Greg replaced the filter clips and the oil cap and then slammed the van's bonnet shut with the strong satisfaction of a job well done. And then Pearl was there.

"Greg."

He was unable to stop his undignified squawk of startlement, or the sudden racing of his heart as she stared across at him, stern and cool and alien. He cleared his throat and tried for something a little more like English.

And a little less high-pitched.

“Hello, Pearl.”

Maybe it was weird, but he'd always found Pearl, possibly the most human-looking of the Gems after Rose, the most intimidating of them. Even before, well, before Steven appeared on the horizon. Garnet was pretty alien sometimes, but she was also steady, calm and predictable in her own way. Amethyst really just seemed like a big kid, half the time, albeit one who didn't quite know her own strength. She could actually be pretty good company. Pearl, though, was one of those guys who'd gone off to war and come back not quite... right. Nice enough, in her own way (at least, nice enough to people provided they weren't Greg), but always slightly on edge, nerves strung tight, watching for threats. Moody. And dangerous. He'd seen her fight.

But then Pearl's face relaxed into a small, almost nervous smile and he relaxed too. She'd been trying, the last little while, really, actually trying. Greg had been trying too, but he suspected he didn't have anywhere near as far to reach. As much as she made him nervous, he'd always wanted to know more about this gem, who'd been such an integral part of Rose's life for so long. Maybe even be friends with her some day. For most of the time he’d known her, however, she’d just wanted him gone.

Greg realised that they’d been staring at each other. Or, at least, he’d been staring at Pearl. Her eyes seemed to be unfocused, as if she were staring through him at something only she could see.

"Um." He rubbed the back of his neck. "Is there something I can... help you with..?"

The question seemed to startle Pearl out of whatever daze she was in.

"What?" she blinked. "Oh. Yes, actually. I wanted-"

Pearl stopped abruptly, a deep frown creasing her forehead, around her gem. She looked down towards the ground, her lips moving silently, like she was arguing with herself, the way Garnet did sometimes. But then the moment passed, and she seemed to come to some kind of a decision. Her head snapped back up, and her eyes found his, unwavering and determined.

"Greg, I want- I need your advice."

Greg blinked. That was a first.

"Um. Ok. What about?"

Her eyes darted around the carwash yard warily, and, to his amazement, a light blush coloured her cheeks.

"It's... personal."

"Oh. I see. Well then-"

What on Earth would send Pearl to him, Greg Universe, of all people, for advice? They had a History. He could hardly refuse.

Greg led her around to the back of his van and held the door open for her.

"- step into my office."

She climbed into the back of the van with barely a sniff of disdain at the mess, and found a spot to sit, legs elegantly folded beneath her, just behind the driver’s seat. He closed the van door, and made himself comfortable on his mattress at the other end of the van’s bay. Keeping a professional distance - or at least out of immediate spearing range.

"So,” he said. “Dr. Greg is in. What can I help you with?"

Again Pearl seemed to take a moment to steel herself, taking in and releasing a deep breath.

"What do you wish Rose had told you before you were together?” she said in a rush. “While you were together?"

Greg blinked. He wasn't sure what he'd expected, but it wasn’t this. Pearl? Asking him about how he and Rose had courted? Where was this coming from?

"Wait, wait, wait, hold up. I think I'm missing some backstory here. Why don't you start at the beginning."

She looked down, suddenly very interested in her hands. A light blue blush spread across her cheeks again.

"Do you remember a few months ago,” the words were as soft and slow as her earlier question had been rushed, “when you couldn't go to the rock show with Amethyst? And Steven and I went instead?"

"Yeah. I had to play cards with Barb and Vidalia. I lent you guys the Dondai. It got impounded and I had to wire over money to get it out."

"Yes, yes. Well... You see, at the concert, I... met. Someone."

It took several seconds for this to process.

No. Way.

"You met someone?"

He winced at the unfortunate stress and incredulity in his tone, but Pearl didn't seem to notice, still engrossed in her hands.

"Yes. A girl. She's... tall, and strong, and has the most wonderful hair. She changes it, constantly. We’ve been… well, I suppose the term you humans would use would be ‘dating’.”

Thinking back, Steven had seemed unusually pleased the next time Greg had seen him, despite the problems getting the car back. And he'd asked if he could buy a new cell phone for Pearl, but wouldn't elaborate why. But still, this was Pearl. Something about it all refused to compute.

"You’re dating a human girl ? That you met at a rock concert . Really?”

Greg stopped abruptly, possessed by sudden urge to see this unicorn for himself.

“Can I meet her?"

