Work Text:
Evidently, Peridot learns early on in the process, dirt is not in fact made out of light.
“You knew that,” Lapis snorts, doubling over in laughter and using her wings to stabilize herself, after the jump to lightspeed sends the soil—which had been carefully packed in barrels–around Steven’s Leg Ship, with the bulk of it landing squarely atop Peridot’s head. “Isn’t there some setting on the ship that’s supposed to keep things from flying around?”
“There’s a setting that stabilizes Gems.” Peridot, fuming, wipes the soil from her face. “Or Gem-powered tech. Anything which operates on light refraction principles. It simply did not occur to me that it wouldn’t work on organic material! I mean, the humans have primitive flight devices! How do they move things in them?!”
“I think they tie them down.”
Peridot eyes the piles of dirt strewn across the floor. “Oh.”
It begins like this:
After the initial daze of healing all the Gems wounded in the corruption—blast and settling those that want to on Earth or back on Homeworld, the attention of Gemkind turns to more ceremonial matters. A provisional committee is formed–with one Gem of every type, each with an equal voice, and as good a representation as possible from onetime colonies across the former Empire–for the purpose of determining how, exactly, the management and governance of Homeworld would look moving forward. And because Gems have become accustomed over the millennia to a certain degree of pomp, it is decided that the installation of said committee should be marked by a ceremony.
When Steven–who was asked to serve on the committee to represent both Earth and the Diamonds–presents the idea to his family, the Crystal Gems decide that at least a few of them ought to attend as a sign of goodwill. And that is how Peridot finds herself in front of the Diamonds’ residence on Homeworld, in the same spot which, an Era and lifetimes ago–when she still walked in her limb enhancers and worshiped every utterance to leave Yellow Diamond’s lips–she always fantasized about seeing.
“It is somewhat...disappointing,” she whispers to Lapis.
“What?”
“I simply mean…I had spent thousands of years while I was posted on several different colonial assignments hoping that one day I would see this place–the seat of the Diamonds!–and now, here I am–”
“You’ve been here before,” Lapis smirks.
“When we were here to save Steven? That doesn’t–”
“Save Steven?”
“Yes, Steven called for help, and we were here as his saviors!” Peridot puffs her chest importantly. “But that doesn’t count! We hardly got a glimpse of this place, then! We were preoccupied with flying around and dodging White Diamond’s head!” She turns away from her companion and back toward the view in front of her. “But look at this! Everything is so cold! On Earth, on our farm, things grew, and there were crops, and flowers, and trees, and rain…but this is just stone!”
“We’re just stone.”
“That’s not true! Not anymore!”
Lapis cocks her eyebrow.
“Well,” Peridot backtracks. “At least it doesn’t have to be true anymore! We’re Crystal Gems! The Earth is a part of us! And if it’s a part of us, then it’s a part of all Gems! Or…it could be! This place, Homeworld, could be beautiful! But it’s not!”
And then the idea comes to her unbidden. It’s a new Era, and she is a new Gem, at least compared to who she was when she initially found herself on Earth. Now, she is not only allowed but indeed capable of doing things of which she would never have dreamed even a few years previously. The Earth—and what it represented–had brought about that possibility for her. And if it had done that for her…
“I am going to bring Earth life to Homeworld.”
“What?” Lapis turns toward her.
“We grew crops on our farm on Earth! Why not here? We can transform Homeworld into a home!”
“What a great idea!” Steven exclaims, starry-eyed and smiling, when Peridot informs him of her plan. “You know, you’ve grown a lot, Peridot.”
“What do you mean?”
“You hated Earth when we first found you, remember?”
“Eh-hem! If my memory is functioning correctly, you did not find me. You clods trapped me when you crashed my ship!”
“Well, we found you first!” Steven grips the back of his neck. “But, after that, okay, yeah, I guess that’s true. But aren’t you glad we did?”
“Yes.” She grins, and for once there is no more that needs to be said on the topic. “So, do I have your permission to implement my plan?”
“You don’t need my permission!”
“Knowing Gem bureaucracy, I would have thought that the provisional council would–”
“Oh, yeah! The council! I’ll check with them. But…” He smiles. “I don’t think they’ll have any issues with it. I think this is just the sort of symbol they’ll like–a sign of unity between the newly independent planet of Earth and Homeworld! Besides, one of the things I’m pushing for is for Gems to take initiative, and this idea is a great example of you doing that!”
“Heh.”
“What?”
“It appears that I am not the only one who has transformed over the past several years.”
Steven smiles, squinting in mock suspicion. “What do you mean?”
“The Steven I met when I first arrived on Earth did not do anything without the approval of his guardians. If we would like to speak about taking initiative, we should be considering you as a prime example.”
