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There was a thunk, and a burst of pain, and a stick jutting out of Bismuth’s shoulder.
The Crystal Gems stopped their conversation, all staring at the place where the arrow had sunk. There wasn’t panic, because it clearly wasn’t a Homeworld weapon, but there was confusion. Bismuth grabbed it, tugging it out, and felt the hole it made slowly reform. Five or six of those and it might poof her, but it wasn’t very effective. She ran her finger along the shaft, up to the pointed head.
“This,” she began slowly, “is wood and stone.”
“Did the trees learn to attack?” Rose Quartz said with wonder, glancing at the nearest one. “I haven’t cried on any lately. I’m almost sure of it.”
Bismuth grinned. “Or an animal did it. Don’t the humans make weird stuff like this all the time?”
Another thunk. Another arrow in her shoulder. This time, she followed the path it flew, charging into the bushes and snagging a human. Her teeth sunk into her arm with a snarl, and she beat at Bismuth with the bow clenched tight in her hands. Her dark hair was braided up, the heavy rope of it slapping at her wrist as she shook her head and tried to rip with her teeth.
“Aren’t you feisty?” She chuckled. “I don’t appreciate you shooting at me, you know.”
“Invader!” she shouted. “Murderer! Thief! Let me go!”
Her eyes widened. “I’m a what?”
The human jabbed a knife against her gem, and Bismuth grit her teeth at the unpleasant scrape at her core self. She grabbed the human’s hand, flinging the knife into the bushes, and she snarled again. “Living stone! Evil spirit! Leave!”
“You know,” she drawled, eyeing her. “I don’t like a lot of the living stones moving in either. I want them to leave. And if they’re not here, my friends and I could find somewhere else.”
Her struggling eased and she eyed the tall gem suspiciously. “You… aren’t all one tribe?”
“We’re the Crystal Gems and we’re fighting the Homeworld Gems,” she said thoughtfully. “And that arrow shoots pretty far, doesn’t it?”
“It does,” she said, looking just as thoughtful. “Do you know which way to point it?”
“So, what are you made of?” Bismuth asked the assembled humans. Three fighters, all very insistent on being called ‘he’. That had taken a while to get used to. But, apparently, humans were divided up into many sexes and genders, and they all used special pronouns. It was incredibly confusing to a race with only one gender, but they tried their best and the humans seemed to appreciate it.
The shortest man said, “Meat.”
She laughed. “Alright. Good start. But what I need is to see your strength, speed and durability. From there we can figure out the best places to put you on the battlefield and give you the right armor and weapons.”
Another human frowned. “Don’t you pull your weapons from your gems? When we’ve gone to collect them, most of them vanish into light.”
Ah. That’s where their weapons had been going. Bismuth grinned. “Maybe you shouldn’t take things that aren’t yours.”
The man flushed. “That doesn’t answer my question. How are we supposed to wield those weapons? Why do some vanish and some stay?”
“The weapons we pull from our gems vanish. The weapons I make in the forge don’t.” She laughed and gave his head a pat. The man yelped and stumbled back. Right. Had to be gentle with the meat. They were more like Peridots and less like Quartzes. “I’ll make you weapons in the forge.”
“And we can keep them?” the shortest one asked eagerly.
“If you want. For what, hunting?”
He grinned. “For hunting Rinaka.”
“Rinaka?” Bismuth said, struggling for a meaning, but her gem came up blank. “What is that, some kind of deer?”
“It’s another tribe,” the tallest one explained. “They put too many nets in the river and steal our fish. They burn our crops. They kill our families. Once we finish with the gems, we’ll take care of Rinaka.”
“You fight other humans?”
“You fight other gems,” he returned. “It has to be done sometimes. My father was a terrible leader, cruel to our oldest and weakest and barely kind to our best. When I came of age, I ran a spear through his belly and now I lead our people. We’re better for it.”
Her eyes went wide, asking breathlessly, “You killed your leader? That’s like shattering, isn’t it?”
He thought about that, then carefully explained, “When you kill someone, they cannot come back to their body. Their soul has gone away. The body rots into the earth.”
