Chorus

Chapter Fifteen

….

So we're finally at the end of Chorus (minus the epilogue, which will be forthcoming), thank you all for sticking with the story all the way to its sporadic, stumbling conclusion. Since Murder Pearl and the Orthoclase/Ginger pair have proven so popular, I was thinking my next longform multi-chapter would be a Homeworld-set detective story featuring the three of them prominently. Thoughts?

…..

The journey back to Lapis' mansion was deathly quiet. Orthoclase was unusually grim and tight-lipped, and though Ginger was as blank-faced as she always was, Steven could sense a tension in her. Of course, Steven himself was keeping his mouth shut because he was sure if he opened it, he would collapse into a gibbering mess.

There had been six of them on the outward journey. Of those six, one was incapacitated, one was dying a slow, painful death and one (the dangerous one) had taken off for reasons of her own. The one they picked up to take back with them was gravely injured. The only one who could possibly fix what was wrong with her was good, but didn't know if she was that good. She wouldn't be able to tell until she got back to the mansion where her full stock of equipment was waiting.

Who wouldn't panic, under those circumstances? Distantly, Steven gave himself a little mental pat on the back for holding it together for as long as he had.

When they finally arrived back at the mansion, Orthoclase practically kicked the door in. Every gem gathered in the living room looked up, but she stormed past them without a word. She made her way to the table she was using to operate on and started prepping it, as Ginger rooted out her surgery tools.

"What happened?" Amethyst demanded, looking Steven up and down for signs of injury. "Did you get her? Where's the other two?"

"We got her," Steven told her. "But...it's pretty bad...Orthoclase is going to operate...that thing hurt Buttercup and Murder Pearl stayed behind to kill it..."

"What thing?" Amethyst asked. "What did it do?"

Steven opened his mouth to answer, but he couldn't find the words. Amethyst stared at him, waiting, increasingly strained-looking.

"Amethyst," Garnet called, strangely calm. "Leave him alone."

Ginger had pulled out the box of lead shavings they'd used to hide Pearl, and Garnet watched carefully but from a respectful distance as they pulled her out of the box and onto the table. Steven saw her fists clench but she clearly knew even as capable as she usually was, she was as good as useless in a situation like this.

"Holy shit," Amethyst spoke in one harsh exhale. "What did they...what are you..."

She sputtered for a moment and fell silent, watching Orthoclase peer into the crater left in Pearl's gem by the black tendrils. Ginger rubbed some sort of oil on a long thin skewer and handed it to Orthoclase, who slowly and carefully slid it inside the gem as far as it would go. Pearl's fingers briefly twitched, and then she was once again deathly still.

"What can you do?" Garnet asked, as Orthoclase pulled the skewer back out.

"Honestly?" Orthoclase answered with a bitter edge to her voice. "Under any other circumstances I'd be telling this pearl's owner to get her processed and get a new one."

Steven felt the bile rise in his throat, and one look at Amethyst told him she felt the same way.

"That's not an option," Garnet said tightly.

"Don't I know it?" Orthoclase laughed harshly. "All the contacts, money and other pearls that I tossed into this...project. You'd think I'd have more to show for it..."

She was full of bravado, even now, but her heart wasn't in it.

"In professional terms," she began to explain. "She needs those fragmented tendrils pulled out, they've penetrated the subdermal layer and are fused to the core composite, which means I'd have to excise the upper layer before I get them out, but she'd need a fully-functional gem to even think about doing that...and she doesn't have one."

"Can't you get the ones in her gem out first?" Steven blurted out. "And you use filler, don't you? For pearls that don't work right..."

"Pebble, there's barely anything left of her gem," Orthoclase told him. "The tendrils are holding it together like scaffolding, if I take them out now the whole thing is dust. If I try putting filler in now, it'll just cement the tendrils in there and most of it will fall through the gaps. I don't have that much filler to spare, I don't think even a repair centre has that much filler to spare. I'm sorry."

"I can use my healing spit," Steven tried, though he knew if that was an option they would have done that first. "I can..."

"That would reactivate the tendrils. Not to mention what's left of her spike," Orthoclase told him, gently but firmly. "She'd shatter straight away."

It's not over. It can't be over. We got her back.

