#trexila

Her wedding ring is made out of bone. Sean slides it onto her finger and he tries to smile, but he doesn’t reach his eyes. He holds her hands and his fingers are ice cold.Teresa’s hands are limp in his. It’s too late to run. She doesn’t know her way out of this underground maze and she doesn’t know how to escape the endless white salt flats on every side. 

She’s trapped here, forever. 

An unwanted thought rises up: a ring made out of bone must have been carved from something big. Maybe from the bones of someone she knew. Maybe her parents. 

The horror is derailed as Sean squeezes her hands tight. “I do.” He says, and looks at her expectantly. 

Teresa doesn’t know why they even want an answer. It’s not like she had a choice. “I do.” She says, feeling very far away as her body’s married and made into a wife for a cannibal. 

(Later that night, she lies naked against soft leather and feels a million miles away as her husband weeps softly and fails in his duties. Sean curls in on himself beside her and confesses a terrible secret to Teresa- he feels nothing for women, and if his family finds out, she’ll be killed and eaten and he’ll suffer in horrible ways.

Teresa puts her hands to work, petting his hair, and thinking ahead. She needs an ally in this place. Her husband is a monster, just like the rest, but perhaps he’s a monster she can control - one that will set her free rather than eat her alive. 

Anything, to survive. Anything.)

-

Sean isn’t so bad, for a cannibal. He likes books and he fills the empty silences forTeresa when she can’t bear to string words together. He keeps his hands to himself. He likes children (and isn’t that something deeply, darkly funny? the cannibal’s den full of happy, healthy children, sitting in chairs made of bone and skin, eating stews made of people) and he can be very kind. They could be friends in other circumstances.

The same can be said for his sisters. Eliza takes to Teresa like she’s always been part of the family, quick to link arms and to tell her everything and anything. She’s the one who lendsTeresa clothes until she can have her own made, and she’s the one who tellsTeresa everything expected of her in this place. 

“It’s a good life.” She tellsTeresa and she means it, wholehearted and honest. “We never go hungry and we’re safe here. It’s not like other places. Nobody here gets fukushima’d. You’ll be happy with us, it’s a good family.” 

Happy hadn’t really been a consideration in Teresa‘s life before now. She had thought often about food, and about how hot or how cold she was, and she had sometimes brushed up against comfort, when her parents would tell her she was important. After all, they were looking after her, so she could look after them. She owed them.

Well. They were dead now. And she had never eaten better, or been warmer, or done so many things other than survive. As long as she tries not to think about what’s in the food, it’s not so bad. As long as she doesn’t let herself see the leather as skin, then she can wear it and sleep on it, and just exist. She can survive. 

Eliza and Teresa sit on the rock the home (the burrow) is build underneath and watch the stars. There’s terrifying sounds in the darkness, howls and shrieks. Each time she tenses, Eliza tells her what they mean. “That’s Connor calling out. He says he’s found something in a trap. That’s Ma answering. She says they’ll come out soon. Oh, there’s Ciara, you can tell from the way it pitches.” 

She stares up at stairs as the monsters she’s made a home with scream out with their terrible voices, and beside her, Eliza sighs and says, “I’m sorry if I’ve been unkind. He was supposed to be my husband, you know? It’s been hard to let go of that…” 

“Oh.” Teresa says. The stars wink and a few trail across the sky quicker than the rest. “I didn’t know.” 

“It’s fine. He’ll be happy with you.” Eliza says and Teresa bites her lips and doesn’t dare let herself make a sound. Cannibals, and worse it seems. Married brother to sister. Eliza gives Teresa a squeeze. “I’m not jealous anymore though. You’re just like another sister to me.” 

Just like another sister. (anything to survive, Teresa, anything to survive)

-

The time passes slow and quick. She gets accustomed to it. To the cannibalism. To the comfort. To full bodies. To riding out over the flats on a hovercraft in the middle of the night. To screaming. To reading. To sleeping tucked beside Sean each night. He gives her little gifts. He promises that it’ll be fine. 

