I've been working on Astronautical again, so I've been wanting to draw some fun stuff for it, like little cover doodles like I used to sometimes do. This hope is thwarted by the fact that I cannot draw Peter. IDK what the mental block is for me, but I simply cannot comprehend his facial structure or something... *shrugs helplessly* At this point, my plan has been reduced to just drawing him over and over until either I figure it out or I go insane. Odds are even either way right now. So here's 21 attempts to draw him. It's probably easy to tell which ones came earlier and later in the process. lol!
If anyone’s interested, Chapter 13 of “She’s my Ride Home” is up. Full disclosure; I have no idea how to write romantic love and it really shows. I’m sorry.
Funny story. So this chapter was supposed to be uploaded a year ago, then I changed my mind and decided I wanted to cram the cheesburger scene into the end of it instead of the start of the next chapter because I wanted it from Tony’s perspective, and ‘Into the Ocean’ will be mostly Nebula (and Rocket and Rhodey). Well, I finally got around to adding in the cheesburger scene aaaaaand... the chapter was getting too long so I cut it in half.... Meaning I wrote this part over a year ago and could have uploaded it then. But I didn’t. *Groans and smashes my face into my desk*
I got excited, because for the first time in a long time I actually made some progress on the next chapter of Astronautical. It was only two hundred something words, but it was progress! So here’s some happy Peter and Mantis having adopted sibling bonding time.
Summary: Nebula thinks she gets it; how her sister came to love a Terran. Those 22 days spent drifting hopelessly through space on a broken ship may have been the best memories she’d ever had.
Author’s Notes: Titles from ‘She’s my Ride Home’ by Blue October.
Chapter 2: I'll be Reaching for the Stars With You
"Looks like a hurricane came through here." The Terran's voice rasped over the hum of the engine leaking from the opened panel.
Nebula carefully wound the plastic insulation tape over the exposed wire which had been sparking and threatening to blow a circuit to the atmosphere control unit. "Hurricanes occur over water."
Tony let out a burst of laughter that left him wheezing a moment later. "A woman after my own heart," he chuckled out between gasps of pain.
Nebula didn't look up from her work. "If I wanted your heart I would have cut it out while you slept."
His chuckles faded into a breathy laughter that sounded a little wetter than it had before to Nebula's enhanced hearing. "Natasha is going to love you."
She could hear him wandering around the room with uneven steps and inspecting various items that had been strewn about in the crash and then, later, her attempts to find the Terran some way to fight the infection that was clearly trying to take over his body.
"Space is like, a kind of ocean," he offered in a painfully transparent attempt at conversation. "Y'know, this is going to be a much longer trip if we can't even talk to each other."
"It's going to be long either way." She finished sealing off the defiant wire and tucked it away, closing the panel back into place.
"It's still nicer to have someone to talk to."
"Not always." Nebula turned to fix him with a sharp look which seemed to have no effect on him whatsoever.
He had a blanket wrapped around his shoulders which he must have stolen from someone's bed, and his forehead looked sweaty again, despite the fact that the ship was holding at low temperature right now.
"That brings me to a thought I had a while ago- how did I understand you all? Did your human friend Flash Gordon back there teach you all English or something?"
"You are hearing our universal translators," she said, rising to her feet and moving around him to sweep the items gathered on the table onto the floor. "I am not speaking English."
The Terran's eyebrows rose as he danced out of the way of the falling items. "That's handy. Don't suppose you have any extra ones I could tinker with while I'm here?"
"No." With the table cleared, Nebula retrieved the box of outdated medical supplies from where she had stowed it in a nearby drawer. She dropped the box onto the table and motioned for Tony to climb up. "Take off your bandage."
"I usually get dinner first," he grunted out as he draped the blanket onto a chair and hauled himself onto the table where she could see better in the ship's dimmed lighting. The action left him panting as he began unwinding the bandages she had applied on Titan.
He was struggling to get his arms behind himself without further aggravating his ribs and after a moment she smacked his hands away with a snort and took over.
"You're a lot grumpier than my usual nurses," he told her as she worked, apparently incapable of handling any length of silence. "Unless you count Pepper, then I guess this is about right."
The edges of his wound were puffy and red, and didn't appear to have made any progress towards healing beyond what she had done with the Suturim on Titan. It had only been a cycle and a half since he had received the wound, this infection was moving quickly.
She pressed her fingers experimentally against the flesh and he gave a yelp, jerking away from her touch.
"Don't poke it!" he snapped.
"The infection is trying to take hold. It's probably originating from somewhere deep inside of you." Whatever he had been run through with was certainly not very sterile. "I am not a surgeon, and we don't have anything here to kill the infection. You'll just have to take care of it and fight it off on your own."
