First published: 08-26-2016 - re-written and posted November 5th, 2020
Present Day — Beach City
The mechanical clang of the school bell at Rehoboth Elementary School signalled the beginning of a new day. Soon, its hallways were filled with the rhythmic clatter of footsteps in their multitudes and a hundred different conversations, of creaking lockers and slamming doors.
As the students began to drain away into their classrooms, a new sound echoed through the corridors. Heavy steel-toed boots thudded against the tiled floor, heralding the arrival of an odd figure. Anyone still in the halls or glancing through the window of a classroom door would have borne witness to the peculiar sight of a British Army servicewoman striding past. Her immaculately-pressed uniform jacket sparkled with several hard-earned medals, and the sand-colored beret on her head was tilted at a slight angle. Displayed at the cap's peak was the famed insignia of a winged sword.
Pearl ascended a flight of stairs. With almost all of the children in class, she had mostly made her way through the school alone, though the custodian had abandoned his mop and bucket to stare blankly at her as she walked by.
Room 23 was on the second floor, only a few steps from the stairwell. Pearl paused at the threshold and checked her watch. She could hear Connie's voice from inside, muffled through the door.
"...As you know, I did my report on US History, specifically the Second World War. To help with the presentation, I've asked my friend Corporal Pearl to join us for class today."
"What kinda soldier is named Pearl?" snickered one of the students. "Sounds like a seamstress."
"Alice, knock it off!"" chided an older voice.
From where she waited, Pearl heard Connie clear her throat loudly. "Pearl! We're ready for you!"
Without a moment's hesitation, Pearl threw the door open, letting it bounce off the classroom wall with a dramatic thump. Shoulders squared, she marched smartly into the room, her old Lee-Enfield (safetied and completely unloaded, only allowed on school premises by special permission from the principal) slung over one shoulder. Forty surprised pairs of eyes watched her every move.
She came to attention in front of Connie and put up a sharp salute. "Corporal Pearl of Her Majesty's Special Air Service reporting as requested, Warrant Officer Maheswaran!"
"At ease, Corporal." Connie grinned, then shot a smug look at a shocked-looking girl in the front row.
Pearl relaxed into a parade rest, surveying the class sternly. Her gaze lingered annoyedly on the girl named Alice, who shrank into her chair in embarrassment.
Connie's soft snickering broke the spell of silence which had fallen over the room. "Pearl, you're having way too much fun with this."
Pearl couldn't hold it in either. Her stern expression melted away, and she cracked a grin. Leaning against the edge of a nearby desk, she unslung the old rifle and set it down on the tabletop with a heavy thump. Several of the boys gawked at it curiously.
The teacher rang the little bell on her desk to get the attention of the class. "Thank you, Pearl, that was quite the entrance. Let's begin, shall we? Tell the class about yourself, and maybe share a few of your experiences during the war."
"Okay, class." Pearl clapped her hands together. "My name is Pearl. As Connie said earlier, I fought in the Second World War, first as a member of the British Commandos, then later as a trooper in the SAS."
"What gun is that?" interrupted a dark-haired boy, staring intently at the weapon on the table.
"That, young man, is a Lee-Enfield. It was a very common battle rifle issued to British personnel during the war. Even by World War Two standards, it was a little outdated, but in the right hands it was reliable, accurate, and quick-firing.
Still wide-eyed, the boy lowered his hand and muttered excitedly to his seat-mate.
"As I was saying, I was with my squad in Poland when the war broke out, trapped on the wrong side of Europe as the onrushing wave of Hitler's armies began to roll across the continent. Oftentimes, we were outnumbered and stuck behind enemy lines as we fought and maneuvered our way back east to rejoin our allies. I'll tell you some of the more notable stories when Connie gets to those parts of her presentation, but first I'll answer a few of your questions."
"How many Nazis did you kill?" blurted out an older girl from the back of the room.
The teacher looked ready to berate her, but Pearl's answer was admonishment enough.
"It is not polite to ask such questions of a soldier. War is a cruel experience for those on both sides. All loss of life is a tragedy, for foe as much as friend."
She paused, letting her words sink in. The child's enthusiasm had fallen away, and shame was quickly spreading across her face.
"As a point of education, however," Pearl went on, "the answer is that I lost count. After a while, it just grew meaningless for me. It weighed heavily on my mind, and I realized that it was best not to think about it. Still, I didn't completely lose track. These notches you see carved into my rifle tally some of the more notable kills, officers and the like. And here..." her finger traced a circle around a pair of grooves scratched into the surface just under the bolt handle, "...these two represent the first two men I killed."