“That’s not true! They told me to be quiet and hide when we saw you monitoring the Kindergarten, the first time we met, but I didn’t! I came and introduced myself to you!”
“Very well. The Steven I met when I first arrived on Earth did not do anything without the approval of his guardians, unless he did not fully understand the ramifications.”
“But even after that–after you and Jasper tried to kidnap us and bring us back to Homeworld and we crashed your ship and escaped–I tried to make friends with you, didn’t I? Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl didn’t approve of that at first either!”
Peridot snickers. “Well, I am the great and lovable Peridot.”
Steven beams. “But I got your point. I guess we’ve both grown a lot.”
After receiving approval from the council, the next step, Peridot decides, is to communicate with one of the Diamonds themselves. And, because she has had no real interactions with Blue Diamond other than to fight her that day on the beach, and because, until several months ago, White Diamond was more myth than Gem, it is only logical, she decides, that it should be Yellow Diamond with whom she has this conversation.
“You’re Pin–that is, Steven’s Peridot, aren’t you?” Yellow says, once Peridot approaches her. They’re inside the palace, which is even more ornate than Peridot could have ever imagined in those days when she’d envisioned herself coming here, with its intricate carved walls in colors matching the Diamonds themselves, and columns for decor more than function. And yet, for all its pomp, she thinks, for all the expertly controlled climate, it feels much colder and less splendid than even a mild rainstorm on Earth.
“I’m a Crystal Gem, if that is what you are implying,” Peridot responds. “And I live on Earth. But I do not belong to anyone except myself.”
“Hmm.”
“However,” Peridot brooches. “I was originally constructed for you.”
Yellow raises an eyebrow, but when she speaks, her voice retains a disinterested timbre. “Were you.”
“Yes.”
Something like an epiphany passes through the Diamond’s eyes, and her lips move inscrutably. She scans Peridot with her eyes as if truly seeing her for the first time. “You were the Peridot assigned to monitor the Cluster shortly before its emergence. You called me a clod.”
Peridot grins. Each time she remembers that moment–the one in which she severed ties with her former life in order to become the Gem she is now–her gemstone swells with a lurch of pride. “Yes.”
“I thought I had my–that is, I thought I had the Pearl shatter you.”
“Shatter me?!”
“Yes. I ordered her to detonate the communicator you used to call me on the Diamond line. It was supposed to shatter you.”
“I…solved the problem. As I was designed to.”
“Hm. Yes. I did value that quality in my Peridots.” She turns away again. “Well, then. Are you here to attach more choice insults to my name? That does seem to be what those Gems who have been easily able to embrace liberation are interested in doing.”
“It is…difficult. We spent our entire existences believing that we were extensions of you. That we existed only to do your will. That if we ever once did not fulfill our purpose,”–she flexes her fingers as if to grasp the empty spaces where her limb enhancers used to be–”we were betraying not only you and the Empire, but the very reason we were created in the first place. It is natural that Gems would adjust their newfound freedom in a disconcerting mann–”
“So you’re here to lecture me. Wonderful.”
“No!” Peridot exclaims, flinging her arms into the air. And some small part of her marvels, still, that she is able to address her onetime Diamond this way. Best not to question it, and she doesn’t, but there is still a pride in how far she has come. “No,” she repeats. “I’m here in order to ask whether you had any objection to my attempting to grow Earth fauna outside the palace.”
Yellow Diamond snorts. “Why bother asking? It’s been made quite clear to me that my authority has very little bearing on the decisions of Gemkind moving forward. I do not own—”
“It’s your home!”
Yellow raises her eyebrows. “What?”
“This structure…while, yes, it is true that your authority no longer extends to all of Homeworld and the former colonies, it is my understanding that you and the rest of the Diamonds intended to continue to reside here, correct?”
“Where else would we go?”
“Well…you are entitled to travel anywhere in the universe you choose. Just like any other Gem.”
Yellow eyes her, as though this idea had not quite occurred to her before now. To be sure, Peridot knows, the Diamonds had traveled–and Yellow Diamond had traversed the galaxy more than any of the rest of them in pursuit of conquests of the Empire. But to simply travel, for leisure, to explore without the intent to conquer? It’s as if the idea of divorcing leaving Homeworld with the notion of Empire had seemed impossible until this moment.
Finally, Yellow’s features settle. “We’re going to stay here,” she says, more quietly this time. “We have…learning to do, it seems, and this is as good a place as any to do it. In fact, perhaps it will be easier to…reeducate ourselves…if something about our existence remains consistent.”
