“You’re not what I expected at all,” muttered Peridot.

Pearl paused mid-weld. It had been a few days since Peridot’s meltdown, since she’d contacted Yellow Diamond only to have her faith in the Homeworld hierarchy shattered. Garnet had spent a day calming her down, and they’d returned to working on the drill, so things were sort of back to normal, but Peridot had barely spoken to Pearl since. No smug superiority, no plaintive whining about her ideas, no backhanded dismissals of her ability (which had actually been few and far between since the robot fight, to Peridot’s credit. The little gremlin was trying, and Pearl appreciated that.)



No, Peridot had just…stared.



Not while she thought Pearl was watching, of course. As soon as Pearl glanced in Peridot’s direction, she’d pretend she’d been completely engrossed in her work, but nobody had ever taught Peridot how to be subtle. It had really started to grate, but Garnet had asked her to give Peridot time to adjust, and so…well, she had.



But now Peridot was talking to her again.



Hummm.



Well, might as well.

“We usually weren’t, back during the war,” she said. "You’re not the first–“



Peridot cut her off. "No, no,” she said, waving a screwdriver at nothing in particular. "Your team was mostly what I expected. You’re strange, but I expected strange. You’re…crazy. Illogical. I knew that, sort of.“ She put the tool down, sighing. "Jasper got a better briefing than I did, but she never could keep her mouth shut about anything, and…she was there, I mean, during.”



Pearl crossed her arms, leaning back against the drill’s cockpit. "Well, I guess that didn’t fit with whatever you’d heard about us back Home before all this, then?“



Peridot didn’t say anything, just…stared, the way she had been for the last few days. After a moment, she narrowed her eyes. "What do you think they tell us about the Earth rebellion on Homeworld?”



Pearl shrugged. Probably…some self-gratifying propaganda? "I’m sure it’s some cautionary tale about rebellion and how many pieces you get shattered into.“



Peridot barked a laugh at that. "Nnnnnope. You wanna know what they tell us?”



After a moment’s silence, Pearl cocked an eyebrow.



Peridot faltered, then…“…Nothing.”



Pearl opened her mouth to ask, then…closed it without a word. Nothing?



“Officially, there was some sort of…of kerfluffle, about what Earth would be for, and Pink Diamond got shattered in a terraforming accident, and the Earth was declared useless. I was sent to repair the Galaxy Warp and then leave. I wasn’t supposed to learn anything else, I wasn’t supposed to get pulled from my normal duties, I wasn’t supposed to…” Peridot shoved herself down off of the table she’d been sitting on and began to pace, weaving around the scattered machinery they’d been working on. "…I wasn’t supposed to know anything. Officially,“ and she paused, at that, and looked Pearl right in the eye, "the Crystal Gems did not exist.”



It made a sad sort of sense, Pearl supposed. Better not to let the idea of rebellion survive. But…



“…Wait, surely there are other Gems besides Jasper who were around during the war?”



Peridot shrugged. "Plenty. The high-grade gems, they keep to themselves. I’m not sure what happens to them if they talk about it. Low-class gems, though? If they told anyone, they got ground to dust, and anyways they all got…split off. Quarantined, I guess. There’s a team of Rubies that gets sent on classified missions here and there, there’s some Turquoises that got stuck in a written-off deep-space mining rig, I think there’s a pile of Amethysts on some lost-the-paperwork Pink Diamond installation somewhere. The point,“ she said, shaking her head and fixing Pearl with her stare again, "is that the Diamonds have done everything they can to keep the idea of the Crystal Gems out of our heads. There’s still stories about you, though.”



“I thought they shattered any gem who talked about the rebellion?”



“No, not–” Peridot threw up her hands. "Not the rebellion. You.“



It was Pearl’s turn to stare. "Me.”



“Yep.”



“That’s ridiculous. Why would they tell stories about me, when everything else was suppressed?”



Peridot heaved herself backwards, back up onto her table. "They don’t know they’re doing it. It’s not…“ she toyed with an exposed piece of circuitry for a moment, searching for the right word. ”…Historical. It’s more…back when you were new, did we like to mess with freshly-made Gems by telling them…stories?“



Pearl smiled softly, losing herself in the memory. "We did. I always liked the one about the gemless ghost who came for disobedient Pearls. No two stories could agree on what kind of Gem she was, though.”



Peridot fidgeted with the circuit board, running her fingers across a cluster of primitive human capacitors over and over. "We still have that one. We know what kind of Gem comes for you, though. It’s a…a Pearl.“



Pearl’s jaw dropped, but Peridot didn’t give her space to speak. "On the back end of the most boring solar cycles, when the local star dipped behind the planet we were orbiting, the other Peridots and I would swap stories with whatever Quartz had been assigned to guard us. The first time I heard the story was from an Ametrine, and,” she clenched the circuit board tighter, “and she told us how when she was fresh from the soil she’d been warned that if she disobeyed her Agate, the ghost-Gem would come for her. She was a Pearl, you see, a Pearl who’d refused to do what her owner said, and, and her owner had had her ground up and ordered a new one, but that didn’t end the Pearl, she came back…some of the Quartzes said that she came for you if you didn’t do what you were told. Some said that she came for you if you just did a poor job. Some said she’d crack you and leave you under your workstation as a warning for your replacement. Some said she’d carve you to little bits, m-make you like her–”



There was a crack, and Peridot froze, the circuit board snapped in half in her hands. Neither of them spoke for a moment, until Peridot breathed in, deeply, and continued. "…The stories that scared me the most, though, were the ones where she’d come for you for no reason at all. No way to plan for it, no way to stop her. She’d just…pick you. And then you were done for.“



Pearl nodded, her fond recollections shattered. It hadn’t been that pleasant a memory, after all. "That…sounds like the stories we used to tell each other, yes…”



Peridot looked at the circuit board for a moment, then tossed it aside and just…stared at her hands. "But ours were different. They were always, always about a Pearl. They were always…“ and Peridot’s eyes rose to meet Pearl’s again, ”…about you.“



Before Pearl could try to argue, Peridot pushed herself down from the table again, and strode over to her. "You! Just…when Jasper told me about you, it all made sense. We’d forgotten who you were, after all this time, but we remembered what you were. The renegade Pearl, who hunted battle-hardened Quartzes for sport. The renegade Pearl who stood at the right hand of the traitorous Rose Quartz. The renegade Pearl who…” Peridot had reached Pearl, now, her fear forgotten, and she was angrily poking Pearl in the chest. "Who, who, you! You were real! All those lonely nights where some horrible, illogical part of me was terrified that you’d round the corner and, and I’d be found by the next duty rotation and they’d just think to themselves oh, well, I guess she wasn’t careful. Maybe she should have listened to our warnings and done a better job! I did the best job! Always! And always, always, there she was. That horrible ghost-Pearl, come to carve me to splinters. And then I met her!“



Peridot threw her hands in the air. "I met you! You’re nothing like what I expected!” She turned away from Pearl, running her fingers through her hair in exasperation. "And I don’t know what to do about you at all!“