Another hand went up, this time belonging to a blonde girl. "The war was over seventy years years ago. If you really fought in it, then how come you look so young? Or is this all just an act?"
Pearl winced a bit, but she'd expected the question.
"I'm not human." she stated flatly. Several students gasped, and the handful who had still been uninterested in the class despite the dramatic introductions were now firmly hooked. "I'm a Gem from the temple at Beach City, and I'm about eight and a half millennia old, going by Earth years. I don't age because my body isn't organic like yours—but more on my physiology later. Let's get back to Connie's presentation first."
Connie shuffled through her notes. "Now, I'd like to call upon Jewel. I think you have something interesting you'd like to show to Pearl?"
Another girl rose from her seat. Carrying a small photograph in her hands, she made her way towards the front of the room. Reaching Pearl, she held out the picture for her to examine.
"Hi, Miss Pearl," she said shyly. "My name's Jewel Kaplan. My grandfather was in the Polish Army when the Germans invaded. He had a lot of stories about the war, and he always was talking about someone named Pearl. When I heard that you were going to be here today, I brought this photo. Are you the person he was talking about?"
The wooden frame was battered with age, and the cellulose film beneath worn and faded, but the image was as fresh as ever in Pearl's mind. She was standing beside a young private. Both of them were filthy and haggard, caked in grime from head to toe, yet they were grinning from ear to ear. Proudly held between them were two helmets, each bearing a matching hole wrenched through the steel.
Time slowed to a crawl. The neat, clean, air-conditioned classroom was gone. She was bathed in clinging heat, and the air held the acidic reek of cordite. The distant rumble of an artillery battery set her nervous system on high alert, and her mind screamed at her to find cover, any kind of cover against the coming storm. Someone was shouting to her, to the rest of the team, but their desperate warnings were drowned out as the first shell howled down from the sky.
She never did figure out how long the bombardment lasted. Seconds, hours, days. Time didn't matter anymore. What she did know was that when she opened her eyes again, she would find beside her a single severed arm, lying in its puddle of crimson.
"Pearl? Pearl!" Connie shook her shoulder, startling her out of her trance. "Are you okay?"
"Huh?" She jolted in her seat, tearing her gaze from the photograph. The class was still paying her rapt attention, and a few students giggled. The teacher looked on worriedly.
Pearl fidgeted nervously with her hands. There was no way about it; they'd all witnessed her latest traumatic episode. The tough soldier act was well and truly over. If she didn't explain what had happened, she'd risk more embarrassment.
"I apologize. I think I just had a flashback to the war. Sometimes, those can be triggered by sights, sounds, or, in this case, objects. when it happens, my consciousness can sometimes...lock itself up. The stronger the memory, the more adverse the reaction."
"So it's a form of PTSD?" Alice blurted out. The sharp crack of the teacher's ruler against her desk warned the students to mind their manners.
"Oh, that's okay, it's a valid question," Pearl reassured the teacher. "Yes, I suppose it is a manifestation of what you humans call post-traumatic stress disorder. It's something I've mostly been able to manage for years, but flare-ups like this do happen sometimes."
"What's on that picture that's got you all worked up?" Connie asked. "You look like you've seen a ghost."
Pearl handed the photograph back to Jewel, who began passing it around for the class to see. "In a way, I have. That picture was taken a few days after the war commenced. We were outside the town of Poznań, fighting our way to the coast to evade the German advance. I and Private Kaplan were scouting ahead for obstacles when an enemy sniper took a shot at us. We were incredibly lucky. He must've thought he'd gotten us both, but his bullet passed through the top of both our helmets without hitting anything. We soon...well, dealt with the rifleman, and when we realized what had just happened, we couldn't help but record our good fortune for posterity."
"What happened to the man here with you?" asked the teacher, finally getting her turn with the picture. "Did you ever see him again? Keep in touch?"
"No, I can't say I did. It was a quite chaotic period in time, but as we have little Miss Kaplan here, it's safe to say he made it out of there alive. Jewel, did your grandfather ever talk about anything else that happened to him during the war?"
"Not really." Jewel shook her head in disappointment. "Grandpa never really liked to talk about the war, except for his story about a mysterious British lady who helped save his life. He said that he wouldn't have been here without her help, so...thanks, I guess. Thank you for saving Grandpa's life."