"Great. I got space-rabies from a giant purple grape. I gotta say, this is not how I was expecting to go out, but don't worry, I'm a fighter. I've been told I'm too stubborn to die."
"You babble a lot," she breathed out, peeling open a new pack of antiseptic. "Is that normal for you, or has the fever affected your brain?"
"Uh... normal, I think. I'd worry more if it stopped-Ouch!" The Terran squirmed again as she scrubbed harshly against the open edges of his wound.
"Hold still."
"Well, you could be a little gentler about it, you know."
"This way will be over faster," she countered, ignoring his complaints and continuing to scrub away the dying flesh.
-x-
"So tell me about these 'Guardians' or whatever- what were they like?"
Nebula opened her eyes to regard her companion coldly. After spending the last half a cycle working tirelessly to keep the ship running, she was finally resting in the captain's seat. Tony was in the seat next to hers, huddled up under the same blanket from earlier, with strict instructions to wake her if something changed on the monitors. A glance around the cockpit proved that those requirements had not been met.
"Nothing has changed," she informed him, making it clear she was not amused, and closed her eyes.
"Sure it did."
Begrudgingly she cracked an eye open again to find him pointing at a series of numbers at the corner of a screen.
"This symbol here. It used to look like a... squiggly star thing, now it looks more like an upside-down happy face."
"It's the navigational system. The co-ordinates will change as we make progress across the galaxies."
"Oh." He squinted at the numbers. "Is that what it is? I can't read them."
"You wouldn't be able to understand what they meant anyways."
The cockpit was blissfully silent for all of three breaths.
"So this family of yours-"
"They were not my family," she answered tiredly, hoping to put an end to his curiosity. "They were my sister's."
"Doesn't that make them yours, too?
"Thanos stole us both from our homeworlds when we were children. We do not share blood."
"But you were raised together? So you must have been close, right?"
"Our father would pit us against each other in battle. Whenever I lost to Gamora, he would replace some part of me in the hopes of creating her an equal."
His brows raised as he stared at her as though noticing her modifications for the first time.
She leaned back and closed her eyes once more so she didn't have to see his face while he counted the failures immortalized into her flesh.
-x-
"Hey Nebula, what is this?"
Nebula set her tools down to accept the crinkling silver packet he was handing down to where she sat cross-legged on the floor. "It's food," she told him flatly. "You eat it."
"Yeah, I figured that, but what is it? I can't read the print, and I don't know if it's bad or just taste like shit."
She flipped the bag over in her hand to scan over the sparse labeling. "It's expired." That was disgusting. How had her sister lived with these idiots?
Tony tugged the ever-present blanket a bit tighter around his shoulders. "Expired like 'the grocery store can't sell it anymore,' or expired like 'time to call poison control?'"
A cautious sniff of the contents revealed it was just old, not rotten. "It's stale. You'll be fine." She handed the packet back to the nervous Terran. They couldn't really afford to be picky right now anyways. The Guardians had not kept a well-stocked ship, and they were a long way from fresh supplies, with no working radio and no way to send a hail for help. "Just don't break a tooth."
The Terran gave a grunt of acknowledgment and accepted the bag back awkwardly with his left hand, his right one clinging stubbornly to his side. Now that she looked, he seemed to be hunched over even more than he had been when she had cleaned the wound that afternoon. It was nearing what should be the middle of the night cycle now. He'd done little but sleep in the time between, he shouldn't look so terrible.
She took in a deep breath and let it out with a growl of frustration as she rose to her feet, abandoning her current project. It was hopeless anyways. The communication systems had been smashed and fried beyond what they had to the means to repair.
"Get on the table," she ordered, yanking open the drawer she had stored the medical supplies in with much more force than necessary.
"You can't want to change the bandage again already?" he asked, but struggled onto the table as requested. "How many rolls of that stuff do we even have?"
"It doesn't matter," she grumbled through her teeth, locating the medical kit she was after and returning to peel the bandage up enough to catch a glimpse of the discolored flesh underneath. "Your infection is getting worse."
The edges of the cut were starting to ooze an ugly yellow puss and, underneath, parts were turning a deep purple which was spreading through the nearby veins, creating dark spider-webs lacing ominously up his side.
"Stay here." She stalked off into the ship's bathroom, locating a clean towel and ripping it into strips then filling a cup with hot water from the sink. Next, she tore through the cupboards and drawers until she found the salt. It was standard for most ships to carry some, at least. Most life forms required it to survive, and if you were desperate enough it had other uses. She placed her gathered items onto the table next to Tony, who was holding his side protectively and frowning down at her like he was already dreading what was to come.
