Note: all characters, as well as the premise for this story (the Jailbreak episode) belong to Rebecca Sugar, creator of Steven Universe, and the production team of the show. All content written here is originally created by me. Please leave a review and let me know your thoughts!
Chapter 1
When Ruby woke up, the first thing she felt was the cold.
It was deceptive; she wasn't freezing, not at all. But there was a persistent chill settled in her body, along her back, the muscles in her shoulders, gripping her neck. It would be bone-deep, if her body was based on bones and not a manifestation of light from her gem. Still, it hurt. She had been on Earth for thousands of years - she'd survived ice ages and fluctuating climates with relative ease - and yet, she'd never felt anything like this.
But then, she wasn't on Earth anymore, was she?
And she hadn't survived those things - Garnet had. But now Ruby was alone.
Sapphire. Where was she?
Ruby's eyes flew open and she immediately closed them again, opting then for a more gradual reintroduction to her immediate surroundings, starting with a squint. It was bright, too bright, and her head hurt, but as she slowly eased her eyes open and allowed them to adjust, she began to take in what was around her.
She was lying on her side, in what appeared to be a holding cell. Her mind felt fuzzy, and the relentless lights on in her cell and the hallway outside it weren't helping. She groaned involuntarily as she tried to sit up and was hit with a wave of nausea.
The weapon Jasper had used to un-fuse Garnet, Ruby recalled shakily. These must be the after-effects of a forced separation, of having the two parts that made up one whole be ripped apart from each other with such malice.
The cell spun as she pulled her body into a sitting position. Come on Ruby, get a grip. You're tough, remember? That's what you were made for. She gritted her teeth and took a few deep breaths, then in one motion - quickly, so she wouldn't lose her nerve - she rose to her feet, bracing herself by leaning one arm against one of the cell walls.
A sickening swooping sensation overtook her, but she set her jaw and pushed herself to ride it out. After a few moments, it did, and finally, Ruby started to feel some of her sense of balance returning. The cold ache was still present, but duller than before. Feeling slightly more in-control, Ruby examined herself and her cell.
After the blow from Jasper, she and Sapphire had retreated to their gems. How long have I been gone? Ruby wondered as she inspected her re-formed body. There were no visible injuries, but that was to be expected, since the process of re-forming was, by definition, to rebuild a broken body. The cold ache persisted, however, supporting Ruby's theory that it was a deeper wound resulting from her separation from Sapphire.
A loud clanging noise jolted Ruby from her thoughts, and she jumped involuntarily, glancing around wildly. She heard footsteps, but they seemed far away, and nobody passed by the entrance to her cell, a barrier marked only by a strange, translucent yellow field of some kind. After a few tense seconds of no further noise, Ruby reached her hand out tentatively towards the yellow barrier.
The shock was immediate and intense, spidering up the length of her arm, and Ruby cried out in pain as she snatched her arm back quickly. She cradled her stinging hand and stared down at it, surprised to see yellow lines fading slowly from the point of contact, as if she had veins. The spot where she had touched the barrier throbbed, and the last of the yellow vein-like residue didn't fade, instead remaining as a quarter-sized spiderweb-like pattern on the injured skin. An electrical burn, she realized, flexing her fingers until the odd tingling went away. Nothing on Earth could harm her that way, and neither could anything from Homeworld, from what she could recall of the place. But then, it had been over five thousand years since she'd been on Homeworld - plenty of time to innovate new weapons.
Ruby turned her attention back to her cell and busied herself by becoming familiar with every inch of it. The ceiling was three times her height; the space was eight paces long and six paces deep, from the yellow barrier to the back wall. She took note of what she could see in the hallway - which was nothing. Across from her was what looked like another cell, but it was empty, and so were the other four she could see by pressing her head against one side wall or the other and straining to glance down the hallway.
Ruby's hands started to shake, and when she looked down, there was smoke coming from under her feet. She took a few unsteady breaths and shifted her feet, trying to calm down, but her body only seemed to heat up more. Calm down, she tried to tell herself, but it didn't work, and her breathing just got faster and more shallow. Feeling hot tears in the corners of her eyes, Ruby pressed her back against one of the side cell walls and sank down to the floor, hugging her knees to her chest. Where was everybody? Where was Sapphire? Steven? Pearl, Amethyst? She was on Peridot and Jasper's ship, that much was apparent. But why was she alone?
