PB didn't reform that solar week or the one after. Eventually Jasper had to return to her duties without her Pearl, and that meant delving through PB's records on her own. PB's work was so thorough and precise that Jasper had to do little more than to draw the obvious conclusions and present the data to her superiors in a report. After the disaster at the moratorium she was quickly pulled from the investigation into the missing gems and she was eager to distance herself from the assignment as much as possible. There was little headway left to make in that investigation as it was.

Once the report was submitted, Jasper was reassigned to a new company for training. This was where she belonged – preparing for battle alongside her fellow soldiers, not pushing investigative reports through the chain of command. It was a relief to have the structure of the army around her again. During the war, the army was the only stable thing she knew and she fell back into it like a drop of water in the ocean.

Or she tried to, at any rate. The quartzes of Yellow Diamond's army regarded her with a wary deference at best and belittling pity at worst. Their whispers followed her everywhere: throughout drills, through combat training, into her recreation time, all the way back to her quarters.

"…pretty incredible that a Beta made it this far…

"…must be lonely living alone, but I wouldn't want to bunk with it…"

"…even gave her a Pearl! Can you imagine…"

It crushed Jasper to see how quickly other gems lost their admiration for her once she was among them. If there was some defect ingrained in her being then her fellow soldiers must have seen it. But she hadn't been purged. Jasper clung to that with a fierce desperation. If she was still here, it was because she deserved it. Beta gems were subpar, almost universally unsuited for a Diamond's army. Except for Jasper.

She knew she was exceptional, not just among Betas either. She had worked with enough Homeworld gems to know that in most cases she could crush anyone who challenged her. With that certainty in mind, Jasper threw herself headfirst into her training. She picked up the drills and the peacetime hierarchy quickly and soon stood out unapologetically as the top performer in her platoon. Yellow's Agates were quick to notice and quicker to make her into an example.

"You're going to let a Beta outdo you, you pathetic clods?" Plume Agate screeched at the entire company every chance she got. "Disgraceful! I'm ashamed to be your Agate if you can't keep up with an Earth gem. You are in Yellow Diamond's army! Show some lustre!"

The other soldiers in her company may have resented Jasper for the abuse but her success was Homeworld's success. It wasn't her fault that she was a better soldier than most. She was happy to lead by example.

The intensity of her training kept her mind off of her situation with PB as well. At least, until she returned exhausted to her empty quarters where there was no sign of PB regenerating any time soon. After the second solar week Jasper hid PB's gem in a drawer in her trophy room just so she wouldn't have to look at it. Still, the emptiness of her private rooms gnawed at her, echoing with what she'd done and every other failure she could remember. The emptiness drove her out into public – either to train during her free time or to run herself through any fighting ring she could elbow her way into.

Even then, reminders of her missing Pearl cropped up when she least wanted them. A particularly plucky Aventurine sidled up to her after drills one day and nudged her slyly before asking "Hey Beta, why don't you bring that Pearl of yours around? We wanna see what all the fuss is about." Nearby a group of soldiers snickered among themselves and Jasper bristled involuntarily.

"Because I'm here to work for Homeworld's future," Jasper said sharply, "just like we all are. Or did you forget?" The Aventurine shrank from her with a dirty look and slunk back to the group of soldiers with her shoulders slumped. The group closed with backs to Jasper, leaving her to wonder at the sudden pang in her chest.

The pang wouldn't be banished by the abuse of her training and when they were released and the rest of her company returned to their barracks, where every soldier's cubby was shoved into one communal hall, Jasper couldn't bring herself to return to her quarters alone. Instead she went again to the arena to watch other soldiers pit themselves against each other for honor and glory. Strangely, she felt no desire to join the fights herself and settled for watching from the edges of the crowd. For the moment it was enough to analyze the gems in the ring, learning their favorite techniques and noticing their missteps before they were even aware of them.

It was a good distraction until she noticed a few pearls standing primly together at the edge of her vision with their hands over their mouths as they whispered to each other. Fragments of their conversation reached Jasper.

"There's the Beta," one of the pearls said, "So where's her Pearl? She really should know better." The pearl trailed off when she caught Jasper looking over at her, her face paling quickly. The pearls with her shied back quickly to distance themselves from their fellow. Jasper moved from the edge of the ring to stand over the group who all stood only as high as her chest. A bunch of papery accessories talking about her like she wasn't standing mere feet from them.

"You should know to stay out of gems' business," Jasper scowled. The offending pearl ducked her head and fixed her gaze on the ground. She stammered an apology but Jasper cut her off. "Your gem wouldn't be happy to hear about this," she threatened and the pearl's head snapped up. The look on her face was pure terror. Behind her, the other two pearls stood close together with their eye fixed too determinedly on a screen above the ring showing the fight going on below, pretending not to hear the trouble their fellow pearl was in. The pearl before Jasper started to apologize profusely, but even the satisfaction of shutting the little gossip up couldn't rid Jasper of the feeling of constantly being singled out. Even buried in a crowd she couldn't keep from being noticed and judged.

The pearl was still stammering when Jasper rolled her eyes dismissively and walked away, leaving the pearl to stumble backwards into the arms of her sister servants with her chest heaving.

There was no getting away from being an outsider so Jasper returned to her quarters to sit with her guilt instead. The place was as cold and empty as she had left it. She pulled out the drawer holding PB's gem, no longer feeling any sort of hope or anticipation. There was no change, just as she had come to expect. Leaving the gem where it was, she stomped away with a huff and came to the far wall of her trophy room with hands clenched into fists.

The weight of expectation, isolation, and guilt suffocated her. Jasper shook as she felt her resolve threatening to crumble beneath her. Disgraceful, that's what she was. In desperate anger, she clenched her jaw and threw her fist into the wall with a wordless roar of frustration. The room shook with the force of the punch and in the stillness that followed Jasper pressed her head against the cool stone of the wall to be submerged by the ghosts following her.

If she could count on anything it was the constant feeling of being haunted by her failures. That stuck with her no matter what.

She let herself fall into silence, let herself be consumed by it so wholly that she only barely noticed the glow of light growing and taking shape behind her.