#s: future

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Hypothesis

Prompt: priyanka becomes the leading authority on gem biology | 157/300

—

Connie’s mother stares at the X-ray in open and downright hilarious disbelief.

“You don’t have a skeleton?!” She yelps in the same cadence that someone might ask the question, What the hell?

“Nope,” Garnet replies easily, her visor glinting playfully beneath the fluorescent overheads. “Gems are projections of light.”

“But you’re tangible,” Priyanka says, plainly attempting to rationalize the irrational. “Matter made manifest… that must mean that your photons are packed so densely that… that…”

“Go on,” she nods encouragingly. “You’re nearly there, doc.”

(Indeed, the future is right on track for Dr. Maheswaran to pioneer a groundbreaking research project.)

[vmficrecs]

WEEKLY FIC ROUND UP

Fresh Egg Author: sadiekate Pairing: Logan, Wallace Rating: PG-13 Genre: Friendship Setting: Season 2 Spoilers: 2.18, “I Am God”  Chapters: 1 Word Count: 1045 Status: Complete Summary: Logan and Wallace do a physics project. Logan thinks a lot, while Wallace gives him meaningful glances.  Notes: WALLACE AND LOGAN BONDING!!! We really deserved for them to be featured more in the show and I’m always upset by it, especially since season 3 totally sets them up to become bffs and then they never have screentime alone together again. it’s fine. 

Black Lines Author: innie-darling Pairing: Logan, Veronica, Logan/Lilly Rating: PG-13 Genre: Introspection  Setting: Season 1 Spoilers: through 1.15, “Ruskie Business”  Chapters: 1 Word Count: 1323 Status: Complete Summary: What if Logan is the one locking Veronica in a cell? Remix of The Bars.  Notes: just feeling upset!!!!!!!! thanks for asking!! also, y’all, the line “He remembers being an onion in the summer camp play, the only vegetable that could make you cry,“ should not affect me in this way and yet. here we are. 

All That Glitters Author: vatrixsta Pairing: Logan/Veronica, Lilly, Wallace  Rating: M Genre: Romance, Friendship Setting: Pre-series, Future  Spoilers: n/a Chapters: 1 Word Count: 1747 Status: Complete Summary: Veronica could never imagine needing anything to remember Lilly by. Notes: Logan Echolls is a moron and it warms my heart. Veronica wondering if Logan thinks about Lilly (and thinks she looks like Lilly) during sex.....I will be showing myself out. I love Lilly Kane and Logan Echolls and Veronica Mars forever thank you. 

Before you knew you’d know me  Author: nevertothethird Pairing: Logan/Veronica, Lilly/Mac, Parker  Rating: Teen Genre: fake dating! secret romance! mutual pining! snowed in! only one bed! friends to loves! suzanne is my mortal enemy!  Setting: AU Spoilers: n/a  Chapters: 4 Word Count: 21694 Status: In Progress Summary: Logan and Veronica's relationship in five different settings: makeup artist at a friend's wedding, best-friend's girlfriend, ditched on vacation, sneaky in love sweethearts, and fake daters reunited years later. Notes: bless tropeapalooza!! suzanne wrote this delightful concoction of one-shot lv stories based off of varying tropes and every single one of them is delightful and true to character and did i mention DELIGHTFUL!! 

Tickets to the Gun Show Author: alilamba Pairing: Logan/Veronica, Ensemble  Rating: Explicit Genre: fake dating! forced to work together! veronica has a crush on logan!  Setting: AU Spoilers: n/a Chapters: 3 Word Count: 16212 Status: Complete Summary: “You’re kidding. You’re kidding. You’re the person about to give me a ticket.” It’s not the first time someone has been less than intimidated by her physical appearance, and, after two years on the force and a few months in this town, Veronica knows just how to respond. “License and registration please.” Notes: Starts off with Veronica being thoroughly unimpressed by Logan and determined to knock him down a few pegs, to her finding herself reluctantly and wholly charmed by him, and attracted to him, etc, etc. A truly fun read. 

