Note: Contains wartime angst. And cuddles.
Warning for violence, injury, death, war.
The battle was long and hard – but no longer or harder than any of the ones before. Battles couldn't really be measured in that way at all, Pearl thought. She was tired beyond reason, as usual in these circumstances, her vision strange and spotted and blinking, her ears ringing and her mind circuitous and meandering. Nothing was clear, there was nothing empirical, she couldn't think linearly or very well at all. She took several shallow breaths and then a few deeper ones, not strictly needing the oxygen, but hoping to center herself. She looked around.
She was surrounded by sickeningly sparkling dust, and gems that were still whole, but no less sickening for it; that just meant they would have to be shattered later. In any case, there was a certain radius around her that was quiet and still, and this meant that Pearl had dealt with any stragglers in this area, and should move on. She picked up her sword, which she must have dropped when she received that blow to her elbow, and quickly dropped it again. Oh. Her arm was broken.
She laughed, and rubbed at her face. Her hand came away glittering, and she laughed harder.
This was horrible. It was always horrible. She was so terrified she was long past feeling it; she wasn't even shaking anymore. But she knew why she was doing this. She never forgot. How could she? It was the reason she ever did anything; the reason she was someone who could do anything, in the first place.
Pearl stopped laughing, steadied her breathing, got to her feet. Yes. She could do this. She could do anything. For her.
She grabbed the sword in her non-broken hand, and stumbled in the direction of the loudest noises. Hopefully, that's where Rose would be. Technically, Pearl had completed her tactical obligations for this battle, and this meant she could finally get to the task that had always mattered the most: protecting her Rose.
She spotted Garnet as she got closer to the clangs of weapons and the thumps of bodies slamming and grinding and slashing into each other. Garnet pounded a spear-wielding warrior with both fists, causing her to revert back into a dull, rounded carnelian. Garnet turned around just then, toward Pearl. Her shades were gone. Pearl's eyesight was currently rather terrible, but she thought Garnet seemed… distraught. Pearl's insides clenched. Rose Rose Rose was all she thought.
Garnet was frowning, calling something to her, seemingly very loud and urgent. But Pearl couldn't hear her at all.
Pearl ran. Her surroundings quickly blended together, objects and movement and noise melding into an intelligible mass, punctuated by the occasional tink and jolt of the point of her sword bouncing off the ground. Pearl was dimly aware that her sword shouldn't be dragging behind her. She should be holding it properly. But giving commands to either of her arms seemed so far beyond her reach at the moment. She slowed down, swaying a little on the spot.
She was too disoriented, even for being as tired and shaken and hurt as she was. She reached up and ran her fingers carefully over her gem. Ah. Right. So that was why.
A cracked gem wasn't ideal. But she still wasn't useless just yet. She could still… she could still do what she needed to, as long as she found Rose before she lost her grip on the present entirely.
Could this have been why Garnet had seemed so stricken when she looked at Pearl? That was a comforting thought. That meant there wasn't some more pressing, immediate problem.
Reassured by this assessment of the situation, Pearl felt much calmer. She gave herself a few moments to get her bearings and try to clear her vision. Running blindly around the battlefield wasn't very helpful. She needed to find Rose. She knew she was close. If she could just concentrate, force her fractured gem to make sense of the input it was trying to process…
Pearl straightened her posture, counted her breaths, thought about space and quiet and starlight and Rose –
And there she was, shield steady and whole, stance firm and wide, facing down an enormous, glittering, club wielding citrine with all the grace and ferocity Pearl had always loved and admired so much. Pearl felt an intense rush of warmth coarse through her whole body as she rushed to position herself between Rose and the citrine.
The hard expression on Rose's faces wavered for a moment. "Pearl," she gasped, eyes wide. Pearl flashed her a wobbly grin. "You're –"
But Pearl didn't catch the rest of that sentence. She lifted her sword, the citrine swung her club, there was a very loud noise and a very noticeable impact, and Pearl watched as her sword once again clattered to the ground, followed shortly by Pearl's armored knees.
The pain was rather unpleasant for a moment, and then, with an unimpressive poof, her body was gone.
.
.
Pearl woke up to the feeling of water splashing onto her gem, rolling down her forehead and along her nose. Her entire face was slick with it, and when she opened her eyes she had to blink the water away. Her vision was fine now, however, and so was her hearing. She heard loud, choppy sobbing and saw pink, volumes and volumes of it, soft and beautiful and familiar, and she realized: not water. Tears.
She was lying on her back in her new, regenerated body, her head cradled gently in Rose Quartz's lap, being vehemently cried on.
Pearl reached up a no-longer-broken hand, carefully threading her fingers into Rose's wonderful hair, finding her cheek through the curly mass of it and cupping Rose's face in her palm.
Rose's eyes fluttered open and her sobs abruptly quieted, but she didn't stop crying, and her frown only deepened.
"Hello," Pearl said quietly, rubbing her thumb over Rose's cheekbone and smiling tentatively up at her. "You can stop crying now, probably."
Rose's hands tightened around Pearl, and she pulled her up toward her, wrapping herself completely around her, holding her close and rubbing her face in the space between Pearl's shoulder and neck. Rose started sobbing again, her entire body jumping and trembling with it, her tears trickling down Pearl's back and soaking in her shirt. Pearl buried both hands in Rose's hair, and trembled with her.
"My shirt doesn't require further healing, I think," Pearl said after a while, lightly, hopefully, but her voice wasn't as steady as she'd have liked.
Rose shivered again, flexing her arms, giving Pearl's whole torso a squeeze, and nuzzling into her. "You have to stop," she whispered intently into the underside of Pearl's jaw. "Please."
Pearl's breath hitched. She felt the plea like a clenched fist in her chest. She tried to swallow but her mouth was dry. Her throat worked uselessly for a few moments. "I can't," she finally managed to squeeze out, voice high and wavering.
"I don't want you to get hurt," Rose said, open and plain and raw as anything. "Do you want to get hurt?"
Pearl shook her head helplessly. "I want to protect you," she said. What other answer was there?
Rose made a small, frustrated sound alarmingly like a whimper. "Pearl." She sounded so defeated Pearl wanted immediately to do anything, anything at all, to make it better. But she couldn't, this time. "Why… why can't you understand?" Rose's breath grazed Pearl's skin as she murmured, soft and intent, "I want to protect you, too."
Pearl squeezed her eyes shut and reined in her tears. There was no solution to this problem, she knew. No compromise she could offer, no promise she could make. Rose's wishes and her own were exactly diametrically opposed. They were at an impasse.
But right now, there was nothing to protect Rose from; nothing for Pearl to get hurt over. So, for now, Pearl didn't argue, didn't apologize, didn't reply at all. She simply wound her arms around Rose's neck, and held on, too.