When the bandage was unwound and the pus and dead tissue scraped from the wound she dunked a strip of towel into the warm salt water and handed it to the Terran who was laying misty-eyed with pain on the table.
"Soak it now."
He swallowed thickly as he accepted the scrap of cloth and pressed it against his raw flesh.
"We'll have to do this several times a cycle. I'll come back later to help you re-bandage it."
She left him on the table and returned to her hopeless attempt to draw the communication lines back to life long enough to send out an emergency hail.
Summary: Nebula thinks she gets it; how her sister came to love a Terran. Those 22 days spent drifting hopelessly through space on a broken ship may have been the best memories she'd ever had.
Author’s Notes: Decided to finally post this here now that I’m caught up on my posted chapters of Luciferous. Title is from ‘She’s my Ride Home’ by Blue October.
Chapter 1: Strike a Match, Pour Gasoline
After all but herself and the wounded Terran crumbled away, the remains of Titan fell into the familiar silence of a battlefield after Thanos had conquered it. For some time she feared her father would return for her. She kept casting glances over her shoulder as she moved through the wreckage, seeking the whereabouts of her sister's ship, half-expecting to find him standing atop the rubble somewhere, here to take her to the fabled garden he had promised so often when she was a child, or to finish her off once and for all.
A tiny part of her wished he would come and take her away, and her sister would be there waiting in the garden. Together, they would turn against the Titan, finally bring his twisted rein to the bloody end it deserved and then they would vanish together, free at long long last. If he truely had the stones, and it was more than evident that he did, then it should be a simple matter to bring her back from whatever fate she had suffered on Vorimir, right? And it seemed just the kind of unfair thing he would do- they could never be free of him, not even through death. Nebula still did not know how Gamora had met her ultimate end. Perhaps she had turned on their father when they discovered the stone, one final desperate attempt to stop him, and he had slain her there.
It was hard to imagine such a thing. In his eyes, Gamora could do no wrong. It was likely, Nebula would never know how her sister spent her final moments. She could only hope it had been swift.
Nebula wished her sister had just let her die on Sanctuary, and let Thanos's dreams die with her. She could have accepted death, gladly and gratefully, to snatch that finally victory from him.
The ship proved to be in one piece when she found it, but the damage it had taken was extensive, and the power cells were nearly destroyed. Freeing it from the rubble took hours, even with the greatly reduced gravity.
When she had the ship freed she returned to check on the remaining Terran, a bag of supplies slung over her shoulder. He had hardly moved since his companions had vanished. When she had last seen him he had still been curled in on himself, holding his bloody hands against his face as he stared with empty shock at the piles of dust around him. At some point he must have grown too exhausted to do even that, because on her arrival he was laying back, one hand pressed against the wound on his side and his eyes shut closed.
For a moment she thought he might be dead after all, survived the culling only to succumb to his wounds shortly after. It may have been a mercy if he had, but as she drew near he stirred and groaned and opened his reddened eyes to blink up at her.
"Did you find it?" he asked blearily.
"Yes." She kicked aside some rubble to clear a space beside him and sat down. "It's in no condition to fly."
"Yeah," the man sighed while Nebula rummaged around her bag, pulling out a bottle of water which she handed over. "I feel the same."
He took a long sip and immediately choked. Nebula snatched the bottle back so he wouldn't spill their very limited supplies while he rolled over on his good side, hacking and coughing. Once his coughs had trailed away into weak, heaving breaths, she handed it back.
"There's a possibility it can be fixed. Maybe."
"Okay," he rasped out, rolling onto his back with an obvious grimace of pain. "How far are we from the nearest gas station?"
The assassin tipped her head and regarded him strangely as she tried to glean the meaning to his babbling. "Without a jump point, we are at least a hundred cycles from the nearest inhabitable planet or outpost." Longer still for anything useful, but she did not add that part.
"And this ship of yours, I don't suppose getting it 'jump worthy' again is much of an option?" he asked, but he stared up at the sky with blank eyes, obviously knowing the answer already.
"Not a chance." She returned to rummaging around in her bag, removing several packs of bandages, antiseptic wipes, and a handheld machine that assisted in stitching flesh back together. All standard medical gear, if somewhat outdated.
The Terran watched her spread out her supplies with the casual disinterest of someone who wasn't sure if they wanted to survive their injuries or not. It was a look and a notion she knew very well.
"You're more useful alive than dead," she told him, echoing the words her father had told her so many times when she wished for death, but he stubbornly refused to release her life from his possession.
The Terran screwed up his face in pain as she scrubbed the dirt and rust and other nasty things from his wound, cleaning the dried blood away and causing it to bleed again, sluggish and oozing.
