In which no one eats Greg's pancakes, and Steven is too perceptive for Pearl's comfort.
Last chapter had two pre-Steven scenes, so this one has three post-Steven scenes. Because who needs consistency, anyway?
This chapter contains some talk about depression and strongly implied PTSD. I know, I thought this story was going to be fun, too. And it is. Because there are also pancakes.
at first
"Da-da!"
Steven stomped his small feet impatiently on top of Pearl's shoes. She held both of his hands and walked him up the path to the mobile home, encouraging him to lift his feet in sync with each of her steps.
"Good job," she cooed. Any day now, he would be running off all by himself. As exciting as that day would be, Pearl was glad that for now the task of keeping an eye on him was relatively easy. She pulled one hand out of Steven's tight grip and knocked on the mobile home's front door.
"Greg!" she called.
"Geg!" Steven yelled.
"No, say da-da."
"Da-da!"
The door remained shut. Pearl hoisted Steven up to her hip and knocked again, then wandered around to peer through the kitchen window. She frowned, calling louder, and then made her way down the small gravel drive to where Greg's van was parked. She pounded on the back doors, and after a moment of shuffling inside, they swung open and Greg's mess of bed head appeared.
"Oh, hey there! I wasn't expecting you guys this early… at three in the afternoon," Greg finished, glancing at the light-up clock by the old cot he'd been sleeping on. "Wow, sorry. You know how Saturdays can get away from you!"
Pearl shook her head in disbelief. "It's Sunday, Greg." She wrinkled her nose at the mess of sandwich wrappers and un-alphabetized CDs scattered inside the van. Didn't he have a bed inside the house?
"Sunday." Greg set the clock down again with a heavy-sounding chuckle. He rubbed his eyes. "Whaddya know about that?"
"Da-da!" Steven shrieked.
"Hey, buddy!" Greg's face immediately lit up. He climbed out of the van and shut the doors on the mountain of clutter. Steven strained to step toward his father, but Pearl kept a tight grasp on his chubby hands.
"Are you feeling well, Greg?" she asked, studying him closely. There were dark circles under his eyes. If he was infected with some sort of contagion, there was no way in the world she was leaving Steven here.
"What? Oh, yeah, I'm just a little worn out."
Reluctantly accepting that they were not in the midst of another human plague, Pearl handed Steven to Greg and observed their strange greeting ritual. Greg tossed Steven into the air- catch him catch him catch him please- and caught him, flipping him upside down and blowing raspberries all around the pink stone in his belly. Steven giggled wildly.
"Hey, I'm going to make some pancakes for… lunch. You're welcome to stay if you want," Greg said.
Pearl smiled politely. "Thank you, Greg. I wouldn't mind staying for a pancake."
She had no intention of eating anything, but if Greg had honestly been asleep for the past day and a half, she wanted to ensure that he could prepare breakfast without burning down the house and Steven with it.
Greg obviously wasn't expecting Pearl to accept his invitation, but he recovered from the surprise and enthusiastically welcomed her into the mobile home. It had been a while since she set foot inside- the Gems babysat frequently, but Pearl almost always tasked one of the others with picking up and dropping off Steven. She always forgot how cramped it was, but in contrast to the hurricane level disaster inside the van, the mobile home was neat and clean. If nothing else, she had to appreciate the fact that Greg generally kept his mess contained.
Greg set Steven down and chuckled as the little boy pulled him forward into the tiny kitchen.
"He's about to start walking on his own," Pearl said proudly. "He tried to let go of my hands several times this weekend."
"Oh, that's great. Where did you guys take him again?"
"The Strawberry Fields. They're just getting ripe."
"That's great. I think I've been there once or twice." Greg pulled a griddle down from on top of the refrigerator. He dug through another cabinet for pancake mix. "I bet he loved that."
Pearl sat at the kitchen table, tucking Steven into his high chair beside her. "Steven may have consumed one or more beetles this weekend. Not toxic beetles. Please watch to make sure he doesn't break out in rashes."
Thirty seconds. She had left him in the care of Amethyst for thirty seconds. But as much as she hated to admit her failure to Greg of all people, Pearl knew it would be unsafe for the two of them not to keep each other in the loop.
