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harinezumiko · 7 years

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Jaspearl: From a Distance

Very self-indulgent AU I’ve been toying with for a few months. Canon divergent as of The Return. Jasper takes Pearl to Homeworld to be put on trial since Steven is clearly not Rose Quartz, Peridot gets to check on the Cluster, and nobody is happy. When it becomes clear that Pearl’s memories have been altered, Jasper takes custody of the Terrifying Renegade, and Era Two is anything but what Pearl expected.

Lots of OCs by necessity. It’s mostly worldbuilding. Milky and Copper in particular belong to @anditwasjustathought.

So much had happened in the past few months that Pearl didn’t ever think her head would stop spinning. Everything bled together, a distinct change from the day and night cycles of the Earth she had left behind. Time was an illusion, marked by the movement of stars in a galaxy she would likely never see again.

She was in the Home Galaxy, now.

Pearl had offered herself in exchange for the others’ freedom and safety, a trade that Jasper wasn’t fool enough to shoot down. Rose Quartz was organic and worthless now, but the Terrifying Renegade might still hold answers, might face charges for what the traitor had done to Pink Diamond. Peridot had been able to check Yellow Diamond’s precious geo-weapon for an estimate on when it would emerge, and from there…

From there, it had become abundantly clear that someone had tampered with the pearl’s memories. Put on trial, she truly didn’t have anything to offer that they didn’t already suspect. The zircon assigned to her hadn’t been able to extract any useful information, and it was entirely luck that the Diamonds themselves couldn’t be bothered with a pearl’s testimony, lest all Gems present be shattered.

Yellow Diamond granted Jasper’s request to keep her prize; part of the plan. It was the only thing that had been truly out of their hands.

Pearl was too old to manifest colors outside of her limited pastel palette, but she’d reformed with appropriate attire for her new station; Jasper headed a gladiatorial Arena, and while she already had an Arena Pearl, a second wouldn’t be a problem. She had the status for it. Pearl wore a uniform that looked a bit like Peridot’s and tried not to acknowledge the yellow diamond insignia over her sternum.

The Arena Pearl knew rumors about the Terrifying Renegade, as did many of their caste. Originally from the ailing White Diamond’s court, and later passed to the tragically deceased Pink Queen, she had something of a reputation back home; her involvement in the rebellion on Earth had sparked great change for her kind.

“We can’t just tell everyone who you are,” Jasper grumbled, “But Copper can know.”

Copper. Copper Pearl. It was still strange to hear other Gems calling pearls by their colors. Pearl could have cried for joy, if she hadn’t used up all her tears mourning her comrades on Earth.

Several things became apparent very quickly, following Pearl’s arrival in the Home System. Most notably was how different things were; Lapis Lazuli hadn’t been exaggerating when she said that it was beyond her understanding. Pearl couldn’t keep up, didn’t know what to do with holo-screens or most of the other Era Two technology. But socially, for a pearl…

Pearls in the White Court had always been dutifully silent and impossibly stationary. Pearl herself had been terrible at it in almost every respect, but she had been part of an otherwise perfect batch meant for the Diamonds, and she’d been allowed a great deal of leeway from Her Holiness.

Her job now involved a lot of staying in one building, but rarely sitting in one place. If anything, Jasper was the one trapped in an office dealing with files and planning; she and Copper worked together to ensure that the Arena ran smoothly, that guests were orderly, and that even visits from the uppercrust went without a hitch.

Sometimes, Copper’s sisters visited. Pearl didn’t know how to feel about that. Pearls had visitation rights now, jobs and income and opportunities, and rights, and Copper privately credited her role in the rebellion.

Of course, Pearl couldn’t visit her sisters; it was luck that Jasper had gotten permission to keep her, luck that kept Nacre from doing an inspection. Pearl was on borrowed time, and seeing her batch mates would surely mark the end of that. She stood to the side while Jasper made her reports to Yellow Diamond through her sister, held her tongue, and missed Earth more than ever.

Jasper sometimes spoke to her about the Earth, little questions that grew more pressing the longer they were alone. At first, Pearl was reluctant to speak to her at all; despite their accord, Jasper was entirely responsible for taking her away from the people and planet she loved above all else, and she hadn’t been very kind about it. Pearl supposed that she didn’t really have to be, but then, she didn’t need to like Jasper for it.

