When Jasper told her to go home, PB obeyed despite her many reservations. She felt horribly out of line when she went into public without her gem. In a paltry effort to avoid the gaze and sharp questions of the gems above her, PB kept her head down as she scurried to and from the warp pad.
The door closed behind her and she was safe from prying eyes. PB's knees trembled and she fell back against the metal door, holding her screen to her chest. Every fiber of her light fizzled with fear at what she had just seen. Hundreds of gem shards passing under the scrutiny of the living, mindless, still full of power and energy but ultimately removed from their former life as gems. Since her formation, she and Jasper had been investigating shattered gems but until PB saw the mindless gem shards being kept in Imperial Topaz's Cache, brokenness and shattering were little more than abstract concepts.
PB could glimpse Jasper's collection of war trophies from where she stood. The collection comprised of half a dozen massive weapons and pieces of bent and cracked armor. All were polished to a gleaming shine but there were marks that even the most dedicated buffing could not disguise. Pearl's chest felt tight as she looked at them and remembered Jasper's muscles straining against a monster of machinery brought to life by the remains of her fellow gems. Until that moment, she could never understand why her Jasper, a veritable bastion of brute strength, needed either weapons or armor. Suddenly, it was all too clear and PB felt very fragile indeed.
There were a dozen tasks to occupy herself with until Jasper's return – the most pressing of which being the screens and screens of notes from the Cache that needed to be organized and cross-referenced with Jasper's previous research. Paralyzed with terror and worry in the face of her new understanding of gem finitude, Pearl could not make herself start a single chore. Instead she sank to the floor, breathless as Jasper's absence grew and grew.
Time seemed to have stopped when the door finally opened. PB jumped to her feet and stood ready to greet her gem, blinking the daze out of her eyes.
Jasper lumbered in without looking at Pearl, rubbing a spot on her shoulder. Her eyes were unfocused, like she was looking inward rather than out. PB wondered if she was really seeing at all.
"My Jasper," PB piped up, unable to hide her eagerness to welcome her gem home. "I-I was starting to—"
Before she could finish her sputtering Jasper placed a large hand over PB's face that covered her mouth, gem, and crown. "Quiet," Jasper told her wearily. Her hand fell away like muck sluiced away by water and she wandered through the door to her trophy room without further acknowledgement.
PB followed in silence to peer through the doorway just in time to see Jasper scream wordlessly and throw a punch at the wall with such staggering force that the sound it made rattled Pearl's ribcage. Then, to her surprise, Jasper slumped against the wall between pieces of armor and threw her head back with a heavy sigh. Her thick, white hair cascaded down her back nearly to the floor and hung in a way that made Jasper look more bedraggled than PB had ever seen her. A few long minutes passed before the quartz giant stirred again. She hesitated before her display of weapons with her hand hovering between a heavy war axe and a cutlass.
Eventually, she picked up the axe – a monstrous thing nearly matching her in height with a nasty spike on the end to balance the weight of the head. Jasper tested its heft in her grip, tossing the war axe from hand to hand as if reacquainting herself with its power. PB shrank into the doorway as she watched. There was unmistakable power magnified in Jasper's grip that both terrified and intrigued her Pearl. PB watched her, wide-eyed and mouth clamped shut, until Jasper ultimately put the axe away and picked up the cutlass instead. Wordlessly, she opened a drawer in the wall and picked up a cloth, oil, and a whetstone before sitting down on the floor in the far corner of the room.
When Jasper examined the chipped blade and began to sharpen it with long, slow strokes of the whetstone PB felt the urge to cross the room and take such a menial task from her. Surely weapon upkeep was Pearl work. But seeing the distant look in Jasper's eye quashed that urge and made PB certain that suggesting such a thing would only irritate her gem in that moment. Still, itching to assist in some way, PB held her breath and watched closely.
Light glinted off the cutlass blade and made Jasper squint. Carefully, PB dimmed the lights to a more comfortable level and quietly slunk away to do work elsewhere while Jasper filled their quarters with the slow, monotonous scrape of the whetstone.
Plume Agate's voice followed Jasper home, along with the chorus of whispers that had filled her ears since coming to Homeworld. Worthless. Degenerate. Good-for-nothing.
Beta.
Her body ached after the debriefing, like she'd lost another war. Punching the wall had only made it worse. The scrape of metal in her hands helped block out Agate's voice in her head but the moments of silence between strokes was more than enough time for the whole ordeal to replay itself.
Irreverent. Disrespectful. Hideous. Should have been left to crumble with the rest of that cursed planet. She didn't deserve half the chance she'd been given.
The scrape of metal brought her back for a few blessed moments. Already, the day's events felt like a blur. She could hardly remember which of her aches were from words and which were from blows. The longer she sat there with her blade and a whetstone, the more of a blur it became and the more personal failings crept up from her memories of Earth. In the half-light, the shadows around her stretched menacingly to taunt her.
Jasper set the whetstone aside and wet her cloth with oil. Shadows were only shadows, and memories only memories. It was over. All over. Still, she watched the shadows dancing in her peripheral as she polished the blade in her hands. A well-practiced tension sat between her shoulders.
It took PB mere hours to catalog their new research. Her cataloging system was becoming quite elegant and she was more than a little pleased with herself over it. Jasper rarely expressed approval, especially over menial tasks, but PB knew she would at least be satisfied with how accessibly PB organized their notes after the mess that was obtaining them. She had even marked important new connections that Jasper might need to investigate further.
Looking over her work, PB was nearly giddy with accomplishment. She could hardly wait to show Jasper.
It wasn't until that thought that PB realized she had not heard anything from Jasper in quite some time. The scrape of the whetstone had long since ceased and had been followed by hours of uncharacteristic silence. Brow creased with concern, Pearl rose to find her gem.
Every light in Jasper's quarters was dimmed to accommodate Jasper's sensitive eyes. PB found her sitting motionless in the half-light of the trophy room, cutlass and polishing cloth in hand. Her amber eyes glinted with light and were fixed on the floor in front of her.
"M-my Jasper?" PB breathed, so nervous that barely a sound left her throat. Jasper didn't move an inch, made no acknowledgement of Pearl.
Lip trembling, PB forced herself quietly forward despite having no idea what she would do to snap Jasper out of her trance. Even when PB stood right beside her, the quartz seemed not to notice her. Taking a deep breath, PB chanced a light hand on Jasper's shoulder. "Jaspe—"
Faster than her name could leave PB's mouth, Jasper grabbed PB's arm in a crushing grip and drove the cutlass through her chest with a yell. The pain seared through her, making her choke. She scrabbled at her chest helplessly and her fingers brushed against the warm blade. Tears filled her eyes even as she felt her form begin to dissipate.
More shocking than the pain was how quickly Jasper's expression changed from a furious grimace to wide-eyed horror. Pearl could just make out her name forming on Jasper's lips before her vision truly blurred.
"I'm sorry!" she whimpered with her last ounce of strength.
All at once she couldn't feel, couldn't see or hear. All was a blur of orange and red until the last sparkle of her light retreated back into her gem with her.