The Lost Art of Persuasion Author: TheLastGoodGoldfish Pairing: Logan/Veronica, Keith Rating: M Genre: HIJINKS!!!, Team Detecting, I would die for Logan Echolls Setting: AU Spoilers: 1.22, “Leave it to Beaver” Chapters: 1 Word Count: 12302 Status: Complete Summary: “I don’t like that you’re enjoying this." “And there’s that spirit of generosity that I’ve come to expect from you during our short but—seemingly endless acquaintance.” Veronica Mars, Neptune's pre-eminent P.I., is accustomed to sweet-talking her way into and out of a wide range of sticky situations. Logan Echolls seems born to throw a wrench in her plans. Notes: if everybody remembers one fanfiction fact about me please let it be that i would absolutely die for thelastgoodgoldfish. i’m going to pretend she wrote this with my specific happiness in mind. everything she writes is so dang good, and this fic!!!!! it’s an engaging premise, logan and veronica are ON. FIRE. in it, and the dialogue!!! perfect lv. we owe her everything. also this is a real laugh out loud fic (i laugh out loud when i’m reading a lot because i like to be joyful but i have corroborated this with others who don’t laugh out loud when reading as much. anyway) 

how anybody survives in this life (without someone like you)  Author: gingermaggie Pairing: Logan/Veronica, Ensemble Rating: Teen Genre: Friendship, Romance, Growing Up Setting: Post Season 3 AU  Spoilers: 3.20, “The Bitch is Back”  Chapters: 1 Word Count: 7701 Status: Complete Summary: She thinks about their last breakup.  Well, not their last breakup, actually. Their last get-back-together. The best one. The one that stuck. Still sticks. Will continue to stick, dammit, so help her. She's not losing him again. AU post season 3. Things go on. Veronica and Logan go on. Notes: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH 

[mimik-u]

Reclamation

Prompt: What about a prompt continuation of this when Steven doesn't feel self-conscious of his corruption scars anymore even when he's wearing his swimsuit on a public pool or the beach or somewhere else and there are people there. Like a way to say to the world that he survived and is stronger than before. | 172/300 | This prompt is a response to a previous piece, Scars!

—

When Steven takes off his swim shirt, Peridot’s eyes are magnetized to the long scars branching outwards from his spine, pale and livid against his skin.

And Steven notices.

He always does.

“Pretty bad, huh?” He says sympathetically.

“N-no,” she stammers, quite clearly embarrassed. “No. Your back is absolutely normal, Steven, and er—”

“At ease, Peridot,” Steven laughs. “I know it looks bad…”

“And I’m okay with that,” he continues. “Really. Loads of bad things have happened to me.”

He smiles at her gently, sage beyond his startlingly few years.

“I’m starting to understand that I get to own them.”

[mimik-u]

Togetherness

Summary: The aftermath of Steven transforming into a huge reptilian monster brings back old memories for Pearl, who remembers another time Steven was scared so many years ago.

A/N: This piece was written for the Pearl-focused I am a Pearl! mini-zine a couple of months ago! It was a great opportunity to get to explore Pearl's mind space after the events of "I am My Monster" and how her friendship with Greg has evolved over the years. ;w; Thanks to the mods for a great zine experience! <3

AO3 Link / Zine Tumblr Link / @iamapearlzine

—

Steven is sixteen years old when he erupts into a scaly, pink monster—fifty-foot tall and inconsolable.

Everyone tells him that they love him, but because words are rarely ever enough, they show him that they do; they embrace him; they hold him; they press their fingertips into his reptilian skin. His scales are cold and sharp against Pearl’s palms, keratin hard and impenetrable. She tells him that he shouldn’t have to keep anything from her, all the while burning with shame that he’s kept so much from her.

He’s felt responsible for her fragility and loved her enough to tiptoe around the Diamond in the room.

His mother.

His mother and the complicated history between them.

The love.

The torture.

The grief.

The love.

(Because what is grief after all but a manifestation of love? A reminder, its echo, and its painful, lingering, lovely ghost.)

