Chapter 8: Resurrection

The Crystal Gems, Connie, and Greg circled around Steven, who held the gem-healing device in one hand, and a bubble in the other, which contained six shiny white Gem shards. Pearl's shards. Steven popped the bubble gently and pieced the shards gently into their round shape inside the device. He focused his mind, calmed his body, squeezed his eyes shut, and concentrated his energy on his healing powers. He put his spit onto the device and waited. The device began to float; the shards glowed. Everyone gazed wide-eyed in hope towards the healing device working its magic into those shards.

The device started to lower as the shards' glow faded. It landed gently in Steven's hand. He carefully removed the gem and looked over it carefully. "It-it worked! Not a scratch left!"

"It did?" Amethyst lunged forward to take a look for herself. "She's... Good as new."

She was barely able to finish her sentence when Pearl's gem began to glow and hover in the air again. An illuminating figure was projected from it, as it phased through each of her previous regenerations.

Finally, finally Pearl appeared, wearing a slightly different outfit but recognizably, undoubtedly, unbelievably... their Pearl.

The moment she landed they all ran forward to embrace her, all with cries of "Pearl, you're back!"

Pearl didn't say anything. She wasn't quite sure what was going on.

"Pearl? Did you hear me?" Steven said. "I said, we missed you way too much. What was it like?"

Pearl looked around nervously, very confused. Then she asked, "Um... Where am I? Who are... you?"

A collective gasp sounded through the room. "Wait, Pearl... Don't you know who I am? I'm Steven! Don't you... don't you recognize me?" Steven tried to blink back tears, but one got away and spilled down his cheek.

"She... doesn't remember us..." Garnet whispered. "This will be a lot harder than we originally thought."

"What do we do?" Amethyst cried.

"What can we do? She had thousands of years of memories. We can't recover every last thing," Peridot pointed out.

"There's got to be a way!" Steven sobbed. "There just has to!"

Connie and Greg, who were standing off to the side, glanced at each other. "They'll figure it out, won't they?" Connie asked, concern audible in her voice.

"I'm not all that sure," Greg admitted. "I mean, I try not to get in the way of their magical Gem business, but I'm still worried. I just hope they can get her back somehow. Knowing them, they probably will... at some point." He knew he sounded very unsure. He was.

"I hope so," Connie sighed sadly.

- THE NEXT DAY -

Steven hadn't been able to show the newly revived Pearl how to get into her room in the Temple, so he let her stay in the living room overnight. The next morning, he began showing her some things she might remember, including but not limited to: the painting of Rose, one of Peridot's remaining robonoids (Peridot had actually rebuilt one just to mess around with in her spare time), Lion, Rose's sword, Connie sword-fighting, the drill they built to stop the Cluster, etc., none of which were able to trigger her memory back.

It wasn't until one afternoon when he was feeling rather musical that he decided to show her the rewritten version he wrote of their song "Strong in the Real Way". He still thought the word "parody" had too light-hearted a connotation for the song he wrote, but couldn't think of any other more accurate names. (AN: I continuously point this out because I too cannot find a synonym.)

He took a deep breath and began to sing, watching Pearl's reaction but having no knowledge of what was going on inside her head as she listened to him sing the following words.

Why did they have to go after you
The battle was too intense...

(Reread chapter 3 for full song.)

AN: I'm back. For how long, who knows. Hopefully I can finish this story quickly because 1) the ending is happy and 2) I want to post another story that messes with your feels just like this one did. The thing is, it features my gemsona Morganite so I will probably have to post her backstory as well. I'm thinking I can just do that in a very long one-shot.

Well, I hope you enjoyed. Next time, we'll see what exactly Pearl thought as Steven sang her the song he wrote from Chapter 3.

~Pikminsanity