Jasper was, however, the only tie she had left to Earth. Lapis Lazuli was conspicuously elsewhere, likely readjusting to life in the Home Galaxy, and there was a marked lack of other Earth-grown Gems here in space.

Her questions were mostly innocent, honest things about the planet they had left behind, but they grew more pointed. She asked about Pearl’s companions, about Amethyst, about when she emerged. Pearl pointed out that Jasper could have stuck around to ask, if she’d cared. Her superior stormed off, and Pearl resumed sharpening swords for the rest of the cycle.

It wasn’t that she didn’t want to talk about them. As she understood it, Jasper was the only Earth-grown Gem still serving the empire, somehow, and quartzes had an affinity for Gems grown in the same soil. They were sisters, in a sense. Amethyst would probably have liked Jasper if she’d had the time to get to know her; when she wasn’t bearing down on enemy rebels, she could be kind, but had the kind of scathing dry tongue that Garnet did, that Amethyst so enjoyed.

But thinking about the Gems she’d left behind made Pearl’s heart ache, and Milky—Jasper’s second-in-command, a brittle Era Two quartz whose sincerity reminded Pearl of Steven—caught her crying for the first time since the trial.

Milky was several things a quartz shouldn’t be. The resource shortage had hit Homeworld hard, made the Diamonds lower their requirements for viable Gems. There was no choice, when only a dozen out of a Kindergarten of five hundred even emerged. She was soft-spoken and hardly intimidating, and offered Pearl her shoulder to cry on. She wasn’t very worldly, and she had never—and would never—seen battle outside of Arena matches, and even those were few and far between. She was a civilian in ways that Amethyst should have been, but that the corrupted Gems on Earth had prevented.

Pearl clung to her and cried until her eyes were dry again, and Milky promised her that life at the Arena would get better with time.

Jasper took her aside a few cycles later, looking tired and haggard and uncomfortable, and Pearl dutifully let the big quartz steer her into her office without complaining. She felt stiff and wooden, and Jasper offered her a seat, but Pearl remained standing.

“Milky told me I made you cry,” Jasper said stiffly. Pearl stiffly denied it. Her superior—her owner, Pearl supposed, and the burning in her gut at the notion would probably subside in a century or two—sighed, pinching between her brows, just above her Gem. “That wasn’t my intent, Pearl. I apologize.”

Pearl’s tongue was dry and her mouth felt stuffed with cotton. She nodded. “And?”

Jasper didn’t need to pull her into a locked office for that.

The quartz sighed again, looking annoyed. “We’ve got a confiscation today. I need to debrief you, or you need to be out of the way. Either way, I need to debrief you, because it’s… messy.”

“Messy,” Pearl echoed, finally sinking into the offered chair.

Jasper looked like she’d tasted something sour, and her sharp eyes met Pearl’s. “An aquamarine has been invited to enjoy today’s show,” she said slowly, “She’ll be sitting in the reserved seats, with her blue pearl. You won’t want to read her file; it’s sick. With luck, she won’t realize what we’re doing until it’s too late…”

Pearl’s eyes went impossibly wide as Jasper explained the details of Copper’s plan to separate the pearl from her visiting owner, an apparently common practice at the Crystal Arena. There was something of an underground network, Jasper explained, where battered pearls would reach out for help—but the legal channels through which they could be taken away from their owners required recorded testimony, and that testimony was impossible to secure while they were in their abusers’ custody. The Crystal Arena was one favored by Yellow Diamond, highly thought of and hard to get tickets to; turning down an invitation simply wasn’t done.

Neither was leaving a pearl home for most of a cycle. It was a good honey pot.

“…The aquamarine has had pearls confiscated before,” Jasper went on, “Public outbursts in the courts aren’t tolerated, and they were easy cases. But this one’s… new. Different. She isn’t even registered. She might be hard to save. We got the tip from another Gem; the pearl may not know what she’s in for.”

Pearl wasn’t registered, either, but she knew that Era Two pearls were supposed to be.

“What’s my part?” Pearl asked, pursing her lips in a thoughtful frown. “She doesn’t know me. I don’t know anyone in this system. I don’t even know the laws.”