She nodded. “That’s shattering. Why didn’t you poof him?”
“Poof?” He cocked his head, then laughed. “Oh! Vanish. You turn into smoke and return later. We do not.”
Bismuth digested that, really turned it over and over. No poofing. When a human died, that was it. The end of everything. There was no way to ever get them back. Well, that put them burying the bodies in a new light. They had thought it was just the way humans grew back.
Still, it was good to know, and she nodded to herself. “Heavy armor. Ranged weapons. Let’s work from there.”
There was another scream and the smell of roasting meat, and Pearl leapt to her feet. "That's enough of that. I have no idea what we're doing, but we have to do something. That cannot go on."
"My tears didn't work," Rose said weakly. "Maybe if they die, I could... But I don't think that's a good idea to try. My plants don't always do what I want them to."
Pearl scolded, "No essences from you, Rose. Bismuth, you work with them. Any ideas on their technology?"
"Their weapons are terrible, they've barely got fire down, and half their energy goes into sewing the shiniest rocks they can find onto their clothes." She laughed and stretched, glancing to the other camp where the humans were healing up after the battle. "But they’ve got the right idea."
"You're pretty shiny, Bis. Better watch out they don't poof you and stitch you onto a dress." Snowflake snickered and dodged as Bismuth tried to catch her in a headlock.
Pearl clapped. "There we go! That's something. Sewing. If they can stitch clothes back together, why not a person? Their clothes are made out of animal skin, so it's really the same process."
"Have you seen their needles, Pearl?" Bismuth said. "Their thread? Pretty big holes they'll have to poke. I think the burning might be easier."
She folded her arms. "So make them some."
Bismuth grinned. "You supposed to be giving orders, Pearl? Who do you report to?"
She laughed, punching her shoulder hard enough to stagger Bismuth back a step. "You report to me! Go make needle and thread, Bismuth. It's the least we can do."
So Bismuth made them. The needles were easy, and she churned out a thousand and dumped them in a box before trying her hand at thread. Metal was too sharp when it was that thin. It would just slice through the skin without holding it together, but Bismuth didn't know much about other materials. She made some hard light adjustments instead, and it worked out alright. Of course, human knives couldn't cut it, so she made a few scissors as well.
Pearl presented her efforts to a wounded human, explaining as she held it up, "I'm going to sew you together like fabric. It should hurt much less."
The healer, River, scowled at her. "We don't need-"
"Let's give it a try!" yelped Sunset, looking warily at the metal heating in the fire.
Pearl settled down, quickly stitching up the wound with minimal whimpers and cries from the wounded warrior. They smiled with relief at the end, whispering, "Thank you! That was so much easier."
Bismuth smiled down at the warrior, then handed the healer the the box of sewing supplies. “Take these. Tell me when you need more.”
———————————————————————
“I’m telling you they’re as strong as anything other than a quartz. A pearl, a peridot, a sapphire. Just name it!” Bismuth said, following behind Rose as they left the rest of the group to talk in private. “I’ve been training them, making them weapons. I’m afraid of some of those little meatballs. I think if I look away, one might take me out.”
She laughed. “Meatballs?”
“It’s a nickname for humans. Some of the gems are picking it up.” Bismuth shrugged nonchalantly, as if she wasn’t the one who came up with it. As if she wasn’t overjoyed every time she heard someone else say it. “We’ve got to stop underestimating them. They could really help us in the fight if we get them to the thick of things.”
Rose sighed, resting her hand gently on Bismuth's arm. “I wasn’t going to tell you in front of everyone else. I don’t want to embarrass you. But this isn’t their fight. It’s cruel enough that you’ve encouraged them to use bows and arrows from the shadows. Too many of them have been cut down for being a nuisance to Homeworld. We cannot allow even more humans on the front lines. You have to give this up.”
“They want to be there,” Bismuth argued. “I’ve seen some of them put on the star.”
“What?”
“I don’t know how they do it, but they’ll show up with the star on them. They want to join.” That was a lie. Bismuth had watched humans use the needles she made for them and bright yellow paint made from flowers, carefully branding themselves with the same star all Crystal Gems wore, one quick poke at a time. She was sure Rose wouldn’t take well to the idea of them hurting themselves just to be part of the team.