Connie kisses Steven, very lightly, very softly, and he falls from the sky, a boy again. 

Pearl wraps him in a blanket.

Garnet carries him into the wreckage of their home.

And approximately one hour later, they’re all standing on the deck, waiting for Priyanka Maheswaran to finish her professional assessment of him as the sun sinks into a honey-colored sea.

Pearl cradles her face in her hands, elbows sinking into the railing, trying to retrace every missed sign in the blackness of her own head. She sees his skin glowing pink in the darkness—at the Reef, in Little Homeworld, just moments ago in the living room…

So many flares in the night.

And Pearl had watched them all fizzle.

—

Steven is six years old when he moves into the newly minted beach house, and he tells Greg that he’s afraid of the silence. Nearly all of his life, he’s been surrounded by noise—the gentle rumble of the van’s motor, the susurrant murmur of the sea, wind, rain, buskers playing guitars on the Boardwalk, the whoosh of the rollercoasters at Funland. 

His dad’s snores echoing off the tin ceiling.

His dad’s laughter.

His softly-sung lullabies, too.

The beach house is really quiet at night, Steven tells Greg who tells the Gems, and he doesn’t like that…

He’s trying really hard to like it, though.

Maybe things’ll get better next week.

Pearl never looks at Greg as he delivers this news, tapping her fingers against the side of her leg as she sits at the kitchen table, ankles primly crossed. He stands in the doorway—right beneath Rose’s painted image—wringing his hands and looking too awkward to be allowed. She resents him for this—for his awkwardness, for his intrusion into their lives, and for everything else, too. 

(Namely for Rose.)

She inwardly knows that she’s being unfair. 

That loathing a person on the basis of his existence is morally suspect.

Wrong.

But what are rightness and wrongness to emotions? To the sheer primality of grief?

Grief is irrational, she rationalizes to herself—she self-justifies; it knows nothing of ethicality.

“Why didn’t Steman tell us this?” Amethyst asks, absently scratching her nose. “If it’s noise he wants, I got an old drum set he can knock himself out on.”

Pearl frowns, well-remembering the ten straight years Amethyst played the drums through the nineties. Rose loved it; Pearl spent many hours alone in her room to decompress. 

“He’s still intimidated by you three,” Greg shrugs kindly. “And shy. You just have to give him reason enough to trust ya with stuff like this. Tucking him in at bed at night, y’know. Checking under the bed for monsters.”

“There aren’t monsters under his bed,” Garnet says, practical as ever. “They wouldn’t fit.”

Greg chuckles, running a flat hand across the back of his neck as he peers between the three gems. When he and Pearl lock eyes, she meets his stare coldly, her mouth pressed into a thin line.

“But Steven doesn’t know that,” he mumbles, glancing away, his cheeks flushing. “You gotta shine a flashlight down there and show him there’s nothing there.”

“Doesn’t that seem patronizing to you?” Pearl asks, taking little care to disguise the condescension in her voice. Across the room, Garnet’s visored stare finds her—blank, inscrutable, and arcane—but Pearl knows her fellow gem well enough to understand that this is chastisement, silent and brutal.

Arching a thin brow, she ignores Garnet.

She demands an answer from Greg.

“Maybe,” the man concedes, but when he acknowledges her gaze again, there’s a little defiance in his eyes, an edge in his scratchy voice. “But maybe not. That’s what being a parent is sometimes. Patronizing the kid! Playing along. Showing him that you’re listening to what he needs. Letting him know that you’re there… haven’t you ever been afraid before, Pearl?”

“No,” she protests immediately, bristling.

“Pssh,” Amethyst snorts. “Last week, you jumped ten feet in the air ‘cuz you saw a snake.”

“You did,” Garnet smiles wryly. “I was there.”

Pearl scoffs, trying and failing to ignore that her cheeks are suffused with blue blush…

… and that Greg is staring at her with an almost distinguishable emotion in his eyes.

If she didn’t know better, she would say it was pity.

