In the shiny metal knees of Pink Diamond's ship were two holding chambers, where crews of Peridots, Agates, and Bismuths stood in wait. It was to there that the matriarchs of Homeworld and their pearls went when they finally left the main command chamber, one diamond to each knee, to give orders to the worker gems. It should only take a couple weeks for them to repair the diamonds ships - maybe even less than that, with their advanced alien technology - and then Earth would be free of the Diamond Authority once (and hopefully forever) more.

Pale Pink Pearl seemed relieved to see them go - and from the looks the diamonds had been sending her, Connie thought that they were happy to get away from her too. But honestly, now that she was no longer under White Diamond's mind control or having a panic attack in the corner, she wasn't that bad.

Now, it was Garnet and Pearl who had retreated to a corner - the former had pulled the latter away after it became clear that Pearl was trying very hard not to freak out, and mostly not succeeding. Connie wasn't sure why Pearl was so upset, exactly. She hoped it was something to do with the puppet strings, and not Pale Pink Pearl herself.

Said gem had settled down on the floor with the remainder of their group. She was careful to keep the cracked side of her face turned slightly away, but one pale pink finger drifted absently back and forth, as though she were conducting a silent symphony in her head.

Connie hummed a few bars of a concerto under her breath. She wondered what day it was, and whether she would still have to go to Monday night violin lessons when she got home. Amethyst flopped onto her back and started drumming on her stomach like it was a pair of bongos. Steven sighed, and finally stopped trying to eavesdrop on Pearl and Garnet.

"So, what should we call you?" He asked Pale Pink Pearl.

Pale Pink Pearl looked baffled. "I am a Pearl."

"Yeah, but like, Pearl is already Pearl. If you're both Pearl that's going to get really confusing."

It seemed like common sense to Connie, but Pale Pink Pearl cocked her head to the side at Amethyst's words.

"Would it not be more confusing if you had multiple words to refer to the same gem?"

Connie, Steven, and Amethyst exchanged glances.

"What about when people needed to distinguish between you and another Pearl?" Connie asked.

Pale Pink Pearl was still bemused, but she gamely went along with them. "Then I was referred to as White Diamond's Pearl."

"Yeah, but like, White Diamond's not the boss of you anymore," Amethyst drawled.

Pale Pink Pearl shrugged. "I would still know who you meant."

"But that's not right!" Connie protested.

"What name would you like to call me?" she asked mildly.

"You're your own gem now; you get to pick you own name," Steven explained.

"I don't understand."

"You could be Bob, or Jesamine, or Onion…" said Amethyst, ticking off various (mostly) human names on her fingers.

"But I'm not a bob, I'm a pearl."

"Maybe you should try a nickname! Something that reflects who you are as an individual."

There was a long pause, and Connie nearly suggested 'Pale Pink Pearl,' the name she'd been using in her head for the last 3 hours. It was an accurate description of her appearance… but at the end of the day, it was also just another allusion to the gems who had owned her. Plus, even in her head it was a mouthful.

"I don't know who I am." The lost pearl said eventually. "White Diamond has been controlling me for millenia."

"Yeah, Pearl said you were dangling on strings like a puppet." Even Amethyst couldn't maintain her usual nonchalance when she said that. For the fourth time that hour, Connie tried to shove down a mental image of Crystal-Gem-Pearl and Pale-Pink-Pearl as literal marionettes, their wooden limbs dragging along a crude stage under White Diamond's perfectly manicured hands, only for the stage to give out while the theater turned into a gallows. Connie shuddered. (They were reading Maus in English this quarter. The terrible graphics in the novel were fueling her imagination almost as much as they were reinforcing her determination to fight Homeworld, with its hierarchies and persecution and-)

"What's a puppet?"

Connie blinked.

"Uh, it's like a tiny doll that you can move around with strings." Steven mimed as he spoke, and

Amethyst went a step further, transforming into a pint-sized puppet and strutting on hinged joints.

"Oh... You should call me Puppet Pearl."

There was an awkward silence, as everyone present tried to imagine calling her Puppet for the rest of her life. Puppet-Amethyst slumped down and shifted back to her normal form. The engine thrummed. Connie's sneakers made a funny sound against the floor. From across the chamber came a snippet of Pearl and Garnet's murmured conversation.

"I guess we could call you Mary," Connie offered finally. "Short for Marionette - that's another word for puppet."

"Ooh, ooh! Or Pinocchio! It's from this story about a puppet who becomes a real boy!"

The pearl's eyes widened. "How did she do that?"

Steven grinned. "I don't know how, but we could watch the movie when we get home. Oh, uh, a movie is like a made up story with videos and music."

The light that entered her eye seemed to confirm that Steven had hit upon the perfect name.

Pinocchio Pearl (tentatively) smiled. "I would like that."

~)o(~

A/N: Poor Pearl. She saved an old friend, but only through accidentally picking up the gem equivalent of blood-bending. Yikes… and you know she's probably worried she'll do something terrible with it. At least Pinocchio Pearl is free, and has a new name for herself, yeah?

Anyway, this fanfic is 50% somebody-needs-to-save-WD's-pearl and 50% my-contribution-to-the-theorydom. I couldn't make all the theories crystal clear (heh) without tripping up the story, but in brief the theories are: 1) Pink and White Diamond switched Pearls, 2) White Diamond has power of mind control, which are strongest over pearls since they're designed to take orders, 3) White Diamond's pearls are customized to have an echo of WD's powers, for her clarity's convenience whenever she possesses them, and 4) Pearl discovered a long time ago that she could manipulate sand and ice crystals, it just never occurred to her that she could use those powers over living gems too.

Reviews are appreciated now and forevermore, and if you want to geek out or theorize together, you can find me on Tumblr at dot com! :D