"I don't seem to be much use either way," he ground out between clenched teeth.
She ignored his words and splashed his wound with some of their precious water before unraveling the first roll of bandages.
The Terran had succumbed to his exhaustion and fallen asleep before she even finished securing the wrap. She left him there to rest and returned to the ship to see what she could do. He must not have been out for long, however, as he made an appearance a short time later. Wordlessly, he limped his way over to where she kneeled over the remains of the gas-lines, re-working the tubes and repairing the countless cracks and holes. There, he settled down next to her and the sound of his labored breathing kept the pace as they worked in tandem.
-x-
There was no day and night cycle on Titan anymore. The remains of the planet drifted on without spinning, so Nebula measured imaginary cycles with an internalized clock that had been worked into her systems so long ago she could hardly remember a time without it.
By what would have been the midnight portion of the cycle, the Terran had developed a sheen of sickly sweat and Nebula sent him away before he made a mistake on the repairs that could cost them dearly. She found him later, not resting at all, but back where he had battled the Titan, crawling among the wreckage.
"You don't listen to orders well, do you?" she asked as she caught up to him. He was on his knees, sweeping together a pile of dust.
"Nope." His sarcastically happy answer may have had more power if his voice wasn't so tight with pain.
She took a seat on a nearby hunk of what may have once been a building and watched him work. "That was done with the power of the Infinity Stones. You can't bring them back."
"Well you're just a basket of inspiration, aren't you?" He finished scraping together every scrap of dust he could reach and sat back to stare at the pathetic mound of dirt before him. By Nebula's estimation, it may have comprised a quarter of a disassembled person at best, and was hopelessly mixed up with the planet's paler natural dust. "I'm not trying to bring them back," he sighed. "It just doesn't feel right, leaving them here like this."
"Was that your son?"
The question clearly caught the Terran off-guard and he stuttered a few times before answering. "Who? What? No. No, what would make you think that?"
"You held him as he died," she murmured thoughtfully. "He sought you out in his final moments. You seemed close." In her time under Thanos, she had watched many families die.
This earned her a strange look from the Terran, and he glanced around the rubble as though trying to figure out where she had been watching him from. "You noticed all of that? With a moon dropped on you?"
"I am an assassin. Noticing things is how I survive."
"Oh," apparently satisfied with that answer, he dragged a bag out from somewhere behind himself and carefully swept the pile of dust and dirt inside of it. "I have a friend like you, you know, back on Earth."
"There is no one like me."
-x-
By what would have been nearly morning, they doused the gathered ashes with engine fuel which had leaked from the ship, too filthy to be salvaged into anything useful, and lit them on fire.
"My name is Tony by the way," the Terran said, sitting on the ramp of the ship with his arms draped over his knees as he stared into the flames from underneath heavy lids.
"Nebula," she answered from where she leaned against the landing gear nearby, her arms crossed tightly over her chest. The smoke from the ashes billowed up in lazy clumps, and the acidic smell of chemicals stung her nose.
"Oh. That's a nice name. It suits you."
Nebula wasn't sure what to say to that. He was probably half-delirious with fever and exhaustion anyways.
The fire burned its self out, dirt reduced to ash. Nebula didn't see much of a difference, and returned to repairing the ship while Tony stared at the embers.
Mid-morning came and went before they had scrapped together enough of a working engine to get the ship turned on again.
Nebula wasn't even sure, as she helped Tony hobble his way to the co-pilot's chair, that the batteries would hold long enough to get them out of the atmosphere. The compromised gravity may have been the only reason they succeeded, instead of plummeting back down.
"Wake me when we stop for snacks," Tony muttered as his reddened eyes slid shut. She left him to sleep fitfully in his chair and did what she could to keep the engines running while she ransacked the ship again for any sign of antibiotics.
Doodles from Book 2, Chapter 8 of Astronautical, “The Dirt Whispered”
Peter and Nebula crossing a canyon on Ego’s planet in search of Rocket.
Nothing big lately, I’ve been crazy busy changing jobs and getting ready for vacation. Can’t sleep tonight so I’ve been sketching, but I’m too tired to sketch anything good, so I settled for a scene from my main fic which I’ve been wanting to sketch from more.
Pairings: Peter Quill / Gamora (slow burn), Peter Quill & Nebula (friendship)
Genre: Adventure, general
Word Count: 5.8k
Rating: T to be safe, mild gore and cussing in some chapters
Links: Fanfiction.net || Ao3
Summary: Peter desperately searches for Rocket with the new deadline heavy on his mind.