She’s trusted enough that she won’t run away (can’t, anyway, they’d catch her and she doesn’t know the way out and they won’t let her see the big maps that show the world beyond their traps) and she and Sean are left to go out alone to check traps together. The other girls give her advice and pity. They think she can’t make a baby stick. 

They check traps. They radio in when there’s people alive. They go out and poke when nobody is. 

They find a baby in one. Sean nearly ends up in the cement-thick slurry to get his hands on it, sinking the car in further but emerging triumphant with the little baby. They’re pink and unhappy, giving out a thin squall. Sean and Teresa sit by the side of the hover, drapping part of a tarp over them as shade from the sun, and they feed the baby a little with the emergency powder in the hovercraft’s kit box. They eat hungrily, greedily. 

Sean holds the baby so tenderly in his arms and he whispers to Teresa, “If… if they were a little newer, we could lie and keep them secret somewhere, and then take them home. We could tell them this one is ours. She’s got eyes kind of like yours.” 

Teresa looks at the baby and at Sean, and she just… she laughs. She can’t help it. That’s his solution. Find a baby, keep it secret, and just turn back up with it one day. She laughs, and she laughs, and she cries and she’s not sure when that switched, but she’s weeping and she’s terrified. She’s terrified. 

They’ll kill and eat her, because they’ve married her to a man who can’t love women. They’ll kill and eat her because that’s all they know how to do here, kill and eat and raise babies. Teresa’s been doing her best to survive, but how’s she supposed to do that when they’ve rigged it from the start?

Sean looks so lost and useless. He just loops an arm around her and shushes her the way he shushed the baby, trying for kind. Teresa curls her head into his shoulder and she knows, she knows, she can’t just survive anymore.

The specifications outlined for Jack had been very detailed, outlining everything: his pain tolerance, his creativity, his impulsiveness, his obedience and simultaneous rejection of authority, every carefully balanced item required to produce an assassin who would be able to storm Rapture, no matter the condition it was in. 

Looks hadn’t been ranked anywhere, and so it was a surprise when the hairless, skinny gremlin of a boy turned out to have more of his mother in his looks. When Tenenbaum first laid eyes on the boy, she had not known yet who he was, but she had thought there was something familiar in his features. He has his mother’s eyes, and some of her features, though his jawline is stronger, his expressions colder. 

And her certainly doesn’t have his mother’s ability to charm a room. Not that it matters. 

Jack had insisted they attend the dance. ‘It’s important for the girls to be around other people’ he said. ‘It’s a good way to meet our neighbours’ he said. ‘It wouldn’t hurt you to talk to someone who isn’t eight years old, or me’, he said. 

Tenenbaum sniffs the punch she was served in a heavy, spiky shaped glass. It smells like the glass feels against her palm; utterly unfit for human use or consumption. It does not even have the decency to have liquor in it, because there are children here. 

(There are children everywhere. Many of them are not those she helped rescue, or so she assumes. When they are running and yelling, they are all interchangeable. She expects they will take five home when they return tonight, but who knows if they will be the same five they attended with?)

Jack is trapped in a corner, where he has been for the last twenty minutes. Each time he tries to slip away, another woman comes up to join them and he’s caught in the same cycle of polite conversation. She was close enough to hear at one point, but after so many questions about his lack of a wedding ring and how he must get ‘lonely’ without a woman around, she puts some distance between herself and them. Jack keeps trying to point to her, perhaps to remind them that he is not alone, or perhaps in some desperate attempt to romantically link the two, and to convince them to seek out some other eligible young man.

There are, of course, no eligible young men here who look like Jack does. There are likely none in the state. 

One of the women laughs at a joke that Jack has undoubtedly not told on purpose. If he wishes for them to go away, he is doing as terrible a job at that, as he had done at flirting on the few occasions that she’s seen him make a pass at someone. Of course, the quality of his pass had not mattered much then either, but that was because Frank thought it was hilarious and encouraged it. 

