(Amedot AU) How to Fit Your Heart in a Petri Dish

Act Two - Scene Four: Heartbeat

A/N: ...I have a soft spot for Malachite and you can tell. Poor, large, bitter baby. She hates herself so much.

On the other hand I feel like Sugilite is slightly out of character — I'll make my excuses here that 1.) I still love her canon character and it's difficult writing her as a legit antagonist and 2.) she's probably on the corner of drop dead drunk and understands that she won't be able to get out of things by punching them when her physical capacities are that trashed, so she's more pliable. Don't think y'all getting out easy though...she's one of those weird people who's perfectly clear-minded even when blitzed.

Warnings are pretty much the same as the last chapter — underage drinking, drug use, sexual references, mentioned and vaguely-discussed sexual assault.

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Peridot was not surprised.

That didn't mean that she was happy at having been right, or tried to justify what happened to her partner as "getting what she asked for" — she simply wasn't surprised. Like a former doomsday prophet watching the world fall apart. If Amethyst was hurt, Peridot's world would fall apart. She didn't think she was ready for that. So that's why she'd kept her phone on her lap all night, why it was on full volume and the fastest vibrate setting, why when Vidalia asked if she wanted to come to the artist party across town she declined, why she made sure that Onion's babysitter could drive.

And then Amethyst had said don't tell anyone.

Peridot was fully inclined to tell someone as soon as she said not to. But then Amethyst began to cry. Her voice was not her own, that was for sure; Peridot probably could have reasoned that she was on something even before she admitted it. There was a distinctive slur in her words as if she had been drinking and she fumbled with the phone like she couldn't hold it steady. And she was terrified at the thought of Pearl and Garnet finding out, almost even more scared than when she talked about Sugilite.

It hurt. It really, really hurt. And that hurt more than it hurt for Peridot to slip on her coat and shoes, make sure the babysitter had fallen asleep, and sneak out the back door, so she chose Amethyst's option with a grimace on her face.

It was both bitterly cold and raining, but Peridot couldn't find an umbrella, so she just pulled up her parka hood and tried to walk fast. Just a minute ago, Amethyst's end of the line went almost hysterical and then dead, babbling words that blurred into one another and made no sense and then stopping altogether. At least it was only a block to Basalt's place, she could see the strings of cars already, but with every step she realized a little more that she had no plan. No plan of attack. No backup. No friends. No manpower. And Amethyst had blacked out, she wouldn't be able to defend herself or call for help — it might be too late.

Peridot was so worried that she didn't notice the lights of her neighbor's house flick on. A tall woman in a teal hijab stepped onto her porch. "Peridot?"

She yelped, spun around, and locked eyes with her neighbor. She'd recognized the voice, so she wasn't exactly scared, just shocked, but then she was scared again as she realized what this meant. Alexandrite Ahuja was the scariest college student Peridot knew. According to legend, the music major survived entirely off coffee and never slept, spending eighteen hours a day over the piano that could be heard halfway across the neighborhood. She always wore sunglasses and unlike Garnet, she didn't have an excuse. She was unpredictable, indecisive, and...well...intimidating.

"Ma'am, I swear I'm not doing anything, I was just — "

"Sneaking out to the bomb-ass party down the block," finished Alexandrite in a perfect deadpan, swinging an umbrella over her head and stepping down from the porch. "I understand. Come along now, I'll take you home."