Pearl, Blue, and Yellow spent the next few hours doing some light sparring, which Blue really did find helpful in distracting from her lingering worries about Green, though they had yet to vanish completely.

"That was excellent!" Pearl said, applauding as they finished off the last round. "Yellow, your dual wielding has improved immensely, I'm glad you chose to stick with it. And Blue, your spear technique is doing very well too; I'll give you some more tips later so you can make better use of its wider range."

"Thanks," Blue said, Yellow echoing her.

"Are you planning on focusing just on your summoned weapon or did you want to continue sword practice as well?"

"Um, I'd like to do both, honestly," she admitted. "I figured learning how to use my spear takes priority though. I'll keep at the sword training on my own."

"Alright, though I'm happy to assist whenever you like."

"I appreciate it."

"Same here," Yellow offered. "Even if I do manage to summon something, I'm sticking with swords, so I'll take whatever practice I can get."

"Wait, really?" Blue asked. "But the whole point of summoning is that you have the weapon you're best suited to, isn't it?"

"The weapon I'm best suited to right now is the one I know how to use." She slipped her swords into her gem with a flourish.

"That's a perfectly valid opinion too," Pearl agreed. "I used swords for many years before I learned to summon, and even then there was a rather tough transition period. I only used my spear in real battle towards the latter half of the war. I think I made Rose rather nervous," she laughed self-consciously. "We'd already had an extended discussion about the fact that she didn't want me sacrificing myself for her, and then I got poofed about three times in quick succession before I had a good handle on using my weapon."

"Three?" Blue asked incredulously.

"Yes, it was rather embarrassing, honestly. But by that point, I'd earned the respect of the other gems in the rebellion, so there was no harm done."

"I'm pretty sure the Diamonds never heard about that either," she laughed. "I don't think they ever even realized you had a summoned weapon."

"Yes, I'm sure it was already enough of a blow to lose to a gem so far beneath you; I doubt any of their soldiers would have dared take the specifics back to their Diamond." Pearl smiled. "Anyway, I should get back, it's nearly Steven's bedtime. You two rest as well, alright?"

"Will do," Blue agreed.

"I'll see you in the morning."

The two of them had never tried sleeping like humans did, but they did head over to their usual spot for a while and sat side by side, making occasional conversation like they used to back on Homeworld.

And in its strange way, that was calming for Blue, even though she couldn't find much energy to speak that night. She liked being able to see the night sky from Earth, and she was particularly happy not to be alone, so she curled up beside Yellow and rested her cheek against her shoulder and tried to tune out all the thoughts bouncing around in her mind.

Rest.

When the sun finally started to rise, the two of them returned to the barn, since Blue wanted to go say hello to Peridot after not having seen her the previous day.

The technician was working when they arrived, and Lapis was present too, up on the roof doing nothing in particular.

"Hi, Peridot," Blue greeted the smaller gem.

"Oh, hello! You're back."

"Since yesterday, actually."

"That fast for a—That's fast," she corrected herself immediately.

"Yeah, I think it's just my gem being weird again," she replied, keeping her tone light. "How have you been?" she asked politely.

Peridot seemed to genuinely consider the question for a moment. "I'm not sure," she said finally, "but I think we're doing better now."

"You and Lapis Lazuli?" Blue asked curiously.

"Mm-hm. We're roommates."

"Yeah, Yellow told me."

"Right. Well, we've made progress! She still doesn't really talk to me that much though."

"Ah." Blue glanced up.

"Maybe you should try," Peridot offered.

"I'm not sure she'd like to see me," she said quietly. "It's—We shared a Diamond, that's all. I don't think we have anything in common besides that."

"Well, you should at least introduce yourself," she declared. "Hey, Lazuli!" she shouted up to the gem on the roof.

"What?" Lapis called back down in a flat voice.

"Come down and meet Blue!"

There was an almost inaudible sigh from above, and a moment later Lapis dropped down to the grass gracefully. She landed just in front of Blue and immediately did a double take, brow furrowing.

