Chapter Text
It’s Pearl’s night to watch Steven.
Funny. She used to look forward to watching him sleep every night. They had to have a heart to heart when he turned fifteen and he caught her peeking around the corner at midnight. He was growing up. He needed privacy. She couldn’t be hovering over his bed and counting his breaths until morning came. She needed to trust he would be alright.
Apparently, I was worried about the wrong thing , she thinks, everything flat and miserable and colorless as she stares at the slumbering boy. He doesn’t look much like a boy now, with his head as tall as Opal, but she doesn’t like to think of him any other way. So she ignores how every breath shakes the leaves on the trees and bushes around him. Every little sound he makes rumbles through the ground. Through her. There’s nothing quiet about this shape. Nothing subtle. Nowhere to hide.
This was what he held inside himself. All his problems. While Pearl had tucked herself away, layer after layer of perfect folds and partitions, Steven had just held it all inside him, tugging and pulling at the fabric of emotions too big for his body to handle, until he blew out of him like a parachute in a hurricane.
She was glad she hadn’t been there for that. Amethyst could barely manage to tell them how it happened through all the sobbing, and she hadn’t been the same since. Amethyst didn’t enjoy sleeping anymore. She didn’t enjoy a lot of things, anymore.
“I’m supposed to take a day shift soon,” Pearl says, too quietly to wake him. “Peridot and Connie and I have been going through psychology textbooks. It’s an entire branch of human science devoted to learning how humans think. How to help people when they’re hurt. Some people spend their whole lives fixing other people, Steven. Seems like a job you might like.”
She pauses, just in case he’s waking, but there’s no noise. “I know Garnet tells you stories all day. She must have told you everything you mean to her a thousand times by now. She hates switching shifts. She never wants to leave. She says, when she looks into the future, it’s a mess. She doesn’t know how to account for this. She doesn’t know how any of her predictions were ever right at all.”
Pearl’s voice cracks and Steven shifts his head slightly. Pearl counts twenty breaths in perfectly still silence to be sure he’s still asleep before she continues, “We’re all supposed to talk to you. Let you know we care. That’s what the books say. That’s why Amethyst keeps practicing her speech in the mirror at home. She almost has it, Steven. Maybe it’ll mean something. For now, she’ll just keep bringing out video games and comics to keep you company.”
Pearl looks along his long, long body, vanishing among the trees. “And I’ll just keep taking night shifts. How am I supposed to talk to you when you’re awake and can’t talk back, Steven? How do I face that? Just talk at you more? Isn’t that what I’ve always done? Isn’t that just putting more on you? Begging you to be okay for my sake? I’m…” She puts a hand to her mouth and swallows down a sob. No crying tonight. Too noisy. She whispers, “I don’t know how to help, Steven. There’s no one to fight, not except you. And I still can’t believe we tried to…”
She closes her eyes, shaking her head. “We’re a mess without you. I’m a mess without you. How am I supposed to convince you to love yourself? To take care of yourself? That you’ve done things worthy of being alive, of being happy? I can’t even do it for myself, and it’s been thousands of years of trying. But if I can’t, if no one can, you’re never going to wake up. You’re never going to talk. You’ll just…”
She takes a deep breath. Her cheeks are wet, and her tears have fallen down into the grass. She pulls off quiet, at least. That’s a success. Steven sleeps, often whining, often whimpering, but still asleep. Pearl takes another deep breath and sighs. “I love you. I miss you. One day, I’ll figure out what to say while you’re awake.”