@aprillikesthings The Jasper+Peridot with Lapis as the ex fic prompt!  Sorry, it’s not even so much a fic as hastily scribbled down incomplete musing. And Peridot-centric. But with Human AU. Warning for implied abuse and implicit description of PTSD.

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So she and Jasper are in what Amethyst delicately calls ‘The Lapis Victims’ club, which. Yeah. True, in the way that anyone can be the victim of a shitty ex. Everyone in the world would probably be part of a Shitty-Ex Victims’ club. Members of multiple clubs, even. 

But Peridot isn’t smart for nothing and technically she knows Amethyst means that other kind of victim. It took her a bad breakup and a bout of depression and some new-age gardening/farming therapy and then denial for a time as long as the river, but she knows. 

She highly suspects Jasper knows too. She’s a soldier. She’s seen these kinds of things. Things that are only supposed to be from having to dodge bullets and digging a hole to survive in for days before her team found her. 

It’s just they’re both too proud. With echoes of a golden time that will be there forever. A emotional high that, yeah, is in the list of. characteristics. 

Even now, Lapis is still her friend on FacetBook (but, like, anyone from your neighborhood pizza shop’s grandma to Steven’s cat can be a friend). Every so often Peridot will see her Instagem posts and she’s still so beautiful. That was an objective truth. Her 10,000+ followers are evidence.

Those pictures make her breath get caught in her throat. It’s the aesthetic pleasure, Peridot reasons. Then her too-smart brain has to go and remind her that the biology of physiological arousal is the same for all heighten emotions, it’s just you decide what to interpret those emotions as. 

(She helped though. It was her type of thing. Social media analytics and trends, and she helped run that account - fuck it, she practically made that account what it was - and sometimes Peridot had been in pictures too and those hearts and praising comments were. Really nice) 

(Jasper quit social media altogether. For once she was smarter than Peridot on that regard.) 

Echoes are also on that list. 

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Sorry! that’s all I could get before hitting a block.

I had fun coming up with those social media names. 

The physiological thing Peridot talks about is true: It’s the Misattribution of arousal. Arousal, in psychology and biology, only means that you’ve got a rapid heart beat, you have shortness of breath - physiological things that are present in a bunch of different and even contrasting emotions, like anger and nervousness and excitement and yes, sexual interest. Because of that, people may mistaken the feeling of fear for romance. 

half-formed ideas

Premise: AU where Peridot was alive during the war and joins the Crystal Gems. Or as I like to call it, the ExtraMom AU.

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Peridot’s a Crystal Gem, she’s been one for decades now, she works with Rose Quartz herself. She’ll still remind everyone that she never wanted to be one.

She was a prisoner of war first, poofed and captured. When she reformed, she was forced to give information about the Kindergartens and what little of Homeworld’s plans she knew about. Then Peridot had no choice - going back to Homeworld’s side meant being shattered, so she stayed and here she is now.

“That’s making your choice,” Pearl tells her, not bothering to hide the disdain in her tone, utterly unsweet and unlike what a Pearl should be.

Rose, instead, looks sadly at Peridot, completely genuine. “I’m sorry you can’t go back to Homeworld. I wish things could have been different.”

So does Peridot. Yet there’s a part of her - the part that watches Pearl slice apart a practice dummy with both grace and savageness, and admires; the part that looks out at Rose’s garden, filled with plants, organic life composed of individual cells, each one alive itself, and with the curious ability to turn light into chemical energy - a part of her that doesn’t mind as much, interested to see where this path is headed.

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“We’ve won.”

Garnet says this quietly, without triumph, and nothing more.

It’s true. Homeworld has left. Earth is theirs. They’re free, they can do whatever they want now, no Diamonds to follow, no rules to obey.

Victory probably isn’t supposed to be death and destruction - at least, not on their side - but for the Crystal Gems, those are their spoils of war. Torn earth and barren land and the endless stench of rot; more gem shards than anyone can bear to look at, and a growing pile of intact Gems that won’t reform.

(They will, eventually, but the Crystal Gems will come to dread it, fearful of every gem that starts glowing)

They delay the census of their new society for weeks. Then they delay it some more. Then Peridot finally makes her report.

The only ones left, in good health and proper functioning: Rose Quartz, Pearl, Garnet/the gems Ruby and Sapphire that comprises her, and Peridot.