"I'm Blue," she offered hesitantly, resisting the automatic urge to bow to a gem of higher status in her former court.

"Lapis," the other gem said warily. Her eyes flicked up and down Blue's form, clearly comparing her appearance to the one she'd had on Homeworld. "I didn't realize it was you."

"Yeah."

"I guess I never pinned you as the rebellious type."

Blue nodded stiffly. "Good. You weren't supposed to."

Lapis gazed at her impassively for a few long moments.

"Anyway, it's a pleasure to meet you," she added politely. "Sorry for, um, stabbing your fusion when I was a fusion."

The other gem let out an unexpected snort of laughter. "It's fine," she replied. "You two were protecting Steven."

Blue smiled, relieved. "Yes."

"Sorry Mala—Sorry she dissipated you," Lapis said uncomfortably.

"It's alright, it wasn't entirely your fault."

"Yeah," she muttered, not sounding entirely convinced. "Okay, well, now we've met. Bye."

Blue watched Lapis take off again, resettling on the roof. "That went better than I expected," she murmured.

"If you say so," Yellow replied.

"See, I told you she's starting to warm up to us!" Peridot boasted. "I'll make sure she has the best possible Earth experience!"

"Too late for that," Lapis called down.

"Just you wait!"

"Let's leave them to it," Yellow said, tugging Blue away. "We have training to do."

"Oh, right!" Blue brightened up considerably. "See you later, Peridot, Lapis!"

"When I said I wanted to train, this isn't exactly what I meant," Blue panted, coming to a halt beside the Holo-Pearl and giving it a weak high five. "Why are we just running laps?"

"Because it'll help," Pearl said cheerfully. "Good job, that's your second Pearl Point today."

"But Yellow got here first."

"Yes, but I think this is the first time you've actually complained about my teaching choices!"

"Oh. I'm…sorry?"

"No, don't be sorry, it's progress!" She patted Blue on the back. "It's good to see you're more comfortable speaking your mind. Now go run fifteen more laps, and then we'll take a break."

Blue nodded, flustered, and started running again.

"Me too?" Yellow asked.

"Yes, please."

She groaned and took off after Blue.

"Stay positive!" Pearl called after them.

Once they had finished up, they collapsed gratefully onto the sand for a break.

"This stuff is the worst," Yellow complained, meticulously tipping sand out of her shoes and pulling her socks back up.

"It provides resistance so your bodies have to work harder," Pearl pointed out.

"Can't it do that without getting into my shoes constantly?"

"You could go barefoot?" Blue suggested.

"No thank you," she replied. "Some of us prefer proper attire."

Blue laughed and shook her head. "Aren't you fancy."

They rested for a few more minutes before Pearl started up their actual practice, instructing them on a few new sword and spear techniques to add to their repertoires.

It was nice to get back to this, Blue thought. Nice to do something challenging but never impossible.

The three of them—Blue, Yellow, and Pearl—took to training on the beach quite often after that, despite the gradual shift of Earth's weather from warm to cool. It didn't really matter to them—they felt the change but didn't feel it like humans seemed to, if the way Pearl bundled Steven up was anything to go by.

Blue knew, though they never really talked about it much, that they were there not just to train but to do what Pearl had said before—show Jasper that they weren't just Pearls like she thought.

She wasn't too sure it was doing much at first, because the Quartz spent most of her time pointedly ignoring them. But as a few days passed, she caught the occasional glance over and could tell they'd, at the very least, sparked some tiny bit of curiosity. Jasper was a soldier, she could appreciate technique.

Still, Blue was surprised when the Quartz called out to her one day as she was practicing alone.

"Hey, Pearl!"

Blue turned towards the rough voice. "Are you talking to me?" she called back.

"Yeah, come over here."

"No thank you," she said, pointedly flourishing her spear as she rested it on the ground. "And I'm not Pearl."

Jasper gave her a skeptical, squinty glare. "You look like one."