Tears sprung to Pearl's eyes. She knelt, embracing the child tightly as she fought the swelling tide within. Here was a sign, a single sign. As she wrapped the child in her arms, she clung onto the one lasting shred of good she had done in those dark years.
It was an eternity before Pearl was ready to let go, but she finally let Jewel pull away. She straightened up, dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief from her breast pocket. Time to compose herself. Connie didn't deserve these histrionics.
"Okay, class. Enough about me for now. I believe Miss Maheswaran still has a presentation to give?"
~{0}~
Pearl sat alone in the booth at the local Crab Shack, aimlessly pushing her slice of pumpkin pie around with a fork. After the presentation, she had stopped by the place on the teacher's recommendation, only to find that her appetite had disappeared. The pie had long since gone cold, now turning soggy as the vanilla ice cream on the side began to melt, but still she stared vacantly out the window, mulling over the morning's events.
Outside, a bugle sounded its first tentative notes. The Reveille. Someone was warming up for the Veterans Day parade. The participants, gathered from a multitude of eras and units, had been trickling into Dewey Park for a few hours now.
In years past, she had been tempted to attend, to honor the lives lost and to celebrate what they had achieved. She'd always found some excuse to be absent, instead withdrawing to the Temple to meditate in solitude.
For some reason, though, today was different. She was still wearing her dress uniform from the morning, and, surprisingly, she couldn't find any ready pretense in her mind to dissuade herself from joining. It wasn't that she had planned to attend; she simply had been so busy preparing herself for the presentation that she had forgotten to come up with a reason not to.
"Shame to waste such a lovely-lookin' pie."
Startled, Pearl snapped her head around. Greg Universe was sitting in the booth across her.
He wasn't someone that most would regard as particularly stealthy, but she knew better. Greg could move swiftly and silently when he wanted to. Only the stars knew how many times he'd slipped away with Rose before the other gems even knew that he had been around.
"Help yourself." Pearl waved away her plate dismissively and returned her gaze to the window.
Sprinkled amidst the sea of American livery were a few more familiar uniforms from British service. A couple were from the Paras, another from the Black Watch, and a handful from several other regiments whose insignia she didn't recognize. She counted four men wearing uniforms from her era and frowned. There had been six last year. Every one of the old warriors was old and weathered, but their shoulders were sharp and their heads were held as high as ever.
"Penny for your thoughts?" Greg popped a large chunk of the pie into his mouth and munched down loudly. Deceptively stealthy he may be, but Greg was still very much Greg.
Sighing, Pearl leaned on her elbows and watched on as Greg lifted a spoon of half-melted ice cream, ignoring the few droplets spilling onto his beard. "I was just thinking about how strange it would be for me to go out there and march with them."
Greg reached for a napkin. "How so?"
Pearl rolled her eyes and pointed to her own face. "It would look strange to have a young woman in a similar uniform marching alongside old men, wouldn't it? It would look like I was stealing valor or doing something horrible like that. I could draw all kinds of negative attention to the city."
Some would say that Greg Universe was slow, or oblivious, or even just plain stupid. Sometimes, they were even right. But anyone who knew him would know that he was wiser and more observant than he appeared.
"Just because Connie's report is done, doesn't mean that the stories have to end. Steven was telling me this morning how you were just getting to the start of the war, and so know that Connie is just itching to hear more from you."
"What does that have to do with the parade outside?"
"Pearl, you shouldn't worry about being judged. Connie says that the presentation at school went well. Nobody accused you of anything, did they? There are also the pictures in the history books to back you up, and Gems are pretty much common knowledge these days."
"Your point being?" She was growing annoyed by this tangent.
"You've already crossed that line with the presentation. Your story is much more solid than you think it is. I know you want to go out there and march with the rest of them, so what's stopping you?"
"I—" stuttered Pearl, "I...can't."
Greg reached across the table, taking her hands in his own. Despite herself, she found the gesture strangely comforting. "The flashbacks are getting worse, aren't they?"
Again, she glanced nervously across the street. The parade was about to begin. The groups of veterans were now standing in neat rows, organized by unit and year of service. Her hesitation was confirmation enough for Greg.
"Go. It's the next step for you. You've gotta confront your past and start making peace with it."
"You really think that it would be okay?" Her voice was barely a whisper, and for the second time today she felt her tears welling up.