Her head snapped back up and she treated him to the longest, oldest, most worldly look he had ever seen. And then, to his utter astonishment, her lips twitched, her cheeks coloured again, and she began to laugh. Not the titters, hidden behind a hand that he'd seen before, or the arch, mocking laugh sometimes sent in his direction, but a proper belly-laugh, head thrown back, eyes closed.

"No offense Greg," she said managed between howls of laughter, "but... no! My stars, no! Not in a million years! A million years!"

She dissolved back into laughter again, and he instantly saw, was caught by the absurdity of the whole situation. For decades, now, Pearl had disliked Greg because she felt he’d taken Rose away from her, after Pearl had loved Rose for so long. And now, after making a concerted effort to put all of that past behind her, Greg had just asked to meet Pearl’s new girl.

It took a few minutes for them to laugh themselves out. Greg sat back, sides aching. Pearl wiped away tears. The atmosphere in the van felt better, immediately. More relaxed.

They could talk about this.

"So, there's this girl," he prompted when they’d both calmed enough.

"Yes."

"And you met this girl at a-”

He couldn't help it: he began to giggle. Pearl, of all people, picking up someone at a rock show. Heck, Pearl just going to a rock show was novel enough, let alone her walking away with a date. A human date,

“- at a garage rock show?" he managed.

Instead of being offended, as he half-expected would happen, Pearl's eyes shone mischievously, seemingly in on the joke herself.

"Yes." She leaned forward conspiratorially, voice dropping to a whisper. "She rides a motorcycle . And has piercings. I’m told that’s quite avant-garde . These days, at least."

"A motorcycle, you say? Well, of course she rides a motorcycle. And has piercings. And likes rock music." And liked rocks too, presumably. Wow did he and Pearl have the same type. "And this motor-cycle-riding rocker chick makes your heart go 'boom'?"

She cocked her head at him, nonplussed.

"I don't have a heart, Greg. You know that. And human hearts are muscles and-”

He waved her (undoubtedly lengthy) explanation away.

"I mean, she makes you-"

What did gems do? They didn’t have hearts to skip beats, and you couldn't get stomach butterflies when you didn't have a stomach. When Rose had tried to describe the ways love and attraction manifested for gems, she was always kind of vague, like she was searching for words that didn’t exist for an idea she wasn’t certain she fully understood.

"You feel-" Greg tried again. "You like her. A lot."

"Well, obviously, yes. I like her."

"And things are getting serious?"

No, that was the wrong question to ask. If anything, Pearl was serious about virtually everything, and she wouldn’t be talking to him, here, now, if she didn’t see some kind of a future in it. How long had she and the unnamed girl been dating? He quickly did the math in his head. Call it three months, maybe four. Long enough for it to probably be seen as getting serious by the human involved too.

"No, no wait, forget I asked that," he said, before she could reply. "Of course it’s serious.

“So, what did you want to ask me?"

She sighed and sat back, and the humour fled her voice in favour of softness.

"I wanted to know what you wish Rose had told you. About us. About her. Before you got involved."

He inhaled and let out a long, slow breath, and sat back himself, the metal side of the van warm against his back through his shirt.

Geeze, that was a big question. There was so much, even now, that he wished he knew. Had known. There were things he would have done differently, if he’d known then what he knew now. Especially when it came to Steven.

His hands reflexively reached for and found his guitar, pulling it into his lap. It always helped him think. Especially when things took a turn to the deep and deeply emotional.

"She know's you're an alien, right?"

A quick tuning check, and a minute adjustment or two, purely by ear.

"Yes," Pearl said. "I've explained that to her, but I don't think she fully understands it yet. She actually thought I was joking at first."

"I can buy that. I wasn't one hundred percent sold on the idea when I found out, and I saw the warp pad. And met Garnet. And Amethyst. And you."

He absently strummed out a few chords, searching for the right sound, the right feeling.

"Has she met the others yet? Garnet and Amethyst?"

Pearl shook her head emphatically.

"No. She's seen Amethyst and Steven with me, but not actually met them, as such. And I’ve told her a bit about us and the Temple but,” she sighed, heavily, “honestly, I'm not sure I'm ready to introduce them to her. Everyone’s already making an enormous fuss about it. Even Garnet. Especially Garnet."

There. Start at C, progress up through the minors to F minor. Back to C, A, D, G. Repeat. A bit melancholy, but a bit bright too. His fingers picked out a simple tune, more or less of their own accord.

Of course the other two and Steven were making an enormously big deal of things. He didn't know about the two new gems out in the barn, but Garnet, Amethyst and Steven wanted Pearl to be happy. They'd mean well - the Gems almost always meant well - but between Garnet's future vision, Amethyst's lack of a filter and Steven's (if Greg was being one hundred percent honest about his son) compulsive nosiness, he could understand why Pearl might want to keep her motorcycle-riding human rocker chick and the Gems apart for a while. It was a big change for her, something new and probably a bit frightening. And Rose had always said that Pearl was very sensitive, sensitive to change and what others thought of her.