Author’s Notes: Title is from ‘The Queen of Peace’ by Florence + the Machine
Chapter 18: The Dirt Whispered
The sky was dotted with stars as Peter leaped once more from the canyon wall. The freefall this time had lost a large measure of its joy, and he landed wordlessly in the forest below. He had briefly searched for Nebula after she had failed to reappear by dinner time, much to nobody's surprise, but the assassin was nowhere to be found. It was pretty apparent he wasn't going to find her so now he did his best to retrace the rout she had shown him the night before, his Walkman as his only company tonight. It took some doing, and he got lost at least three times before he made it to the far canyon wall, not quite at the same place he had meant to come out. He could see the rockslide area Nebula had used to climb up last time in the distance, though. Good enough. He could get to the top now, follow the edge of the canyon from above, and be there in under fifteen minutes, easy.
When he made it to the landing field the predicted time later it was empty and silent.
Peter waded through the tall grasses, careful for any traps the paranoid raccoon may have left. "Rocket!" he called into the darkness. "I know you heard the news this morning, we need to talk!"
He finished a lap around the meadow and stared into the shadowy forest, his hands on his hips as he debated the safety of wandering in without his mask to see in the dark. These seemed much thicker than the forest in the canyon, which allowed plenty of starlight to filter through, and Rocket could have easily set all manner of less technical traps to ward off Peter's attempts to pursue a conversation.
"Come on Rocket! We're leaving soon! Now or never, man!"
The trees rustled in a soft breeze.
Peter sucked in a deep breath. "Uuuuuuuuuuugh! This is getting so oooooold! At least let me know if you can hear me!"
"You could find him, you know," a voice whispered in Peter's ear and he leaped, twisting around with a scream. No one was behind him, though.
"What are you doing here?" Peter demanded. "I didn't call you."
"I am here to help," the voice was like a distant recording of his own, echoing back at him. "I may be able to provide you with a solution you have overlooked."
"Yeah? And what would that be oh wise voice-in-my-head?" He now found himself hoping Rocket wasn't watching. It wouldn't be too helpful to have him talking to himself like a crazy person.
"Reach into the planet," the voice whispered. "You have seen Ego do it often enough, surely it has crossed your mind that you could do the same?"
A grimace pulled at Peter's face. It had crossed his mind, sure, but "How would I even do that? Ego's never shown me." Plus, it felt odd, if Peter was being honest. He might still have a few lingering fears about being plugged into the planet and its core again.
Eternity seemed to sense these fears, and an echoing chuckle rolled through the back of his mind. "He has shown you how to interact with the planet to answer the hails, this is not so different. There is no need to worry, I will look after you Peter. I will not let you be swept away. Just do as I instruct, and all will be well.. Place your palm against the ground."
Peter chewed his lip nervously but kneeled down and swept the grass aside to press his hand against the dirt beneath. "Okay, now what?"
"Listen... Not with your ears, with something deeper. Do you feel the Light, the veins of energy humming through the planet beneath you?"
The grass rustled around him like whispering voices as Peter closed his eyes and pressed his hands deeper into the dirt.
It took a minute, maybe two, but he swore he could feel something, a thrum of energy, like a pulse beating through the ground beneath him.
"Did you find it?"
Peter struggled not to lose the feeling as he answered. "Yeah, I think so. What now?"
"Good." An answering energy seemed to swell up from within him, reaching down his hand toward the living dirt. "Now you lean into it, and fall."
The energies met and then he was tumbling down into darkness.
Peter tried to shout, but he had no body to cry out with.
"Do not panic, I am here." Something brushed up next to him, like the feeling of a great beast's breath as it hunted one through nightmares. "Follow the Light, Peter. Trust it. Ask it for what you seek, and then allow it to guide you. I will help you along the way."
Peter tried to shove aside the sensation of falling, bodiless, through empty space and focus on the thought of Rocket. Fractured bits of Light sparked into existence around him, like thousands of winding streams shooting off in all directions. One seemed to shine just a little brighter than the others, the flickers and sparkling flashes calling out to him, inviting him that way.
The presence wrapped around him, buoying him up through the darkness and tugging him along toward the stream. As they grew near, Peter tried to reach out again, with the Light when he recalled he had no hands to use.
The Light swept him up like a river, bringing him back to the surface where he floundered weightlessly until Eternity righted him again. As he struggled to make sense of his surroundings he thought he saw Rocket, reclining on the twisting branches of a tree that hung out over the canyon wall.
He looked around for any other landmarks that may help him locate his evasive teammate. A loud crashing sound hummed through the air, and something glowed bright and silver nearby.
"Good. You have found him."
The sensation of tumbling through the ground returned and much quicker than he had left, Peter was back in his own body, gasping for breath on his hands and knees.