Jack looks up desperately from the group towards Tenenbaum. It seems he wishes to be saved. But he is the one who brought her here instead of letting her stay peacefully at home, so she will get the wolves gnaw on him a while longer.

“You think they did something to her face?” 

“Hmm?” Fiona’s been reading and she looks up from the page she’s on. Connor’s on his back, staring up at the ceiling of their hollow. He’s got one of the trap babies on his chest, and he hasn’t said they’re taking this one, but she knows him well enough by now to know that they have all but officially. Connor’s patting the wee one on the back and he’s got that far-away stare in his eyes.

Ah. Cathy then. “No, I don’t think so. I think she’s feeling shy. She’s going to look like one of them.” 

“She’s still our little girl.” Connor says and Fiona loves him, but he’s also such a silly man. Cathy’s old enough to have her own children. She’s not a little girl anymore, and hasn’t been for some time.

Anyway, it’s dreadfully silly to call someone who’s nearly seven feet tall ‘little’ anymore, but that’s Connor for you; everyone’s still small to him, no matter how old they get. 

“Of course she’s our daughter. She’s one of them now too.” Fiona marks her place in her book and rolls over, nudging her shoulder and hip against his. “Shiny eyes, green skin. And with all the chrome on those bikes of theirs, you know she sees herself looking back all the time”

Connor nods a little. The baby’s asleep. He’s got a thin, sickly look to his face. But he’s got no tumors, and with enough milk, he’ll plump up again and be a healthy one. Soon, he’ll look like all the others, rosy cheeked and bright eyed. 

“She’s still ours.” He says again and Fiona sighs a little, giving Connor a pat. He’s a good man, but he’s also painfully sentimental. Of course she’s still theirs, but she’s not. Oh well. He’ll figure that out soon enough.

-

Fiona expects that Connor will end up seeing her first, on account of him seeking her out every time the Sisters ride in. He’s gotten good at picking her out of the crowd. Fiona can never tell until someone points Cathy out to her. If she were younger still, it would eat at her to know that she couldn’t just spot her daughter like that and know it’s her. But she’s had five of her own and they keep taking on every spare baby they can, so she’s accepted that she’s a perfectly fine mother in the ways that matter, and that if Cathy wants Fiona to know she’s there, she’ll tell her. 

Which she does, when she sits down by Fiona while she’s guarded one night and takes her helmet off. The motion’s quick and before Fiona can even recognize what’s happened, the helmet’s off and she looks over, and… and she sees her daughter’s face for the first time in a decade. 

Cathy’s not looking at her. She’s looking in the distance, holding her helmet in her lap and though she’s trying to hide it, Fiona knows that expression. She’s seen it on Connor’s face a thousand times. She’s seen it on her own. Cathy’s afraid. 

God… how many times had she walked past Fiona, intending to do this, and not doing it? There’s Sisters here all the time now and there’s always one or two lingering nearby. Sometimes they sit with Fiona and keep her company when it’s her turn on watch. How many times did Cathy sit beside her, not telling her mother who she was, trying to work up the courage to take her helmet off?

Poor girl… 

Fiona’s always been more direct than her husband, and she looks over at Cathy. There’s no surprises her. Her eyes glow ever so slightly. Her skin is pale to the point of green, but not quite. Her freckles must be what’s making her look greener, coppery. She’s still got her red hair, though it’s an absolute mess. It looks just like some other of the Sisters she’s seen, who all seem to like to wear their hair raggedy and wild. 

She looks a little like her dad, and a little like Fiona, and a lot like an O’Malley. 

“Your dad was worrying they did something to your face.” Fiona says, because blunt and direct has always been her way, same as her mother’s way. “But you look perfectly fine. Just like I remember.” 

Cathy scoffs a little and Fiona just reaches out, linking her arm with her daughter like they used to do, when Cathy was young. She gives her a squeeze, and she turns her eyes away when she can see Cathy starting to tear up. 

