Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Taking form is like waking up from a swoon. All of a sudden, you just…exist, when you’re cognizant that you didn’t a moment before.

This time you exist in what looks like some kind of luxury spa. You stand, feet turned out, atop a glass disc in the centre of a vast octagonal room with high ceilings, marble floors, and delicate whorl patterns upon the blue and cream-coloured walls. You’ve never been here before, nor seen it before, nor heard of it before, but you know at once that this place is called “the Reef”. You also know that the large, silver woman standing before you with a large, glittering jewel nested in her wide bun of hair is, somewhat improbably, named Cubic Zirconia. She smiles broadly at you, hands clenched in what looks like anticipation.

You’ve met her before, of course; sometime before you took form. You’d been zapped by one of her Peridots when you’d been walking home through the park on Earth, and taken as a biological sample. Cubic Zirconia had been your hostess on her ship…or perhaps your jailer. But you’d done your best to amuse her: told her jokes, told her stories, played your violin for her. All to get her to turn around and let you go home—or at least to remember that organic lifeforms needed to be regularly fed and watered. She’d seemed delighted by you.

But now, you’re still not home. You’re no longer hungry. You feel so very strange. And, looking at Cubic Zirconia, you find that what you feel is not primarily fear, not resentment, not frustration, but—what?

Devotion. Loyalty. You want, in spite of everything she’s done, to please her. And no longer as a means to an end; you want it—genuinely want it—as an object unto itself.

You take a step forward, ready to demand an explanation, but the moment you open your mouth, what comes out is:

“How do you do / My dear Zirconia / Thank you for bringing me into the world; / I am at your eternal service / Welcome to your new Pearl!”

Your hands fly to your mouth in astonishment. Saying it would have been quite bad enough, but you’d done more than that. You’d sung it. You’d done a little dance. You’d fallen to one knee and clutched her hand like she was your liege lord. And then—and you can scarcely describe what this had felt like—you’d glowed.

Except you can’t sing; you’re not a good dancer; and there’s certainly no part of your body capable of glowing. Until now.

Only then does it occur to you that the voice was not your own; nor were the legs you’d stepped forward upon, nor the hands now clasped over lips that feel alien to the touch.

You run your hands over your face, finding it smooth and ovoid, with a large triangular nose. You take stock of your body and find it tall, slender, feminine, and clad in what looks like a ballerina costume loosely based on the clothes you’d been wearing aboard the ship. And then there was the pendant necklace hanging between your clavicles…

 You brush against its surface with your now-delicate fingers and realise at once that it’s not a pendant. The gemstone has somehow been embedded directly in your body, just as all of the aliens you’ve met since you were kidnapped have gems embedded in their own. This one is smooth and creamy and hemispherical, like a very, very large—

Pearl.

“I trust you’re satisfied with our product?” asks a voice. Out of the corner of your eye, you see a plump green Gem holding a stylus like an old-style cigarette holder. You’ve never seen her before, but you know her name is Jadeite. You also know—though your mind militates against this knowledge—that she designed you.

“That depends on whether the transfer was successful,” replies your… replies Cubic Zirconia.

“What have you done to me—” you gasp. It’s the first volitional thing you’ve managed to say since you appeared here, and you take some small satisfaction from the realization that your will isn’t entirely in abeyance; even if it’s ruined a split-second later when some arcane new reflex kicks in and forces you to append: “—My Zirconia?”

Jadeite offers a lopsided grin. “Looks rather successful to me.”

“Please, my Zirconia,” you try (and there’s that honorific again); “I don’t understand—”

“Hush, Pearl, the Upper Crust are speaking,” interrupts your Zirconia.

You fall abruptly silent. Even worse, you feel a sudden stab of shame; as if you’ve committed some cosmic sin by acting against your Zirconia’s wishes. A blush rises to your cheeks.

Cubic Zirconia turns back to Jadeite. “You’re certain that everything about them was transferred? Their skills, their personality, their memories—”

“Yes, yes, yes, Cubic Zirconia, my darling,” dismisses Jadeite with a wave of her hand. “It was all stored in that gooey bit of grey matter the Organic had in its head. It was all just a simple matter of digitizing it, translating it into gemetic code, and infusing it into a blank Pearl template. I promise that she knows everything that that foul little human did. Though, why you would want that is beyond me…”

“The human amused me,” replies Cubic Zirconia fondly (and, in spite of yourself, your heart melts at learning you made her happy).