It felt like all the air was being sucked out of the room. If they'd gotten to her sooner, she might have been okay...but with everything they had to do to get to her in the first place they couldn't have gotten there sooner...

It's my fault. I waited too long. I should have gone for her sooner.

"Try using live filler."

Ginger spoke quietly, but it was like a gunshot breaking through the tension. A small shot of hope.

She was peering into the crumbling wreck of Pearl's gem, solemn as a grave. Who knew what she was thinking? Orthoclase scoffed incredulously, raised her arms to the ceiling in a gesture of frustrated helplessness.

"Live filler?" she laughed without humour. "From what donor?"

"Take your pick," Ginger shrugged. "You can start with me."

Amethyst covered her eyes, but not before Steven saw relieved tears escape from her eyes.

"For the love of Core," Orthoclase swore. "That's more filler than one pearl can give, and even if I had done the procedure before, even if it had been done outside of simulations..."

"It's experimental, not impossible," Ginger cut in. "If any gem can do it, you can."

"Well, as nice as it is to hear your confidence in my abilities..."

"Can't you try it? Even if it doesn't work, it's something, isn't it?" Steven cried.

Orthoclase turned to him, as if she couldn't believe they were ganging up on her like this.

"I could, pebble," she said. "I could do all sorts of things. Problem is, this procedure probably won't work, plus if I get it wrong it could kill the pearl that's donating the filler. How many more pearls are you willing to throw away for this one?"

Steven couldn't answer that.

Ginger, however, could.

"Any one of us would be happy to give our lives for her," Ginger said. "Ask them if you don't believe me."

For the first time, they all turned to look at the pearls gathered in the living room. None of them had attempted to get any closer, but they were keeping a close vigil on what was going on.

"Fine," Orthoclase growled, then turned to the gathered pearls. "Do any of you want to let me stick a pipe through your core circuitry to harvest living nacre from your manifest bodies directly? Bearing in mind if I stick the pipe wrong on the first try you're as good as shattered?"

She clearly wasn't expecting every hand (or other working limb) to be raised, but perhaps she should have. The pearls had already proven themselves willing to sacrifice their lives for the Renegade Pearl. Orthoclase sighed, rubbed her temples and groaned.

"Okay then," she grumbled. "We'll try it. I'm not making any promises, but we can try it."

The relief hit Steven so hard he nearly fainted. Shakily, he sat down on the ground beside the operating table. Pearl's hand was dangling slightly off of the side, and he reached out to thread his fingers through hers. They were cold, but if he concentrated hard he could almost feel a slight pulse of life in them.

Ginger handed a long tube and a sharp needle-like instrument to Orthoclase, and turned to pull her hair to the front.

"No," Orthoclase hissed, just loud enough for Steven to hear. "You're not going first."

…..

The first five times, Orthoclase got the placement wrong. It shattered the first pearl (Blackberry)and stopped the next two (Lemonade and Jane)from moving. They crumpled to the ground like puppets whose strings had been cut. Orthoclase managed to get some of the strange shimmering liquid she needed out of them, but it wasn't much. The pipe fed it directly into Pearl, the forceps held her jaw open to receive it.

The procedure was unpleasantly close to violence. All the Crystal Gems looked away when Pearl's jaw was cracked, uncomfortable as it was to watch it done to a regular pearl it was unbearable watching it happen to Pearl. The cannula Orthoclase used to pierce the donor pearl's core spine had to be thrust downwards at the exact spot with enough force to go through the several layers of the manifested form. It looked uncomfortably like Orthoclase was stabbing them.

After the fifth pearl (Meg) only lost the feeling in the right side of her body, Orthoclase perfected the technique. The sixth pearl (Rosemary) was hit in exactly the right spot, and the tube filled with nacre almost instantly.

"Holy Core," Orthoclase whispered, more to herself than anyone. "This might just work..."

Slowly, Pearl's gem began to reform itself. As soon as one pearl began to wilt, the cannula was pulled out and she was replaced by the next in line. Ginger was deep in concentration, pulling the tendrils out of Pearl's gem by micro-measurements, as soon as it was safe to move them a little. She had excised some of the skin on Pearl's face to inch away the black strands there. Orthoclase was fully occupied with her stabbing and monitoring the flow of nacre.