“If they think they want to be there, it proves they shouldn’t. Why would anyone want to be there, Bismuth?” Rose said. Her arms wrapped around her belly, covering her gem as she cringed. “Seeing all those poofed gems discarded on the battlefield. The shards, Bismuth! Who could want to be in a place so awful? We fight because we have to. They don’t, so we should leave them out of it.”
“Rose, they shatter each other all the time!”
“More proof that they’re incapable of understanding!” she cried.
“If you took the time to know them, you’d know that isn’t true! Go to their healers and look at home they tend to their wounded! Go see how they mourn their dead. Then come back here and tell me what they’re capable of.”
She shouted, pulling away. “I am not going to watch your pets suffer because you’re too irresponsible to care for them! This has gone on long enough!”
“What?” Bismuth said, almost laughing from the randomness of it. There was that thing in Rose's eyes again, that look of being somewhere else that never sat well with the blue gem. “Rose, what are you talking about? The humans aren’t pets. They’re working with me because it’s the only way any of them survive the fights.”
The shouting ended, Rose falling quiet under the setting sun. Her fingers came to her chest, resting softly there as she caught her breath. “Of course. I don’t know what came over me.”
Bismuth took a cautious step forward. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“It’s nothing.” She looked away. “If you believe the humans are able to agree, then I trust you. There’s no reason to stop any of them from fighting.”
"What is wrong with you?" Cornflower shouted, the short man dragging Dawn in front of the gems. The girl was small and furious, scratching at his hold. They were about to step in when he dropped her, glaring at the assembled gems. "What kind of monster lets a pregnant girl fight?"
"Pregnant?" Rose whispered to Pearl.
"It's a human word for a fatter woman," she whispered back.
Rose frowned. "Why can't a fat woman fight? What's wrong with that?"
"She's not fat, she's pregnant!" he snapped.
"Daddy, I told you, they don't know what that is," Dawn insisted. "It's not their fault! I'm the one who asked for the weapons and armor! It's what I want to do! I don't want my baby-"
Rose gasped, by the girl's side in an instant. "You have a baby? Where'd you get one?"
Cornflower growled, glaring at his daughter as the girl's cheeks began to darken. "That is a conversation for another day. But the baby is right here, already quickened. She can't fight." He pointed at her swollen belly.
Rose gasped again, now with tears in her eyes. "You ate it?"
"That's where it grows!" Cornflower bellowed. "She's making a baby. That's what pregnancy is! Every time she fights she risks its life. Keep her off of the battlefield!"
Rose was blissfully unaware of his anger, focused on Dawn. "Humans make babies?"
Cornflower's rage was gone with that, too confused by her lack of knowledge to keep it going. The girl cradled her belly gently, and explained, "That's how we make more humans. We start as babies, we grow into children, and then adults. This is the beginning."
Rose's hand reached out, resting softly on the hide dress. She put on her leader voice, calm and reassuring, but firm with no room for question. "You cannot fight if you are making a new human. The baby doesn't get a choice if she's stuck inside you. When she emerges, you can come back. Unless..." Her eyes filled with tears again. "Does it hurt you when the baby comes out?"
Dawn laughed, covering her mouth so as not to tease the gem. "Mmm. Very much. But I'll get better, and then I can come fight."
"You get better?" Rose said with wonder. "Does it corrupt the ground?"
Dawn looked baffled again. "No. Why would it?"
"Just making life, no taking," Rose whispered wondrously. "Beautiful."
She stood, turning back to Bismuth. "No more armor or weapons for pregnant humans. It's too dangerous."
"Of course not," Bismuth whispered, staring at the girl. A baby. A new human. It grew inside them and emerged as those tiny squealing things they occasionally brought into the armory, often attached to a breast which was often attached to a very tired looking adult. They had all thought they were pets, cute but annoying things humans doted on the same way they doted on the dogs they brought to the fights.