"Well? Did it work?"
"Damnit!" Peter ripped up a clump of grass and dirt and flung it at the assassin crouching in front of him.
Nebula swatted the sailing clod aside then stood from where she had been crouching nearby, wiping the dust off her hand.
"I swear to God Nebula! Wear a bell or something!"
The assassin was less than apologetic, ignoring his complaint outright while she checked under her fingernails on her right hand for any dirt that may have been lodged there.
"How did you know what I was doing, anyways?"
That did earn him an answer, at least. She gave the meadow around them a meaningful look. "What else would you be doing?"
"And what are you doing here?" He'd assumed she would be as far away from any living thing as she could get right now, and had given up any hope of seeing her until breakfast at the earliest.
"I figured you'd be desperate to find the uplift-"
"Rocket."
"-Rocket- tonight and came to ensure you didn't wind up lost or impaled on some spike trap he set."
With his breath caught, Peter hauled himself back to his feet, dusting the dirt and loose blades of grass from his pants. "Aw, you really do care."
"I care about your obsession with making friends not ruining my chance to see my father dead."
"Nu-uh, this makes twice in one day that you've gone out of your way to help me. You looooove me!"
"I'm going to love snapping your neck when this is all over."
Satisfied that his pants were as clean as they really needed to be for a trek through the woods at nearly midnight, Peter wandered back towards the edge of the canyon, scanning the sides for any sign of the hanging tree. "Nah. You wouldn't do that to your best bud."
Nebula trailed after him, her nose wrinkled like he had said something especially disgusting. "I don't have a 'best bud,'" she sneered.
"Don't you?" he shot back with a bright smile and waggle of his eyebrows that only made her grimace deepen.
"How well do you think you'd survive if I shoved you off this cliff?"
"Okay, okay. I'm done. Before you shove me off the cliff, though -which you and I both know I would survive just fine-" he tapped the toe of one of his boots against the ground for emphasis. "-you can help me find Rocket. He's in some tree hanging over the canyon. I think he might be near a river or a waterfall."
She considered this for a long moment, before eventually taking a deep breath and blowing it out through her nose. "I believe I know where he is. I hope those boots of yours have plenty of fuel left."
-x-
"I'm sorry I didn't go after you, by the way," Peter confessed as he ducked under a bridge of low hanging branches that interrupted the trail Nebula was leading him down. "There's only one of me, and I just thought, right then, that Gamora needed me more..."
"You wouldn't have caught me, anyways." Flashes of starlight off of her augmentations gave her away as she stalked through the shadows ahead, occasionally calling back a warning about an obstacle in their path.
"I looked for you after you didn't show for dinner."
"A waste of your time and energy."
"I was kind of hoping you might want to be found. What happened, when Mantis touched you? You looked-"
"Nothing happened." She cut him off abruptly. "Her powers don't affect me as strongly as they would someone like you."
"I mean-" Peter paused to pick his way carefully through some twisting roots. "- they still affect you a little bit, right?" If Mantis could put a raging Celestial to sleep against his will, certainly she could effect Nebula despite her enhancements.
"Watch your steps up here, we're getting close to the edge of the cliff. We'll be traveling parallel to it for a while before we leave the trees, so don't wander."
That sounded like a yes, but Peter let it go for now to focus on finding Rocket. The air was filled with the rumble of a waterfall, and a light mist that steadily dampened his hair and clothes.
"Hey Nebula, can I ask you something else? Something I think I'd rather ask back here, where it's a lot harder for you to hurl me to my death or drown me in the waterfall."
The footsteps ahead of him stopped.
"We haven't made it to your friend yet," she warned him. He couldn't see her face through the night, but he was sure her lips were pressed into a deep frown and her eyes had that hardened look to them like she was bracing herself for something painful to be thrown in her face. "Think hard before you piss me off enough to just leave you out here."
Peter hesitated and almost changed his mind. He really didn't want to send her away, but this may be the last chance he had to talk to her alone before they were back with the NOVA Corps, and privacy was a luxury they were sure to be lacking. "This thing between you and how Gamora was being so soft on Mantis... were you... jealous?" Peter took an unconscious step closer to the trunk of a large oak-like tree to his right, in case he needed something to put between himself and the assassin who's buttons he insisted on pushing.
There was no noise for a while, not even the sound of her leaving as she had threatened. When she did speak, her voice came back, flat and emotionless. "No."
"But-"
"I am not jealous. Mantis can have her, and with any luck, Gamora will be satisfied with training her and leave me alone now." Peter doubted that, but kept his mouth shut and let her continue. "It's just... infuriating, to know she had it in her this whole time. To have to see it. After everything I did just to survive and she wouldn't even acknowledge me." The leather of her suit creaked and Peter was sure she was balling her hands into fists as she spoke.