When almost twenty pearls had been drained, a curious thing began to happen. Pearl's gem started flickering, projecting a broken image up at the ceiling. Steven tried to make it out, but it was too blurry to be seen properly. Her hand was a little warmer now, but Steven thought that might just have been the heat from his own hand.

When the image did clear enough for him to see it, he didn't recognize it. It was a projection of a tall red gem in a strange puffy outfit, laughing and talking to someone. Pearl had shown him a lot of things from Homeworld over the years, but he had never seen this gem before.

"That's one of mine," the pearl who was slumped over next to him (Dandelion) piped up.

"One of yours?" Steven asked.

"The monster took most of her memory," she explained. "We're giving her ours."

Simple words, but the weight behind them hit like a sledgehammer. Those little blue cubes she'd been stacking in his dream, trying to keep the monster out, telling him that he couldn't be there...

"She kept yours safe," Dandelion assured him. "She protected your memory as long as she could. It's still there."

Pearl's gem flickered on and off throughout the procedure, the images becoming clearer and clearer as more nacre was pumped into her. They were filled with little exchanges, smiles and songs and touching hands. Stern commands, whispered secrets, casual indifference. Steven saw, for the first time, what gesture-speak looked like to a pearl's eyes, fluid and clear and beautiful as prayer.

What he didn't see was any note of harshness, any of the myriad cruelties visited on pearls by the gems that subjugated them. It was all joy and kindness. They hadn't just gifted Pearl with their own lifeblood, but given her their best, most treasured memories.

Ginger was the last pearl to give her nacre, and Orthoclase did hesitate, just a little, before stabbing her with the cannula. She turned her back to the images projected by Pearl's gem for the first time; for all her talk of wanting to know what Ginger was thinking, she didn't want to invade her privacy so directly.

Perhaps she would have been surprised to know that Ginger's most treasured memories were of her. Or perhaps that was exactly why she turned her back.

…..

"It'll take about ten cycles, maybe more," Orthoclase said when she handed over the lead-lined box where Pearl's recovered gem was stored. "I don't know how long it'll take on your planet. It's anyone's guess."

A shuttle had been sent down for them from Lars' ship, once the procedure was finished Orthoclase advised them to get off of Homeworld as soon as possible. Murder Pearl would likely be making her move on the lab soon and once she did whatever she was planning, the skies would be strictly monitored. She and Ginger brought them to the drop-off point; Steven had barely enough time to say goodbye and thank each of the pearls and the other gems that had helped them.

Lapis had scoffed in her haughty manner when he thanked her, but bid him a fond farewell all the same. The pearls seemed taken aback that they were being thanked at all. The temptation to try and smuggle a few of them back to Earth was so overwhelming that Garnet insisted on holding his hand as they left to stop him.

At least Blinky, let's bring Blinky, so she doesn't have to go back to...

"You'll look after them, won't you?" he asked Orthoclase, as the shuttle's doors opened for them.

"Of course," Orthoclase assured him. "Won't be nearly so easy without your healing spit, but no matter. If you ever change your mind about going into remodeling..."

"I won't," he cut in.

"Shame," she shrugged.

"They will miss you," Ginger told him. "Even the ones who didn't get to meet you."

"They won't say anything, will they?" Amethyst asked, sounding a little panicky.

"No," she answered. "We are good at keeping our secrets."

Orthoclase snorted with good humour, and all the while Steven tried not to cry. He hated Homeworld and the awful things he had seen there, but his love and gratitude for Orthoclase and Ginger were so forceful he couldn't stand the idea of not seeing them again.

"You can come to Earth with us," he said suddenly, ignoring the stares from Garnet and Amethyst. "The shuttle's big enough..."

"Our place is here, pebble," Orthoclase said, gently but firmly. "We have work to do."

He hugged them both before he was pulled away into the shuffle. It didn't feel like nearly enough to express how much he loved them; they had risked their lives multiple times for his sake, done their best to accommodate him despite never having seen a human, much less a child before. Their absence would leave a hole in him that could never be filled.

He watched them from the shuttle window as they rose into the clouds. Orthoclase's long lean figure looking up into the sky, Ginger's petite frame stuck beside her like a mismatched set of salt-and-pepper shakers.

Someday, he might come back and find them. They would be fine, middling along doing the most illegal of things right under Homeworld's authoritative noses and getting away with it. They had promised they would message him.

They would be fine.