Chapter 5
Rose and Sapphire stood at adjacent arcade machines, idly chatting as they worked their way through the various computerised challenges. Rose tried to focus on her game long enough to keep her the character she was playing as from dying, but she found her eyes constantly drawn back to Sapphire, who was of course playing flawlessly, effortlessly walking her way through a strange game that involved swinging lumps of meat around. Using future vision was kind-of cheating, but Sapphire didn't particularly care. So few things on Earth were easy to predict, so she was more than happy to take advantage of the arcade games' simple programming to grant herself a period of clarity. The games had the added benefit of preventing her thoughts from dwelling too long on Rose. Sapphire was enjoying being around her again of course, but it wasn't easy. Sometimes Rose would make a certain face or tone of voice, and Sapphire would be cast back yet again to the events of the Human Zoo battle. She still saw the flashes; Rose holding her close, and then driving a sword through her without warning. Sapphire stamped the visions down quickly though, allowing the game to pull her focus back into reality. She wasn't going to let those feelings make her run away any more. Still, she couldn't help but notice the irony in a Gem who was supposed to see the future being hounded so doggedly by visions of the past. The Sapphires back home would definitely have got a kick out of that, but honestly, she found herself caring less and less about what they might have thought. She still wasn't sure whether or not she wanted to stay on Earth indefinitely, but the time away from Homeworld was definitely helping to heal at least some of her old wounds.
Rose and Sapphire had had the arcade to themselves for most of the morning, but a few other Gems, and the occasional brave human, were beginning to file in. Crystal Gems of all shapes, colours and sizes were amusing themselves with the multitude of games lining the walls. Sapphire gazed around the arcade at them. Some were covered in spikes or strange splotches of colour, while others bore animalistic appendages; all vestigial damage from the Diamonds' corruption attack. During her time with Facet 31, the sight would have been quite off-putting to Sapphire, but now, having become accustomed to the sight of a permafusion of all things, these Gems' aberrations seemed subtle in comparison. There was one Gem among the crowd who still caught her attention though. The Gem's back was turned, but Sapphire could tell immediately from her green and black flight suit, long coattails, and tufts of pale hair that the Gem was a Nephrite; one that Steven was quite fond of, if Sapphire remembered correctly. As if noticing Sapphire's gaze on her back, the Nephrite turned, revealing the spherical green gem that was fused with her eye. As the Nephrite began walking in her direction, Sapphire felt her anxiety rising. She did not want to do this now. Rose was around, and that Nephrite raised questions she didn't want to discuss right now. Turning to the exit, she moved to leave.
"Sapphire?"
Sapphire stopped in her tracks at the sound of Rose's voice calling out to her. "Is everything alright?" the Quartz continued in a worried tone. "I'm not bothering you, am I?" Sapphire sighed. For once, it wasn't Rose who was making her uncomfortable, and she hated the thought that she might have given her the wrong idea. "I'm fine Rose" she replied as convincingly as she could manage. "I'll be back in just a minute, ok?"
"Er… ok" said Rose, looking slightly confused. "You take all the time you need." With that, Sapphire darted out of the arcade and off down the boardwalk. Once she was gone, Rose couldn't help but wonder to herself what had just happened. Sapphire hadn't sounded sincere when she's said that she was fine, but the lack of ice in her voice made it seem like she wasn't mad at her this time, so why had she suddenly left? "Hmm, maybe she tried those human ingestible products, and had to go use Steven's bathroom or something" Rose theorised out loud. "No, she would have said something if-"
"Excuse me?"
Rose whirled her head around as her train of thought was interrupted. The question had come from a Nephrite, who was standing next to her looking a little sheepish. "Er…yes?" replied Rose, unsure of why the slender green Gem was speaking to her. Usually the Gems in Beach City went out of their way not to converse with her. "Your Sapphire friend was staring at me before" said the Nephrite. "Have I upset her somehow?" Rose wasn't entirely sure how to answer. Sapphire's current mental state was such that the Nephrite very well could have upset her without even meaning to. That said; it seemed unlikely that any simple misunderstanding would have caused enough offence for Sapphire to just storm out. "I… don't think so?" replied Rose uncertainly. "She certainly hasn't said anything to me about it."