Jasper’s toothy smile startled her; it was grim, and almost conspiratorial, and she leaned forward with her hands steepled in front of her face. “Exactly. The aquamarine won’t even know you work here. Copper’s practically synonymous with the Arena itself, and Milky’s too timid. If you can lure the pearl away from the seats, we can get her to safety without causing a scene at all.”

It sounded dangerous and unfamiliar, and Pearl nodded. “What if there is a scene?”

“That’s what your spear’s for, isn’t it?” Jasper sounded almost nonchalant about it. Pearl stared at her like she’d split into two Gems, and Jasper raised an eyebrow challengingly. “You’re supposed to be a legendary warrior. Use it. Protect the blue pearl and don’t hurt any of the spectators. If the aquamarine tries to stop you, use force.”

“Since when are pearls allowed weapons?” Pearl managed to squawk out. Her mind was reeling.

Jasper looked smug. “Welcome to Era Two. Are you on board?”

She offered her hand, and Pearl stared for several seconds before extending her own. Jasper squeezed her smaller fingers tightly, and Pearl stared at the quartz a moment longer. Then, she managed a smile, faint and uncertain. “I’m in.”

----

The confiscation went almost too smoothly, but Pearl supposed that Copper must have had several centuries’ worth of practice from the way she steered the blue pearl into a private area after Pearl had gotten her out of her owner’s sight. Milky was tasked with detaining the aquamarine not long after, and Pearl felt a little silly and awkward standing perfectly still in the hallway, clutching her spear for several minutes while the aquamarine’s shrieks echoed down the hall.

“Good job,” Jasper said, appearing behind Pearl without a sound. She whirled on the Arena Head, ready to lunge with her spear, still on edge—and Jasper caught the shaft before Pearl could thrust it too close to her Gem.

“…Sorry,” Pearl managed tightly, letting the weapon dissipate. “Reflex.”

“My fault. I shouldn’t sneak,” Jasper said, raising her hands in a gesture of appeal. “You did good. No disruption at all. No complaints from the crowd.”

Wide blue eyes stared up at her; Pearl wasn’t sure what to say. “Is this… normal?” she asked uncomfortably. Jasper nodded slowly.

“A lot of Gems don’t like the new laws, especially old ones,” she explained, motioning for Pearl to follow her. Pearl found it easy enough to walk and listen, just like a pearl should. Jasper went on, voice low. “It’s hard to enforce new laws on old Gems. Especially if their pearls won’t—or don’t know to—report violations. Or they can’t, because it’s all they’ve ever known. Some owners aren’t sneaky, but the ones that are’re harder to trip up. That’s what we’re here for.”

“This entire Arena schtick?”

Jasper laughed, shaking her head. “Nah. Arenas have been around longer than I have. When Copper applied to be the Arena Pearl, I looked a little too deep into what happened to her. Found out she wasn’t alone. And now, we do this alongside regular Arena duties.”

“What happened?” Pearl couldn’t stop herself from asking, but from the way Jasper’s step stuttered, it was a mistake.

Jasper didn’t answer, not right away, but she did look down at Pearl coolly. “Not your business,” she said, and Pearl shrank back a little. “Copper doesn’t talk about it.”

“Oh.”

Silence stretched between them for several seconds, and Jasper sighed. “Let’s get you somewhere quiet. Nacre isn’t coming for this confiscation, but it’s better if you don’t get seen by her aides yet.”

Pearl nodded absently and wondered, briefly, whether her sister still worked alongside Mother of Pearl—but thinking about her sisters was almost as painful as thinking about her family on Earth, and she stuffed those feelings down inside her to contend with in the distant future. Pink certainly couldn’t afford to see her, and if that meant hiding in alcoves and weapons rooms after confiscations to buy a little more time, she would have to do it.

She wrapped her arms around her midsection and missed the perplexed look on Jasper’s face.

----

Pearl’s new life was terribly, achingly lonely. Copper was kind and spoke with her often, but she was hardly physically affectionate at all, even for an Era One pearl. Pearl learned to approach her from her left side, away from the Gem on her thigh, to give ample warning, and that she seemed to have a limit to how much physical contact she could stand from just about anyone—and that limit was far, far lower than anyone Pearl had been close to since the war. She endured the clinging from pearls they confiscated because she understood, in ways Pearl wasn’t sure she could, their fear and pain.

