A/N: I hate the way FFNet does its chapter postings, and just realized it deleted all my section dividers... So I've gone back to edit. Thanks for reading!
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Steven can't sleep when he gets back. He wishes he was home, in his bed, with his family. Pearl could watch him sleep, like she liked to; Amethyst and Lion could curl up next to him. Garnet would be there, somewhere. He's not sure what she did while he slept, but sometimes she'd tuck him in,and often, she and Pearl would have food ready for him when he woke up.
He can't even close his eyes and pretend for a while. Apart from the uncomfortable floor with no pillow or blanket, there was the crushing weight on his chest that wouldn't go away. Laying on his back made it easier to breathe, and if he thought of nothing the best he could, he could stop crying for a while.
This must have lulled him to sleep at some point, because he woke up some time later to a gentle nudge at his leg. His heavy dream fades away at the sight of the gem in front of him.
"PEARL?"
"Uhm, yes?"
Steven rubs his eyes, taking a better look. For the thousandth time since everything was normal, he feels tears stinging at his eyes, but blinks them back.
She looks a bit like his Pearl- her gem is on her forehead, though more circular, her face looks similar, but it's not the one he knows. Her hair is a dark blonde, short, and hanging straight down the way Pearl's only does when it's wet. She's skinny, dressed in a white leotard and gold necklace,with short socks and pink shoes.
"Sorry," he says, taking the food bars she's been trying to hand him, "I thought you were my friend."
"Friend?" She repeats, puzzled.
Steven, picking up that he's said something weird, glances anxiously at the guard, who is watching them from the corner of her eye. He thinks of Yellow Diamond's threat about conversing with other gems.
"Thanks for the food," he murmurs, and she excuses herself with a polite nod.
...
"Rose Quartz killed countless gems."
"Good; you people are assholes."
Amethyst smiles cheekily at the furious expression in front of her. The other amethyst, larger, angrier than her, has been attempting to tell her about the war with little success. She's heard about the war. Rose mentioned it sometimes. Garnet only mentioned it as a tragedy. Pearl romanticized it, but at the end of the day, Amethyst knew it left a heavy weight on them all, even if they all undoubtedly knew it was the right choice.
And if they thought it was right, so did Amethyst. She didn't care what this new bitch with her gem said.
She's only met the one amethyst so far- a high ranking veteran of the war on earth- but from what she can tell by her insistence on calling Amethyst, "runt", they're all almost as big as Jasper.
She rolls past the large fist aimed at her head, allowing it to smash into the wall behind her. Pieces of stone come off, but the purple giant seemsunfazed. Collecting her temper, she points a meaty finger in Amethyst's direction.
"I know what you're doing. You might want to take this seriously before I decide you have no use and reduce you to shards," she growls, "you're not even worth the small amount of power you could lend to being placed in an object, runt."
"But, I do have use, apparently," Amethyst points out, "or you wouldn't keep me around. So what is it? What do you need information about that you don't have? I'm not the most knowledgeable of my friends on the war- I wasn't even there. Is it the Kindergarden you want to know about?"
"I know all about the Kindergarden," the amethyst sneers, "what do you think all of those other holes in the cliff were from?"
"You're from Earth?" Amethyst gapes; the other nods.
"Rose Quartz was disgusted with us," she says, sensing a foothold, "our creation was killing some backwater planet full of organic life, which would each die so quickly on its own. Yet Rose Quartz valued their existence above ours; she slaughtered us- amethysts, other gems- for the worthless lives on Earth. She cared about them more than she could ever care about us, or you."
Amethyst thinks that might be right.
Rose would still be around if she wasn't so enamored with humanity. So willing to give up her own life to see how far their existence could was testament to that.
"Yeah." Amethyst shrugs.
The other doesn't seem how to respond.
"Rose really liked humans. More than any of us did, even though I do have a few good human friends. It was more than just that, though," Amethyst says, thinking on her conversations with the fellow Crystal Gems- Rose was often on about humans, and Amethyst agreed that they had the right idea when it came to sleeping and eating and music- but Pearl and Garnet always seemed to cite Rose's thoughts over their own, on why they fought.