Well, she knew that one - classic strategy for captured soldiers, keep them separated, increase stress and minimize opportunities for a coordinated counter-strike. Her battle programming supplied the information for her, and she slammed the side of her fist into the wall and yelled in frustration.
"Ruby?" came a muffled call, from what sounded like somewhere down the hallway. Ruby rubbed her eyes and shot up, running to the edges of her cell, craning her neck to see if she could see anyone, but nobody was there.
"Hello?" she called back. "Who's out there?" It wasn't Sapphire - even through the odd buzz of the yellow barrier, which seemed to do something strange to sound coming through it, making words sound distorted - she would know her voice anywhere.
"It's Amethyst!" came the voice, and hope surged in Ruby, followed immediately by worry, concern, and fear. From what she could tell, Amethyst was two cells down, on the same side of the hallway as Ruby - that's why she couldn't see her when she looked around.
"Amethyst, are you okay? Are you hurt? What happened after I - " she swallowed, "After Garnet was split? Where are we? Where is everybody else?" Ruby cried out.
"I'm okay for now," replied Amethyst, and Ruby couldn't tell if the unsteadiness in her voice was a result of the barrier's distortion, or something else. There was a slight pause before Amethyst continued. "We're on Peridot and Jasper's ship. After Jasper hit you with - whatever that was, a Homeworld weapon - you and Sapphire were torn apart into your separate gems. That really threw us," Amethyst said, "But we still had numbers on our side… that is, until five more Amethysts were deployed from the ship. They must have been waiting for Jasper's signal, and she gave it once she took you - I mean Garnet - down. They took your and Sapphire's gems, along with me, Pearl, Steven, and Lapis Lazuli, and they put us all in separate cells."
Ruby was quiet for a moment, processing. "Have you seen any of the others?" she asked finally.
"They put Pearl in a cell diagonal from mine, across the hallway," said Amethyst, "You'd have been able to see her too, from your cell, but you hadn't re-formed yet. But… two of the other Amethysts dragged her out yesterday, and I haven't seen her since." Her voice got quieter at the end, and Ruby felt her body heating up again, steam coming out of her ears, flames dancing on her fingertips. Dragged her out. She pictured Pearl, stronger than nearly any other gem she'd ever met, but whose physical form was thin and wiry in comparison to Homeworld Amethyst guards. If they did anything to Pearl… wait.
"Yesterday?" said Ruby. "What do you mean? How long have we been here?"
"It's been three days, I think."
Three days? Ruby felt a twinge somewhere deep in her chest, where there would be heart, if she had organs like a human being. "That long?" she said, mostly to herself. She raised her voice, calling out again.
"What about Sapphire? Steven? Lapis? Have you seen any of them?" Ruby asked, almost afraid to know the answers.
"I haven't seen any of them since we were brought aboard the ship," Amethyst replied. "They separated us right away, we were all taken in different directions."
Ruby let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. She didn't know how to feel - angry? Scared? Confused? Relieved? Hopeful? What if they were hurt? Why were they all on the ship, what did Jasper want with them?
Running pretty low on hope at the moment, she thought. Sapphire always helped with that. Where are you? Without Sapphire, Ruby just felt so… small. I'd know if Sapphire had been - Ruby forced herself to think it - shattered, she thought. It was the first thing she'd been sure about since waking up, and she took a small shard of solace in that. If Sapphire were gone, I would know.
She had been standing near the yellow barrier to the cell as she spoke with Amethyst, but now, Ruby let herself sink down with her back against the wall once more. She drew her knees close to her chest and bowed her head.
"Ruby?" Amethyst's voice echoed strangely down the otherwise empty, too-bright hallway. Ruby swallowed, and her throat burned. She hated how her lip was wavering, how her vision blurred with furious tears. Most of all, Ruby hated how she couldn't do anything about it. She couldn't get out, she couldn't find Sapphire, she didn't know what was going on.
"Ruby, are you okay?" Amethyst called.
Ruby rubbed her eyes. "No," she said, and her voice cracked. There was a long silence.
"Me either," said Amethyst.
"I'm sorry," said Ruby.
"What are you sorry for?"
"For - " for falling apart. Literally. "For not keeping it together. For not being Garnet. You and Pearl and Steven always look to her for guidance, and leadership, and I want to be those things, but…" Ruby stared at her hands, so much smaller than Garnet's. With her right index finger, she traced the coin-sized electrical burn on her left palm. It prickled at her touch. "I don't feel strong right now," she said, inhaling a shaky breath, "And I can't be who you need me to be."