ENJOY SOME INDULGENT FIC ABOUT BLOODSTONE 

FUSION

Quartz is plentiful and cheap. Some varieties are more precious of course - Jasper is a kind of Quartz but stronger, fierce, better for battle. Carnelian is Quartz, but it’s better made, perfect for the archivists and the historians. But regular Quartz? Cheap. Weak. Disposable.

Moganite is rarer, but it’s just another form of Quartz when you get down to it. The dry planet that produced Moganite made it rarer than plain Quartz, but rarer is not better. Rarer is not stronger or faster or better. It just means a unique failure to produce something useful.

So when it comes time to run the experiment, it seems right to use gems that won’t be missed if it goes badly. After all, what does it matter if two might be killed in an experiment when their deaths are a drop in an ocean? They could waste a thousand of their kind and still not matter, so long as it turns the tide of this endless war. Fusion is as weak as the gems that use it, as likely to fail in battle as it is to succeed. But what if two gems could be one? What if something could be more than just a fusion, longer lasting, permanent?

So, they start with two: Quartz and Moganite. Two gems into one, just to see if it can be done. If they die, then they can try again, and again, and again until they succeed, or until they find some other way to do it.

They meet moments before the experiment, politely exchanging names while the Peridots do the finishing checks to the equipment, and the Onyx running the experiment is busy greeting the observers.

“Quartz,” she says, awkwardly shaking hands with her soon-to-be-permanent addition. Moganite is a milky white to Quartz’s clearer white, and all Quartz can do is wonder what colour they’ll be when this is done. White? Or something stranger?

“Moganite. It’s… it’s nice to meet you.” Moganite is polite and clearly afraid. Quartz hopes she hides her own fear better than Moganite does. She’s terrified, but there’s nothing she can do about it. Quartz hasn’t decided what’s worse - dying during this? Or being living proof of how weak and useless she was that she needed another gem to stand tall?

She still hasn’t made up her mind when they’re ordered to take their spots in the saw. Moganite trembles and Quartz readies herself to do this with dignity. She refuses to be the gem that’s remembered for breaking down and weeping. But once the whine of the saw starts up, all she cares about is having it end.

When Chalcedony wakes, two gems made into one, she is delighted to find that she was wrong to be afraid. Why should anyone fear this? The pain was worth it for this moment of understanding.  She’s more than just a fusion, more than a passing conversation, a relationship with a start and and end. She’s a lecture that never ends, a love that lasts forever! What isn’t wonderful about that? What isn’t amazing about that?

INCLUSION

Red Jasper hasn’t even finished getting through the doorway when two pairs of arms grab onto her, picking her up and squeezing her tight to a long, broad chest. “You’re here! I’m so glad to meet you!”

“Uh, thanks.” She mutters, looking at the gem- the fusion in front of her. It’s hard to hide how she feels about this gem. Only her orders (and her smaller size) are keeping her from planting two feet in the middle of the quartz-thing’s chest and pushing back.

“I’m Chalcedony. Do you prefer Jasper or Red Jasper? This is going to be wonderful, just you wait and see! You have no idea how good it’s going to feel!” Chalcedony smiles broadly, like this isn’t a horrible perversion of everything they’ve ever known. The mixed gem is right there, staring Red Jasper right in the eye. She’s going to be part of that soon, and she can feel her hands clenching up into fists.

“Red Jasper.” Is the reluctantly given answer to Chalcedony’s question. What she wouldn’t give to be a regular Jasper but… that was impossible. The Kindergarden had produced many powerful gems, but it had also made Red Jasper. She pushes a little on Chalcedony’s chest, figuring that she’s been held long enough that she can get mad about it. “Put me down.”

“Oh! Sorry. Here-” she sets Red Jasper down. Chalcedony crouches down, putting one set of arms on her knees and using the other set to gesture. “Sorry, I’m just so excited to join with you! We’re going to be so powerful together! Have you ever fused before? Maybe we should do it at least once, before the procedure, so you won’t be so nervous! Can you dance? Should I just hold you?“

Urg. Every Quartz Red Jasper has ever met has been obnoxiously forward, and it seems merging two types together makes someone who’s downright insufferable. And this is who Red Jasper is going to be permanently fused with. It’s not right and it’s not fair, but this was never her choice.