Greg winced and flipped a couple of pancakes onto Pearl's plate. "Well, in that vein of total honesty, this week I learned that the pool cleaning company is moving out of Beach City. They didn't have enough business here. Turns out that nobody in Beach City really has a pool because… well, most people go to the beach." Greg laughed to himself. "Should have seen that coming, huh?"
He put another pancake in front of Steven and ripped it into pieces for him. Steven giggled and proceeded to drop the pieces, one by one, onto the floor.
"So you're out of work again?" Pearl asked wearily. While Greg was picking up Steven's mess, she hurriedly beamed her own pancakes into her Gem for safe-keeping.
"Yeah, for the moment. But I've got an idea for something that could be a much more permanent solution. You know what everyone in Beach City does have that always could use a cleaning?" He led with his voice, eyeing her expectantly.
Pearl blinked. She couldn't think of anything in particular. Everything in Beach City seemed like it could use more regular cleaning, as a matter of fact.
"Cars! Everybody has a car, and they're always all sandy," Greg said, enthusiastic as if he had discovered the cure for cancer. The light didn't reach his eyes, though. "I got the idea while I was hosing off the ol' van for the thousandth time the other day. Wow, you're hungry, aren't you?"
Greg interrupted himself to flip more pancakes onto Pearl's plate. He put another in front of Steven, who giggled and set it on top of his head.
"This is gonna work. I've already found a building that I'll probably be able to lease. And people here are so great. The Pizzas already said they'd be willing to invest…"
"That's a lovely idea," Pearl said politely, stealthily storing the fresh pancakes in her gem as well.
Of Rose's many final wishes for her, Garnet, and Amethyst, Pearl had anticipated that 'not blaming Greg' would be the most difficult. But the truth was, Pearl sometimes got the sense that he was already taking care of most of the blaming himself for her. Pity was the easier emotion to feel, on the days that she scrounged up an emotion to feel towards Greg. She was glad that the people of Beach City could be counted on to pity him as well.
Pearl pushed her empty plate out of the way and lifted Steven from his high chair. She set him on the floor, and he bounced up and down, holding onto a leg of her chair. And then he squealed, looked at Greg, and let go, wobbling on his own two feet for a moment before taking a step forward.
"Greg! Quick! Grab your analogue recording device!" He would want to have this moment captured.
Greg dropped the spatula and looked around the tiny kitchen in a panic. "Oh, shoot. I think it's out in the van!"
"I have one. Here." Pearl retrieved a camcorder from storage in her gem and quickly turned it on as Steven took tiny, unsteady steps toward his father, who knelt in front of him.
"That's it, buddy. One foot in front of the other," Greg coached. Steven lost his balance after a few more seconds, but Greg immediately scooped him up again. "Way to go, little man."
Pearl clasped her hands in delight. "He's walking! Can you believe this? Oh, it might not be long before he's summoning his shield for the first time!"
"Nah, all the books I've read say that won't happen for at least another two months," Greg said with a small smirk.
"What books are these?" Pearl had read every book she could get her hands on about child-rearing. None of them had been remotely helpful about that sort of thing.
Greg shook his head. "Nothing…I was just… just kidding."
They both knew that the day was coming when the Gems would play a much more integral part in raising Steven. It was Pearl's calling now, and every second that she wasn't watching him or fighting to protect his planet she spent drawing up plans for the house he would live in, writing summaries of their history for him to read, mapping out locations she would have to take him to visit. It was only a matter of time.
Greg set Steven back in the high chair and took the camcorder from Pearl. "Oh man, I'm so glad you caught this! I can't wait to show…" He paused for just a moment. Just long enough. "Garnet and Amethyst." Greg folded the viewfinder back into the camcorder and sat down at the table. "You should take this back and show Garnet and Amethyst. They'll love it."
"Greg…"
He fiddled with the lens cap, looking incredibly weary again.
"Greg, your pancakes."
They were burning. Greg jumped up, muttered a bad word, and unplugged the griddle, reaching to open a window so the quickly-rising smoke could escape. He scraped the blackened batter into the trash, wrinkling his nose.
"That's all right. I wasn't that hungry, anyway." Greg sat back down at the kitchen table next to Pearl. There was a tremor in his voice, his hand, something.