Amethyst waited a few seconds before responding. Ruby supposed she was gathering her thoughts.
"It's true that we all look up to Garnet," she started. "And you're right, I do miss her. But I'm not sorry to be talking to you, Ruby, or to have you here. I know we don't see each other much, but me and Pearl care about you and Sapphire just as much as we care about Garnet - and not only because the two of you are Garnet. Does that make sense?"
Ruby nodded slowly, then remembered that Amethyst couldn't see her. "I guess so," she said, but she could hear the doubt in her own voice.
"Ruby," said Amethyst, "I'm not looking for you to be anything other than who you are, okay? I don't expect you to be Garnet."
"I miss being Garnet," Ruby said.
"I know," said Amethyst. "We'll find Sapphire, I promise. And we'll get Steven and Pearl and Lapis, and then we'll get back to our favorite patch of sand on our favorite lump of space rock, and say goodbye to these Homeworld gems and this Homeworld ship forever."
Ruby knew that Amethyst was trying to cheer her up, and she heard a hint of the familiar light-hearted Amethyst in the tone of the words, but there was something else there, too. Something hardened, almost like Amethyst was trying to say it so confidently that she could manage to convince herself of it, too. Your efforts are appreciated, Amethyst, Ruby thought. Even if I don't see how it can be true. Without Sapphire's future vision, all I can see is what's in front of me - and even then, I still feel blind.
"That sounds good," Ruby said, leaning over until she lay sideways on the floor, curling up, facing the direction that Amethyst's voice was coming from. "Can't wait to get started on that."
"Me, too," said Amethyst, and this time, Ruby could barely hear her soft reply over the hum of the yellow cell barrier.
The two gems lapsed into silence. Ruby strained her ears to pick up anything other than the incessant buzz of the barrier, but there was nothing. Where are we? Are we headed back to Homeworld? Are we still orbiting the Earth? There was nothing she could use to mark the passage of time - Amethyst could probably only give me an estimate of how long we've been here since she, unlike Pearl and I, actually eats on a regular basis, she thought. One line of thinking led to others, tangents off of tangents, all of them stress-inducing. Were they feeding Steven? Do they even know that he needs food to survive? She resolved to tell whichever Homeworlld gem she saw next that Steven required water and sustenance, if they wanted him to live, which she assumed they did. That proposed a whole other set of problems, but better to deal with keeping Steven alive first, and worry about why they wanted him alive later.
Ruby didn't know how long it had been - hours, certainly, she estimated based on the soreness of her shoulder as she shifted from her lying-down position and stood, straining to see down the hall through the barrier - when she heard the commotion at the end of the hallway. The noise was sudden, loud, and relatively incoherent: all at once, there were several voices shouting, all sounding very aggravated.
"Move away from the barrier!" one unfamiliar voice yelled. "Get back! Stand against the far wall!" An Amethyst guard? Ruby wondered, still trying to see down the hall but having little success.
"What did you do to her?" came another voice, and this one, Ruby recognized as Amethyst - the Crystal Gem, the one from Earth, her friend, her family. Who was she talking about?
Ruby didn't have to wonder this for long. As she stared out of her cell, two figures suddenly came into her view, approaching Amethyst's cell. "Get away from her!" Ruby heard herself yelling, as she saw one of the larger Amethysts leering menacingly in the direction of her friend's holding area. The guard turned to her sharply and let out a quick, sharp, barking laugh.
"Finally awake, eh? Was wondering when you'd come back around." The guard grinned, and Ruby braced herself for the Amethyst to march down the hall and turn all her attention towards her - but instead, the guard turned away, focusing her attention on the other guard, who stood before the cell diagonal to Ruby's, on the other side of the hallway. It was then that Ruby noticed the third figure in the hallway - she had been dwarfed by the two guards on either side of her. Now, each Amethyst guard gripped one of the gem's arms tightly as one of them unlocked the door to the cell with a keypad, the prisoner between them appearing as though she was being held standing by only the will of her guards.
As Ruby watched, the barrier to the cell disappeared, and the guards roughly pushed their prisoner to the ground through the opening. She fell on the cell floor as the barrier re-formed.
"Have a good rest," one of the guards called as they walked leisurely away down the hall in the direction from which they had come.
Ruby's feet were on fire; they burned footprints in the cell floor where she stood as she waited for the guards to be out of earshot. When they finally were, she and Amethyst both cried out at once.
"Pearl!"