And this is the only way Red Jasper might ever see battle. If this works, if you can fuse many types of gems together and make something that can’t be split by stress or fear or any other individual flaw, then they’ll be a powerful weapon. They’ll be a world wrecker. It’ll be worth it, to be something powerful, like Red Jasper was meant to be before she cooked wrong. That, or she’ll die in this experiment, but at this point, death’s better than returning to her status as a defective gem. Red Jasper is too small to fight, too weak to do anything but record battles and report back. A real Jasper would be down there fighting.

Two weak quartz types had made a Chalcedony. A third should make a proper gem, a real fighting machine. Something worthy.

“Well?” Chalcedony asks again, two big beaming smiles on that huge face.

“I’m already spending the rest of my life stuck in you,” Red Jasper growls out, feeling good when she sees the twin smiles on Chalcedony fall away, “I want to enjoy my last day separate.”It’s the last thing that does before the Inclusion, and she’s glad she’s got that to hold onto when the sawing starts.

When Bloodstone wakes, everything is different.

It’s a success of course. Three gems merged into one, and even better, Bloodstone is infinitely more stable than Chalcedony! Two arms, two legs, two eyes, one mouth, and one singular gem in her chest.

The Peridots all shake hands and the Onxy is given the highest praises, and Bloodstone’s paraded before a whole list of dignitaries. She shows off her weapon, also simplified by the second inclusion, a single blade with a handle, shorter than a sword, perfect for hacking.

Bloodstone’s big, but not unwieldy, perfect for a transport ship. It’s not enough though. It’s still not enough. They need something bigger - but she’s a good start, a great base to keep building on. There’s talk about the next inclusion, the addition of a more powerful gem, the building of a master weapon. If they can keep Bloodstone stable as she enters the next stage of permanent fusion, then they’ll have something truly intelligent and deadly to set loose on the battlefield.

For her part, Bloodstone pays very little attention to the discussion. She is occupied with herself. Her stone is so unique now, pitch black and flecked with red. They never told her the color would change so much. They thought she should be green and red, but the stone turned out dark instead, flecked like a strange night sky.

When she was still Chalcedony, she had been so chatty. Now she likes to sit and listen instead, speaking only when the moment feels right. There’s a confidence in her that no longer shivers or quakes, no matter who she stands before. They’ve had to speak to other tri-fusions, but they talk about things like compromise, balance, maintaining unity. Bloodstone does not feel torn. She does not feel disagreement. There is only a single, strong confident attitude that pervades every aspect of her. There are no individual voices - only one single, strong voice that speaks alone. This is her body, her mind, no one but her inside of it.

She should worry about what will happen when they add another gem and she has to find her balance, but she can’t find it in her to worry. Somehow, she knows it’ll all work out. They could add a dozen more gems, and she’ll remain, a single, strong voice that unifies them all. She’s certain of it.

INCLUSION 2

When Bloodstone wakes up, she knows it’s all gone wrong. The lights have gone out and she can hear shrieking from one of the Peridots. Her body aches and she pulls herself off the floor, trying to figure out what happened. She remembers the Diamonds on the screens, watching from their respecting fleet ships and homeworld locations. And she remembers meeting the Aventurine, who had been so small and so frightened of Bloodstone. There was nothing to fear - being together was glorious and wonderful, she’d understand soon.

But- they hadn’t fused. Instead, Yellow Diamond had asked for a demonstration, proof that Bloodstone couldn’t defuse. She’d done that demonstration a dozen times before, and this had been no different, reaching out to grasp the prongs on the Seperator, feeling the buzz and the sharp shock of pain as it flowed through her body, and then…

Nothing after that. She heads towards the screaming. It’s coming from a supply closet, the door badly scratched up but not broken. Bloodstone fumbles with the lock until it disengages and the door opens. There’s a Peridot lying inside, leg extenders twisted and shattered. When the Peridot looks at Bloodstone, she stops screaming, eyes going wide with confusion and then with fear.

