Oh I have got to get better about scheduling my week. This chapter didn't actually take that long to write all things considered but there were a few things in particular I wanted to get in now before uh... more stuff starts happening. I was reading through Seditionis the other day and it occurs to me there were a lot more slow moments than there have been lately. We're due for a beach episode or something... any way enjoy!
When any of the other diamonds went places that had less- other gems, they caused a lot of tension. Yellow was intense, Blue was aloof, and White was both. Pink knew gems got a lot more formal around her, that wasn't hard to see. But it was really weird to see Domina... embarrassed.
"And so she looks at Peridot 6HJ, looks at the rock she picked up and then just pops it in her mouth and then swallows. And says 'wow, you can really taste the zinc!'" The apatite was midstory and Pink Diamond didn't think she could smile any wider. "-and we all panic and 9ZQ rushes her back to base, and then Pearl finds out, and all of us are panicking, and then Vitus comes out and just laughs at us, and tells us it's normal."
"To be fair," Domina said, still really red in the face. "It was a small rock."
"It may have been a small rock but you were only this tall!" 1KL said gesturing to below her knees. The rutile at this point interrupted.
"Y-Your Brilliance." She said then glanced at Pink. "-s. What exactly has brought you two see us?"
"I have something I need to speak with 1KL about, but it can wait for a moment," Domina said. Her eyes briefly flickered to the apatites stomach where her pale blue gem rested, slightly flatter than normal.
"So what's out here?" Pink Diamond finally asked after half a second of unbearable awkward silence.
"Oh!" The Rutile suddenly jumped to attention and ran to the console. "Well, we've found at least 4 planets that would be potentially productive." Said planets began to appear on screen, each with a little pop out indicating the resources located on each planet and a lot of other information that Pink Diamond honestly wasn't that interested in.
"Only four?" Steven asked. Apparently, no one had really noticed him, which was weird because Steven was at least as tall as Domina and built like a quartz. "Oh, Hi I'm Steven, I'm Domina's friend, sorry, I should have introduced myself." He waved.
"Steven's half gem," Domina explained.
"Wow, that's not something you see every day." 1KL was much more cavalier about this compared to the Citrine and Rutile whose eyes had just been getting bigger and bigger through the whole conversation.
"I mean I do." Steven grinned. Pink Diamond giggled, he looked just like Rose when she was joking. Domina smiled too, though she was focused on the descriptions of the planets.
"What about the others?" Domina asked, "The other planets, that is, what was wrong with them? We're trying some new kindergartening techniques, they might actually be viable."
"The other planets in the area are..." The rutile paused, her face screwing up in indecision.
"They're as weird as a black hole spitting out pearls." The citrine said folding her arms, her accent was as thick as Domina's but was different, her 'r's were rougher and her 't's had more power. Rutile raised a hand to rub at her shoulder gem setting in embarrassment. Domina laughed.
"Gamma Quadrant?" She asked the Citrine nodded simply.
"What makes them weird though?" Steven asked leaning over Domina's shoulder to look at the planets slowly appearing on screen.
"They're already drained." Apatite 1KL said gently pushing Rutile out of the way. More planets began to pop on screen and they... well they did look like they had been kindergartened, they were really more reminiscent of Asteroids than planets at this point. "And some even have structures on them all the way out here."
"...We haven't been out here before right?" Domina said with a frown. Pink Diamond looked closer at pictures of some of the buildings. They were domed, with squared columns, the floors, or at least what she could make out of them, were put together in organic shapes.
"Correct." Rutile said. "In a few hours we'll be orbiting a planet that does seem to have some structures still intact but like the others, there are no life forms."
"The toroidal one I was reading about?" Domina asked.
"Aww, you read my reports?" 1KL said reaching up to ruffle Domina's hair. Domina rolled her eyes.
"Please, you didn't think I was completely ignoring you."
"Well, it's not like you call."
"You can't get signal out here!" Domina protested.
"Hey uh, so what does toroidal mean?" Steven interjected.
"Donut shaped!" Domina said with a grin. Steven's eyes went wide as he processed this information.
"There's donut-shaped planets?" With a few keystrokes, the rutile brought the planet on screen. Pink didn't really know what a donut was but the planet was squashed, with a hole in the center that its moon moved up and down through.
"Woah..." She gasped.
"Do you want to go down and check it out when we fall into orbit?" Apatite 1KL asked. There was a long enough pause that Pink looked over at Domina, who just briefly had a very White-like expression on her face, eyes staring off into the middle distance, mouth set firm and serious. And if she looked a little deeper she could see... fear? Then Domina shook her head like she was trying to clear it and nodded with a grin.
"Well, of course. But first, 1KL, if we could talk in private?"
It had been easier for Domina to slip into the mindscape since she lost her organic form. It was one of the few things that she actually was thankful for about being hard light now.
Just the briefest glow of her gem after she had closed her eyes and memories laid out before her, swirling gently in a breeze seen but not felt. Domina began to gently coast through the swirl of memories, peaking briefly into those that showed untouched worlds from their lower atmospheres, some were green and healthy, others sandy and cold. And then there were gems, so many gems over the years. And her, 1KL had really been the one to teach her to fly and it was odd to see her own childish smiling face reflected back at her. Domina began going farther and farther back, before the war, before the outer colonies. Any moment she expected to see blue Diamond emerge but before she got to that she was met with a wall of static. This is what Domina was expecting. A long row of memories, some static'd out, others were only ghosts of memories, tattered, in pieces. Domina frowned, these were the hardest to fix, sometimes the pieces still lingered but so rarely did she ever deal with memories that were tampered with this far back.
She hadn't realized just how old 1KL really was.
Domina started with what was easiest. She took the static'd memories in hand and wiped at them gently, softly, like they were living beings in need of comfort. And she let herself peer into them, feeling the emotions within them. It wasn't joy like she expected or heartache, or fear. It was... bewilderment. She felt confusion in front of White and Blue Diamond. She could see the surprise and worry on White's face. Though their voices were only half-audible she could hear the emotion in Blue's voice, a kind of dogged determination that was something she had never heard from Blue Diamond before.
There was more hidden in the static, Old domed stations that were certainly not of gem design, open rooms, arguments, charts, plans, lines. All in spurts, all important but with no context. Domina returned to the main section of the mindscape to find it, not dark as it normally was, but blindingly white, as the memories began to file into order, like books on a shelf.
Domina looked around in a panic but calmed when she saw that the ones she had been working on were still there. Still, there was something wrong. What had she done? Slowly the area around her began to dim until all was left was a soft glow around her. Domina tensed, holding on to the feeling of her gem glowing so that she could keep herself in the mindscape. Then she spoke out, not with her voice and not really with her firmly occupied mind.
"Is anyone there?" She asked, hoping beyond hope that there wasn't an answer. Thankfully there wasn't. Domina turned to the shredded memories, focusing on the pieces that she did have. There wasn't much left, a flash of ground, of the sky, and of hand. Domina focused on the six-fingered hand, trying to make more of it out. She could feel a thrumming behind her gem and slowly, like sand trickling into a pile, the picture began to form.
Domina would worry about why that worked later, later when she wasn't focused on the fact that what she was staring at was... it was... it was a face. No no, not just a face. It was purple, with four eyes, laid out on either side of its head, and a beak like a bird. It was an alien. A fracking alien. Something pulled her away, forcing her racing mind calm, reminding her that there was still more work to do.
And Domina didn't remember doing it but by the end Apatite 1KL's memories were in order, as clear as if they hadn't been tampered with in the first place. The light around Domina faded and the memories began to rise, lifted once again by an invisible wind before Domina finally let go and returned to the real world.