Warning for slavery and non-graphic implications of rape and mentions of physical and emotional abuse and gaslighting. Sort of a companion piece to the previous chapter.

Pearl didn't remember anything before forming for the first time in the sterile white expanse of a moonstone's showroom. She stood in front of the column where her gem had presumably been on display, with her back straight and one hand clasping the other in front of her. There were other columns with other pearls, but right now it seemed that she was the only one to form just then. Standing before her was a tall, bright green figure with black stripes in her hair that mirrored those stripes radiating from a central point in her gem, and next to that gem was a smaller white one who didn't bother to glance away from the tablet in front of her.

"I thought I specified that I wanted it brighter," the tall green gem grumbled. Pearl noticed that the gem on the back of the tall green gem's left hand matched the placement of her own. "Like me. And the skirt's all wrong."

The white gem's eyes fixed on her tablet, her voice bored and almost droning. "You can specify that to the pearl and any changes will remain after she regenerates her form. There's a terminal with a database of basic appearance modification samples in the back."

The green gem grunted and uncrossed her arms. The hand lashed forth to grab Pearl's chin and turn her face this way and that. It alarmed her, but she had no idea how to react and remained frozen. Then the hand moved to her shoulder and turned her so roughly that she almost lost her balance. That seemed to break the dour look on the taller gem's face and it turned into a much more unpleasant sort of smile. "Eh, the color can stay, I suppose. Moonstone, I'll take it. Pearl, come. We need to change that ghastly skirt. I know I specified something with more leeway."

Pearl didn't know what was wrong with the skirt—it was ankle-length and opaque, and it swished nicely around her legs. But she followed her mistress to the terminal anyway, because it never approached her not to.

In time, Trapiche Emerald found the skirt she wanted on her pearl: almost entirely transparent and trailing in the back but cut to mid-thigh in the front. The second alteration was the opening up of the front of the leotard from hem to mid-sternum. Pearl shifted her form to reflect the changes. Then, before she knew it, she felt a sharp pain as something pierced her between the ribs and she had to release her form entirely.

When she returned to consciousness, she was in a new place. The sitting room was expansive, with luxurious couches and chairs. The viewscreen was enormous and took up the majority of one wall, and against two other walls were curio cabinets full of trinkets she couldn't possibly name. Centered in the wall opposite of the viewscreen was a portrait of a ship against a stylized backdrop of a nebula.

"The Lonestar," Trapiche Emerald said suddenly as she strode in from the hallway leading to other parts of her quarters. Her expression was dour again. "My pride and joy, and I don't even get to fly her."

Pearl didn't know what to say beyond a mild; "I'm sorry, my Emerald."

Trapiche Emerald continued as if she hadn't even heard her. "I'm six emeralds separated by spokes of black tourmaline. I should have been shattered. But no, Blue Diamond thought I was a perfect exotic gem. I should be on that ship, but here I wait until she wants me trotted out for court again."

The lost sensation deepened. What could Pearl possibly say? And before she could think of anything, Trapiche Emerald strode to the biggest, plushest couch and slumped in the middle. Her voice was bored, and there was something underlying it that Pearl didn't like. "Entertain me, pearl. Dance."

Pearl stepped out onto the large, ornate blue-green rug in front of the couch and began. It was a simple dance with forms provided by her gem, but she did her best. Several minutes in, as she shifted her weight onto the tip of a single toe, something lashed out, wrapped around her ankle, and tugged it out from under her. She fell hard against the rug and pain shot up where her elbow had hit the floor. Then, suddenly, there was a hoarse, ugly bark of laughter as she tried to get up. It felt worse than the physical pain of the fall. As much as she tried to keep her face placid, she couldn't quite stop the pricking of tears in her eyes.

Trapiche Emerald only laughed harder at the sight. Pearl stood as straight as she had when she first formed, and it didn't quite stop the horrible feeling inside her. "Wonderful! You'll work out after all."

As time passed, Pearl got used to the feeling of a whip's tail wrapping around one of her ankles and pulling it out from under her when she tried to dance. She got used to the corner where Trapiche Emerald demanded she stand when she wasn't working. She got used to dreading her owner's presence. She got used to the fact that not even her body was really hers. All she had that was her own were her thoughts and the way they wandered while she stood in her corner.

It was while she was dusting the curio cabinet that she came across her salvation. It was a little crystal ball with a series of buttons underneath that lit up when she touched it. One button projected full-color holograms of the vistas of some alien worlds she had never visited: tranquil beaches, twisting canyons, snow-cloaked mountains, and so on. If she tapped another button while a landscape was selected, she could change the weather patterns, too. Buried as it was in the back of the curio cabinet, she thought it wouldn't be missed and slipped it into her gem. After all, Trapiche Emerald never said anything about the curios beyond the command to clean them once a year. When she knew Trapiche Emerald would be gone for a while, she took out the crystal ball and fantasized about what it would be like to visit those places. What would rain feel like, or snow? What would it be like to run her fingers through pristine sand, or to feel the rumble of thunder?

The crystal ball gave her something to dream about, something that existed beyond the confines of Trapiche Emerald's quarters. For that alone, she loved the little thing and cradled it close when she thought it was safe.