"Well-"
"I know the circumstances," she cut him off again, "and I don't care. We're done talking about this."
"Okay." They probably weren't, not really, but he'd pressed his luck far enough, and now mostly just felt guilty about intentionally bringing up such a sore subject. "Sorry."
They made it the rest of the way with nothing but the growing rumble of the waterfall between them. When they arrived, Nebula pulled them off the path they'd been taking and pushed through the edge of the trees, one hand held out to keep Peter from walking straight over the edge when the brush and leaves hung out deceptively, making the ground appear to jut out farther than it really did. After assuring he wouldn't fall to his death, or at least an unpleasant setback in tonight's journey, he looked up and quickly realized something was off.
"Hey wait," he said, narrowing his eyes against the spray in the air as he stared at the waterfall cascading down from across the now very narrow canyon. They must have traveled down to where the two edges nearly met, but, "We're on the wrong side."
The edges of her augmentation shone in the starlight as she raised her arm to point one slender finger across the way. "That should be where Rocket is, if he hasn't left yet."
About a third of the way down the cliff, half-hidden from this angle by the mist of the waterfall, a tree grew defiantly out from the drop. It appeared it had taken a hold of a small shelf among the rock, and decided to grow there, simply refusing to be ruled by the laws of physics.
"I wasn't joking about your boots."
"Oh," Peter groaned, measuring the distance between himself and the tree and plotting the best path to his target without missing and face planting into the wall or getting soaked. "Are you coming with?"
Her eyes narrowed as she did some calculations of her own. "It would take me a significant amount of time to join you. The water complicates the climb up."
Peter hummed to himself as he glanced up and down the canyon edges. "What if we go down that way?" he offered, pointing down to where the two cliffs nearly reached each other before separating again. "I can get us both across that narrow part with my boots, then we just walk back on the other side and we can drop down on him together?"
The 'No' was plain and clear on her face even in the dark.
"Come on, please? It's not even a mile away, shouldn't take more than ten minutes to get there. I think I have a better shot if you're with me."
"Why in all the galaxies would you think that?"
"I dunno," Peter shrugged but persisted. "Just a feeling, mostly, he talks to you at least, and you're better at explaining what we're up to. Plus, maybe he won't just run away if he thinks you could just track him down."
"All of that is stupid, Peter."
"Hey, my gut feelings are not stupid." He was already ducking back into the trees and feeling his way down in the direction of where the cliffs almost met. "I've been saved by a gut hunch plenty of times. I've learned to trust them. It's like a sixth sense-AAH!" His boot came down on nothing and a hand yanked him back onto solid ground by the scruff of his shirt.
"You would do better to listen to your common sense first." Nebula shoved him further from the uneven edge of the cliff and took the lead once more.
"See now that has lead me astray a few times."
-x-
Peter nudged his toes along the edge of the canyon, frowning at how bits of it crumbled away. "Are you sure you don't want a ride over? I really can do it. It's only like, twenty something feet. And I've carried people plenty of times before."
"My answer isn't going to change," she said stubbornly. The assassin was standing back from the edge, her arms crossed defiantly over her chest while she watched him test the footing for his takeoff.
"How are planning to cross, then? You can't jump that." His heart hammered a little faster at the thought of her trying just to show him up and hurting herself. Sure, she could survive a fall that long, but he knew very well now that she felt every broken bone when it happened. Maybe he shouldn't have insisted so hard she come with him this way.
"How is your creation coming along?" she asked in place of an answer. "Do you think you could make a long staff with any sort of flexibility to it?"
Peter glanced between the assassin and the far cliff face. "I don't think I could make you a bridge without taking all night." and it might not hold, anyways. He wasn't exactly an engineer.
"Not to walk on," she corrected him, "to use as a vault."
"You want to vault that!?" Again, the image of her misjudging the leap and plummeting into the thick tree-tops below filled his mind.
"I can. Easily. But I will need a staff at least twice my height."
There was some discussion about materials, Peter still being unable to make things out of wood or metal, which would have been the ideal mediums, and eventually Nebula settled on requesting a shorter staff made of diamond, the only solid material he really knew how to make that wasn't likely to snap.
"If you miss and fall, I'm catching you," he warned her as she took several steps back to wind up.
"If you touch me, I'll break that finger for a third time."
"Then you'd better make it, or we're both going to be miserable tonight."
