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Amethyst finally catches Pearl outside of her room while in the kitchen, in the middle of the night, about three days after Ruby comes back, in the week of comparative calm they have before the wedding.
“So,” she says, leaning against the fridge and grinning as Pearl, startled, jumps. “Finally decide to try eating?”
“Of course not,” Pearl responds with a forced nonchalance. “Steven’s been through a lot lately, and I want to be sure he has enough food in the house.”
“Riiight.”
“Speaking of which, if you’re not quiet, you’re going to wake him up!”
As if on cue, Steven’s sleeping form releases a small groan.
“Yeah, I don’t think I’m the one who has to worry about that,” Amethyst scoffs. “But we should talk, so if you wanna go outside or whatever, that’s cool.”
“Fine.” Pearl turns on her heels and walks toward the door, leaving the other Gem to follow in her wake. “Well?” she continues, once Amethyst catches up to her on the porch, purposefully glancing to where Lion lay asleep on the beach instead of back toward her.
“You were Pink Diamond’s Pearl.”
“Yes.” Her cheeks flush blue.
“Since before she got Earth.”
“That is correct.”
“Soooo. You musta been pretty involved in building the Kindergarten, huh.”
“I…” Finally, Pearl turns her head to face Amethyst, then looks away again and bows it.
That’s all the confirmation the other Gem needs. “So all that stuff you always used to say, about the Kindergarten being a mistake, what you told Steven about it being horrible, and the Gems who built it being bad…you were talking about yourself, weren’t you?”
“Did Steven put you up to this?”
“What? No! I’m not talking about this with Steven! He already thinks that this whole mess is on him, and—”
“Whaaat?! This isn’t his fault!”
“Yeah, duh! And it’s not yours either.”
“I…That’s different…I directed the building of the Kindergartens, and—”
“You were Pink’s Pearl. And, like, I know I wasn’t made on Homeworld, and I don’t really get how all this works, but if a Pearl is ordered to do something, doesn’t she have to, like, do it?”
“Yes, but…” Pearl sighs. “It wasn’t just that I was ordered to build the Kindergarten. I wanted to. I felt satisfaction when it was done, and it was the first thing I did for Pink that seemed to make her happy. And that made me happy.”
“Okay, so you were happy you made your Diamond happy like you were supposed to. Big deal.”
“It was a big deal! The Prime Kindergarten was just the beginning! You were on the Moon Base! You saw what the plans for the colony were! How it would have destroyed everything!”
“But it didn’t! Because you stopped it!”
“By causing a war. By bringing Pink to the Kindergarten and the surface and showing her everything that she was going to destroy. By ultimately staging her shattering which caused thousands of Gems—including most of my friends—to be corrupted!”
“I’m sorry, are you saying you wish Rose hadn’t rebelled?!”
“I…Of course not, I just—”
“Because it sounds like you’re saying you regret the War.”
“Of course I regret the War!” Pearl flushes again, turns away. “No…I mean…we just lost so much. And I started it. With the Kindergarten. And bringing Pink there.”
“Okay, we’ll get back to the Kindergarten in a minute, but first: listen to me, P. The War wasn’t your fault. The Kindergarten wasn’t your fault. Everyone has to stop taking the heat for decisions that Rose made!”
“But I—”
“No, Rose was the one who wanted a colony, Rose was the one who decided to invade Earth, and yeah, maybe you managed the whole thing, but Rose was the one that built the Kindergarten, she was the one that wanted to come to the surface, and when she didn’t like what she saw, she was the one who decided to rebel! She was even the one who decided to fake her own shattering!”
“But I wanted to help her.”
“Yeah, okay, and maybe some of that was because you were her Pearl and the rest of it was because of whatever weird relationship you had with her, but—”
“It wasn’t weird! I…We…”
“Yeah, whatever, but the point stands. There’re things you’re responsible for, sure, but you’ve been fulfilling your responsibilities as long as I’ve known you. And I know you feel so close to Rose that sometimes you forget that you two weren’t the same Gem, but—”
“I do not—”
“But you weren’t. And the things that she decided to do, the mess she left behind, is Not. Your. Fault.”
“I…” Pearl sighs and closes her eyes. “Thank you for saying that, Amethyst.”
“But you don’t believe me, do you?”
“I’m not there yet,” Pearl admits, a sad smile threatening to break through her lips. “In a way, it almost feels disloyal. To not share the burden with her.”
“But she’s not here to share the burden with you! Her burden. She just left us!” Amethyst falls angrily into a sit on the porch, arms crossed.
“I know.” Pearl follows, folding her legs to sit beside her. “And maybe, someday, I’ll learn to accept that.”
They sit in the silence for a moment, listening to the waves crash onto the beach, until Pearl finally speaks again. “Amethyst?”
“What.”
“Where did all this come from? It’s unlike you, to want to talk about this sort of thing…”
She shrugs. “You’ve been weird since everything went down the other day, and you’ve obliviously been upset. And I don’t know—I just thought about how I used to feel when you would talk about the Kindergarten, and then…it sorta clicked for me. What you’d really been talking about. And you shouldn’t hafta feel that way.”
Now, Pearl does smile gently.
“And,” Amethyst continues. “If I didn’t do this with you, I sorta figured that Steven would eventually, and we gotta stop dumping so much on him. I think we forget—especially with all the cool Gem stuff he’s been doing lately—that he’s a human kid.”
“You’re right.” She sighs again. “We—I’ll be better.” A pause, and then: “And Amethyst?”
“Huh?”
“Thank you.”
Amethyst returns the smile. “No prob, P.”