Her little escape couldn't last, of course. The crystal ball distracted her. While the crystal ball projected the crackling of a forest fire against her gem, she was unable to hear Trapiche Emerald open the entrance door until it was much too late to cover up her transgression. The outraged screech lanced through Pearl's reverie first, then came the rapidly-mounting dread as Trapiche Emerald strode across the sitting room to her corner. Trapiche Emerald wrenched the crystal ball from her hands and nearly crushed her fingers in the process.

"How dare you play with my gifts!" Trapiche Emerald was so furious that Pearl quaked against the two walls of her corner. In her rage, Trapiche Emerald hurled the crystal ball against the far wall. It hit the wall sharply, splintered, and the shards fell into a tinkling, glittering little pile on the floor.

Despite her best efforts to keep her reactions to herself, Pearl couldn't hold back the little strangled cry of loss as the one thing that alleviated her boredom was destroyed. Seeing her escape broken beyond any hope of repair hurt in a way that cut deeper than all of Trapiche Emerald's little pranks. She realized for the first time that that pile of shards could very well be her if Trapiche Emerald got tired of her, and the hurt deepened to the point where she couldn't keep herself from falling to her knees and tearing up.

Trapiche Emerald grunted in disgust as she started crying over the broken toy and the sudden awareness of her mortality. Pearl braced herself for the kick she knew was coming. The boot was already in motion and—and then it stopped.

"Stars but pearls are pitiful." Trapiche Emerald shifted her weight back onto her kicking leg as she watched Pearl cry. Several moments passed, and Pearl did her best to get herself back under control. "You do cry so prettily, though."

Pearl settled back onto her knees and wiped away her tears, her senses immediately on edge when she recognized that unpleasantness underlying Trapiche Emerald's words. It was the kind of unpleasantness that usually resulted in Pearl getting hurt somehow. She took a bracing breath and stilled as Trapiche Emerald's fingers tucked under Pearl's chin and tilted her face up. That glint in her mistress' eyes made her want to back away, but she was trapped.

"Well, at least you're on your knees." Trapiche Emerald's thumb stroked against her lips, forcing them to part. "Since Kunzite had the nerve to stand me up, you'll have to do. Do well and I may just forget this little transgression. Understood?"

Pearl closed her eyes and obeyed.

It's interesting what the mind does to survive. Her time with the little crystal ball gave her pictures aplenty to fixate on while Trapiche Emerald used her. She could envision, with perfect accuracy, the protective cloak of night or a blanket of fog concealing a valley. She liked fog and mists the best; they allowed her to imagine being able to hide far away from anyone who would do her harm.

If nothing else, she had that little toy and its loss to thank for teaching her how to go away in her mind.

It got easier once she became more adept at going away. Anything that happened to her felt distant and unreal. Trapiche Emerald's pranks didn't cut as deeply. Even when Trapiche Emerald decided to lend her out to other gems, no one could pull her from her mists. She was still able to perform to her mistress' demands, but she became so disengaged and unresponsive that Trapiche Emerald slowly lost interest in her.

When she was no longer able to get a satisfactory response out of Pearl, Trapiche Emerald threw her on the auction block.

The pink Zircon who purchased her afterwards certainly tried to get a response out of Pearl. At first she even succeeded, up to a point. Zircon's forte was manipulation and the ability to make her doubt her experiences. She talked to Pearl, built up her confidence with expert precision, and then took it all away with a few words that reminded her of her place. Zircon seemed to thrive on poisoning her thoughts. It worked up until Zircon's awful, twisting words got lost in the memory of projected thunderstorms. Zircon was a secondary owner, which dulled the compulsion to obey. Eventually Zircon too lost interest in her lack of response.

The grandidierite she was given to was a more physical kind of cruel, and several smacks of Pearl's gem against a wall damaged her so badly that it was much more difficult to go away. The pain radiating from the tiny fractures in her gem became a constant that kept her from focusing on the sanctuary in her mind. But, she got used to the pain as time went on. Despite Grandidierite's strongest threats, she went away to the shelter of those mists. Like all those before her, Grandidierite got bored with her dissociation and sent her away to be harvested.

As much as she dreaded the thought of nonexistence, it gave her some mild, thoroughly petty satisfaction that she was able to take away their enjoyment of abusing her by going away to where no one could touch her. She did the barest minimum demanded of her with all the enthusiasm of an automaton, to their frustration. If she had to be harvested, then at least she ruined the enjoyment of three owners. And really, what more could she ask for?

But then, as if the universe blinked, she was saved from the harvest pool and given to an old, off-color peridot unused to the thought of ownership. She repaired Pearl and erased the source of her physical pain. The peridot was sweet, if clueless about what to do with a pearl, and in time she even saw Pearl as a real gem and surrendered ownership of her. With her new freedom, Pearl helped the rebellion the only way she could. The rebellion was hope for an escape from the grindstone of Homeworld's oppression. Even if that hope was tenuous, it was worth fighting for. She named herself for the mists that protected her mind while her owners did what they wanted with her body. Peridot took her to experience all the vistas and weather she had imagined and never thought twice about granting any of her wishes.

And Mist, who had retreated into the mists in the far back of her mind where no one could touch her for almost her entire life, no longer felt the need to go away.