"No, you should eat something. Here, you can have mine," Pearl said quickly. She beamed the pancakes in her gem back onto Greg's plate, then drizzled syrup over them with a flourish.
Greg stared at the plate of still steaming pancakes. They sat in silence.
"Pearl, I think I've been struggling with depression," Greg said, without warning.
Pearl dropped a few strawberries from her pocket dimension onto the pancakes. Then she sat back and looked at him for a long moment.
Greg rubbed his neck uncomfortably. "Are you...do you need that one explained?"
"I'm familiar with the concept, although I will be sure to research it more thoroughly after this," she promised. Even knowing as little as she did, she felt a bit foolish for not seeing it herself.
"But it's… probably just a human thing?"
She hesitated. "I suppose. Gems can, of course, experience extremes in emotion, sometimes lasting for long periods of time." Sometimes for an eternity.
"Right. Yeah." Greg poked at the pancakes with his fork listlessly.
"But a Gem never suffers the physical side effects associated with the human construct of 'depression,' such as fatigue or a disrupted sleep cycle," she explained.
"That makes sense," Greg said. He pushed the plate away. "I was just... I was doing okay for a while. But I guess I never really talked to anybody about... About Rose, and everything that happened. I guess I thought that some things… might be too hard to explain?" His voice was getting thick.
Pearl said nothing. It had been almost a year, and Greg could still hardly speak her name without choking up. He must have gone to great lengths to seem composed in front of the Gems on a regular basis, but it was obvious that, at least when Steven wasn't around, he had let the pain grind him to a halt. That was a dangerous thing to do.
She scooped Steven up and held him on her lap. Greg cleared his throat, and Pearl realized too late that her silence had invited him to share more.
"But I ran into Mr. Fryman in city hall yesterday- er, Friday- morning, when I was getting the permit. We talked for a while." Greg wiped at his eyes. "I didn't realize that his wife passed away just a few years back."
"Good," Pearl said.
Greg just stared at her. He didn't even look surprised. Pearl blushed, immediately hearing her mistake.
"I misspoke. Of course, that's tragic. I'm only glad you were able to find solace in his companionship."
"Oh, yeah. Me too, I guess."
Pearl hesitated a moment before she reached over and set a hand on Greg's shoulder. "Thank you for telling me that. That must have been difficult for you."
"No problem, Pearl." He clicked his tongue and pointed at her, winking. "Just knew we oughta keep each other in the know, ya know?"
Pearl didn't laugh.
"So… you can keep pancakes in your head. Do they stay warm in there, or…?"
"Wait, Greg, I have one question," Pearl interrupted his horrible attempt at small talk.
"Shoot."
"Is this going to get in the way of your ability to care for Steven? Because after what I've witnessed today..."
"No!" Greg burst out, heat coloring his cheeks. "No, no way. Look, this weekend was bad. It's… bad sometimes when he's not here. But I'm all there for my little buddy! Pearl, I promise, it's really minor and I'm gonna do what I need to do to get it taken care of. Besides, Steven's my champ. He's keeping his old man together, aren't you, bud?"
Steven blew a spit bubble of agreement. Pearl's nostrils flared.
"No, Greg. Steven is NOT keeping you together. That is not his job."
"I didn't mean-"
"He's just a child, and it's your responsibility to keep it together for him. Do you understand?"
Greg wouldn't look at her. It might have been harsh, but she had to say it, for Steven's sake. She wasn't like him. She couldn't stop and let herself wallow in it for a moment or… she didn't know what would happen, but it would just be a distraction from her mission of caring for Steven.
"Do you understand what I'm saying to you?" she repeated, more slowly.
"I understand, Pearl. Thank you." Greg's voice was now almost as cold as hers. "I'm going to do everything I can. And I'm going to start by talking to some humans."
It was clearly a dig at her unfeeling demeanor, but that didn't matter. She had gotten her point across.
Pearl thanked Greg for the pancakes she hadn't eaten and left the mobile home with quick steps, ignoring the fact that her feet somehow felt heavier without Steven standing on them.
but then
It was a solid decade before Greg turned those words around on her. Once again, smoke hung in the air, but this time wafted from the burning wreckage of a little makeshift spacecraft. It smelled significantly worse than the charred pancakes had.