Bismuth could feel guilt pressing down on her as she struggled to remember how many pregnant humans she had provided with armor, how many had fallen on the battlefield. How many more humans could each fallen soldier make, if they hadn't been struck down? Not only the pregnant ones, but any of them?
Every dead body was the end of a long human line that could have been. Every human life sliced away as cruel as destroying an injector and leaking the life of thousands of gems into the soil, never to be made. How many had she sent off without bothering to memorize their names? Too many. Hundreds. Thousands. She had treated them as pawns and tools, little moments of life that flickered out like a fire in the rain.
When Bismuth went back to her forge, for the first time, she really, truly wondered how long this war could go on for.
She wondered how to end it.
“You would really like them if you got to know them,” Bismuth told Pearl for the millionth time. They dangled their feet in lava as they sat side by side. “I’m telling you, they’re as good as gems. As different as gems. I’ve got this one who spends a lot of time in here, her name’s-”
“I don’t want to know, Bismuth,” Pearl cut her off. “How do you even learn and remember all those names?”
She could feel every name, tie it to a face, as clearly as the moment she learned them. It had been two thousand years since Dawn told them she was pregnant. Bismuth had thousands of names inside her, and when she wasn’t working on a bigger, more important thing, she thought of ways to immortalize them. Future humans, with lives and memories too short, deserved to remember what their ancestors had done. The humans who had fallen deserved to be remembered for it.
“I think it’d be wrong to forget them, don’t you?” she asked. “I was thinking about writing their names into the cliff side, around the forge. We could put their names and the gem names too, side by side in combat and shattering.”
“There’s too many of them. It won’t fit.”
“Cold, Pearl.” She laughed. “Are you gonna forget me too?”
She gasped, head snapping to her. Pearl's fingers wrapped around her bicep and squeezed, almost painful. “You are never, ever going to be shattered! You’re Bismuth, our Bismuth. No one could ever stop you!”
“If I did go,” Bismuth insisted. “Would you forget me? Just another name you don’t want to remember?”
“Of course not! How could I forget anyone who fights by our side?”
“Unless they’re human,” the bigger gem muttered. Pearl looked away, delicate form rigid and perfectly still. She pushed on, hoping this time would be different. “They’re people, Pearl. It doesn’t go away if you ignore it. All of the ones who have fought with us deserve to be remembered right. They deserve us bearing the burden of some pain so they don’t die for nothing.”
“Don’t say die.” She wiped at her eyes. “I hate that word.”
“It’s their word. We should use it to respect what happens to them.”
“It’s an awful word!” she snapped. “Die. Kill. Murder. Slaughter. All these terrible words they’ve made for the terrible things they do to each other. Why do you waste your time with them?”
“Because they’re people!” she shouted, and another laugh ripped from her throat, wild and ferocious like a hot sword in water. “Why is it so hard for everyone to understand that? Why does everyone else have to look away when the truth is staring them in the face? Every time we fight, humans die. Every human that dies loses the chance to make more humans, to pass on stories, to live out the rest of their lives!”
“The rest of their pathetically short century long lives!” Pearl shouted. “What a tragedy.”
“That’s even worse!” Bismuth grabbed her wrist. “They only get one hundred years and we’re ending them at twenty? Their time is so valuable because it’s so short! Generations of humans have lived and died in the time Benitoites have spent waiting for Blue Diamond to stop in for a visit. How much could a human do with that time? We can’t cut it short!”
“I can’t talk to you when you get like this.”
“If gems died like humans did, this war would be over by now!”
Pearl said nothing, pushing out of the pool and walking away. Bismuth screamed, throwing a hammer shaped fist into the wall and pounding until she had herself a pile of rubble and dust and her anger had dwindled into a pathetic flame of despair. She groaned, resting her head against the wall as tears rolled down her cheeks and dried in the hot forge air.
“Why don’t they see it?” she whispered. “We could do it the way they do. We could end it.”
She stepped back from her hole, looking at her anvil. The problem was that she was holding back. She had to go harder, bigger, show Rose Quartz and the others that she really meant it. She started everything up, hot and rolling, and got to work on that bigger thing. She understood now, refined it, carefully pulled and willed it into shape. She’d been too gentle before. There was no poofing. No cracking.
