Fade Out

Chapter Six

…..

Pride was nearly an impossible trait to develop with the spike in place, but there were a few pearls that managed it anyway. She had been valuable once, and even with their world in ruins she could still be considered valuable.

Her owner, the Tourmaline responsible for funding the mission, had spent a solid fortune getting the pearl on the ship. She was in decontamination for ten cycles just so she wouldn't have to be packed away in gem form like the other pearls.

Tourmaline had recognized the danger long before the last tree on the planet crumbled, but thought the guards and bribes she had paid out would be enough to protect her, and she tried to put through the lengthy decontamination again before she would leave. Her guards abandoned her, her bribes were worthless, and in the end all she could offer in exchange for her life was her pearl. The Everlast took the pearl, as she had before, and Tourmaline lost her life anyway.

From the very first cycle in the vault, she was the clear favourite. She was better dressed, more polished and in better working condition than the others, and even as her expensive dresses were shredded and her polish dulled she remained the favourite. Perhaps it was because she didn't cower before Pyrite as the others did, and bore every pain and humiliation with a clenched jaw and grim silence.

Pyrite was a proud creature, for all her savagery. She liked to see the pride in others shatter. Perhaps she had been trying to shatter Treasure too, in her own way.

…..

"I can find her."

The sound of Treasure's voice rang like a gunshot, startling them all. They had been sitting in silence for who knew how long, the pearls using their fluttery hand language to talk among themselves, the three Crystal Gems mutely horrified staring into the sand. Courage had been prowling the perimeter restlessly, like a caged animal.

Steven had managed to keep the tears at bay, but once he heard Treasure speak he couldn't hold them in any longer. They were happy tears, but they stung as much as sad ones. He wiped them away with damp, grit-covered hands.

"How?" Garnet asked, looking from Treasure to Steven and back, unsure of who to go to.

"Trace memory," the blue pearl answered, rising to her feet. "We've been swapping traces since last cycle. It's faint, but I can pick up the trail. She's not far from here."

The relief made him feel faint, giddy. They would get her back. They wouldn't have to leave her here.

"How are you going to get back there?" Garnet asked. Steven could hear the relief in her voice as well, though she was still on her guard.

"I'll walk through the shale plains," she answered, brushing herself down daintily and adjusting the knot on her flimsy skirt. "The vehicles can't cross them, 's too rough. Anyway, they'll be way off course now. We doubled back to lose them."

"I'll go too," Gift said, springing to her feet.

"No, you won't," Treasure told her sternly. "Only one of us needs to go. The rest of you stay here until I come back."

"I'm going," Courage said suddenly, grabbing a blunt hank of metal from the rig. "I'm not sending you out there alone."

Treasure didn't dispute this, though the other pearls fluttered to each other in alarm.

"This squad can protect you until we get back," Courage told them, cocking a thumb in Garnet and Amethyst's direction.

Garnet nodded grimly, and Amethyst looked up for the first time since she admitted she'd lost Pearl. She nodded too.

"Shouldn't one of us go too? Just in case?" Steven asked, scrubbing his face on his t-shirt.

"We'd be better off staying here in case we have to drive the rig away," Garnet told him.

"Well, then maybe I should go..." he started.

"What? That's crazy!" Amethyst spluttered. "You wanna get lost too?"

"I won't be lost," Steven assured her with forced gusto. "I'll be with Treasure and Courage, and if anyone's injured on the way I can help...what if Pearl's gem is cracked when they find it?"

He could see the guilt hit Amethyst hard, and he regretted what he said. She looked back down at the ground again, ashen-faced.

"Anyway," he continued. "She said it's not far, so we'll be back quickly, I have my bubble and shield, I'll be fine...I can do this!"

Garnet sighed, rubbed her temple and finally nodded, though it looked like the action caused her physical pain.

"Don't dawdle," she warned him, sounding close to tears (and that scared him).

…..

After crossing three dunes, they reached what Steven assumed were the shale plains; a long expanse of hills made of loose, sharp rock. The hills were just big enough to shield them from view. Steven had to pay close attention, as he brushed up against them accidentally the sharp rocks left him with long, thin scratches.

Treasure held her wrist out in front of her, walking with her eyes closed. Courage followed close behind her; both of them ignored Steven, except for stopping every now and then to make sure he was still close by.