—

Dr. Maheswaran tells them that Steven is okay; he’s tired and sore—transforming expended a lot of his energy—but he’s ready to see everyone now. She tells them to be quiet and to maybe go in one by one, so he doesn’t get too overwhelmed.

Firmly, she warns them that it’ll take more than a good night’s sleep for him to heal .

And she doesn’t mean physically.

“Here’s a number of a good therapist I know,” she says, placing a card in Pearl’s hand. “Her office opens at nine.”

Pearl folds her fingertips over the edges of the glossy card stock but doesn’t quite glance down to look at the name—too fixated on watching Greg stand in front of the doorway, palming the screen door as he seemingly steels himself to go in. 

He’s aged so much in the twenty-something years that Pearl has known him—from his nearly bald head to the branching lines creasing the corners of his eyes—but for some reason, it is only now, in this ephemeral moment, that she realizes how old he is.

She doesn’t mean physically either.

As the others gather around Dr. Maheswaran, asking her questions, voicing their concerns, Pearl takes one deliberate step and then another.

—

Garnet tells Steven that it’s okay—there are no monsters under the bed—and when she shines a flashlight beneath the mattress, Amethyst is there, shapeshifted into a tiny kitten, purring at the child sweetly.

“See, dude?” She laughs, bounding out from beneath the bed. In an instant of blurred matter and color, she becomes herself again, her bangs sweeping inelegantly over her eye. “No monsters under the bed, only cute kittens.”

“Only kittens?” He repeats, grinning that famous gap-toothed smile that everyone adores. His legs are nearly swallowed by his oversized shirt.

“Kittens and dust bunnies,” Amethyst confirms, knuckling his curls playfully and smiling broadly when he laughs. “G’night, Steman.”

“Night, Amethyst!”

“Goodnight, Steven,” Garnet murmurs, lifting the six-year old into her arms and gently placing him onto the bed. She tucks him beneath the covers. She tenderly kisses him on the head.

“Nighty night, Garnet.”

And then it’s Pearl’s turn. Garnet and Amethyst head towards their temple rooms, and Pearl settles down on the edge of the comforter, balancing her left ankle on top of her right knee.

“Don’t forget about M.C. Bear Bear!” She teases softly, reaching over and placing the stuffed animal next to Steven’s arm. “He needs a snuggle buddy.”

Steven nods in agreement, his brow furrowed seriously over his eyes.

“Yep,” he says importantly. “I’ll be sure to hug him tight.”

“Excellent,” she says primly.

“Excellent,” he echoes playfully.

She lightly skims her knuckles across his soft cheek, smiling when he giggles a little, always ticklish…

… but then, when she withdraws her hand, letting it fall away from his face, the moment that immediately follows is quiet.

Too much so.

So quiet that Pearl can hear the softness of Steven’s breath, quiet enough that Greg’s words from earlier haunt her in the absence of noise.

Haven’t you ever been afraid before, Pearl?

Contrary to what Garnet and Amethyst may believe, she isn’t afraid of snakes —pestilent creatures though they are.

She’s surprised by snakes.

And afraid of much bigger things—five-thousand-year old secrets and equally ancient insecurities, for instance.

Six thousand years ago, after all, she was coded to believe that her highest order in life was to be a slave.

And sometimes—if only sometimes—she fears that her weaknesses were ingrained then, in the very moment she emerged from a shell and was called a pearl

One of so many.

Disposable.

Programmable.

Objectified.

Sometimes, she barely knows what it means to be herself, much less what it means to be a parent .

Indeed, Greg Universe of all people seems to have the idea down better than she ever could.

So, yes, Greg, she is afraid.

(Afraid of failing Steven.)

(Terrified that she’s already failed her. )

Patronize him, Greg suggested.

Play with him.

Show him that you’re listening.

Let him know that you’re there.

—

“Greg?”

Pearl places a light hand on Greg’s arm, startling him from his trance as he turns around to face her.

“Pearl!” He exhales, his breath coming in short bursts. “Y’scared me!”

