Pearl crosses her arms, weathering the roar of the larger gem stoically - until the word useless, and the choked gag. Then she flinches.
She doesn’t want to relate to Jasper. Jasper is horrible, Jasper is Homeworld - she took them prisoner, split up Garnet, tried to kill them. She called Pearl defective. (The fact that she’d been right only made it worse.) It would be much, much easier to hate Jasper, to take advantage of her instability and just get it over with and bubble her so Pearl would never have to see her again. And she’d be lying if she said she isn’t tempted. It would be so much easier to hate her.
But unfortunately, Pearl knows a little something about feeling useless and abandoned.
The look of Jasper’s face burns her, because she remembers all too well the first time she realized she was alone. All through the war, through the battles and the fear and the hurt and the grief of seeing gems shattered under her feet - all through the aching knowledge that she was stuck here, now, on Earth, she could never go back to Homeworld, she could never see the stars up close again - throughout it all, Rose was there, and Pearl told herself that she could weather anything as long as it kept her by Rose’s side. But then Rose was gone, and Pearl was alone, and there was nobody to tell her what to do or how to feel or what to fight for.
And she remembers how even after the war ended it never really ended, not for her, her mind just made up new battles for her to fight. She remembers curling up around the agony of knowing she was lost and broken and defective. She remembers thinking that after five thousand years of trying to be more than what she was made to be, of trying to be better, she is still no more than what Homeworld made her: a pearl, a servant, utterly dependent, utterly weak.
Homeworld has done a number on them all.
It builds up in her, the bleakness, the anger. Pearl wants to hate Jasper. Rose, she thinks, would want her to be kind. She is caught somewhere in between bitterness and pity, and cannot help but feel the weight of the betrayal of their kind, of the authority that built them to be enemies, and then left them to suffer together.
“You think I don’t know what it’s like?” she snaps, shaking with the effort of holding it all in. “You said it yourself - I’m a pearl. Nobody on Homeworld has ever cared about me - except one, and she’s gone. You think I don’t know how it feels to be made to serve and find yourself alone? Useless?”
She laughs mirthlessly, and feels old. “I could teach you something about uselessness.”
She steps closer to Jasper. The other gem could backhand her to the dirt with ease, but Pearl can’t find it in herself to be afraid. She can feel all the sharp, broken edges inside her rubbing together, and in the truth of her brokenness she feels, suddenly, strong.
“You know what you do when your superiors abandon you?” she demands, and though her eyes meet Jasper’s, they don’t really see her. “You keep going. You find something new to fight for. You learn how to be your own gem.” (Garnet’s voice rings in her ears, and Pearl remembers how it feels to have someone who believes in her.) “Congratulations. You’re free. Now learn how to live with it.”
She could walk away then and there, and leave Jasper alone amidst the desolation. But she thinks of Steven, and how he has never stopped believing that anyone can be redeemed. And she thinks of Rose, who always accepted deserters from Homeworld, even if they’d fought against her, even if Pearl begged her to think of her own safety. And she turns back to Jasper.
“Earth’s full of lost, defective gems no one else cares about. We take care of our own. Think about that.” She looks away coldly. “Or give up. It’s your choice.”