"I mean I'm not called Pearl. Not here." She leaned a little of her weight against her spear, feeling surprisingly in control of the situation despite the way Quartzes used to intimidate her. Then again, last time she'd met one on Homeworld she'd stabbed her with a destabilizer. Hardly a real fight, but it definitely did something for your confidence. "Pearl's the white one. Gem on her forehead, star on her chest?" she called, pointing to each in turn to demonstrate the differences.

"The renegade Pearl."

"That's right," Blue said lightly. "I'm called Blue. And my friend who you were incredibly rude to before is called Yellow."

Jasper gave her a long look. "Yeah, alright, sure."

"So what did you want?" she asked.

"I want you to come over here so I don't have to shout everything."

Blue took a second to consider, then grasped her spear securely and strode over to the destabilizing field farther up the beach. She kept some distance from it, enough to be safe but not enough to make it look like she was scared. "Alright, now what do you want?"

"I want to talk. I have questions, and no one else is answering them, so I thought I'd try you."

She frowned. "Steven's been trying to talk to you ever since you got here; you're the one who hasn't wanted to cooperate."

"Yeah, well, the little Rose Quartz imposter never sticks around for long anymore; she's always got one of the others with her."

"He," Blue corrected her.

"What?"

"He. There's a difference. It's a human thing."

Jasper tossed her head irritably. "Great, some other arbitrary nonsense the Crystal Gems adopted."

Blue kept her mouth shut. She couldn't quite get a read on the larger gem—she seemed far less hostile than usual, but still very prickly. And prickly Quartzes were always dangerous.

"I want to know what you're doing with me," she continued. "There has to be something more to this than just…keeping me here."

"No, I'm pretty sure that's as far ahead as they thought," Blue replied, barely managing to hide her smile.

Jasper stared at her.

"Look, there's not some master plan everybody's keeping a secret. You were awful to them, but they're not going to torture you or shatter you or anything."

"Why not?" she demanded. "I'm a prisoner of war, aren't I?"

"Because that's not how Crystal Gems do things."

"Oh, that's rich," Jasper said angrily. "They don't shatter gems, but they make an exception for a Diamond?"

Blue bit her lip. "I wasn't there for that. Maybe they were desperate, maybe it was a mistake… To be honest, it doesn't matter a whole lot to me. I trust the gems they've proven themselves to be in my time here."

"How touching," she muttered sarcastically.

"But the point is, you're not at war." Blue pointed up at the temple. "And if they wanted, they could have just stuck you in a bubble with all the other gems who couldn't withstand the Diamonds' retaliation. That would have been really, really easy. But they didn't do it."

"Because you all want me to suffer?" Jasper snarled. "This is humiliating."

"Steven doesn't understand that. He's trying to help you."

"He's Rose Quartz. Of course he understands!"

"No, he doesn't!" Blue said sharply. "He's not like us. He doesn't have years and years of Homeworld telling him what he was supposed to be. He didn't have to fight as soon as he was made. He's not a soldier, not like you, and you can't treat him like one."

"All Quartzes are soldiers, that's what we're made for."

"Are you really sure you want to talk to a Pearl holding a weapon about what gems are supposed to be made for?"

"You're defective. Rose Quartz isn't."

Blue took a deep breath, fighting back her frustration. "Okay," she said slowly, "let's say, for the sake of argument, I am defective. If I'm defective, that means Blue Diamond kept a defective Pearl for thousands of years and never noticed. If I'm defective, it doesn't matter what kind of shape your gem is, something can still go wrong. If I'm defective, every other gem could be as well. Where does that leave us?"

Jasper hesitated.

"When it was just Pearl, I'm sure it was easy to rationalize her as an anomaly. And she was, at the time. She was the only one brave enough to do that. But there's three of us here now. We all belonged to Diamonds, we all ran away, we all chose to devote ourselves to something besides our original purpose, and we all do things Pearls aren't supposed to be able to do. We're not an anomaly, Jasper. We're not defective."

Conflicting emotions warred in Jasper's eyes. "That's not possible," she said. "That's not—We're made to serve our Diamonds."