"So, uh..." he began, wanting to break the silence. "How do you two know each other?"

Courage looked down at him with a puzzled frown, Treasure didn't even turn around.

"Courage was one of the Everlast's best soldiers," Treasure replied breezily. "I was always gifted out to the best soldiers."

Gifted out...?

He knew, of course, that pearls were considered property on Homeworld, no different than a pet or a smartphone. It was something he didn't like to think about too hard. It made sense that it wasn't any different on other gem-colonized planets. But there was something about the way she said gifted out... something that he didn't really understand but it made him feel uncomfortable, like there was something cold and slimy running under his skin.

"I stole the pearls," Courage told him bluntly.

"No, you didn't," Treasure corrected, uncomfortably similar to the way Pearl sometimes corrected Steven. "I asked you to take us. We asked you."

"Oh, so it's like she broke you out of jail," Steven laughed.

Or like a prince rescuing a princess from a tower he mentally added, but that was kid's stuff and he was a Crystal Gem. He looked down at the ground when the glare of the sun hit especially hard, and suddenly noticed little splotches of green scattered on the white rocks.

It hadn't occurred to him, because he had shoes and Courage had boots, but Treasure was barefoot and her feet were probably scratched to hell. It didn't seem to bother her, she kept searching with her outstretched wrist, oblivious to the fact that she was bleeding all over the rocks.

"Are your feet okay?" he asked her, working up his healing spit. "You're bleeding..."

"It's not a serious matter," she told him, without even opening her eyes.

Courage looked down at her feet, frowning.

"Can't you, like, uh, make some shoes for yourself...? So you won't have to walk on the sharp bits...?"

"I haven't manifested in orbits," she answered, eerily calm. "I don't remember how."

"Oh..."

He didn't know how to respond to that. He half-thought about taking off his own shoes to give to her, wondering if it would hurt really badly, when Courage swept forward and picked Treasure up. She perched Treasure on her shoulder, which made Steven think giddily of a pirate and her parrot.

"You two look almost like you're about to fuse," he laughed.

This got a reaction from them. Courage ground to a sudden halt and Treasure opened her eyes, dropped her wrist. They both blinked down at him, owlishly.

"Fuse?" Treasure asked. "What do you mean?"

"You know, fusion," Steven stammered, realizing properly that he was alone with these two, without Garnet or Amethyst or Pearl or Lion to step in and help him if he was in trouble. "When two gems dance together and become one big gem."

Courage looked confused, an odd expression on her stoic face. Pearl did her head-tilt-narrowed-eyes thing at him.

"Pearls don't fuse," she told him. "We can't."

"But our Pearl does it all the time," Steven argued. "With Amethyst mostly...and sometimes with Garnet...and sometimes they all fuse into one giant..."

"That's impossible," Treasure gasped, though a note of doubt had crept into her voice. "We're not the same as other gems. We'd shatter. We're too soft."

"The Everlast says only corrupted gems fuse," Courage mumbled thoughtfully.

"That's nonsense," Treasure scoffed. "Pyrite is a liar, you know that."

"So is whoever told you pearls can't fuse," Steven piped up. "I'm telling you, Pearl does it all the time. It's easy, as long as you care about the person you're fusing with."

They walked on in thoughtful silence, Treasure balanced perfectly in the dip in Courage's shoulder muscle. Until Treasure suddenly straightened, and pointed off to the west.

"She's over there," she said, relief making her voice breathy.

'Over there' was just past the edge of the shale plains, a half-dozen soft motile dunes skirting the outside of the trail they had thundered across not that long before. The canyons and cliffs crumbled softly on the other side, huge and empty. Courage dropped Treasure gently to her feet, and she narrowed down Pearl's location to one of the dunes.

But she dug through it, and found nothing.

"She was here..." she mumbled, filtering through the sand. "There's trace memory all over this spot..."

Steven's heart plummeted and tears rose to prick at his eyes. All this way for nothing.

"Looking for thiiiissss?"

The voice was so raspy and ragged it was barely a voice, and the gem who possessed it was barely a gem. Skeletal, ragged, the colour of dry dirt and with limbs so out of proportion she moved with evident pain, she grinned down at them with black slimy teeth. In her one huge hand she was holding a large club made of what looked like bone.

In her other hand, pinched between her needle-like fingers, was Pearl's gem.