The humans had it right. Sometimes, you had to kill.
"Bismuth." Rose's voice was hushed. "What is that?"
"It's how we win."
Her hand raised, reaching out, but held back. There was fear and anger in her eyes, too much for her to even dare touch it. That was fine. Bismuth expected some resistance to something so radical. She had her arguments prepared. She knew that Rose would see reason. Rose loved the Crystal Gems. She loved Earth. She loved humans. She had to see reason.
"We can't win this way, Bismuth. It's a cruelty we should do our best to never inflict." Rose shook her head. "We've had some mistakes. That's the cost of a war like this. But you're talking about intentionally shattering the Diamonds! What would that solve?"
"Not just the Diamonds," Bismuth said quickly. "I've been talking to humans about how they deal with bad kings."
"Oh, Bismuth," Rose said, closing her eyes. "They're humans. You can't take the things they say seriously. They're just cute little-"
"They kill their kings! They kill their upper crust!" Bismuth insisted. "We have to take it seriously. Look how they've changed, Rose. We've been here such a short time and everything we give them they change. Everything they are has changed. We need to follow in their footsteps. We need to try something new."
"I can't talk to you when you get like this," she said, turning away. "You need to calm down."
"Why does everyone keep saying that?" she shouted. She clenched the Breaking Point tight in her hand and jabbed it at Rose. "Maybe you need to get worked up! Maybe you need to stop acting like this is a game and take this war seriously."
"You have no idea what I've given up for this!" Now Rose was shouting too. There it was. Calling her immature always lit a fire in her, stoked her passion. Maybe now she would listen.
"The same thing we've all given up!" Bismuth returned. "And that's less than what the humans are given up, Rose. You say we can't shatter, but how many humans have been shattered by Homeworld?"
She's gasped, eyes filling with tears. "Bismuth, stop it. I hate it when you talk about-"
"I've watched a human walk down a spear just to poof a gem!" she cut her off with a snarl. "I've seen them dragged back without limbs because they've cut themselves free of traps. Our spies have said they drink hemlock just to keep our secrets when they're captured. Don't we owe it to them to work harder? Don't we owe it to them to take down everyone who's left their blood in the dirt?"
Rose whispered. "Bismuth, how many gems do you want to shatter?"
"As many as it takes!" she bellowed. "This can't keep going, Rose. There are thousand of names in my memory and I'm running out of room! This can't go on forever. This can't-"
She’d been jabbing with the Breaking Point, not even thinking about it. And now... And now there was a sword in Rose's hand. The sword Bismuth made for her. The words dried up in her throat as everything floaty and dreamy and starry eyed faded away from her leader, leaving only decisive coldness in Rose's eyes. "You get one more warning, Bismuth. Throw it into the furnace and we'll forget this ever happened. Nothing has to change."
She wasn't listening. Even now. Bismuth screamed and charged forward, and she wasn't even aiming at Rose’s gem. Not really. But she couldn't think for pain, as names and faces flashed in front of her eyes there was a searing burn in her belly. The Breaking Point poked at Rose's chest, where a human heart would be. There was nothing there, of course, so it didn’t bother Rose at all.
And Rose, oh Rose. Her sword had slid up to the hilt in the same spot on Bismuth, and there was an awful scrape of the hard light alloy against her gem. Their faces were barely apart, close enough that they could feel each other breathe even in the hot air of the forge. The smell of fire and smoke and metal was a comfort, even now.
There was some betrayal, but she was coming for Rose. That deserved a poof. Still, her voice cracked as she whispered, "You're not thinking long term, Rose."
"Yes, I am." Her face was soaked in tears.
Bismuth laughed, bitter and cold, and felt her form go ragged and scattered. They could talk about this tomorrow, when she reformed. She was thinking she might move her star a little higher on her shoulder. She would try this again once she was back to herself. Eventually, Rose would understand. They just needed to keep talking. Tomorrow was another day.
And then Rose bubbled her.
Tomorrow never came.