It had been sometime since you had been Human. 700 years, to be exact. Too old for a Human to be considered living, and far too young for a Gem to be considered 'adult'.
Gems were strange like that. For example, for a Gem to be considered adult they have to be at least 3500 years old. Anything younger than that, and you were dealing with a juvenile Gem, a Gemling. It was irksome, always being told that you were too young or too inexperienced. You'd rather deal with being treated like a child than being treated poorly for your gem type, though.
You were reincarnated into a Peridot: a short, lime colored gem with more hair than head, whose height was more comparable to a Hobbit than a Human's. Your gem is located on your forehead, a light-green triangle of crystalline material, a fancy way of saying your gem was a green triangle. Your hair is colored a light shade of chartreuse, almost a pale blond in how light it is. Your hair is shaped in a square afro, the left corner was gone leaving a triangular cut going at an angle. A fairly stylish hairdo that's caused you more trouble than you'd like to admit. You already know what you look like, though. Nearly 1000 years of seeing your new body in the mirror pretty much subsumed all of your memories of your Human face.
You were wearing a rather simple outfit, a standard Gem jumpsuit, it was mostly black with green accents on your knees and chest. The stomach of your jumpsuit had a yellow-colored diamond on it, denoting that you served Yellow Diamond. You had a pair of robot arms and legs, called limb enhancers. Peridots didn't have any sort of Gem abilities, so you needed them in order to do any of the work required of you.
Anyway, when you were reborn, or emerged, you had this sort of bright-eyed enthusiasm for what the world and, later, the galaxy had in store for you. That optimism perished in a century.
Gem society is ordered very strictly. So strictly, in fact, that you had absolutely no choice in what you wanted to do with your life. You were reincarnated as a Peridot, so you were an engineer. If you were a Quartz, such as an Amethyst, you would've been a soldier. If you tried to do anything other than what the Diamond Authority designated your Gem-type could do, you would be punished severely. You learned that the hard way. You don't want to think about that, though.
Shaking your head to clear those thoughts, you refocused and turned ahead to stare at the project you had been ordered to complete. Though 'project' is a bit too fancy a way to say what the job really was: routine maintenance on a... particularly aged ship.
Getting to work, standard procedures were put in effect: Run a scan of the whole ship to find any sort of general problems, fix them if there are, once finished with that, board the ship and take more in-depth scans of the ship's interior systems, if there are problems, fix them. Once finished with that, give the ship a once over a few times to make sure you don't miss anything, finalize the fixes and maintenance and send in your report to your superior. Easy stuff.
This was your life for the past 700 years. Day in, day out. Of course, life has a way of throwing something at you every now and then.
It had been just like any other day for you. You worked, and worked, and worked. Gems don't need to sleep or eat, so any time not spent doing something was time wasted. You didn't like wasting your time, nor did your superiors like you wasting their time. Besides, most of the work you did was stuff that interested you, so it wasn't that big of a deal.
What was a big deal was the fact that one of the ships you performed maintenance on suffered a catastrophic malfunction, shattering most of the Gems on board and cracking those who weren't shattered, basically shattering them anyway as there is no way to repair a Gem with a crack. You didn't hear about it until a report was sent to you after you had gotten off duty and headed back to your private domicile to work on reports and other projects.
When you had first read the report, it felt as if a lead cannonball named 'Dread' had been dropped to the bottom of your stomach. Queasiness quickly followed as you realized your slip up ended up killing several Gems. Several dozen Gems. Gems are dead because of you, all of them innocent, all of them having their own lives, all dead, dead and gone and never coming back and oh stars - collapsing to your knees, you started violently dry-heaving. Nothing would come up as Gems don't need to eat, but the motion still occurred. One time, two, three. You stopped heaving after five times.
Sitting on your knees, breathing heavily, you managed to get your hysteria under control, barely. You don't know how long you sat there, catching your breath, but when you came back from your thoughts, you saw a Gem in your room. She was tall, broad shouldered, and intimidating. Wild white hair flowed from her head down her back, piercing amber eyes met your own dark green eyes, and a fierce frown marred her face. Her skin was tangerine with red-orange stripes on her face and arms. You took this all in in less than ten seconds, because, once you realized that a Gem of higher standing was in your room, you all but threw yourself up and forced your aching limbs to salute her.
Once you got into the salute, the Gem didn't say a thing. She just continued to stare directly into your eyes, still not uttering a single word. Time seemed to pass at a pace so slow you wondered if you'd had time-stopping abilities with how slow time was passing. Finally, after what seemed like decades, the Gem spoke:
"You are Peridot Facet 5D6G Cut-3DF, correct?" her voice came out as a rough, intimidating rumble. You very nearly let out a squeak of fear, just barely reigning it in. Composing yourself, you nodded your affirmation to her. She simply raises an eyebrow and remains silent, waiting expectantly. It took you only a moment to realize what she was waiting for.
"Y-yes ma'am, I am Peridot Facet 5D6G Cut-3DF..." You reply, twitching nervously in place. After giving your stuttered, fearful response, you notice the Gem's frown get a little bit deeper.
"Peridot Facet 5D6G Cut-3DF, by order of your superior, Yellow Striped Agate, and by request of Yellow Diamond, you are to depart from this posting and return to Homeworld, effective immediately." She paused briefly before continuing, "Once you have returned to Homeworld, you are to head to Yellow Diamond's palace for a discussion about what has recently occurred."
The first half caused the dread in your stomach to turn into a freezing, half-ton rock. Once you processed the second half, the dread turned from a freezing, half-ton rock into the purest form of terror and despair imaginable. You were being sent to Homeworld. Homeworld was upset. Yellow Diamond was ordering you to head to her palace. She wanted to speak to you. Oh, stars no. No, no, no. I'm going to be shattered, please no. No, no, no. Please...
In the real world, you fell back onto your rear and let out a sound that was somewhere between a sob and a gasp.
I have cross-posted this story to both Wattpad, Quotev and AO3 (Archive of Our Own). My Wattpad is DrLepper, my Quotev is SubliminalEnd, and my AO3 is Dr_Lepper.