Rose had wanted Pearl to be happy too. And to not have that happiness bound up to and dependent on one person. Pearl had been through a lot, she’d said. The Diamond Authority, Greg had later learned, operated with some kind of caste system. Really rigid. There were warrior gems and advisor gems, builder gems, inventor gems, maintenance gems, philosopher gems; gems for every kind of job you could think of. And Pearls were servant gems. The way Rose had explained it, Greg had wondered if the better word wasn’t 'slave'. At one point, Rose had literally owned Pearl. Other gems had owned Pearl before that. Other gems could shatter Pearls on a whim, and they had notoriously short lifespans as a result.

It was the kind of knowledge that made him sick. But, he supposed, it also made him more understanding. For all their History, he'd like it if Pearl was happy too.

Greg's fingers stilled on the strings, the last note hanging in the air. He laid the guitar aside again, and focused his full attention on Pearl.

"I think the hardest thing for me was finding out everything piecemeal," he said. "Maybe not everything, not at first, but the big things. What your Homeworld was like. What you did there. Why you rebelled and came to Earth. And what happened during the war. Especially at the end. Tell her about that. Even the ugly bits. The bits that are scary."

Pearl sat silently, still, without even the appearance of breathing.

"I think Rose didn't tell me a lot of things at first because she thought she was protecting me," Greg continued. "And she didn't want me to worry. I'll be honest, some of the stuff she did tell me was frightening. Man, I had nightmares for weeks after finding out about the Kindergartens. But not having the whole story's way worse, and it made things way harder than they needed to be sometimes. It's a lot like-"

The Gems didn't always do so well with metaphors, he'd learned. Pearl was one of the worst, the most literal. But there was one thing that might get the point across.

"It's a lot like coming across a half-finished puzzle, and not being able to find the missing pieces or the box."

When Pearl winced at the very idea of such a thing, he knew he'd struck metaphor gold.

"You can guess what it's supposed to look like from what's already there,” he continued, “but you'll never know for sure unless you can find the box or all of the missing pieces. Every now and then you'll stumble on a missing piece, or someone will hand you one, and the picture will be a bit more complete. Or you'll find a piece you think is for the puzzle, only it's for a different puzzle altogether, one you didn't even know existed. And then you have to try to finish that puzzle too.”

“But if you don’t find the pieces,” Pearl said slowly, testing her understanding, “you’ll never complete the puzzle and see the final picture. You’ll always wonder what was on the missing pieces. You might even get frustrated, and throw the whole thing out.”

Greg beamed.

“Exactly!”

Pearl, however, frowned.

“So… Rose was the puzzle?”

“No, she wasn’t the puzzle. The puzzle here is the relationship . We were working on it together. The more pieces we had, the easier it was.”

Pearl fell silent again for a time, evidently processing this.

“I see. I think. That makes sense in a way. And I suppose I could tell her more about Homeworld. And the Rebellion.”

Her eyes grew distant and sad for a moment. Painful memories, Greg knew. But then she sighed, and refocused on him.

“I can try, at least. Was there anything else?”

“That I wanted to know?” he asked. “Back then?”

He gave it some thought when she nodded.

Homeworld and the war were he keystones. You couldn’t understand the Gems, all of their quirks and frailties and strengths, without that context. It was a good starting place, and talking about all of that would lead into other, necessary topics for Pearl's mystery girl. But the Gems, Pearl in particular, missed a lot of human context, human culture. Steven seemed to be helping with some of that, but there were still massive gaps. Even Rose, who’d been interested in humanity for thousands of years, got things spectacularly wrong sometimes.

“I can’t think of anything right now, but if I do, I’ll let you know. Though, actually, I do have some more general advice for you, if you’re interested.”

“Go on…”

“I don’t know exactly what you want out of this relationship you’ve got going on, Pearl, but if you know what that is, you need to be really upfront and clear about it. And you need to encourage her to be too. Because I think that the expectations for a relationship can be really different for gems and for humans. Especially when it comes to-.”

He stopped abruptly as his brain caught up with his mouth. Oh geeze . And if she asked him to clarify, he had to bring it up. Because Pearl couldn't even deal with eating or drinking .

“Especially when it comes to…?” she prompted.

He closed his eyes, as if that would somehow make the coming words easier.

It didn’t.

“Especially when it comes to stuff like sex."

"Sex?"