"Oh, I'm not contesting that," Blue said, voice softening. "I know why I was made. I'm just saying that I have the freedom to be something else. All of us do, we just never realized."

She shook her head. "It's not right. This isn't right. You're trying to brainwash me."

"I am not," Blue argued.

"Well, you're wrong either way. The Diamond Authority exists for a reason, and there's no place for gems like you in it."

"Okay."

"Okay?" Jasper repeated disbelievingly.

"Okay," Blue said with a shrug. "In case you hadn't noticed, I don't really want to have a place in the Diamond Authority. And it's not my problem if that's what you think regardless."

"Oh, come on, everyone else practically jumps down my throat when I even dare to imply something like that in their presence."

"And clearly that's not accomplishing anything. Look," she said, eyes steely, "I don't like what you're saying. But I have met hundreds of gems just like you and I don't have the time, energy, or power to set you all straight. A lot of times, being a Pearl means you just have to take what you get and deal with it. So okay. I'm going now." She turned, taking a few steps away before glancing over her shoulder at Jasper again. "Oh, and thank you."

"For what?" Jasper asked warily.

Blue grinned. "You called me a gem, didn't you?"

Blue felt more than a little exhausted as she walked back, but she didn't feel bad, just relieved to be done with the conversation and a tiny bit proud of herself for not letting Homeworld ideas get to her. And actually, it had been a little refreshing to have a distraction from her thoughts.

She found Yellow waiting for her just outside the temple.

"Do I need to go stab her?"

"Excuse me?"

"Jasper," Yellow clarified. "Was she bothering you?"

"No more than I anticipated," Blue said, laughing a little.

"So she was."

"Yes, but—Yellow, it's fine." She caught her by the arm before she could start making her way down the beach. "I appreciate you trying to defend my honor, but you don't need to."

"If she talks to you the same way she talks to me, then I think—"

"Yellow," Blue interrupted, "I mean this in the nicest way possible, but you do have a tendency to antagonize people you don't like. Not that it excuses Jasper's behavior in any way, but gems do tend to be a little more tolerable if you don't provoke them."

Yellow huffed and crossed her arms. "I'm aware of that, thank you, but you can't tell me she was happy to be talking to a Pearl."

"Well, no," Blue admitted. "But she doesn't have a lot of choices at the moment, and I think she knows that. She didn't say anything too terrible, I promise."

"Alright," she agreed reluctantly. "What did she say then?"

"Mostly she just has a lot of questions." Blue shrugged. "I think it's probably a good thing that she's curious?"

"I suppose." Yellow frowned. "You don't think she's up to something?"

"No." She hesitated. "Well, I think she would be up to something if she had the option, but she's stuck here with the Crystal Gems watching her every move, so she's probably just trying to get a better handle on her situation."

"Alright then," she relented.

"What are you doing here, by the way?" Blue asked. "I thought you left with Pearl."

"I did, but I wanted to talk to you."

"Oh?"

"Yes."

She gave Yellow a curious look. "About what?"

She hesitated. "You seem like you're starting to overtrain again."

"Ah," she said quietly, surprised. "I hadn't really noticed."

"Well, it hasn't gotten as bad as last time yet," Yellow said. "But you said you wanted me to tell you if you started doing that sort of thing, so…" She shrugged awkwardly. "I'm not particularly good at reading people, so I don't know if this is about the other Pearls or fusion or something else entirely, but I figured it was best to bring it up now anyway."

"It's a bit of everything, I guess," Blue murmured. "I'm not sure, I'm just stressed."

"Okay."

"Mostly the fusion thing," she admitted. "I've been thinking too much, that's all."

"Well, stop it."

Blue laughed.

"What?"

"Nothing, you just have an interesting way of comforting people."

"I hadn't gotten to the comforting part yet," Yellow said defensively.

"Oh, alright. Please, go right ahead," Blue said with a smile.

"No."

"No?"

"You have to explain what you've been thinking about first."

"Ah, yes, we have to have an order to these things," Blue said wisely.

"Blue."

