felt odd in her mouth, not quite wrong but illicit, a guilty pleasure.
The new outfit, when it was chosen, was a revelation. To move so unhindered was like releasing a breath that had been held for far too long.
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She scarcely heard the words Sodalite and Pink Diamond spoke to each other. The other pearl, the one that belonged to Emerald, was plagued by the nothing. She looked so distressed that Pearl felt a pang of absence where before her own nothing would have kicked in for the sake of empathy. She imagined that even if she hadn't been given the go-ahead to go to her, her feet might have dragged her there of their own accord.
HelpmeHelpmeHelpmeHelpmeHelpmeHelpmeHelpmeHelpmeHelpmeHelpmeHelpmeHelpmeHelpmeHelpmeHelpmeHelpmeHelpmeHelpmeHelpmeHelpmeHelpmeHelpmeHelpmeHelpmeHelpmeHelpmeHelpmeHelpmeHelpmeHelpme pearl red's eyelids called in a flickering loop.
Pearl took pearl red's hands and held them to her chest, to filter the nothing through her own body. A familiar burn trickled across her skin and sank into the floor. It was barely notable compared to how it had been with her nothing fully intact. Slowly, pearl red came back to herself.
Thank you she waved with her fingers.
Where have you been? Pearl asked, smoothing her palm across pearl red's wrist.
I released my form. I hid in a cargo vault. I drove a loading pike into my stomach. I made it here.
Why did you do it?
I couldn't stand it anymore. I want what you have.
What if it doesn't work for you?
I don't care. I want to be free.
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In the before, she might have offered Pink Diamond some comfort to ease her obviously troubled mind, but her comforts were hopelessly lost in the mess, stuck with all of the old ways and all of the new things that were just making themselves known.
How did normal gems cope with this endless chaos?
After three cycles came and went and no sign of Pink Diamond leaving her rest pod, three cycles of being stuck in her own loop of conflicting words, thoughts and images, an idea occurred to her, seized out of the racing mess.
Sometimes Pink Diamond watched a holo-screen as a distraction; she wouldn't mind if Pearl did the same. It was likely she wouldn't notice. She brought the holo-screen up and flicked through the broadcasts until she found something that caught her attention and held it.
She had seen Lapis Lazuli dance before, when she'd still had the nothing. Watching it without the nothing was a new experience. Every step, every leap, every elegant movement threw a hook somewhere deep inside her and pulled, hard!
Her arms and legs, free to move unhindered, took their positions as though they'd meant to be there, as though they'd been created for this purpose. In a single step, she perfectly mirrored the Lapis' spin and dip, and matched her stance. She leaped with her, pulled up with her, arched her arms and raised her legs with her.
An intense sensation, akin to a burn but somehow more liquid, filled her up from the inside. The Lapis' moves, perfect as they were, fell short. Too much control, not enough feeling.
The glow suffused, trickled through the very atoms of her being. The racing thoughts melted into mass and burst. The force propelled her movements, pitching her arms wider, her legs higher, putting sparks under her feet to launch her into the air.
Where the Lapis cleared one pelmetre on a leap, Pearl cleared two. Where she kicked to a 60 degree angle, Pearl kicked to 90. Where she spun twice, Pearl spun four times. The music didn't matter, or the dance formation.
What mattered was the force, and the feeling. If she kept the glow contained, she would explode. This was an explosion of a different kind, a heavenly kind.
When she was finished, she was aware of a familiar sensation. The nothing, the small shard that remained, was reacting. But in her motion, she hadn't noticed it at all.