“I’m sorry,” she says sincerely, not quite moving her hand away yet. His skin is warm beneath her fingertips, soft like wave-washed sand. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“Yes,” he returns immediately, and then—taking one look at her imperiously raised brow—just as quickly rectifies himself. “No. I don’t know. I’m freakin’ terrified, Pearl. I feel like a failure of a parent. I don’t know what to tell him. But I gotta go in there anyway.”

He says it all very rapidly, as though he’s talking to himself.

Encouraging himself.

And putting himself down to do it.

“I’m his dad,” he concludes, his voice breaking, tears standing in his dark eyes. “I’m his dad, and I didn’t… I wasn’t there for him, and I should have—“

“ Shh, ” Pearl cuts across him gently, patting his arm as tears threaten to slide down her own face. “Shh. There are so many hypothetical should haves that we’ll all have to face soon when it comes to Steven. But not today, Greg .”

With her free hand, she conjures a tissue from her gem and hands it to him, unflinching and kind, even when he needs to wipe his nose.

“Today,” she murmurs, her voice inhibited, a hundred emotions thick, “we just let him know that we’re here.”

—

“Pearl?” Steven asks.

Pearl blinks rapidly, coming back to herself; she’d been lost in her own thoughts, nearly consumed.

“Hey,” she smiles, placing her hand on top of Steven’s own. His skin is so warm and soft; she absently wonders if her alienness feels sharp to him… hard… cold… “Here’s an idea—how about I sing you a lullaby before you go to sleep?”

“You know how to sing?” Steven’s eyes widen incredulously, his mouth shaping itself into a delighted smile.

“Don’t look so surprised,” she laughs playfully. “When we were younger, your mother and I used to sing all the time—hymns from our home planet and the like…”

A pause, infinitesimal, hesitant. 

“...I could sing one for you if you’d like?”

“You could?” The child dares to be hopeful; the very emotion shapes the pitch of his question, the light in his eyes.

He has his mother’s eyes.

Dark and full of stars.

“I could,” Pearl repeats. “I’d sing as long as you wanted me to.”

“How about fooooorever?” 

“Let’s just start with until you fall asleep,” Pearl laughs. “That’s a part of forever, yes? This moment?”

“If you say so, Pearl,” he wrinkles his nose skeptically.

“I know so, Steven.”

As she sings him to sleep in her mother tongue, Pearl admits that this must be something that Greg knows, too.

The importance of hereness to a child.

Togetherness on scary nights.

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Flowers

Prompt: White Diamond gives someone unexpected a sincere compliment. | 166/300

Steven doesn’t particularly like being around White Diamond. Loquacious, eager to please, and astonishingly dramatic, she’s honestly exhausting.

(And her black fingernails, dark as pitch, are traumatic.)

But Steven tolerates her.

They have work to do.

“We could get drones to slather our Diamond potions all over Homeworld,” he suggests. “That might be enough to make the grass grow again, the flowers!”

White smiles, the expression surprisingly soft in her sharp face.

Affectionate.

“That’s a marvelous idea, Steven,” she hums. “Flowers again—on Homeworld!”

“You’ve missed them?” He asks curiously, incredulous against his will. “You’ve taught me that I should.”

[mimik-u]

Puppet

Prompt: If fragment requests are still going, maybe something involving the pearls interacting with their old diamonds post-CYM? Ive always been curious how the pearls feel towards their “masters” since theyve been liberated | 138/300

—

Bathed in White Diamond’s long and spiky shadow, Volleyball resists every ingrained memory that demands that she cross her wrists and salute.

That she cower.

That she bow.

She’s free now, and free gems don’t lessen their bodies to make other gems feel taller.

“Thank you,” Volley says, as evenly as she can manage, “but no thank you…”

White’s brow nearly disappears into her hairline with surprise.

“But I hurt you, Pearl,” she emphasizes. “I puppeteered you for thousands of years!”

Volley shakes her head sadly, almost pityingly.

Almost.

“And what would I gain from doing the same to you?”