The other Pearl sighed, leaning heavily against the railing and staring out at the beach. "Sorry. I honestly hadn't realized I was overdoing it again. I was trying to distract myself."

Yellow nodded, hesitantly copying Blue's posture, though her back remained ramrod straight.

"It was always me asking," Blue murmured. "And I can't help but think it could just have easily been you that was hurt because I'm…different. I would feel terrible if it had been."

"It wasn't."

"I know."

"And asking about what?" Yellow queried. "Fusion?"

Blue nodded. "I mean, it was my idea. And then I suggested it the day we fought Malachite too, so…" She clasped her hands together anxiously. "It feels like it's my fault. I know you don't mind being Green, because it's always really great, but…"

"Yes, obviously I fuse with you because I don't mind," she said sarcastically. "Stars, Blue, I'm a lot of things, but I'm not apathetic."

Her face tinged a dark blue. "Like I said, I was thinking too much."

"And you somehow arrived at the conclusion that I'm fusing with you out of obligation or something?"

"I don't know," she said quietly. "You aren't, are you?"

"Definitely not." She tapped a finger on Blue's arm. "I not only don't mind fusing with you, I enjoy it. So stop worrying about problems that don't exist."

"Okay," Blue replied with a faint smile.

"And until I see solid evidence of it being directly harmful to either of us, I have no problem continuing to do so. I told you that already."

"I know." She leaned closer to Yellow, pressing their shoulders together. "Thanks."

"You're welcome."

"And for coming to talk to me." Blue slipped her arm around Yellow's, linking them. "Thank you. You're actually not so bad at the comforting."

"Good, but I wasn't quite finished yet." Yellow pulled a small package from her gem. "Here."

"You got me a present?" she asked, surprised.

"I got you a prize from Pearl's pouch thing, and then Steven and Peridot suggested I wrap it up because apparently that's what you do on Earth."

"I knew you saved those Pearl Points," Blue laughed, eyes softening as she took the gift.

Yellow smirked. "Figured I might as well use them for something. Anyway, it's yours."

"You're sure?" she asked.

"Yeah."

Blue smiled and carefully opened up the package, wrapping paper unfolded neatly and placed aside. "Oh! I love these!" She lifted the small pack of multicolored hair clips out. "And they're stars," she said delightedly.

Yellow nodded, looking pleased. "Since they're more decorative than functional now," she pointed out.

"They're perfect," Blue declared. She gave Yellow a quick hug, then looked at her for a moment before hugging her again and holding on tight. "Thank you."

"It's not a big deal."

"You gave me something! You earned it and then you gave it to me and—and I don't know, I'm happy that we can even do that sort of thing. It's so new and rebellious and I love it."

"I figured," Yellow replied, a note of fondness in her voice as Blue let go.

"Will you wear one too?" she asked, already unclipping a couple from the cardboard backing.

"They're meant to be yours."

"Yes, they're mine and I'm sharing. Please?"

"Alright," she agreed reluctantly.

Blue grinned and reached up to slip it into Yellow's hair, just beneath one of the clips Steven had given her. "Looks good," she said brightly, hand lingering only a second before she picked out one to put in her own hair. "Honestly, it's very refreshing to see and wear things that aren't blue."

"I assumed you still liked it, seeing as you reformed in all blue again."

She laughed a little. "I don't dislike it. But I didn't want to make too many changes all at once; that seemed too daunting. And I wanted to get back." Blue slipped the rest of the clips into her gem. "Thank you again for looking after me too. I promise I'll do the same when you get poofed."

"When?" Yellow repeated indignantly. "You make it sound like it'll happen tomorrow."

"Well, whenever it does happen, I'll take care of you." She smiled, giving the other Pearl a playful nudge. "Hundreds of years from now, I'm sure."

Yellow stared at her for a few long moments and then clicked her tongue, turning to hide the blush on her cheeks. "Thanks," she muttered. "Come on, we should go inside. Steven wanted to see how you look with those."

Blue smiled and let Yellow lead her back into the temple, grateful for the slightly warm fingers that took her hand and the care with which they slipped to fit between her own.