“Close it!! CLOSE IT!” She shrieks and curls herself against the opposite wall. All of her quivers,  legs clattering. Bloodstone shuts the door and leaves the technician to cower. She follows the trail of destruction instead, following her way back to the lab.

It’s as she passes through the doorway that she becomes aware of something else: Bloodstone’s bigger than she was when the day started. She was sizable then, though smaller than most average tri-fusions. Now her head brushes the ceiling and her arms feel substantially longer. Her skirts are longer, brushing the ground where before they rose above by a few inches. But she still feels like herself. There’s no new mind within hers to give her new memories and thoughts, no new mind to take her place and make some new gem. She’s still only Bloodstone… Just bigger.

The are no gems in the halls. There are the remains of equipment, and here and there, she sees the mangled remains of equipment worn by the technicians. But no gemstones on the ground, nothing cracked or shattered even, nothing waiting to regenerate. Just the remains of some vast thing…

Bloodstone steps through the shattered doors of the lab and into the wreck. The damage is worse here. The fusing equipment has been smashed to pieces, crushed by some impossible force. The Seperator lies on the floor, broken in two. The screens are broken, all except one.

“-quarantine has been unsuccessful. Prepare attack ships for orbital bombardment.” Yellow Diamond orders someone off screen. Her eyes are turned away. Bloodstone stands before the display screen, studying Yellow Diamond’s face. She seems annoyed. And then, she glances back at the lab. When her eyes fall on Bloodstone, the annoyance falls away, revealing for half a second a blip of shock… and then surging back into irritation. “What’s the meaning of this?”

“Yellow Diamond.” She presses her arm to her chest, bowing slightly. Bloodstone has never made a direct report to anyone this high up before. But she’s not afraid. “I can’t answer your question. I only just woke up a few moments ago. Is the thing that caused this damage still here?”

Yellow Diamond stares at Bloodstone.

Bloodstone waits an appropriate amount of time and prompts Yellow Diamond again, in case the connection is bad. “Yellow Diamond. Are you able to hear me? There was a Peridot hiding in a supply closet. I can fetch her to give a report.”

Yellow Diamond simply continues to stare. Then, she starts to laugh, and won’t stop, even when the other gems come to see what it is that has her laughing so hard.

Bloodstone drops her arm and decides to go get the Peridot. Maybe she can explain this.

EXPERIMENT 1 - 24

Her new quarters are a containment unit with walls thick enough to contain her, which is good, because she needs to be contained. Blue Diamond showed her the footage, once the site (and Bloodstone) were secured. It had been enlightening.

No wonder she had grown bigger. She had devoured half a dozen other gems. Bloodstone has no memory of the moments between the pain of the of the Seperator, and the moment she woke. Instead, she has the footage showing her body shake, and start to shatter, and then-

And then change. Her form fell apart, but she didn’t separate - couldn’t separate thanks to the inclusions - and in her place, there had been a thing. A mass of writing spikes and oozing, creeping tentacles. She had attacked the room and devoured anything she could grasp. The shambling horror had make her way through the room, down the corridor, chasing after any gem that moved.

Bloodstone can’t remember any of it, or the gems she devoured. Their memories are locked off from her own. But she’s taller. She’s got more mass. And she’s still somehow Bloodstone, still herself.

She hasn’t be killed yet. Bloodstone suspects that they must have tried already but… maybe it went wrong. It’s hard to tell the passing days in here, but she’s seen how skitterish the staff has become, how some seem to be missing when she wakes after sudden, unexpected sleeps. How she’s grown a few inches. How her weight has subtly changed.