Greg rushed over to where their parachute landed. He wrapped Steven in a bear hug and wept openly. After ensuring that both of his son's feet were planted firmly on the ground, Greg pulled Pearl around to the other side of the van, out of Steven's sight. She braced herself for the worst.
"Do you want to tell me what the hell is going on with you?"
Greg spoke quietly, but she had never seen his sunburned face that shade of scarlet before.
It was her chance to apologize, beg for forgiveness, explain herself, but Pearl found she was unable to do any of those things, because she was as bewildered as he was. She didn't understand the forces that had driven her to the edge of the atmosphere, or her irrational belief that continuing to propel the tiny craft forward was the only thing that could keep it from rattling to pieces. That stopping would be the thing to break it apart.
She stammered, but no words came out.
"Well, you need to figure it out now, Pearl, because this is not happening again."
"Never," she promised earnestly.
It was an easy thing to promise.
and later
Pearl was supposed to be cleaning up the debris from the next spaceship to explode and rain down pieces on their beach. But it was hard to accomplish that task when she couldn't take her eyes off the sky. The stars were just beginning to wink out, extinguishing by the rising sun. Somewhere beyond them, more ships were lurking, and she felt the same niggling sense of futility she often did as she mopped Steven's dirty footprints from the kitchen floor, knowing Amethyst was yet to pass through. And yet mop she always did.
Pearl was supposed to be cleaning. But she just stood lost in her thoughts, waiting for the stars to go out.
"Hey."
Pearl flinched and turned on her heel, pulling her spear from her gem and wielding it before she registered that the voice certainly did not belong to an enemy. Steven stood in front of her in his pajamas, resting his ukulele on the sand beside him.
"You doing okay?" he asked, eyeing her spear with one eyebrow raised.
"My apologies. I didn't know you were awake, Steven." Pearl stored her weapon hastily and took a deep breath. "You should still be sleeping."
"Garnet said you were cleaning up. She said not to bother you," Steven said. "But it looked like you were taking a break, so I came out to see you."
A break. She hadn't moved in half an hour at least.
Pearl huffed in annoyance. She knelt down in front of Steven and touched the puffy skin under his eye. "Steven, have you been icing this? I told you to ice it."
He shrugged away from her touch. "I did. And then it all melted. Ice does that."
Pearl frowned. "I really think you should try to get a little more sleep, Steven, the sun's hardly even up."
"I can't sleep anymore," Steven said, with a wide yawn that made Pearl wonder if his thoughts were more of a culprit than any surge of energy. "I'll go sleep at the carwash tonight. I'm due for some Dad time, you know?"
"You'd be safer in your bed here at the temple."
"Not with giant hands crashing all over the place," Steven pointed out, a little too accurately. Pearl bristled. He yawned again. "Dad will sleep better if I'm there, anyway."
He really didn't care where he would be safer, did he? After everything that had happened, he was still trying to put them all at ease. Steven turned back to see Pearl, who was stiff as a board beside him. "What's the matter? Why are you mad at me?"
"I'm not mad at you," Pearl lied.
"Then why don't you want me out here with you?"
"That's not… I don't…"
Steven put his hands on his hips. She was half expecting his shield to pop out, he looked so defensive. The last twenty-four hours had just been too much.
"You shouldn't have come back, Steven!" Pearl blurted out. "You could have been seriously hurt!"
"Yeah, or you all could have died!" Steven scowled. "You know, everybody else has been telling me what an awesome and cool thing I did, saving your lives. And all you've done is just yell at me about it."
Pearl flushed. "I… you're right, Steven. I'm sorry. What you did was very, very… cool. But please try to understand. You're so important. It's our job to take care of you." She grabbed his shoulder, pleading with him to understand.
"That's kind of dumb."
Pearl met his eyes, bewildered and exhausted.
"No offense, I mean. But we're a team, Pearl. You guys have taken care of me forever. And I'm gonna take care of you. And that means I'm gonna fight with you, and that means I'm gonna sit here on the beach with you, and I'm not going back to bed even if you ask me nicely."
Pearl sat down on the sand. She stared out across the expanse of water numbly. "Okay then," she mumbled.
"Well, okay." Steven sat down beside her, crossing his arms stoutly.
They sat in silence.
Steven let his crossed arms drop and dragged his fingers through the sand. "That was a big spaceship, wasn't it?"