Rose thought all life was precious.
Rose believed the Earth should be protected.
Rose this and that. She thinks Garnet and Pearl stayed because they didn't like it where they were. Amethyst couldn't blame them; from what she could tell, Homeworld sucked.
"We had gems fighting for all sorts of reasons," Amethyst shrugged, "Garnet likes being fused. Pearl doesn't talk much about Homeworld, but I don't think her job was any fun; not like being a smasher," she flexes, pointing in the direction of the other, "there were a lot of gems on Earth's side before Homeworld came to wipe them out- I think a lot of them liked the freedom. They wanted to live there, just like you guys wanted them to do- they just didn't need to conquer Earth to do it."
The amethyst says nothing still, thinking. She grabs the pad next to her, keying in her thoughts silently, and turning her back.
Amethyst drums her feet against the leg of the table she's sat on, wondering how her friends are doing.
...
Steven is once again summoned via Jasper. He's not sure what her job normally is, but now she seems assigned to him. He was finding talking to her to be helpful, but ever since his conversation with Yellow Diamond yesterday, he can't. Things can never go back to normal now, and it's all thanks to the striped gem standing before him.
"You're wanted," Jasper says; Steven ignores her.
She pulls his cell open and drags him to his feet, cuffing his hands in front of him, and leading him back to the big warp.
The yellow gem from the day before is once again leaving when he enters the room. She appears to be a pearl, too. Her gem is on her chest, and she's got a leotard similar to the one who fed him earlier, only her outfit features thigh-high socks and no jewelry. The pearl's eyes widen at a point past him and Steven flinches as she's hit roughly by the citrine accompanying them, and shooed off through a side door.
He cranes his head backwards to see what caught her attention, but Jasper is too much in the way. They flash back into Yellow Diamond's satellite.
Once again, Jasper leaves, and Steven finds himself alone before the giant woman.
That is, until the warp flashes once more through the doorway.
"Steven?"
"Pearl?" He gasps, excitedly, turning his back to Yellow Diamond to look at her.
She looks rough, but none of the clear injuries she's sporting seem to be bothering her; all her attention is on him. Steven assumes by her unchanged clothing that she has not been hurt so badly that she's retreated into her gem.
"Pearl, are you okay?"
She's limping, which Steven thinks is due to more than just the shackles at her ankles. Bruises mar her fair skin, and she seems to have taken at least a couple hard hits to the face. Her pleased expression at the sight of him unharmed- besides the bruise from when Jasper first got a hold of him- disappears as she turns her attention towards Yellow Diamond.
"What do you want from me?" she spits.
Yellow Diamond's expression is livid.
"You will speak when spoken to, pearl, " she growls, twitching a finger upwards.
The citrine who escorted Pearl in throws an elbow up, catching her hard in the back of the head.
Steven yells as Pearl hits the ground. She twists, to land on her side, and twitches once, unable to reach a hand up to touch where she's been hit with her wrists bound behind her back.
He goes over, kneeling beside her.
"Steven," Pearl warns, but at no further orders from her Diamond, the quartz towering over them makes no move to stop him.
He helps her into a sitting position, wishing he could do something about her current state.
"This one," Yellow Diamond says, unsure of what to call Steven, "thinks you'll be more helpful than him. You've clearly not been, judging by your injuries, but maybe a change of scenery will help you to speak."
"I refused to be coerced into your schemes," Pearl growls, but some of the effect is lost as Steven presses a sloppy kiss to her brow, "Steven, get down."
He sits, staring gloomily at the cut above her eye that has not healed by his spit.
"Hah," Yellow Diamond barks, "A pearl ordering a quartz around. It would be more funny were you not the source of so much trouble.."
Pearl says nothing, glaring upwards. Steven wishes he could hold her hand. He thinks that might make him feel a little better.
"We'll start with one of your unanswered questions, before we go into the ones I had for Rose Quartz, to test your cooperation." Yellow Diamond says, "What, exactly, is 'Steven'? How does he work?"
Remaining silent, Pearl's shoulders rise an inch, as if she is bracing herself for another blow. It does not come.
Instead, Steven is aware of a sharp pain in his skull before everything goes black.