"Oh, okay then" replied the Nephrite, partially calmed, though clearly not entirely. "You got a designation, Nephrite?" asked Rose, trying to be polite. She had noticed that few of the Gems in Beach City actually went by their gem types. The Crystal Gems had a penchant for nicknames. The Nephrite though, looked a little surprised to have been asked. "Well… I'm Facet 413, Cabochon 12… but I usually go by 'Centi' here." The nickname sounded much like the ones the Crystal Gems used, but a quick glance at the Pink Diamond emblem on Centi's chest told Rose otherwise. "I'm guessing Steven came up with that one" said Rose with a chuckle. "Heh, yeah" replied Centi with a shy smile. I didn't like it much at first, since it reminded me so much of the corruption, but it kinda just… feels right now."
Rose looked at Centi attentively as she spoke, but before she got the chance to reply, something about the former pilot caught her attention. As the Nephrite's large eye swivelled in her head, taking in various parts of her surroundings, the light from the game machines glinted off it, giving off a slight green shine now and again. "Er… is everything alright?" asked Centi, having noticed Rose staring. "Uh… yes, sorry" relied Rose with a nervous chuckle, slightly embarrassed by her lapse. "It's just… your eye. Is it your gem?"
"Yes it is" replied Centi with a quizzical expression. "Why do you ask?"
"Well it's… that is… you can see" replied Rose, failing to disguise her confusion. "Well…yeah" replied Centi, looking just as confused. "The Diamonds wouldn't have given anyone an eye gem if it stopped us from seeing." Rose wasn't sure how to respond to that. She didn't know a lot about the Gem creation process; it had been well outside her job description during her time in Pink Diamond's court, and she had therefore paid little attention to it. However, she could certainly see the logic in Centi's statement. Why would the Diamonds build an obvious weakness into a Gem? Granted, Gems came with disadvantages sometimes; some Quartz soldiers came out short or misshapen for instance, but those anomalies were always the result of… "A defect." Rose finished her own though out loud, albeit in a whisper. "Um… what?" asked Centi in response. "Oh… nothing, sorry" replied Rose, deflecting as best she could. The questions she had now weren't for Centi, and any answers were none of Centi's business. "Alright then" said Centi, giving the monocular equivalent of a raised eyebrow. "Anyway, I just wanted to make sure that I hadn't-"
"Rose, I'm back!" Sapphire's arrival cut Centi off mid-sentence, as she stood in the entrance to the arcade holding a couple of paper bags. "I got us some…pastries…" Sapphire stopped as she noticed the Nephrite stood next to Rose. She had hoped that the two wouldn't get talking, and she could tell from the strange look Rose was giving her that the Quartz had put two and two together. "Excuse me" she said in a polite yet edged tone as she walked up to the Nephrite "could you please leave us for a moment?"
"Um… sure. I'll leave you two to it" replied Centi, looking mildly unsettled. As the Nephrite trudged back to an unoccupied games machine, Rose and Sapphire turned to look at one another. Sapphire's expression was difficult to place, but it definitely wasn't happy. Rose put on a sheepish smile, wondering whether she had somehow offended Sapphire. Did she really have some problem with that Nephrite? The brief moment of tension passed as quickly as it had formed, as Sapphire sighed and dropped her shoulders. "I can tell by how you're looking at me that you've figured it out. How much did she tell you?" asked the small blue Gem in a resigned tone. "She…said that Gems with eye placements are supposed to be able to see." Replied Rose, before asking as gently as she could "Sapphire…are you defective?"
Sapphire looked up in her general direction but didn't meet her gaze. "Yes." Rose looked down at her as sympathetically as she could. She knew that Sapphire's past had, like her own, been traumatic, but she had been completely blind to this particular facet of it. "Do you… want to talk about it?" Rose asked gently.
Sapphire thought for a moment before deciding that, now that Rose knew, she might as well hear the full story. "Every once in a while" Sapphire began, "a Gem with an eye placement emerges with a flaw which causes their gem to fully replace the eye instead of merging with it like it's supposed to. For Gems like Rubies, this isn't an issue; they have another eye to fall back on after all. For a Sapphire though… it left me completely reliant on my future vision to even get from place to place."
Rose was stunned. "How did you manage to keep that a secret?" she asked. "If Blue Diamond had found out she would have had you shattered and replaced."
"I know" replied Sapphire, looking down at the floor. "That's why I made sure no-one knew. Everything back on Homeworld was predictable enough that my future vision was flawless. I was able to conduct myself well enough that none of the other Gems ever suspected that I couldn't see. The Crystal Gems made things more difficult when they disrupted Homeworld's status quo, but even then I managed to keep my cover. I didn't lose my future vision completely until the Diamonds made peace with Earth. That's… when I came to Facet 31." Rose remembered that day well. The day that a lost, blind Sapphire had wandered into Facet 31's underground hideout; the day Rose had walked over to her, brushed aside her fringe and become the first person to ever see her gem; the day Rose had, for better or worse, given her a new purpose.