"Yes, it was," Pearl murmured.
"Like, a really big spaceship. A lot bigger than our spaceship."
Their spaceship hadn't made it very far.
"Pearl, can I tell you the truth about something?"
"Of course," she said faintly.
"I don't think I want to go to Homeworld anymore."
Pearl smiled thinly. "I don't think I do either."
A wave lapped at their feet. Steven dug through the sand beside him, making little hills and valleys and then smoothing them away.
"It was never really a serious possibility, but I just didn't want to believe that things had gotten so bad…" Pearl sighed. "Homeworld has always had its problems, Steven, but I have some very precious memories of the time I spent there with… friends that I won't get to see again."
"And with my mom?"
Pearl nodded, her gaze distant. "I just get a little sad sometimes, remembering it."
"I think you always seem a little sad," Steven said quietly. "Even when you're happy."
He wasn't wrong. The ache in her chest was certainly not a stranger. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath to keep the emotion from spilling over. It would pass in a moment.
"It's okay, Pearl. You can cry if you want. I already cried earlier." Steven dribbled a handful of wet sand through his fingers. "My dad always says if you try not to cry when you need to, it just builds up until your head explodes and blows out your eyeballs."
"Greg says that?" Pearl almost smiled in spite of herself.
"He says part of it. Sometimes I forget the rest of what he says so I have to fill it in."
Steven stopped rummaging in the sand and held up a piece of debris. It was a shard of something that glittered sickeningly in the morning light. "Whoa!"
"Put that down, Steven! It could be very sharp!"
Steven handed the shard to Pearl without further objection. She inspected it carefully.
It could be- it could be- it wasn't. It was just a piece of glass from a shattered window.
Steven watched her closely as she set the shard aside to dispose of later. "Does all this remind you of the first war?" he asked quietly.
And something about the way he said first, implying an inevitable second war, nearly sent Pearl over the edge again. There couldn't be another. They couldn't win. She was shaking with the effort of holding herself together. If only he would leave. Steven had already seen Garnet ripped apart, and the very least she could do was not to come undone in front of him.
"Pearl…"
Pearl covered her eyes. A small hand squeezed her shoulder gently, and a sob gurgled in her throat before she could stop it.
"It's okay. It's your turn to cry, Pearl." He was rubbing her back now. "You must be scared out of your mind."
"Why… why do you say that?" she gasped, desperately trying to steady herself.
"Because the more that I learn about all this stuff, the more scared I feel," Steven admitted. He rubbed at his sore eye reflexively. She had to resist the urge to cup his cheek and examine it again. "And you know everything, so you must be the most scared."
"I don't know everything, Steven." The ache in her chest sharpened. "I'm so sorry."
He said nothing in reply. Steven dropped his ukulele in the sand and crawled over her legs to sit in her lap, inches away from the breaking tide. He grabbed both her arms and pulled them down around his shoulders. Pearl lowered her cheek onto his mess of hair and let the tears fall freely.
"I'm going to write a song about this momentous day that we had, all right?" Steven said, scooping up his ukulele again.
"I'd love to hear it," she whispered.
Steven fiddled with the tuning knobs for a moment before strumming rather aggressively. "We- al-most- died!" He switched to a happy, bouncing strum. "But we didn't so it's okay, Pearl!" And then after a moment's thought, he strummed forcefully again. "Home-world's- a- jerk! But we beat them so it's okay, Pearl!"
As heartfelt as the song was, it did little to put yesterday's horrors from her mind.
Steven giggled suddenly, which jostled Pearl's head. "What's so funny?" she asked, sniffling.
"My head's all wet now. It's like you're washing my hair."
"You do need to wash your hair, Steven. It's very smelly." Pearl ruffled the black mop affectionately.
"Yeah, everything's smelly if you stick your nose in it. Logic, Pearl, if you would." Steven raised the ukulele for another verse. "They- punched- my- eye! But it looks cool so it's okay, Pearl!"
And it was okay. Wrong as it may have been, it was only okay because he was there to sing about it.
There will be one more chapter, which will return to the elusive before Steven/after Steven format. It will almost certainly not be as long, painful, or interesting as this chapter. But stick around anyway!
Please review and speak your mind. It means the world to me! :)