Milky had learned to be sparing with her affection. She expected Pearl to be distant the way Copper was, and though she was pleasantly surprised that it was not the case, she was too shy, too awkward to simply fall into easy, casual touching with an Arena Pearl.

Finding out that the new Arena Pearl was the Terrifying Renegade that Jasper had told stories about made her even more awkward.

“I don’t bite,” Pearl insisted, feeling somewhat wounded that the brittle quartz was avoiding her now that she knew. The diamond against her sternum itched, and Pearl shrank in on herself. “That’s not who I am anymore.”

Milky regarded her with some hesitation. She was a young quartz—made well into Era Two—and she couldn’t imagine the scope of Pearl’s long life. Jasper had regaled her with thrilling stories of the war on Earth, and those stories featured a worthy adversary that she had never had the opportunity to fight. Pearl seemed to think her reputation was undeserved, and Milky didn’t know her well enough to agree.

“Who are you now?” Milky asked hesitantly, scratching the back of her head. Pearl’s gaze shot up to meet hers, startled and glassy. “You don't have to tell me anything—that is, it’s up to you. But I’d kinda like to know.”

Pearl no longer wore a sash or skirt to fiddle with, and her long fingers tangled together in her lap instead. “I’m no one now,” she murmured, “I gave up everything I was coming here.”

That brought to mind several questions, but Milky watched the way Pearl closed off, the way her eyes grew distant and sad, and it was hard to be afraid of her. She put aside the bracers she had been tightening and crossed her legs, resting her hands in her lap. “You weren’t confiscated,” she said slowly, and Pearl shook her head. Milky’s brows furrowed as some pieces of the puzzle fell together. “You weren’t rescued. You weren’t even in the empire, were you?”

“Earth was never colonized,” Pearl’s voice was hollow. “We ensured that.”

Then what was Pearl doing here? Milky watched her, and daringly reached out, passing her hand through Pearl’s field of vision by way of warning before settling her big hand over hers. Pearl’s head jerked up, and their gazes met. Milky mustered up a lopsided smile. “Tell me about Earth?”

Pearl did.

----

There were many things Milky didn’t understand in Pearl’s stories of Earth; she had trouble imagining the beach, the trees, the fauna. Pearl showed her projections of some of these things, and Milky stared with rapt attention as Pearl talked about domesticated wildlife and plants, of ecosystems Homeworld didn’t have on any of its colonies, and while a lot of it went over her head, it was the happiest Pearl had seemed since she had come here.

Milky asked questions, and eventually, those questions were angled at Pearl’s companions. She was thrilled to learn that one of Jasper’s sisters lived on Earth, somehow, and abundantly curious about Garnet and Steven. She didn’t tell Pearl not to cry when the memories were too much for her, and for that, Pearl was grateful. Milky tried to be understanding, and Pearl tried to be honest. They talked, and Pearl cried, and Milky couldn’t really find it in herself to be afraid of the Terrifying Renegade after all that.

“It was really brave of you—protecting them like that. I’m sure they appreciate it,” Milky said with some uncertainty. Her smile was sincere, and she gave Pearl’s small hand a squeeze. Pearl squeezed back without missing a beat. “You couldn’t know you’d end up here. It’s lucky Jasper could save you.”

Save.

Pearl didn’t feel saved. She felt like a fish plucked from the ocean and transferred into a tank in someone’s office. Like the little clown fish in one of Steven’s silly movies, except that there was no brilliant escape plan to be made, and no one coming to rescue her.

She didn’t feel very lucky, either.

“I suppose I owe her for that,” she murmured dully, “It’s better than being shattered, I guess.”

Worry writ itself across Milky’s face, open and unguarded, and Pearl knew she’d said the wrong thing, but there was no taking it back. The quartz stared at her, searching for something to say and coming up short. The alabaster Gem before her looked—aged, like the vids she’d seen of White Diamond, and it startled her.

“You should talk to Jasper,” Milky blurted out, wincing at the withering look Pearl pierced her with. “She could—help? You’re obviously unhappy, Pearl, and nobody wants that. But Jasper’s the only one who might get it. Copper ‘n I have never left the Home Galaxy.”

