Hero Worship

Is everyone finished screaming over 'The Answer' yet? No? All right then.

…..

"Show me a hero, and I'll write you a tragedy."

-F. Scott Fitzgerald

We should talk to her.

We?

I... I should talk to her.

That was the difficult part. Walking came easily as breathing after a while, and the sense of wrongness went away with every cycle they spent fused. Getting the hang of being together wasn't so hard, but there was that little grain of thought in their minds that kept them from melting completely into a single entity. The thought that Rubies were not meant for this, and neither were Sapphires.

Rose said not to question it, but how could they not? Every gem pulled out of the ground had its task given to it within moments of birth. Not doing the assigned task left a gaping hole. Even fusing with other Rubies hadn't been so nerve-wracking; they all had clear goals in sight.

As right as it felt to be fused with Sapphire, there was an equal and opposite feeling of emptiness, no longer knowing what they were for.

One of them (they couldn't tell which anymore, their thoughts were starting to sync and meld) came up with the bright idea of talking to Rose's renegade pearl. There was a gem that definitely wasn't performing its assigned task.

She certainly didn't look threatening now, sitting on a tree stump listening to Rose ramble about something with a little smile on her face, she looked about as dangerous as any other pearl they'd seen on Homeworld. But the memory of how fast she'd been with that blade, and how she threw herself at opponents several times her size without hesitation, gave them both a little separate shiver inside of Garnet's powerful frame. Just how had Rose managed to get it to do that?

Rose ambled away after a time, and the pearl stayed where it was, looking up at the stars.

Now's our chance!

Now's MY chance!

Right, that's what I meant!

Garnet awkwardly shuffled up to the stump, and the pearl turned slightly to regard her, blank-faced as any pearl they'd ever seen but with a little spark of something around the eyes. It was unsettling.

"Uh..." Garnet mumbled.

Say something!

Me? You say something!

Now the pearl looked worried, and that was even more unsettling.

"...hi," she blurted out at last.

"Hello," the pearl said smoothly.

"I like your swords."

Really, Ruby?

What? I do!

"Thank you," the pearl nodded.

Say something else!

I don't know what to say!

"How'd you get...like that?" Garnet asked.

"I don't understand," the pearl said. "Like what?"

"You know...all hacky-slashy!"

Garnet chose to demonstrate this (via Ruby's command) by slashing at the air with her arm wildly a couple of times, which was absolutely the wrong thing to do as it compromised her precarious balance and one of the blows skimmed the top of the pearl's head. In an instant the world flipped and she found herself staring at the sky with the pearl's elbow pressing onto her throat. It happened so fast she wondered if she'd spontaneously unfused.

"Oh..." the pearl muttered, blushing furiously. "I'm sorry...force of habit."

She got up, but Garnet remained sprawled in the leaves for a moment, pondering what had just happened.

Okay, ow, but that was really cool!

Hacky-slashy? You should not be allowed to talk.

…..

She wasn't really stalking the pearl. Not exactly.

The rebel enclave just happened to be quite small, and they happened to cross paths a lot, and Garnet would sort of get roped along almost like a gravitational pull. There was a chance she might see something cool if she stuck around the pearl, so she did.

Mostly it wasn't cool. Rose and the pearl talked...a lot...about nothing in particular. The pearl had a particular spot where she practiced with her swords, but Garnet wasn't allowed near it while she was still working on her fine motor functions. She'd seen the aftermath of the training sessions though; cracked boulders, split earth and trees carved into mulch. It irritated her to know she was missing something.

She tried to talk to the pearl again, but conversation was still tricky with Ruby and Sapphire firing off different synapses, and the pearl seemed uneasy talking to her without Rose around. After a while she would start making these odd movements with her hands instead of talking.

"What are you doing that for?" Garnet asked bluntly (at Ruby's behest.)

The pearl just made a sort of whining sound under her breath and walked off, hands fluttering like leaves in the wind.

Rose came to see her a short time later.

"I need you to give Pearl some space," she told Garnet, gently but firmly.

"Oh...I didn't mean...I didn't..." Garnet sputtered as both Ruby and Sapphire fell over themselves to appease her.

"I know you meant no harm," Rose assured them. "But I've only just gotten her to start talking again, I'd rather not go backwards. Give it time, she'll warm to you."

"How did you get her to be so good at fighting?" Garnet blurted out. "That's all I wanted to know."

"I didn't," Rose shrugged. "She taught herself."

That...wasn't possible.

"On Homeworld...they said it was a virus that got into her programming," Garnet mumbled. "They said it could happen to any pearl. That's why they put in the restrictions."

"It's no virus," Rose told her. "She wanted something, and to get it she had to be strong. She made herself strong. It's that simple. Now, with that in mind, what do you want, Garnet?"

A little flush passed over her, a sort of melting sensation. Ruby and Sapphire wanted the same thing, it was what kept them together.

"I want to stay as myself," she mumbled. Clumsy and awkward though she was, she couldn't imagine being separate again.

"Our enemies would like to see you split apart. To defy them, you'll need to become strong, as Pearl did. As I did. It will come with time, but you have great potential. You could be stronger than you know. You could become the kind of gem that other gems look up to."

That possibility was so remote it was laughable, and yet...

...and yet she could almost see it, herself strong and capable and powerful. Someone even the pearl would look up to.

It was far away, but it was there.