A/N: This chapter marks a change in style for this ficlet. Updates will still be drabble-sized, for the most part, but now there is going to be a chronological story that eventually segues into other chapters about Ruby and Sapphire that you've already read (fusing, escaping, etc).
I was inspired by Garnet's remark in Love Letters about "Love at first sight doesn't exist. Love takes time, and love takes work" to create a situation in which falling in love would be tough, and now I really want to see it through til the end. I'm also exploring ideas of how Ruby and Sapphire act when they're not freaking out in an enemy spaceship, and ways they could have potentially helped each other grow as characters.
In other words, this drabble-arc takes place in the phony-baloney setting briefly mentioned in a previous drabble, Homeworld's Containment Unit 6, roughly 3 millennia before Garnet or fusion were ever discovered.
Sapphire has just finished being transferred into Homeworld's Containment Unit 6. By her count, she hasn't seen sunlight for 2,565 years and… approximately 300 days.
She's an asymmetrical gem who has visions of potential futures. She doesn't need sunlight, she just needs to ask the right questions for the Diamond Authority, and deliver the results promptly through the communication system in the center of her new room.
Looking around her new quarters through her fringe of light blue bangs, Sapphire can't help but wonder what the point of being transferred was. All of the Containment Units—and at this point she's been to three of the six—look the same. Deep underground, walls made of sheet metal, no windows, and a door whose lock can be overridden from the outside. The recreation area she will be permitted to use for four hours of every day will always be bustling with activity. There will probably be rumors and suspicions about why exactly the tiny blue gem in the dress is being kept in isolation instead of in the general dormitories. Is she better than anyone else? Is she worse? What does she think she is? Let's test it out.
Inevitably, Sapphire will get into a fight. She will reveal her spiked knuckledusters, dart in on swift, slippered feet, and deliver one hell of an electric shock to her opponent while simultaneously cracking a fist across their cheekbone, or slamming it into their midsection. She'll avoid attacking her opponent's gem, but only barely.
That's when the fight will either become large scale, or no one will want to talk to her again. If the situation is toxic enough (a guaranteed fight every time she enters the recreational facility, for example), then Sapphire will be transferred to her fourth Containment Unit.
It's happened before. Sapphire doesn't need to look through probable outcomes to understand that it will most likely happen again. There's no reason for it not to.
Once she's left alone in her quarters, Sapphire glances at the clock on her communication station. No sunlight in 2,565 years and 301 days now. When you're only 3,100 years old, that's an abominably long time.
She doesn't understand why she's so fixated on this sunlight thing, really. It's not like she needs it to work.
Sapphire grazes gloved fingers over the edge of the central monitor as she admits to herself, "It just would have been nice to be asked."
Ruby claims she doesn't remember the first words they ever said to each other, but Sapphire does. How can she forget, when it was the one thing that happened differently—and subsequently changed the course of everything.
"You're fast."
Sapphire looks up from the novel she's reading on the far side of the recreational facility. The Ruby before her stands a couple of inches shorter than Sapphire, but what she lacks in height she clearly makes up for in strength. Everything about her is squared off and stocky, constructed to stubbornly withstand… something. Whatever her reasons for her form, she looks stubborn. Not the type you want to get into an argument with over whether or not she actually saw Sapphire dart from one end of the room to the other and settle in with her novel as if she had been here the whole time (which, admittedly, Sapphire did just do).
"Thanks," Sapphire replies, because that's the response that's least likely to be misconstrued.
"I mean, you're really fast." The Ruby pulls up a chair and sits in it backwards, her muscular arms resting across the backrest. "How do you do it?"
Sapphire blinks from behind her bangs. What kind of question is that? Why does she care? "It's… not something that can be taught, I don't think," she says slowly.
The Ruby doesn't seem to mind this. "I haven't seen you around before. Are you a transfer?"
"Yes." And Sapphire waits for it.
She doesn't get what she's expecting. Instead, she receives a friendly, if somewhat awkward smile and a formal introduction. Ruby doesn't offer to shake, either, and that's when Sapphire notices the gem set in her left palm. No wonder she's is so much smaller than the other rubies she's met. Everyone's corporeal form is limited by a certain radius from the center of your gem; the radius is bigger for more powerful gems, which results in larger forms for no other reason than the fact that they can manage it. The radius still applies the same, even when you're skewed, and that naturally manifests as more compact forms.
"Sapphire," she says, because it's only polite. This conversation feels deeply contrived, though, and she's wondering what sort of endgame Ruby has planned, and whether or not it was actually her idea.
Still, Sapphire can't help but be intrigued by finding someone else who has a gem set this way. Asymmetrical gems need to stick together, and she's never found anyone else who holds the core of their being in the palm of their own hand. There is a kinmanship here, she thinks, if only because of that.
"What are you reading?" asks Ruby, pointing to her novel with her gem free hand. She keeps the other consciously closer to her body. Protective. Sapphire can't blame her.
"You read for fun?" She hopes her tone comes across as curious and not outright incredulous, though privately she is that. The gem before her doesn't exactly look like the reading type.
Ruby shrugs and offers a crooked sort of grin. "I've been known to do stranger things."
Like this, perhaps?
"I guess we all have our quirks."
Something about the way she says it causes Ruby to laugh. It's the first genuine thing she's done this entire conversation. "Did you intend for that to have two meanings?" she asks with a slight gesture to Containment Unit 6.
Oh. No wonder it was funny.
Sapphire finds herself smiling, just a little. "If I didn't before, I think I do now."