There are experiments. She participates of course. Why wouldn’t she? She’s as loyal as ever. Maybe even more so, now that she’s made up of so many loyal gems. So, for three diamonds and a host of scientists, she does as they ask. She fuses, and they find she’s still able to do that and to unfuse… so long as it doesn’t last too long. The longer she’s fused, the easier it is to stay together. The longer she’s fused, the more she starts to assert herself again, extra eyes and extremities fading, her size shifting, her body once again reasserting itself, until she’s Bloodstone only, but with just a pinch more mass.

She keeps those memories. The gems who fuse with her willingly (or unwillingly) and who stay with her, she remembers them. The ones she devours when she’s not herself, they never become a part of her. They remain mute and memoryless.

Bloodstone expects this is where she will spend the rest of her life. They can’t let her out, not without putting the homeworlds in danger. It’s fine though. She’s perfectly content here.

All of her feels content at all times. There’s a special peace that comes when she absorbs a new gem. She tells the Onxy that. She tells everyone how it is. It’s only right she does. She tries to describe the feelings to them, the endless peace and the confidence, the sheer happiness that consumes her. One of them asks if Bloodstone misses her possessions, but of course she doesn’t. Why would she need anything other than herself now? She’s as happy here in this warm, safe cage, as she would be out there in any other home or dwelling. Wherever she is, she’s home. Wherever she goes, she’s happy.

That seems to disturb them more than her admission of not remembering her schisms. Poor lonely gems. One day, that will change for them.

One day, they’ll all understand just how safe and good it feels to be fused forever. She’s sure of it. She just needs to wait for them to come around.

EXILE

They come to her cell one day after a battery of tests. The guards lead her through empty hallways to a waiting transport ship. She follows and takes a seat in the provided chair. They’re going to take her to be disposed of. Shame, but it’s fine. It just isn’t time yet.

Three screens are extended in front of her. Yellow Diamond. Blue Diamond. White Diamond. She raises her arm to her chest to salute them.

Yellow Diamond speaks, while the other two silently observe, as is their usual preference. “Bloodstone, our experimentation has come to an end. Onxy assures us that you are as stable as you are ever capable of being. You can’t be allowed to stay here.”

“Of course.” She agrees. That would be a terrible idea. All it would take would be a single incident and she might consume an terrifying swath of the Homeworld. All those minds, lost forever to her. “Have you discovered a safe disposal method?”

“You’re not going to be disposed of.” Blue Diamond speaks up. It’s the first Bloodstone’s ever heard her speak. “You are to be given command of a transport ship. You will leave Gem controlled space and await summons.”

“There’s still a use for you. Some planets are… more troublesome than others. We might still need you.” Yellow Diamond explains. “For now, you are to stay away. Your absence ensures our safety.”

“Of course.” Bloodstone echoes and salutes again. Alive still… and in command of a ship. To be sent away, and to be used when necessary. She can’t stop the smile on her face from coming forward. “Thank you.”

“Stay out of Gem space.” Blue Diamond says again, insisting on it, and Bloodstone nods. She lapses back into silence. White Diamond says nothing at all. She just studies Bloodstone.

“You’re being provided with a crew. If you need to. Feed. They should sustain you.” Yellow Diamond makes her way through what must be a truly distasteful sentence. Bloodstone just nods, and smiles, and keeps on smiling even after the screens go dark.

The guards on either side of her stand so very still and tense. But they have no reason to fear. She’s in completely control of herself at the moment. And what a wonderful piece of news she’s been given. A ship of her own to command. Quartz and Moganite could have scarcely expected such an honor, not low quality gems like them. Now, all together, the mass that’s made Bloodstone will be captain of her own ship.

She folds her hands in her lap and waits eagerly to be sent into exile. The Diamonds will be served. And with time, she knows they’ll come around to see how good and useful she can be. One day, maybe centuries from now, but one day, they’ll come and join her fusion willingly. And then, won’t that be a wonderful day? All gems united, and happy, and perfectly content, in a fusion that will never end.

Sean watches weightlifting championships and turkish wrestling. 

Eliza watches men’s workout routines/total body workouts and videos of men picking up and throwing square bales/other large objects.

He harems all of them. 

Monster.