Ten chapters down, stars know how many more to go. This chapter went far longer than I was expecting it to but I'm happy with it, and it's at a good ending place. (this is one of those chapters where I would loooooove to hear your theories, if not here, then over on tumblr, or discord!)
Anyway, thank you for reading, and as always, please enjoy
For the first time in 5000 years, Blue Diamond felt like she could properly think. It was like a fog had been lifted now that Pink was back and she finally felt as if she wasn't just floating from task to task. But of course, she was still a diamond. And she still had duties. Even if she had been putting them off for the last few weeks to spend time with Pink.
The Holik system was home to one of the most distant diplomatic outposts. Holik-9 specifically, processed data from the spies and diplomats that resided in the surrounding galaxies. And it was for that reason that Blue Diamond wondered if she had perhaps shown too much favoritism to the outer colony in the past, especially if it resulted in Catapelite Facet 9F4S Cut 2PN believing that she could get away with disobeying the authority- with disobeying Homeworld so thoroughly.
Blue Diamond stepped off the warp pad into Homeworlds central cell block, into what was essentially an empty corridor. There were guards, mostly quartzes that stood a little more rigidly as she passed them. There were one or two garnets that saluted her as she passed. And one Fayalite that ran straight into her the moment Blue Diamond rounded the corner to Catapelite 2PN's cell.
"OH my stars!" the Fayalite jumped backward and bowed low enough that her hair bent to touch the floor. "Your Lustrousness, please I beg your forgiveness I did not mean to-" Blue Diamond waved her off and continued forward towards the cell.
Catapelite 2PN paced in her cell, turned pale orange by the yellow barrier separating her from the corridor. She stopped though as Blue Diamond came into view and saluted.
"My diamond, I, of course, was not expecting to be blessed with your presence," 2PN said her expression somewhat relieved.
"Your Zircon said that you requested an audience."
"I did! I simply wished to explain my actions."
"To me and not the court?" Blue Diamond asked raising an eyebrow. "You would be better off stating this to your zircon before your trial." 2PN hesitated.
"Is the trial really necessary my diamond?"
"Are you questioning our authority?"
"Not your authority of course." The catapelite said quickly. "Not your's or Yellow Diamonds of course but surely you can understand why we chose to ignore such orders." Blue Diamond pursed her lips. Admitting deliberate insubordination. It would have made things a lot easier if there was a zircon here.
"Humor me." Blue Diamond folded her arms in front of her.
"It's one thing to change Homeworld at its core, where there is no one to see us but other gems. But out there-there are civilizations looking for any moment of weakness." 2PN kept her gestures short and placating. "What do you expect us to do when those of the elite class begin to grind from lack of recognition of their status combined by such an assignment that, while very essential my diamond, keeps them away from the luxuries of Homeworld itself and the empires inner colonies."
"I expect you to do what Homeworld had ordered," Blue Diamond said firmly. "You were told to cease pearl production and free all that belonged to those under your control."
"And I would have my diamond, but-"
"You were not chosen for your excuses 2PN." Blue Diamond interjected. "You were given the position and expected to fulfill it to the best of your abilities. Seeing as that you are lacking. It will be given to someone else." Blue Diamond saw the gems mouth snap shut and she nodded, before stepping away, hands balled tightly. She had almost rounded the corner when she heard 2PN again.
"Don't you wish you could go back to the time before an organic ruled Homeworld?" The gem spoke up.
"An organic doesn't rule Homeworld." Blue Diamond snapped, almost reflexively, spinning around to see the gem pressed as close to the barrier as she could.
"Doesn't she?"
"2PN, I suggest if you want me to discount this conversation in your trial you stop talking."
"Of course," 2PN said, nodding her head and saluting. "My Diamond."
"You have to reinforce with something stronger." Yellow Diamond crouched across from Forest, peering at the fracture line in the injectors material chamber.
"I told you," Forest continued to spread the pale purple goop across the fracture on her side of the table. "I'm going for flexibility, rather than strength.
"Are either of you listening to me?" Jet sighed. She really didn't know what she had expected.
"I told you to talk to someone other than me," Forest said flatly.
"I am." Yellow Diamond pushed herself to her feet. "Of course a Lapis makes sense for the fracking itself but there are other terraforming gems, and all Lapis are accounted for, lazuli, armenus and lacedaemonius."
"Just because they're accounted for doesn't mean their incapable of collapsing a kindergarten." Jet pointed out.
"No..." Yellow Diamond frowned. "But it does mean that there's only a thousand four hundred personal records to look through as opposed to an entire empire's worth." Jet tried not to be dramatic around the diamonds but she couldn't suppress a groan.
"This is ridiculous."
"Blue does keep track of her gems better than I do. If you asked her personally-"
"No." Jet said firmly. "I'm not involving her, I didn't even want to involve you." Yellow Diamond pursed her lips and shrugged her shoulders before bending back over the injector.
"Your decision"
After her embarrassing encounter with Domina in the citadel, it took Pink Diamond a few days to track down Domina. There were still a lot of questions she had about the world she had reformed into and somewhere in the range of 85% of them were about Domina. Well.. and steven too but she was more accessible.
She finally tracked Domina down to a private garage in the White District. Its intent was probably for like light kite manufacture, er well, roaming eyes? Whatever little ships were called these days. Anyway, it was instead mostly empty, but the moment she entered the warehouse-like structure she could hear the third movement of Spacetimes Curve playing from some very low-grade speakers.
"Please," Domina's whine was muffled as Pink Diamond approached, slowly and confused. "Please change the music." There was a laugh, slightly high pitched and just... happy.
"You're the one that practically begged me to stick around." Her pearl's voice dropped a little bit and adopted that weird provincial accent that Domina had. "Pearl I promise, I just want to spend some time together, Please Pearl you can pick the music."