“So it is your home,” Peridot repeats. “And you should have a say in what happens to your home. We all should.” A pause. “And I know, at least, I inferred from our previous conversation…your feelings toward Earth have historically been…complicated.”
Yellow considers her again. “Yes, I…that is, Pink…” She closes her eyes, turns away. “Do it.”
“What?”
“Bring Earth fauna here. Make it grow.”
Peridot grins. “Message received.”
Amethyst finds her, several days after, on Earth, as she begins to load caskets of seeds and soil onto Steven’s Leg Ship. Steven hardly used it himself, and so he’d been more than happy for Peridot to borrow it. (“I kind of think of it as belonging to all of us Crystal Gems here on Earth, not just me. I think my mom would have wanted us to use it that way.”)
“Uh…Peri?” Amethyst’s face is blank with confusion.
Peridot hums in acknowledgment without raising her visor from her clipboard.
“Didn’t they fix the Galaxy Warp? Ya know, now that we’re at peace with Homeworld and everything?”
She levitates a metal barrel to the top of the pile. “What’s your point?”
“So wouldn’t it just be easier to just warp all this stuff to Homeworld? And, like, way quicker?”
Peridot looks up at her for the first time. “That’s not what farmers do!”
“Uh…what?
“Farmers don’t warp! Haven’t you read Big House in the Field?!”
“Have I read what?”
“Big House in the Field! A classic tale of human life in the West, which was later adapted into a hit television series!”
Amethyst raises an eyebrow. “Have you read Big House in the Field?”
Peridot returns her gaze to her clipboard. “I did not read it, but Lapis and I found a large collection of episodes on those human film rectangles in the barn. We watched them once we ran out of Camp Pining Hearts–it was what inspired us to begin to grow crops in the first place.” She looks up at another barrel of soil. “And in Big House in the Field, no one uses a Warp–”
“Forget about Big House in the Field!” Amethyst interjects, throwing her hands into the air. “You’re a farmer now, and you Warp!”
“But not while I’m in the process of growing crops!”
“Whatever.” Amethyst sits down on the ground beside her. “Does the Warp, like, damage the plants or something?”
“Hmm. An interesting question.” Peridot squints. “I had never considered that possibility. Perhaps something in the Gem-powered technology would disrupt the natural growth properties of the plants in question.”
“Well, Steven, Greg, and Connie are able to Warp.”
“What’s your point?”
“They’re organic, aren’t they? Well, Steven’s half organic, but the others are organic-organic. And they’ve used the Warp before! And they still grow. I mean I get they’re not, like, actually plants, but…” She changes course. “Well, you know way more about this stuff than I do. But my point is, I think you’re making this way harder than it has to be! So what if farmers didn’t Warp in Big House in the Field?! It’d be way easier for you to–”
“I don’t want to!” The container that Peridot had been levitating crashes to the ground as her arms shoot over her head.
Amethyst blinks.
“I don’t want to,” Peridot repeats quieter this time, sitting down beside her companion but purposefully avoiding her eye. “Warping between Homeworld and Earth is what Homeworld Gems do. It is what I did before I became a Crystal Gem. I do not want to be that Gem again.”
“But you are,” Amethyst replies gently.
“No I’m not! I have developed into someone else! A Crystal Gem, a hero, a Savior of Homeworld! Not like the–”
“Yeah, you’re right! You’ve grown and changed a lot! We all have! You think I’m the same as I was when I first met Rose?” She laughs. “Or…forget Rose! You think I’m the same as I was a few years ago when Steven first managed to pull his shield out of his Gem? A’course I’m not! The things that happened changed me. Or, no, they didn’t change me–I grew because of them. But the Gem I was when I was then, and the Gem I was when I emerged, the Kindergarten…they’re all still a part of who I am now, ya know? And there’s not anything wrong with that!”
“But…” Peridot looks down at her hands. “I was…bad.”
Amethyst lays a hand on her shoulder. “Nah. You weren’t.”
“I was! I wanted to report you all to Yellow Diamond! I wanted to destroy the Earth!”
“But ya didn’t do it, did ya?”
“Only because you all stopped me!”
“That’s not true,” Amethyst gently counters. “You were the one who came up with an idea of how to stop the Cluster—”
“But that was because I was stuck here, and I didn’t want to—”
“And when you did finally get in touch with Yellow D, on that communicator, you told her that the Earth was worth protecting! I mean, think about that! You went up against Yellow Diamond, not because you didn’t like her—at that point you still loved her, remember?—but because you believed in the Earth more!” A grin. “Annnndddd you had the perfect opportunity to turn us in then, but you decided not to! I mean, Peri, you lied to her to protect us! Back when you still thought you were loyal to her!”