"Positive." Greg grinned, giving her hands a firm squeeze. "I'll tell you what. If something goes wrong, if somebody accuses you of anything, I'll get Ronaldo to put out a piece on his blog defending you, and then I'll clean the Temple from top to bottom as penance. But nothing'll happen, I'm sure of it."
Pearl stood up and straightened out her uniform, brushing a few crumbs from the sleeves of her jacket. "Thank you, Greg. I suppose it's time to give it a try."
"Hey, no problem." He scooped up another spoonful of ice cream. "Call it payment for the free pie."
"Last call for marchers!" Outside, the event coordinator had gotten on a loudspeaker. "Parade starts in one minute! One minute, folks!"
Pearl was halfway to the door when she turned back to the man now polishing off the remains of her pastry. "Uh, Greg?"
"Yeah?"
"About that cleaning thing...you do know that Amethyst's room is deplorably filthy and is probably too toxic for humans to safely work in, right? You're that sure? Because I will hold you to your promise."
"I run a car wash." Greg gave her an expressive shrug. "Trust me, I've probably seen worse. Now go. Get out there and be proud of your service."
~{0}~
Her last-minute arrival had left the event coordinator very confused, especially after he had taken stock of her appearance. She was nearly accused of stolen valor, but a hasty intervention from a passing Mayor Dewey (perhaps the only time she would ever be glad of his presence) had mollified the young man.
The organizer soon found her a suitable spot, near the head of the Second World War group. Today she would be helping push wheelchairs, a role which didn't make her look too far out of place amidst the elderly veterans. That suited her just fine. She didn't mind where her place in the line was, only that she would be allowed to stand with the men of her war.
She was the fortunate one. They had faced the same dangers and shared in her pain, they had seen the same horrors which still haunted the most dreaded of her nightmares, but they were merely human, flesh, bone, and blood. If the war had broken her, then what had it done to them?
Pearl took up station behind a wheelchair, gripping the handles and disengaging the wheel locks. The man in the chair twisted around to get a look at her.
"Good morning, sir." She smiled brightly down at him. "I'm Pearl. I served with the Special Air Service. What's your name?"
His eyes twinkled with youthful energy, and he raised his good hand up to her. "Captain Lipton at your service, my dear lovely lady."
"A pleasure to meet you, Captain." She took his hand, and was surprised to find that his grip was still quite strong.
With a cheeky grin which belied his years, Captain Lipton settled comfortably into his chair. "Nice to know that even in my old age, young women still seek me out."
Pearl was about to reply, but the shrill blast of the starting whistle cut her off.
"Company! Forward march!" shouted the parade section leader, himself a gray-haired Filipino man wearing an officer's uniform. On his left shoulder was the emblem of a scimitar inside an inverted red triangle.
Under the autumn sunshine, they moved out, their backs held straight and shoulders squared. The marching band struck up a tune, setting a slow but proud pace for the procession, and the veterans' disciplined ranks followed in behind.
There was no time for further conversation. Pearl concentrated on her task, keeping Captain Lipton moving along steadily with the rest of his group. A few of the other marchers glanced at her curiously, but there were no hostile glares, no recriminations. They had seemingly accepted her presence without question.
As the parade turned onto Dewey Boulevard, her anxiety began to drain away. She marched in sync with the grandiose trumpets, and the cheers of the gathered crowd lent her confidence with every step.
Halfway down the street, she spotted Greg's van. Steven was standing atop its roof on tiptoes, pointing excitedly down at her. His other arm was draped around Connie, who was eagerly waving a flag around. Greg himself was by the open driver's-side door, busily combing the street with a pair of binoculars.
Beside the van was Garnet. She caught Pearl's eye and gave her a slow, encouraging nod, draining the last remnants of self-doubt from her mind. Perched on Garnet's shoulders, Amethyst shot Pearl a wide grin and a thumbs-up.
All of them were here, and they had come to support her. And so she made a promise to herself, to them, to those marching with her.
She had her friends, she had her family. And unlike the men whom she had formed ranks with today, she still had an entire future ahead. A gift, and a responsibility. Things were going to be all right, if only she could let go and let the old wounds heal. The time had come for her to stop bottling up the past.
End Chapter 7
No authors notes this time other than to say that the partnership with Rodsantos continues to be successful with great story updates and writing ideas. Please go read Rodsantos's epic story "Operation Eclipse" if you enjoyed the writing style and content of this chapter then you'll enjoy his story too.