Pearl cocked her head at him curiously, and Greg could feel his cheeks heat. Never, never in his life, did he think he'd end up explaining the birds and the bees to a millennia-old sentient alien space rock.

Again.

He cleared his throat. Just plow through it, Greg. One foot in front of the other.

"Well, you see, humans have evolved-"

"I know what 'sex' is, Greg,” she interrupted. “I just don't see how it relates to me. Gems don't reproduce in that way."

If Greg blushed any harder, he was pretty sure you'd be able to fry an egg on the top of his head.

"Yeah, um, well, but you , a gem, are dating a human . And humans adults do reproduce that way. And they also, er, recreate that way. Not all of them," he hastened to to add, "but a lot of them. It's about bonding, and trust. And, sometimes, just for... well, fun. Because it feels good."

Pearl stared at him blankly for a long moment, long enough that Greg began to worry that he was going to have to spell it out. But then her eyes went wide, her hand flew up to cover her mouth, and she turned so blue you could have mistaken her for Amethyst in a bad light.

"Oh! "

"Yeah."

Her hand slowly dropped back to her lap, eyes with it

"Oh. I... I'll admit I hadn't thought about that Oh my."

"Yeah."

"Oh my," she repeated.

Greg rubbed the back of his neck again. It felt just as hot as his face.

"Yeah. It was something that Rose and I had to work through. It took a bit of time and a lot of communication, but we got there in the end."

Pearl's head jerked back up, and she looked at him as if suddenly seeing him for the very first time. And when her expression of embarrassed shock dissolved into one of incredulous horror, he knew exactly what she was thinking.

"You mean-!? She-!? You-!?"

Greg could only shrug helplessly and try not to be too insulted as she spluttered to a stop. Then she touched her gem and pinched her nose. Eyes closed, she seemed to count under her breath for several seconds.

"You've-" She shuddered minutely before recovering herself. "You've given me a lot to think about. But I think that's enough... advice for one day."

He could only agree, and was even one step ahead of her, already opening the van doors before she finished speaking. He held the door open for her until she’d disembarked, and they were blessedly out of the suddenly stifling van and into the fresh salt air of Beach City in Autumn.

"Thank you, Greg," Pearl said briskly.

"Any time, Pearl," he said, and meant it. "Any time."

She turned to go without another word, and he figured that was that. Expect the unexpected in Beach City, they said, but this was going to be one for the books even so. It seemed like something where even the other Gems wouldn't believe him.

But then Pearl turned back, before he could start to leave himself, and he stopped, puzzled. Again she seemed to hesitate before speaking, but her words, when they came, were clear and certain, her head held high.

"I want you to know that I meant it, Greg. I know we've had our differences in the past. And I know that I haven't always been very," she seemed to struggle to find an appropriate word, "respectful towards you. I appreciate that you're willing to overlook that and talk to me about something like this. Thank you."

To his utter surprise, she reached over and punched him gently, if awkwardly, on the arm.

"Thanks Pearl." He rubbed the spot, feeling the words catch in his throat. "It means a lot to me to hear you say that."

It did. It did at that. Probably more than she realised.

Steven adored and worried for her. Rose had been exactly the same. Greg had wanted the chance to see what they saw in her. Especially what Rose saw in her. He'd wanted to meet the bold, selfless, unconventional gem of a hundred war stories, someone who'd worked to turn her weaknesses into strengths, a former slave who'd shaken an empire to its very foundations. He’d wanted her respect, maybe even her friendship.

If it were any of the other Gems, he probably would have hugged her just then. Instead, remembering the last time he'd tried hugging Pearl, he returned the shoulder punch to her, just as awkwardly.

Baby steps.

They shared a small smile, and if Pearl noticed that his eyes had gone suspiciously glassy, she chose not to comment.

And then, as an afterthought, and because Greg Universe was known to sometimes push his luck, take a risk or two, he gently nudged her in the ribs. Or where her ribs would have been if she were a human.

"So, are you sure I can't meet this mystery woman of yours?" he asked, and waggled his eyebrows.

Pearl rolled her eyes, brushed away his elbow and started back out towards the road, towards the Temple.

"Yes." Her words were brisk but bright. "Quite sure."

"Was that a 'yes, you're quite sure I can meet her'..?" he called after her, grinning.

"Not on your life!" she shouted back, just as cheerily.

"Are you sure? Please?" He raised his voice to shouting. "I'll put a bag over my head! Steven can supervise me! Or Garnet!"

Pearl waved dismissively over her shoulder at him as she reached the sidewalk.

"Only if you want me to cut your still-beating heart out of your frail human chest cavity!"

And Greg laughed, because he was pretty sure she was only sixty percent joking, and because that was one hundred percent Pearl.