“Yes, but that was when I started to change. I was a different Gem before tha–”
“That’s what I’m saying! No, you weren’t! You were still you! You just didn’t know who you wanted to be yet! Once you found out—once you learned there was more out there in the universe than just Homeworld and the Diamonds, once you found Earth—you started to do things that you’re proud of now! Right?”
Peridot breaths through her light-synthesized lungs—another habit she’d discovered by observing Earth beings. After a moment, she speaks again, softer this time, a grin tugging at her lips. “You know, there is another reason I am transporting my supplies this way, rather than by Warp.”
“Why?”
“It reminds me of when you and Steven helped me bring plants to the Kindergarten on the train. We could have warped, but we didn’t.”
“Yeah, but that didn’t work. We couldn’t get anything to grow there!”
“But you and Steven still did it with me. So…something did still grow there. Is that…a correct use of metaphor?”
Amethyst grins. “Yeah. I’d say it is.”
No sooner is the horticulture tastefully arranged around the so-called Homeworld Palace that Peridot realizes her oversight.
“What?” Lapis asks, deadpan, as Peridot throws her arms to her head in a panic.
“The water!”
“What?”
“I’m such a clod! I forgot that these crops need water! Quick, Lapis, give them a drink!”
Lapis produces a stream from her Gem, and aims it toward the flowers and trees. “Happy?”
But Peridot isn’t. Beside that which a Lapis Lazuli can produce from her Gem, there isn’t any viable water source on Homeworld, and she can hardly expect Lapis to stay here forever. She wouldn’t want her to anyway—she wants Lapis to return to Earth, with her. “Are there other Lapis Lazulis who might be able to stay here and water these plants?”
Lapis cocks an eyebrow. “You want to force other Lapis Lazulis to stay here and do your work for you?”
“No! Of course not! I simply wondered if any of them might be willing…”
“As far as I know, no other Lapises have even returned to Homeworld. Somehow, I don’t think any of them would be particularly fond of moving back here to water your flowers.”
“Then what are we gonna do?!”
“This was your idea—why shouldn’t you come water them every day?”
“Because I don’t live on this planet!”
“The Galaxy Warp exists.” Lapis’s eyes flit away. If Peridot has negative connotations about Warping in general, Lapis’s Gem lurches everytime she pictures the Galaxy Warp pad itself. And Peridot doesn’t blame her, not really, not after what she’s been through…
But either of their emotional issues aside, it wouldn’t be feasible. The spread of her landscaping is impressive and vast, and she is one, small Gem. Even with her levitation abilities, there is no way that she could practically transport the required amount of water on her own, and she won’t ask Lapis to make a daily trip to somewhere she was traumatized in order to help her.
Gah! This would have been so much easier before! Before, when she was a bad–
No. Peridot reminds herself of Amethyst’s words. She wasn’t bad. Just didn’t have as much information. She had more resources, but not as much information.
More resources. She has access to them now. It wouldn’t make her bad to use some of the same resources she might have before…
And then the answer comes to her. She jumps up, throws her hands into the air. “Robonoids!”
“What?”
“We’ll use Flask Robonoids! They can transfer the water on the Warp from Earth! I utilized them all the time when I still worked for the Diamonds! They could do this easily, if I just recalibrate them to carry water instead of Warp fluid!”
It’s almost as if, she thinks for one sentimental moment, that her previous self–the one with the limb enhancers and a casual disdain for the Planet Earth–is handing her exactly the tool she needs in this moment...metaphorically speaking, of course. Peridot grasps it—in an equally metaphorical fashion—grins, then hurries off to fetch the Robonoids.
While she of course returns occasionally in order to check on the progress of her garden, it’s not until nearly a year later–by the Earth calendar, that is–that the full effect strikes her.
The provisional council had conceived of a democratic framework in order to decide which Gem would lead various aspects of Homeworld’s governance and had organized an election for Gemkind’s first ever President. A Zircon had won, and it was decided that her inauguration would occur on the steps of the former palace.
It was symbolic, Steven said.
As Gems from all corners of the former Empire gathered around, of all hues and cuts, off-colors and the un-corrupted included, as they gaze at the flowers and trees, the Robonoids carrying water they’d brought from Earth, Peridot sees something glimmer in each of their Gemstones. It had manifested for her as hesitation, that first time she’d stretched her hand out to feel a droplet of rain. For them, it’s not scary. It doesn’t have to be, thanks to this new universe she’d created with her friends. But it’s nonetheless a bridge between the Gems they’ve been, and those who they might become.
Peridot smiles, and thinks how nice it will be, after the speech, to return to Earth, her home. But for now, it’s sufficient to see her homeworld in bloom.