"And… why didn't you tell me?" asked Rose "even after I knew that you were blind, you never told me that it wasn't supposed to be that way." Rose wasn't sure how to feel about Sapphire having hidden her condition. On one hand, she was hurt that Sapphire hadn't felt able to open up to her; but on the other, she knew that Sapphire had been right not to be fully comfortable around her. "I didn't know what you would think" said Sapphire, intently observing a patch of floor. "Everything we… everything Facet 31 was doing, was to bring back the old ways; cast out the fusions and off-colours that the Diamonds had welcomed into our society. I didn't think… I didn't think you'd want me anymore if you had known that I was like them." Sapphire's lip trembled as she recounted her feelings. Rose simply stood and listened in silence, unsure of what to say. Would she really have abandoned Sapphire if she had known she was defective? She regretted that she couldn't rule it out. Until the Crystal Gems had intervened, she and Sapphire had both overlooked the hypocrisy of Facet 31's mission; the fact that it brought together Gems of every caste in a mission to re-erect the walls between those very castes. Who could say what would have happened if they had discovered a defective Gem in their midst?
"I wanted things on Homeworld to go back to the way they had been" Sapphire continued, still trembling with emotion. "Part of that was because I wanted to rebuild the reputation of Sapphires after the perma… after Garnet was created, but another part was that I wanted to be able to disguise my condition again. I never thought I'd actually end up changing so much that I didn't want to go back to my old life." Sapphire cracked a subtle smile as she spoke that last thought. She hadn't thought fondly of her time with Facet 31 in what felt like an eternity. It had ended so badly that she had forgotten how much the experience had improved her as well. Even if she did reacquire full access to her future vision, she doubted that she could go back to her old life now. She wasn't sure what the alternative was yet, but now that she and Rose were beginning to piece their relationship back together, she had to believe that whatever they did would be better than their pasts had been.
Catching her smile, Rose knelt down to look her in the face. "Facet 31 changed both of us. In good and bad ways. I still regret a lot of stuff from back then, but… I think I'm glad about where we are now at least." Rose knew that what she had said was as much for her own benefit as Sapphire's. She wanted desperately to be able to tell herself that what she had done to Sapphire could be fixed one day; that they could both be happy again.
"Yes" replied Sapphire quietly. "I think I am too." Rose's eyes welled up at the small hint of forgiveness. She would have reached out and hugged Sapphire on the spot, but she knew that wasn't where they were yet. "Still" said Sapphire, her face falling slightly as she looked off into space and began to think "I'm not sure what I'm going to do now. Homeworld didn't care enough to look into me, but the Crystal Gems always pry into other peoples' issues; it seems to be their thing. I'm not sure how long I can keep my condition hidden."
"Well… maybe you shouldn't try to" said Rose tentatively. "No-one in the Crystal Gems is gonna shatter you for being different." "If anything," she added with a smirk "it might make them like you more." Steven and his entourage did seem to be inexplicably drawn to any Gem who even remotely broke the mould, so it was a fairly safe guess that they would offer Sapphire their support; assuming she was willing to seek it. Sapphire's face relaxed, and Rose sensed that she had brought her at least some of the way round. "You're probably right" said Sapphire with a weak smile. Not too long ago, Sapphire would have been irritated at the idea of another unsolicited counselling session from the Crystal Gems, but somehow, her talk with Garnet had made the prospect seem more attractive. "Is it alright if we finish our…outing for now? I think I need some time to think."
"Of course" replied Rose sympathetically. From anyone else, Sapphire might have found her tone patronising, but she knew that Rose was just trying to preserve what little of their bond they had managed to rebuild. Sapphire made sure to give Rose a smile she left, before heading up to her preferred thinking spot on the hill above the temple. She wasn't sure yet whether she could open up to someone else about her sight (indeed, she hadn't even meant for Rose to find out), but she decided that she would do it sooner or later. If the last few weeks had taught her anything, it was that burdens weren't meant to be carried alone.
Author's Notes: Well there you have it. The shocking truth about Sapphire that I definitely didn't come up with just after finishing 'Missing Peace' when I remembered that
the way I'd written Sapphire wasn't how eye gems worked in the show. Still, I'm hoping to spin it into some interesting character growth in the coming chapters.
What are you guys thinking of the story so far? Any feedback is appreciated. Until then, I'll see you in the next chapter!
