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breakingdownsu · 6 years

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Chorus Chapter Nine

Note: Multiple weddings, work issues and health issues mean the next updates may not be for a while, but hopefully I'll get back to normal by the end of July. This is just a heads up.

Also, this might be peak pretentious git, but I made an 8tracks playlist of music I listen to when writing Chorus. There will probably be more than one, I have a lot of musical inspiration. It can be found here: https://8tracks.com/ptlikestea/chorus-inspiration-tracks

…..

Time on Homeworld had more or less ceased to mean anything to Steven, so he had no idea how long he and Ginger sat in silence, waiting with dread for Murder Pearl to return.

On a scale of one to ten, how angry is Ginger with me?

Probably, like, thirteen.

Usually when someone was angry with Steven, they went quiet on him, but Ginger was already quiet so it was hard to tell. She didn't look angry, but if he had learned anything from his time on Homeworld, it was that what Pearls looked like and how they felt were two very different things.

Eventually, the boredom mixed with the fear prompted him to ask her.

“Ginger?”

“Yes?”

She didn't even turn to look at him. Her eyes were rooted on the vent above them.

“Are you really angry with me?”

Her answer could mean he'd have to apologize a lot more and they'd move on, or it could mean getting tossed out of the workshop to fend for himself, leaving Pearl's fate unknown. He gulped.

“No, of course not.”

That surprised him. Considering how badly he'd messed up, he'd thought she would be at least a little angry still.

“Really?”

Now she did turn towards him.

“Orthoclase should not have left you here unsupervised,” Ginger told him. “From what I understand, you lack knowledge of pearls and how they work. You could not have known that her spike was no longer functioning and that fixing her would make her uncontrollable.”

“No, I didn't,” he admitted. “I'm really sorry.”

“We knew she was dangerous. Taking her from her owner was a gamble,” Ginger continued. “But it will be all right. I promise I won't let her hurt you.”

That was heartening to hear, but it brought Steven to tears because the resemblance to Pearl was never so strong as in that moment, when she promised to protect him. He swallowed, scrubbed his face against his arm. He couldn't afford to cry now; he had more questions.

“What is this spike thing you were talking about?” he asked. “Why is Murder Pearl's one not working?”

“It's working, it just doesn't affect her like it would another pearl,” Ginger explained. “The spike is implanted into our gems when we are made. It generates a shock when we start thinking too much.”

Steven thought he couldn't possibly have heard her right. A shock?

“Like...an electric shock?” he asked, tentatively.

“Yes,” she answered. “It's a magnetic pulse shock, but it's much the same.”

That couldn't be right. Homeworld was an awful place, he had no doubt about that, but it couldn't be that bad. Even if he had just witnessed a whole lot of gems throwing blades at a pearl that had been deliberately blinded, and even though he had days before seen his 'friend' Orthoclase give away six living pearls like a kid giving away snacks at lunchtime, and he knew that pearls were so isolated they had to develop their own sign language just to speak to one another, but this...

“Why?” Even asking, pushing the word past the lump in his throat, was difficult.

“If we think too much, we can refuse orders we find distasteful,” Ginger replied, so distant and cool she might have been talking about the weather. “It keeps us obedient.”

With mounting horror, Steven realized that if Ginger was using the word we, that definitively meant all pearls got this treatment. Including Pearl.

“Does our Pearl have one of those?” he asked, dreading the answer.

“The Renegade Pearl's spike was removed early on in an experimental procedure,” Ginger told him. “Though it was said that a small broken piece remained inside her gem. Not enough to give regular shocks, just the occasional one.”

A lifetime of memories flooded Steven's mind. Pearl was known to act erratically, overemotional. It was a quirk they all just shrugged their shoulders at. Knowing she had possibly been experiencing electric shocks suddenly made sense of her entire personality.

Steven just about managed to clap a hand in front of his mouth before he vomited.

…..

Ginger forced him to ingest some more of that liquid after she cleaned him up, then told him to go to the rest pod for a while. He gladly complied.