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Rose keeps asking if Peridot doesn’t want to learn to summon her weapon. Learn how to fight, as if she can be anything like a soldier. They have all the time in the world now, and Peridot knows that one day she’ll be worn down enough to give in and start training, but for now, the answer is no.

“I think it’ll be fun to try something different.” Rose says, as she watches Peridot work. “You don’t have to be cooped up in this lab all day.”

“This is fun for me,” Peridot says. “I’m good at it. It’s necessary work. And that satisfies me.”

They spend a lot of time together nowadays, trying to make sense of everything broken around them and trying to fix it all: The corrupted Gems, the lifeless Kindergartens, the decaying remnants of Gem presence on Earth. Rose Quartz is a healer, determined and talented; but Peridot is the Gem specifically trained in science and technology. Together, they make a good team, more so if Rose can just let Peridot be.

Rose wants Peridot to not be a Peridot, wants her to be something more, something different. Like a Pearl that fights, or a Ruby and Sapphire perma-fusion. That's all good and well for them, but Peridot is fine as she is.

“You need me,” Peridot tells Rose. “I was made for this. I do this job better than anyone else can, including you. You can't deny that.”

Every word out of Peridot's mouth is arrogant, disrespectful. A Peridot mouthing off to a Rose Quartz. Ridiculous. Dangerous, if they were back on Homeworld.

That's exactly what Rose wants, though, and she smiles at Peridot.

Peridot smiles back.

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this probably has been done, and by someone with much greater skill, but i don’t care

Momswap sketch

Ame

Steven Floats

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What a fun episode! 

Ancient Interplanetary Gem Vessels. 

Left: The ones Homeworld Gems used to first come to Earth

Right: The ones Homeworld Gems used to leave Earth, around 1000 years later. 

Modern-ish Human AU: Amethyst’s 15-years-old and a soldier stuck in war.

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Don’t think.

That is the most important rule of all.

Amethyst doesn’t think about orders - all she ever needs to do is just to follow them and not complain. Amethyst doesn’t think about the guns in her hands, the triggers she’s pulled, the grenades she’s thrown. She doesn’t think about bullets or explosions, or the bodies left behind.

She doesn’t think about the fact that it’s the fifth year of her becoming a soldier, and yet the fighting is no closer to ending. She doesn’t think about the time she was ten years old and being dragged away from her sister, her home. A gun was shoved into her hands, and they told her she was serving the Four Diamonds Army now.

Amethyst doesn’t think about being fifteen and being unable to read more than street signs; she doesn’t think about whether this is what she’ll be doing until she dies, and she doesn’t think about whether that will be something that is going to happen sooner or later.

Don’t think about the past, don’t think about the future. There’s a war to fight, and that’s all Amethyst needs to know.

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Headquarters is a mansion in a small city they have taken over.

Half of the city is abandoned, a former battlefield that’s now just burned skeletal remains of buildings slowly breaking down into rubble. The other half, though, and the mansion at the center of it, is still in good condition, and this is where the Four Diamonds Army plot to bring the government down.

For winning a recent series of battles, the company Amethyst was in was summoned here to be rewarded by Yellow Diamond. Or something like that. Amethyst doesn’t particularly care - it’s not her or her fellow soldiers dining with the big shots, just her commander. They’ll be eating and sleeping outside on the mansion grounds, just like always, for a few days or few weeks, before being deployed to burn down a sad, unlucky town somewhere else.

Still, it’s almost sort of nice, this place. They’ve turned the mansion into a fortress, and there are streets and electricity and running water. There’s even a garden and a fancy greenhouse, with flowers and trimmed bushes and trees.

Amethyst tried walking through it - tried to enjoy it, she really did - but she had to run out moments later, fighting the urge to cry.

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Amethyst isn’t her real name, but she’s been using it for so long it might as well be. She earned it after helping take down a truck full of government soldiers. A landmine did most of the work, but someone had to pick off the survivors.  

Everyone in the rebel army take on codenames. Anyone new is ‘Dirt’, promising recruits are ‘Rocks’, and as you prove yourself, you get to have names like ‘Critine’ or ‘Agate’ or ‘Amethyst’. The Supreme Commanders are the Diamonds. Unbreakable. Pure.

Rocks are strong, tough; they are the earth society is build on, the foundation - or so recruits are told. The Four Diamond Army fight for independence, for the betterment of the masses.

By any means necessary.

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WHAT KIND OF CAT POSE IS THIS what happened smokey

Drummerthyst

Playing around with gifs.

It snowed.

Um.