“Yes, well; everything they could do, your new Pearl should be able to do at least as well—all while being able to follow simple instructions, and without needing to ingest organic matter just to stay alive. You’ve really traded up on this one, darling.”

“I’m certain I shall be satisfied with the results,” says your Zirconia. “Come along, Pearl.”

A part of you wants to speak up, to protest that that’s not your name; to demand to be returned to your own body at once! But you can’t find it in yourself to say anything, since your Zirconia ordered you not to. And so you walk over to her, and escort her out of the room, and feel at once both good and disgusted at yourself for feeling good.

Chapter Text

You make your way down the hallway in the wake of your Zirconia, feeling sick to whatever you now have instead of a stomach. She’s made you a Pearl! Did she just throw out your real body in the process? Just vent it into space? Process it into organic nutrients for growing more Pearls? It feels so wrong! So violating!

But…

My Zirconia must have her reasons.

You hate yourself for thinking that. You hate yourself for using that pronoun. My. My Zirconia. And yet it’s there like a fixed idea in your mind; try as you might to excise it, it’s unshakeable. She’s not just “Zirconia”, no matter how hard you try to think of her as such; she’s your Zirconia, just as you—

Just as you are her Pearl.

Eventually you notice that you can speak again. And yet, you’re not sure whether you should; whether it could ever be appropriate to speak unprompted in the presence of someone so manifestly superior to—

No. No, don’t think that.

Thankfully, your new form seems to have a built-in knack for obsequiousness. “My Zirconia,” you speak up in your high and reedy new voice.

She turns to look at you and you fall at once to your knees in supplication. Thankfully, she seems in good humour, rather than angry at you for speaking out of turn.

“Begging your pardon, my Zirconia,” you say. “But…what exactly have you done to me?”

She smiles, and it’s like seeing the first ray of sun after a long, hard winter. “What have I done? Why—I’ve given you exactly what you asked for, of course!”

Your face blushes fiercely in view of her kindness, but you still manage to say: “What I…asked for, my Zirconia?”

“Why yes! Back on my ship, surely you remember. In fact…why don’t you play it back for us? I will need to test your new abilities sooner or later, it might as well be now.”

“‘Play it back’, my Zirconia?” you ask, feeling abominably stupid for not understanding her meaning.

She laughs musically. “Of course, you have no way of knowing, I suppose. Your holoprojection, Pearl! Replay the moment you told me you regretted not being a Pearl.”

You open your mouth to protest, because you know for a fact that you’d never actually done so. But unfortunately, you find that your memories are all now meticulously catalogued somewhere deep within yourself and—and there is file matching your Zirconia’s description. You remember it well, in fact; and, in remembering it, it appears there before you in a ghostly blue image. You can feel your own Gem quivering slightly as the scene plays out.

It’s on the command deck of her ship, which looks less like a science-fiction control centre and more like a throne room. And there you are, or the human you used to be, bowing before your Zirconia and a number of her attendants on a raised dais in the centre of the room. The violin that you were carrying on your person when you were abducted is tucked under your right arm, its bow held downward in your right hand. You remember it well; you’d just played every piece you’d known for her, plus several variations, plus a good 45 minutes of random freestyling that you’d hoped at least sounded good, all in a desperate bid to please your Zirconia enough to take you home. And indeed, she had eaten up everything you had thrown at her, sitting rivetted on the edge of her seat for your entire performance; and now, in the hologram, she was on her feet, wildly applauding.

It makes you happy to know that you’d pleased her so, though you hate that it makes you happy.

“Encore!” you dub-in reflexively, in sync with the lip movements of the Zirconia hologram. “Brava! Encore!”

The human you chuckles nervously, wiping sweat from its brow. You can remember its exhaustion, the numbness and soreness in its fingers. “I, uh…I don’t think I have another encore in me, I’m afraid,” you dub.

Your hologram Zirconia looks crestfallen (and it pains you to know that you disappointed her so). “Why ever not?”