Some long unturned gears deep in the recesses of Pearl’s mind creaked, shifted, and groaned. She wondered whether she could convince Jasper of anything. She had no leverage over her new owner, no tricks up her sleeve.

“I don’t have anything to give her,” Pearl’s voice was hollow, “She doesn’t have any reason to help me. Any information I had got thrown out at the trial. Mistrial.”

Milky considered this for a while, watching Pearl’s eyes darken unhappily, and she hesitantly reached up, settling her hand in the other Gem’s hair. “She doesn’t need a reason to help you,” she said gently, “She’s our boss. It’s her job. And she’s secretly nice, but you didn’t hear that from me.”

The joke fell flat.

“Talk to her,” Milky urged again, and Pearl nodded almost mechanically. The Arena Second managed something that passed for a smile, even if Pearl couldn’t see it. “Is there anything I can do…?”

Crush me, came to mind, but was the wrong thing to say. Pearl had already worried Milky quite enough, she told herself, and she shook her head slowly. “Thank you, Milky,” she mumbled despondently, “I’ll talk to her.”

She just wasn’t making any promises about when.

----

An upcoming tournament gave Pearl several excuses to make herself both scarce and busy. Unsure as to whether Milky had spoken to Jasper about their conversation, she simply avoided the Arena Head as much as she could. She buffed armor, reinforced bracers, and tended to the absurdly large collection of swords kept in the Crystal Arena.

She worked in their forge, too close to the flames, but if she closed her eyes she could pretend she was back home, in the Temple, in the boiler room, and what did she care if she got burned now?

Pearl didn’t speak for days, and her silence wasn’t totally unnoticed.

“…She’s not thriving,” Copper said, pointedly leaning across Jasper’s desk. Their conversation had gone in one circle already, and the Arena Pearl didn’t have time for another lap. Jasper seemed convinced that Pearl was adjusting well; Copper didn’t have to speak to the other pearl to know better. “She’s closing off! Jasper, why did you even bring her here? She doesn’t meet the qualifications!”

Pearl could hear Copper’s voice several meters down the corridor. She couldn’t hear Jasper’s response, not quite, and curiosity got the better of her. As quietly as she could, she moved to stand near the open door to Jasper’s office, and listened.

Copper was speaking again, shrill and frustrated. “I can’t even read her file—it’s locked up!”

“You know why,” Jasper sounded tired.

“And you know there’s a reason Arena Pearls have to apply for the position,” Copper quipped, “She wasn’t confiscated; she hasn’t had a cool down period; she hasn’t had any training that wasn’t on site! She has no travel privileges, she’s not registered, she hasn’t seen any of her batch mates since she started here—“

“It’s a risk we can’t take,” Jasper cut in, “They belong to the Diamonds. Yellow Diamond can’t know it’s her.”

Copper kept going, unperturbed, but getting louder. “So let’s review, Jasper; you brought a war criminal who gets no vid calls out, no rehabilitation, no visitation rights, no travel. This is completely against protocol!”

“She gets the job done, doesn’t she? She must enjoy some of the work—“

“That is not the point,” Copper growled, “And you’re killing her.”

Pearl heard Jasper’s chair scrape back. She wasn’t sure when she’d covered her mouth, but stale air burned in her lungs now.

“You know me better than that,” Jasper’s voice was a low rumble, and Pearl recognized it as threatening. “I saved her the only way I could, Copper! She’d be bubbled or worse—“

“Is this better? Is this really better, Jasper?”

They argued, and Pearl stood rooted to her spot in the hall, out in the open, in the worst possible place to freeze up. Copper’s words were touching, but the realization that so much about her situation was wrong scalded her to the core.

The fact that she’d never thought of any of this, for weeks, was chilling.

Tears blurred her vision, and Pearl pressed her palms to her face and cried silently.

“Pearl?”

Of course Milky would round the corner and see her. Of course. Jasper and Copper’s argument came to a screeching halt, and Pearl did the only thing she could think of:

She ran.

-----

Not that it helped. The Arena was large, but there were a finite number of places she could hide, doors she could open, and the other Gems all had higher clearance than she did. Pearl ducked into the forge and tried to bar the door.

She couldn’t do this.