"I don't sound like that!" Domina protested half-heartedly, laughing. Pink could see them now. Her pearl was standing on the landing ramp of a dropship pod while Domina was half underneath it. Domina's White jacket was tossed on the ground haphazardly and a screen hung midair, volume on full, playing the music.
"Sure you do, you really think that after all this time I don't know what you sound lik-" Her Pearl trailed off and Pink Diamond realized she had been spotted.
"Oh um... hi." Pink Diamond said. Domina's legs jerked, and there was a sharp clang and a stifled scream.
"How does that hurt even more now?" That seemed to snap Pink Diamonds pearl out of it. She dived to the side and yanked Domina out from under the ship.
"Are you ok?!" She asked panicked. Domina nodded and rubbed her gem.
"Yes fine." She said through gritted teeth, then finally looked at Pink Diamond. "Need something Pink?"
"I uh... just wanted to talk." Pink Diamond said feeling even more awkward. Her Pearl didn't meet her eyes, just checked Domina's gem and nodded.
"Blue wanted help with something, I'll see you at that meeting with the Ultyn system later Domina," she said.
"...alright." Domina visibly deflated and watched as the Pearl left the building.
"...You let my pearl make fun of you?" Pink Diamond asked. Instantly Domina's face went stony.
"Alright, let's get a few things straight," Domina said. She set some tool down on the ground with a louder clang than necessary. "She is not your pearl and she is not my pearl. She's just Pearl. Pearl HGC-5 if you want to get really specific. She doesn't belong to anyone, she does what she wants and I love her for that." The wind went still and Pink Diamond once again felt like she was looking at a tall gem with the most disapproving expression in the universe on her face, instead of a half gem, a foot shorter than her, wearing an expression of indignation.
"And if you ever forget that, we are going to have problems. Understand?"
Pink Diamond did the only thing she could do in that situation. She nodded.
"Good," Domina said with a smile, her face instantly lightening. "So, what did you want to talk about?"
"I uh..." Pink Diamond frantically searched for the right question to start this off. "So um... is that your ship? Yellow said you didn't like the headship." Domina shrugged.
"It didn't corner well, this is The Styx." She said, then Domina also hesitated. "You can look around if you like. It's not much bit."
"No no that's ok," Pink said, though she really wanted to. "So.. you don't have any of White's memories? And you grow?"
"I did.." Domina said, "Grow that is, my bodies not organic anymore and it hasn't been a concern for several thousand years." She paused, and after a moment slid her jacket back on. "And I don't have any of my mother's memories, that's not really how that works."
"Well, I know that." Pink said while she processed the 'anymore' part of that statement. "So if your half human where did the human part come from?"
"My... wait Yellow didn't tell you?" Domina looked puzzled
"You really think Yellow would tell me anything actually interesting?" Pink gave Domina a knowing look and to her surprise, her fellow diamond laughed.
"Alright, alright. Good point." Domina's hand drifted up and touched a circular lump in her shirt. Like there was another gem under there. "Let me... Let me tell you about my father. Vitus Gellia. He..." Domina shook her head like she was still trying to make herself believe it. "He made White Diamond fall in love with him."
"Will Connie be able to make it this time around?" Domina asked. Steven frowned from his place on her screen and pulled out his phone. The plans for her visit to the Apatite assigned to the scouting mission were in front of her. As she walked out of her room
"No..." Steven said after a long moment. "No, she has a Theory of Literature paper the next day."
"Alright, well it shouldn't take too-" And it was at that point that everything behind her went black, and everything in front of her began to shake.
Your standard single access multidimensional space was connected to a geothermal power source and could generate as many rooms as keyed to it. Urban life on homeworld had taken that to the next logical extreme, with multiple access points, and nearly infinite rooms, run through a series of generators and load balancers. This worked almost perfectly and really cut down on the amount of residential space necessary on the planet. It worked perfectly that is until an earthquake severed the connection and everything turned off at once.
It took domina a moment to realize exactly what was happening as she saw the lights and heard the screams behind her.
"Domina, what's going on?!" Steven shouted.
"I'll call you back!" Domina said, batting the screen away, more focused now on making sure the door didn't close. Air pressure could do a lot but holding open what was essentially a rift, in reality, might be a little much. "This way!" She shouted into the abyss, trying to keep the roof from crumbling over top of her, hoping that someone on the other side would hear her. The portal fought back and Domina felt her gem warm significantly under the strain. This wasn't going to work, it was too much, she was going to need to drop something and hope for the best. She looked at the floor that she had previously been standing on and saw that it had caved in. The shattered windows showed that the whole building was falling. She was falling, she hated falling, she always ended up falling, that's why she didn't fly! Winds erupted before Domina had time to think about her thoughts and her eyes went dark as she felt her body step forward into the abyss, a body wreathed in wind and light.
When she came too she was outside in homeworlds half light covered in dust with her neighbors around her.
"-orry" ran through her mind as she blinked and winced at the pain in her gem.
"My Diamond." A Jade who lived below her and pearl smiled, almost in tears. "Thank you, I thought we were shattered or worse." That broke the dam and someone helped her to her feet and clapped her on the back while Domina stared around bewildered at the collapsed building around her and the rescue gems standing by, still unburying gems. She almost missed the ruby tugging at her pant leg.
"Y-yes?" Domina asked, trying to focus on anything, anything that wasn't going to just be more confusing. It helped that she recognized this ruby. "Yes Leggy?"
"Hey um, Pink Pearl wanted to know if your ok and Yellow Diamond said that they need you in a meeting now," Leggy said quickly, while 4ND yelled at her from the far side of what used to be the building.
"Right... Alright. Yes, I'll uh." Domina looked around and sighed. She was going to need another new screen. "Can I borrow your screen?"