#dl!bdubs

Impulse stares at her. Pearl doesn’t stare back.

“I don’t think so,” he says. “You’re a bit strange when you don’t get enough sleep, but not– it’s in an endearing way. You’re fun to be around and I appreciate that you’re here. I know BDubs loves having you here.”

Pearl laughs quietly. It’s a far wetter laugh than he expected. “I feel like BDubs loves everything,” she says. Her dog pads over and flops on top of her, head in her lap. She pets its head distractedly. 

“He does,” Impulse agrees fondly. “He’s a very easy person to be around.”

Impulse pretends not to notice when Pearl discreetly wipes her eyes. “You and BDubs are perfect fits for each other, aren’t you?” she asks, her voice far calmer than he expects.

“I guess so,” Impulse says. “Never really had to think too hard about it. We were together since basically the beginning; it’s a bit silly how we didn’t figure it out then.”

Pearl exhales slowly. “That is silly,” she says, a hint of her typical teasing tone sneaking back into her words. “What, did you get a little paper cut and then hear BDubs screaming in the distance?”

Impulse laughs, relieved that the sudden heaviness of the moment had passed. “Something like that,” he says with a slight chuckle. “Has he told you about how the second we settled down here he asked me for a clock?”

Pearl finally looks at him and smiles warmly, the green light in her eyes dancing in mirth. “And how you got it for him immediately, you softie?”

“I– look, I mean– well, yes,” Impulse stutters as Pearl starts to shake in silent laughter. “It was important to him! He deserves to have it!”

“I know, I know.” Pearl says. She turns to look at the golden apple sitting on a floating shelf again.

When BDubs returns from his mining expedition (though Impulse is sure that he stole half of what he has brought with him), he blusters in dramatically. “Sweetheart, I’m HOME!” he says loudly, and Impulse is torn between warm appreciation and prickling embarrassment at the pet name. BDubs had picked up on his mortification at anything that wasn’t a diminutive of his own name and was systematically working through a shockingly large list of things-to-call-your-partner to find out which one made Impulse the reddest. Within an hour of arriving at their home, Pearl had contributed at least twenty additional names to try out, which firmly placed her on BDubs’s good side and nearly got her kicked out by Impulse himself.

“So I can see,” Impulse replies, reaching out to give him a hug. “We’ve got dinner cooking.”

“He’s got dinner burning,” Pearl deadpans.

BDubs cackles at that as Impulse tries to hush her. Peals of laughter escape Pearl as she dodges his clumsy attempts to grab her.

“Well! Burnt steak is my favorite kind, snookums,” BDubs says, turning his soulmate’s ire back to himself. “Why don’t we get settled down and sit down at the table, then?”

“The two of you are sickeningly domestic,” Pearl comments lightly. “I’m glad my soulmate left me if this is what he expected out of that arrangement.”

BDubs makes a series of sputtering noises that go back-and-forth between grumbling about how Scott doesn’t know what a good thing he threw away and how it’s completely fine to be happy to make yourself a nice house and settle down. Impulse just looks to Pearl and wonders, truly, if she believed his answer to her question earlier.

He doesn’t think she can read minds, but just in case, he focuses his thoughts and pushes them towards her. You are lovable. You are loved. No one can tell you otherwise.

  ◈ ◈ ◈

 After dinner is cleared up and before the sun begins to set, Pearl sets out across the world. Impulse and BDubs make worried noises at her, but she tells Tilly to stay with them and reassures them that she’d be back by nightfall, hopefully not plagued by too many mobs on the way back.

It’s strange, to be out in the world like this: alone, wandering through brush and trees, idly digging up dirt or tearing down stone when it gets in her way. She’s used to this, but not from this world. She didn’t think she’d have to worry about that in this world.

Something twinges in her wrist as Pearl walks, and she knows that it’s not anything she did. She’s still quick to try and heal from it with whatever is in her pockets: the remnants of the dinner Impulse had prepared earlier that BDubs insisted she take with her, the melons that grow wild by the house she now shares, the occasional berry she picks as she passes.

The world is not large and it’s easy to get to where she is heading. The idle thought that Scott and Cleo’s bases are cute passes by her as if she’s in a dream. She’s not too sure about the idea of a bridge over a chasm in the violent world this will become, but it’s a fun building idea and they’ve made it work. She passes by Cleo’s house and knocks on Scott’s door before she loses her nerve.

He comes out, still wrapping a bandage around the wrist Pearl had felt earlier. He freezes at the sight of her.

“Pearl.” His voice is cold, and Pearl’s heart twists at the memory of how warmly BDubs and Impulse had treated her a mere half an hour before. Suddenly, she wishes she’d brought Tilly with her.

“Listen, I’m not here to beg for you,” Pearl says, her voice firmer than she feels. “I’m not going to get on my knees, I’m not going to tell you that I was wrong, I’m not going to give you empty apologies in the hopes that something in the past will change. You think I messed up, I think you messed up, and there’s really no compromise we’ll be able to come to based on that.”

Scott looks unimpressed.

“But,” she continues, “I do want to offer you– something.” With shaking hands, she reaches into her inventory and brings out something that makes Scott gasp quietly.

“Where on earth did you get that?” he asks with a hush, staring at the golden apple.

“Ironically enough, I found it in the Nether on the first day.” Pearl studies his expression, how pale he’s become. What an innocuous threat, she thinks, just a simple fruit, usually something worshiped and carefully saved for a dangerous journey.

She shoves the golden apple into Scott’s hands. 

“What are you doing?” he asks, dumbfounded. He takes it all the same.

“This isn’t– I don’t–” she huffs as her mind races past what she can physically say. “What I’m trying to say is, I’m not the one that wants to throw out what the universe gave. I don’t want that option. But you? You already decided to go against the universe’s rules.” She shrugs helplessly, gesturing towards the apple. “What’s another?”

“Pearl, I don’t–” he tries again.

“Just– keep it.” Pearl thinks of a million other things she could say to Scott right now. She could scream at him, demand to learn why he can’t learn to love her, tell him about how soulbound pairs are supposed to work past whatever grievances they have with each other and grow into something beautiful. She could tell him that she’s sorry, that she wishes he could learn to appreciate her still, that she knows they could together become something far more dangerous and beautiful than any other pair has already become.

Pearl says none of these things. She turns and slowly makes her way across the bridge again, and by the time she’s broken her resolve and turned back to look, Scott has closed his door.

She makes her way back to Impulse and BDubs’s house numbly, and she just shakes her head and waves them off silently when they ask her if she’s alright. That night, she lies on their floor, staring at the ceiling, and she wonders when she will feel the sudden jerk of her life being torn out from inside her, when she will be shot through the throat, when she will fall but Scott will not.

The sun rises. Pearl checks her reflection in a bucket of water, her eyes more specifically.

Haggard. A thin veil of terror that Impulse must have noticed. Shadows under her eyes that must have worried BDubs. But green. Still green.