“I, um,” your hologram stumbles. “I’m exhausted.”

“Exhausted?”

“Yes,” your hologram chuckles. “See…the thing about humans is that we need…rest. Food. Water. Sunlight. Wide open spaces. Contact with our own kind,” it adds (and you remember hoping that your Zirconia would finally take the hint). “You know…rest and recuperation. On Earth.”

“Well how much rest could you possibly need?” you holo-Zirconia demands.

“Oh, a fair amount. Days, at least. Probably longer. And food; and water. Those are important too, haha.”

You remember the awkwardness of the situation; the delicate balance between trying to get her to take you home and trying not to offend her in the process. It gives you anxiety just thinking about it.

In the hologram, one of your Zirconia’s attendants—a Pearl, in fact, as you now find yourself—speaks up on your behalf. “It’s true, my Zirconia,” she says. “Our records from Earth and from the human zoo indicate that humans are a lazy, indolent people and need to spend inordinate periods of their lives unconscious or unproductive to maintain productivity.”

You weren’t about to quibble over the racial insult. “Haha, yeah, that’s us,” your hologram says. “Lazy and indolent to a fault.”

“Oh,” mopes your holo-Zirconia. She reclines her chin on her knuckles and pouts, and you remember feeling a sharp fear that if you disappoint her too much, she’ll just cut her losses and airlock you. And yet, you doubt you could have played another tune for love nor money at that point.

“I—I am sorry,” your hologram says. “Really I—I wish I could keep going—” it gestures, “like one of your Pearls here, but, haha, if you’re going to deal with humans, you need to put up with our limitations.”

Those were them; the fatal words.

Your holo-Zirconia suddenly brightens up. “Oh, what a perfectly splendid idea!”

Your hologram looks confused. “Um…”

“My zirconia?” says your Pearl hologram.

Holo-Zirconia rises to her feet and waggles her finger at you excitedly. “You may go rest in your chamber. Pearl, prepare some organic food and water for our guest.” She grins. “I have preparations to make!”

“Come along, human,” says the Pearl hologram, escorting your former self away from the command deck. You remember being so relieved just to have been granted this small dispensation that you’d barely wondered what her “preparations” were, nor noticed her ordering “Peridot, plot a course for the Reef!” as you left the room.

The playback ends.

You look up into your real-life Zirconia’s grinning face. That had been it, you know. That idle rhetorical flourish on your part had been enough for her to assume consent. Or at least to give her the idea—you sincerely doubted that she would have cared about your consent one way or another.

But why should a being as great as your Zirconia waste her time obtaining the consent of an irrelevant human or Pearl, your new programming compels you to think. And just then, you wished you still had a spine so that you could have a proper shudder at knowing that such thoughts were a part of you now.

“I figured I’d surprise you with it,” says your Zirconia enthusiastically.

“Well, I’m…certainly surprised, my Zirconia,” you say.

“And what do you say when someone gives you a gift?” she asks in a maddening singsong.

The words “how dare you?” somehow transmute into “Thank you, my Zirconia,” as they leave your mouth.

 “My pleasure, Pearl,” she replies. “Only the best for such a delightful servant!”

You feel an interesting cocktail of pride at hearing her call you ‘delightful’ and disgust at literally everything else about your situation. You suspect you’ll be feeling a lot of that from now on.

“Am I correct in assuming, my Zirconia,” you manage to force yourself to say, “that you will not be returning me home?”

She laughs. “Why would you say such a thing? Of course I’ll take you home with me!”

Home. To her home, of course. “…And not to Earth, my Zirconia?” you hazard to ask.

“No need, no need! Indeed, as far as I’m concerned, neither of us need step on that depressing ball of mud ever again!”

“…Oh.”

You look down at the ground, and you hope that your Zirconia assumes it's out of embarrassment at asking such a silly question. You have a broken feeling somewhere deep inside of you and it takes conscious force of will to prevent tears from welling at your eyes.

Your Zirconia wraps her arm around you and brings you in for a side hug. You smile nervously; you hate to admit it, but it does make you feel somewhat better. “Now come along, Pearl! Oh, I cannot wait to introduce my staff to the new you!”