The knight stumbled backwards into one of the many armor racks behind her and wound up buried in quartz-sized light armor, bracers and chest plates and something akin to chainmail. The resulting crash was almost deafening. She reached automatically to check her Gem—no dents, not that it mattered—and rocked forward to cry into her knees.

Pearl could hear the others coming, and she wished more than anything that she hadn’t been spared after her trial. She sobbed, tore at her hair, and was vaguely aware that the thundering footsteps in the hall had to belong to Jasper.

“Pearl!”

Milky’s voice. Sufficiently worried and out of breath, she sounded a little like Amethyst. Or, more likely, Pearl’s mind was playing tricks on her. If she closed her eyes, maybe just for a moment, she could pretend this wasn’t Homeworld.

Jasper tore the forge door off its hinges, and that moment ended.

Pearl reacted without thinking. Cornered and afraid, she drew her spear in the second it took for Jasper to lay eyes on her, but the quartz was already upon her—and it was the Strawberry Battlefield all over again, strewn with weapons that were unfamiliar and large, and Pearl screamed, expecting exactly the end she deserved.

There was no killing blow.

Jasper’s cheek bled crimson where Pearl’s spear had grazed her, but she snapped the shaft, and then—nothing. Wild gold eyes met hers, and Pearl’s breath hitched while reality caught up to her. Foliage and the scent of strawberries bled away like a forgotten dream, and Pearl tried scrambling away from her adversary, but was already inches from the wall. She was cornered, and a frantic look around confirmed that she was still very, very far from Earth. Milky filled most of the doorway, but Copper had an arm out, cautioning her to stay, and Pearl’s wide eyes settled again on Jasper—

Jasper.

“Pearl,” Jasper’s voice was low, but there was no threat this time. “Pearl, look at me.”

She did. Jasper’s face was inches from hers. Her vision blurred, and the world tilted, but she did meet Jasper’s eyes before dissolving into ugly tears with a low wail.

Jasper faltered, unsure of what to do, what to say. She settled for going rote, murmuring reassurances that she didn’t think Pearl could hear, and which ultimately didn’t matter anyway. Behind her, Copper slipped inside to check the forge itself; she shut the open grate as quietly as she could before pulling Milky into the hallway.

Pearl hiccupped and sobbed, but she wore herself out quickly, and Jasper leaned a hand against the wall near her head.

“I’m sorry,” Jasper said stiffly, and this drew Pearl out of her revere. “I made a lot of decisions for you without your input. It was well-intentioned, but…” She cleared her throat, looking askance. “You cooperated on Earth, and I… saw you give your testimony. The memory alteration wasn’t your fault. And I—I know about you. Stories from the war. I thought you’d do well here. I thought it was better than the alternative.”

The alabaster Gem stared at her, eyes puffy and damp, and she uncurled slightly. Jasper sat back on her heels, and Pearl tried to gather her wool before speaking.

“I’d rather be dead,” she croaked out, “I never, ever wanted to come back to this place. This isn’t where I belong—I can’t live under the Diamonds again. You said yourself that I’m defective—I know what happens to defective pearls!”

Jasper looked taken aback. She swallowed thickly. “It’s different now,” she insisted, “Nothing will—you’re safe here, the Arena program is a good cover. You’ll…”

Pearl stared at her flatly. “I’ll die. Isn’t that what Copper said? You took me away from everything I knew and everyone I loved, and I’ll die.”

The quartz’s jaw hung open, and she faltered, tried and failed to say something. Pearl’s arms were around her midsection again, and Jasper finally recognized the defensive gesture for what it was. Blue eyes fell away from her face, and Pearl dropped her voice. “I’ll die, and I’ll welcome it.”

Jasper’s throat was dry. Pearl looked smaller than ever, head bowed, hair tousled, and for a moment she could sympathize—because eons ago, after learning of Pink Diamond’s death, she’d felt the same way.

“Pearl…” she tried, and the smaller Gem bristled visibly, drawing in on herself. Jasper sighed. This wasn’t working. She was horribly bad at comforting anyone to begin with. “Just… bunk with Copper or Milky for a few days. I’ll see what I can arrange. I’m not going to just let you die.”

Of course, Pearl thought dully, even that was out of her hands. She had been a fool to think otherwise even for a second.

----

#Jaspearl #Steven Universe #anditwasjustathought #Jasper #Pearl #fanfiction

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