But he regretted it once he got stuck in another dream, and it was clear things were getting much worse. The high ceiling of the dome was splintering like a cracked eggshell, and what could be seen outside of it was black and red like congealed blood, pulsing with obscene life. The little blue cubes were stacked high but the black was spreading over them too, in long ropey veins.

The floor of the dome had cracked too, and as he looked into the chasm below it he could just about hear something. It sounded like singing, high and breathy and in no language he could identify. It almost sounded like a prayer.

Pearl was nowhere to be seen.

…..

He woke because he heard a noise in the vent above the pod, a noise like the scurrying of squirrels or mice. He hurried out of the pod as fast as he could manage, nearly sick with fear. Ginger grabbed him as he was running into the main workshop, just before Murder Pearl neatly hopped out of the vent to land in front of them.

She didn't look any worse for wear, except for a ragged tear in the shoulder of her dress and a smudge of some dark liquid on her neck. The hook she had brought with her, however, was bent so far out of shape it was nearly straight.

Ginger's fingers fluttered, but Murder Pearl laughed.

“We may speak freely now,” she said with an angelic smile. “There is no-one to stop us.”

“What did you do?” Ginger asked, backing up a little to put herself more firmly in front of Steven.

“I did what was needed,” Murder Pearl answered. “I saw my enemies. They are no more.”

“You are a pearl,” Ginger reminded her. “You do not have enemies.”

“The ones that toy with my life are my enemies. I have been given the means to destroy them, and so I shall.”

“You compromise us. All of us. If you are running loose we will not be able to find the Renegade, and you will bring scrutiny on our sisters.”

“I do not intend to run loose,” Murder Pearl said. She sounded almost...hurt?

“Orthoclase is one who toys with your life,” Ginger told her.

“And your life, and the life of many others.”

“If she does not, our sisters will be at the mercy of the others. I have accepted this.”

“You have not,” Murder Pearl laughed. “It pains you. I have seen how it pains you.”

For a fleeting moment, Ginger's face crumpled in on itself in a mask of despair, and a moment later it was gone again.

“I would release you from your pain,” Murder Pearl said, gently stroking her battered hook. “And I will take the others. They will not hurt our sisters again.”

“You would get us all processed,” Ginger said sternly. “And you would see all our memories lost in the dust. You are not thinking. Kill your tormentors, if you must. I will not stop you. But you will not put us in danger.”

“How can you stop me, sister?” Murder Pearl asked. She took a step forward, and Steven's heart leaped into his throat, but Ginger stood firm.

“I cannot,” she answered. “But I will give my memory to others, and no pearl on Homeworld will speak with you again. You will be alone.”

The way Murder Pearl reacted, it was like Ginger had threatened to destroy her family. In a way, maybe she had. Murder Pearl's grip on the hook visibly tightened so the twisted metal groaned. Calm as ever, Ginger stepped away from Steven and put herself directly in front of Murder Pearl. She took the hand holding the hook and placed the sharpened tip at the centre of her own gem.

“Kill me,” she said. “If you can.”

Murder Pearl had only really shown two faces; eerie calm and murderous glee. But to Steven's astonishment, her face when Ginger asked her to kill her was distraught, almost childlike in its misery.

“I could not,” she said, as fat tears began coursing down her face. “How could you think that I would?”

She tossed the hook aside and covered her face with her hands. Ginger wrapped her arms around her trembling shoulders.

“This foolishness ends here,” Steven just about heard Ginger whisper. “We need your memories more than we need your violence.”

…..

Eventually, Orthoclase returned with a 'What in Core's name happened?' that made Steven wince and a serious whispered conversation with Ginger in the alcove. Murder Pearl had retreated to her gem form and Ginger had placed her safely in a tin box, after assuring Steven she was no longer a threat.

It was through Orthoclase that they learned that forty-six Jaspers had been murdered in a barracks not far from their workshop. The investigators were baffled, and Homeworld was on a curfew until more information was found.

“The black market's going to be down for a while,” Orthoclase explained wearily, ushering him into her operating room. “Pretty much the entire Homeworld underground is going to lay low. Best case scenario is they think it's rival Jaspers in a turf war.”

