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“I miss her, still.”
*
“She was my entire universe. And the hardest part about Greg was realizing I wasn't that for her. Maybe I never was.”
*
“When Rose gave up her physical form to create Steven, I was so lost. I didn't know what to do, so once Steven started living at the temple, I just… went back to ‘Pearl’ duties. It was… comfortable, I guess. I really do like cleaning. Isn't that pathetic? For all that I try to be my own gem, I really am a Pearl at heart.”
“Just because you started out with something doesn't mean it's not yours.”
*
“She could control me. In ways she couldn't control other gems. I was her personal pearl, so she could tell me to do whatever she wanted and I had to obey. Sometimes, I think the only reason she trusted me is that she knew she could control me.”
*
“She silenced me. After all that time following her, serving her, keeping so many of her secrets, loving her! She trusted me so little that she used her authority over me, the authority she claimed to hate so much, to give me an order I physically couldn't disobey. She was always talking about becoming more than what we were made for, always encouraging me to change, but it was always her choice. She wanted me to fight, so I learned to fight. She wanted to try fusing, so we fused. She wanted to rebel, to leave behind everything and create something new, but she never stopped seeing me as hers . Hers to command, hers to love, and then hers to abandon.
"Sometimes… sometimes I hate her for that.”
*
“There's so much she didn't tell me. I was her most trusted confidant, she kept secrets from everyone but never from me, that's what I thought. But things keep coming up that I never knew. Spinel? This violent pink power? So much of her history that I never knew. Did she hide it because she was ashamed? Because she wanted to move past it and create a new life on Earth? Because she didn't want to deal with the consequences of her actions? There's no way to know. I'll never get to know what she was thinking. And I'm the one dealing with the aftermath, just like before.”
*
“Steven asked me once. ‘Did Rose make you feel like you were nothing?’ I told him 'she made me feel like I was everything.' But… it wasn't my everything. There was nothing that was mine . I was the terrifying renegade pearl. I had to be. …The conflict might have been staged, but it was real war. I had to protect people, I had to keep Rose’s secrets, I had to learn everything and train constantly just to keep up with the quartzes, and I couldn't fail, because if I failed, the whole ruse might fall apart. I had to be everything for her and the revolution, and there was nothing left for me.”
*
“I must have poofed hundreds of times during the war. Maybe thousands. And I couldn't take the time to reform properly, I had to be back as soon as possible, to protect her again. I… I like to take my time with it, now. Now that I have the time. Now that I choose what I look like.
“It took me a long time to let go of the forms she chose. The delicate outfits with frills and lace that were so in fashion on homeworld. Rose changed so much, but I hardly changed at all.”
“You’ve changed now.” My therapist gestures to my outfit. Boxy shoulders, cuffed jeans. Human fashions I’d have never seen myself wearing just a few years ago, fashions I learned from Greg and chose all on my own.
“I suppose I have.”