Here’s a bit of writing muscle-stretching I did the other day, super fast hour-ish warmup/block-breaking kind of deal, because it’s been forever and I’m miserable. Vaguely going off the recent promo. ~950 words of Pearls, because what else?
—
“Pink?”
Yellow squeaks out as soon as the throne room doors have closed behind Gemkind’s
most lustrous and illustrious, and Pearl is jolted out of her hand-wringing
over their youngest member, so very far out of his depth.
She
also manages not to outwardly scowl at the name. For now. “Hello, Yellow.”
“I told
you,” Blue pipes up in that tiny voice that still somehow never fails to carry
when she wants it to. “I told you it was her. I saw her. With the Sapphire at
the Zoo…”
“Unbelievable!”
Yellow’s tone seems far too grating to be something one would miss, and yet
Pearl finds she is more than glad to hear it. “How are you even alive? And what
in the stars are you wearing?”
“I wear
whatever I want, thank you very much,” Pearl replies just as haughtily. But then
she allows her voice to soften. “I’m… really glad to see you two. I’m glad
you’re…” safe, she wants to say, but that’s hardly ever true for any
pearl. Here feels just as wrong, if for different reasons entirely -
she’s often imagined having the two of them by her side, on Earth. Certainly
not on doorway decorating duty, and definitely nowhere near diamonds when
tensions were running so high, and when… White Diamond might possibly
get involved.
The
very thought makes her shudder from head to toe, but Yellow is already there,
prattling on.
“Well,
it’s good to have you back, however strange the situation might be at the
moment. We always were best as a set.” Yellow nods sagely. “I assume your
return means your Diamond won’t be having you do any more bizarre things.”
“He’s
not… she… I wasn’t ordered to do anything!” Pearl is quick to snap back, as it
is a sore point that’s been prodded far too much recently, and an argument
she’s had with so many over the centuries - including herself. Especially
herself. But then she remembers hands pressed over her mouth, gentle as flower
petals but immovable as stone, and, well - if she can’t be honest with her
current company and hope they understand that particular situation, who ever
will? “That’s… that’s not quite true. There was… one thing.”
One
thing with all the weight of the world, pressing down - now gone.
“But
you know what? I decided that I didn’t like it, and that it was wrong.
Certainly, considering the problems it was causing us, there had been a
miscalculation and oversight on… Pink Diamond’s part.” Pearl’s voice drops to
an even lower, even more conspiratorial whisper - even though they are
perfectly alone and disregarded as only pearls get to be, and her audience is
already captivated by her talk of a diamond’s fallibility. “So I disobeyed a direct
order.”
Blue’s
reaction is a gasp she moves to muffle immediately. Yellow allows herself the
full drama of a shocked hand raised to her gem and an incredulous “You didn’t!”
“Oh yes
I did!” Pearl shoots back, giddiness rising.
It was
fear filling her at first, when she at long last managed to let Steven know the
secret - a terror of it finally, finally coming to light, the magnitude of what
it would mean for him, for all of them, as well as a much more dense, personal,
selfish fear of how their perception of her would change. Then the most potent
relief she’d ever known, warring with endless regret and frustration with
herself because she hadn’t managed to tell them all sooner. Because she’d
failed when it had been so important, when it could have saved them so much
pain (but she fights that down and stashes it away again and again - the could
haves and should haves and desperate whys are for some other
Pearls to deal with). And all of it finally brewing into a veritable cocktail
of emotions flying every which way, with Sapphire and Ruby- and Bismuth- and
Garnet- and the Diamonds of all Gems-!
But
now? There is no other name she can put to the feeling bubbling insistently up
inside her other than pride.
She did
it, after all. She figured it out, and she did it! The terrifying renegade
pearl, the quickest thinker of the notorious Rebellion, a whirlwind with both a
sharp blade and a sharp mind, and armed with a willingness to use them -
finding a loophole and throwing off the yoke thought to be baked into her very
nacre, a fundamental limitation of her gem type that made so many so very
complacent and so very careless in their dealings with pearls. And if she could
share it, if she could encourage it in others…
She’s
imagined running away often enough in her life. Clever warp skipping. Bluffing
all the way to the Crystal System. Stealing away on a ship bound for the
Earth’s wilderness, or just stealing one outright.
This,
she imagines, feels almost as good.
“Tell
us how.”
She’s
never heard Blue be this demanding. There is a new dimension to the looks she and
Yellow both have fixed on her, and a new weight. So she rushes to oblige.
“Well…
it was a rather interesting workaround, if I do say so myself. And quite…
situational. But the finer points will take some explaining. Luckily,” Pearl
allows some of that age-old disgust at being reduced to idle hallway
ornamentation to seep through, “we seem to find ourselves with plenty of time on
our hands.”
The
Diamonds, upon their return, find the pearls nowhere near where they left them
to wait, and certainly not at hand to open any doors. Instead, the three are seated comfortably in a decorative nook, huddled
together over a phone, engaged in an increasingly lively discussion about the inner workings, potential, and many uses of the not-quite-holopad.