The image of those black veiny ropes covering the inside of wherever Pearl was flickered through Steven's mind.

“We need to hurry,” he said desperately. “We're running out of time.”

“I know, I know,” Orthoclase assured him. “We're moving ahead with phase two, I still have a favour or two to call in.”

“What is phase two?” Steven asked.

“We need to get a whole lot of pearls all at once to make up the rest of the chorus, and besides the shops and the baths where they get made, there's only one place to find a whole lot of pearls,” she explained. “We're going to hijack a processing plant.”

“Oh. What's a processing plant?”

“It's where old unwanted pearls go to be processed.”

It still didn't really explain what it was, but Steven had a sneaking suspicion he was better off not knowing.

“Where's Ginger?” he asked instead.

“She's had a rough cycle, I told her to get some rest. So I need you to help me fix up this pearl,” Orthoclase said.

She turned on a machine and the gem on the table formed the body of the blind pearl. Even though Steven knew her eyelids were closed because she had no eyes, she still looked like she was sleeping.

“You ever think about going into remodeling, pebble?” Orthoclase asked conversationally.

“No,” Steven answered bluntly.

“That's a shame. Even without your healing spit I think you'd be good at it.”

Steven said nothing, but licked his palm and was about to bring it down on the blind pearl's navel-set gem, but Orthoclase caught his wrist before he could.

“Don't,” she said sternly, handing him a wet wipe-thing to wash his hand. “If you heal her, her eyes will grow back and we'll have to remove them again. It's just a touch up, it won't take long.”

Swallowing, Steven wiped his hand and stepped back. Orthoclase took out a vial of some shifting, silt-like material and what looked like a paintbrush and needle combined. She handed him the paintbrush-needle and poured the silt into a flat tray.

“Why do you think I'd be good at remodeling?” Steven asked.

“You seem to care a lot about pearls, even the ones that don't belong to you,” Orthoclase answered with a shrug. “Homeworld could use more remodelers that care about what they do. I mean, look at the mess Spinel made of a routine eye removal!”

“I don't think I could,” Steven said. “Doesn't it hurt them when you do these things?”

“It used to, but these cycles I usually disable their pain receptors so they don't feel a thing.”

Steven wanted to ask about the spike, but he was afraid of the answer. He'd already vomited once, and Ginger had only said a few words. He knew Orthoclase would be brutally honest, and that scared him even more.

“Just ask, pebble.”

“What?”

Orthoclase was brushing the silt along the wound the blind pearl had gotten from the thrown sword, her eyes seemingly rooted to the pearl's face. All the same, Steven felt like she was watching him.

“You have that look on your face like you want to ask me something. So ask it.”

Swallowing, he asked.

“Ginger said the pearls have a spike in their gems to keep them obedient,” he asked. “Is that true?”

“Of course,” Orthoclase answered flippantly. “You think any normal gem would do the things pearls have to do if there wasn't something compelling them to? This one jumps over knives cycle in, cycle out. If the spike wasn't there, who knows what she'd be doing.”

“Why pearls? Why do none of the other gems have to have spikes?”

“Pearls are created differently,” Orthoclase explained. “Gems come from the earth. Pearls are made in water grain by grain. It's easy to put the spike in while they're being made.”

“Can it be taken out? Ginger said our Pearl had hers removed...”

“It's a difficult procedure, but it can be done. Of course, once it's out you usually get the few cycles of crying and screaming to put up with until they get used to it...”

Steven couldn't ask anymore. If he knew anymore, he'd be sick again.

“I removed Ginger's early on,” Orthoclase continued. “She cried for three solid cycles, and I still have no idea why because she won't tell me. I suppose that's why you'd make such a good remodeler, pebble. She talks a lot more when you're around.”

Steven barely heard her. He was stuck in a loop of thought, circling in his head.

I need to get Pearl out of here. I need to get pearls out of here.

#Chorus #steven universe fanfiction #breaking down universe #orthoclase and pearl #murder pearl #trigger warnings for slave caste problems and depersonalization

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