A roll of her eyes was her only response to that and then she was off, rushing the cliff with her makeshift vault after he had failed to make a more reliable one for her. He couldn't help the wince as she made the leap, still half-expecting to be diving down after her any moment. Instead, she cleared the gap just as she had promised, landing in the open space on the other side as the staff she'd been using tumbled down into the forest far below, glimmering brilliantly as it went.
"Hurry up," she called back. "The longer you insist on taking with this, the more likely your friend will be long gone by the time we get there."
-x-
The trek back to the waterfall was even quicker, the trees on this side being thinner and more easy to navigate, and before he knew it, Peter was looking down at the top of the twisted tree growing out of the canyon ledge below. He couldn't tell through the thick cover and the rolling mist if Rocket was still there.
"Well, here goes," he muttered to himself before stepping off the edge and plummeting to the shelf below, wishing he had his mask to help him see where he was going. The boots buffered the bulk of the drop, but he still landed with a grunt and the breath knocked out of him. The shelf was just as narrow as it had looked from across the way, but it was more slanted than Peter had predicted, and the loose crumbling dirt nearly sent him sliding over the edge. A thick root twisting out from the cliff provided enough of a hold to allow Peter to drag himself up to the slanted trunk of the oak-like tree.
"Hey Rocket?" Peter called up, squinting against the spray as he scanned the branches above. "I'm coming up!" he announced, searching with his fingers for a hold along the damp, twisted trunk. "If you're up there, don't like, throw any pine cones or acorns at me okay? I don't have a good grip and if I fall I won't die, but I'll be pissed."
The array of branches and angled trunk made for a manageable climb up, despite the soggy bark, and as Peter reached the thicker canopy he dragged himself up to where a gnarled branch met the trunk at a perfect angle and sat in the crook to catch his breath.
"Was that supposed to make me not want to do it?"
"Rocket!?" Peter gasped. The raccoon crouched in the fork of a branch jutting out in the opposite direction, a darker shadow among the shadows. "Good you're still here! We can talk now!"
"How did you find me? Did that damn cyborg rat me out?"
"No, I did it!" Peter declared, a little proud that his new powers had worked. "Okay, it was more of a team effort, really, but it was like, 90% me. Nebula should be joining us soon, though."
Rocket's muzzle pulled into a grimace, his ears pinning back. The tips flashed brilliantly in the dark.
"I assume you heard the news," Peter started. "We'll be going off planet soon."
"Yeah. I heard."
The sound of loose debris and pebbles raining down the cliff face rose over the roar of the waterfall, and a moment later the whole tree swayed as something dropped onto a nearby bough.
"Nebula," Rocket greeted her coldly.
"Rocket," she returned, locking eyes with him through the distorted starlight.
"Ugh, he's got to you too with that name," the raccoon grumbled standing up straight on his own branch and crossing his arms. "What are you, his bodyguard now? That's one hell of a demotion you've suffered."
"The only step-down from my previous position would have made me you."
There was a flash of teeth and an audible snarl in response to that. "I don't need to take this from Gam's spare parts."
Nebula narrowed her own eyes and took a threatening step towards Rocket's branch.
"Whoahwhoahwhoah!" Peter cut in, too far down in the tree and too unable to move quickly to actually get between them. "Easy guys! Reel it back in. We're wasting moonlight. Bickering when we should be planning."
"Planning for what?" Rocket moved away from the pair and up a branch, so he was just a little higher in the tree than Nebula now, and well out of her reach, but didn't leave just yet.
"What we're going to do when the Nova Corps pick us back up. Unless you're planning to go back into that cell. You didn't leave a great impression on the way out."
Rocket's glowing red eyes narrowed into slits. "I ain't going back in a cage," he warned.
"That's why I'm here. To make sure you don't. But I am going to need just a liiiittle bit of cooperation to make that happen."
"Why do you need that? Ain't you some magic boy that can make all their problems go away with a snap of your fingers. They should be linin' up to kiss your boots, right? So just demand what you want. They gotta give it."
Peter rubbed at the back of his neck. "Not... exactly."
"He has yet to prove his worth to them." Nebula's voice echoed his thoughts pitilessly. "You'll have to pull your own weight for now."
A snort told them just what Rocket thought of that.
"Will that be a problem?" Nebula taunted the raccoon, sidestepping to a twisting branch that ran nearly parallel to the cliff face as it reached towards the sky. She leaned back against it with deliberate nonchalance. "Are you missing your life as a lap-dog already?"
That seemed to get through to him at least. Rocket's hair stood on end, the tips gleaming silver where they caught the barest hints of light filtering through the trees. "I'll show you a lap-dog," he growled, low and deadly.
"Go ahead." The assassin seemed less than impressed with the threat. "And the last thing you'll ever see is the inside of the Nova Corps' airlock. If I don't just throw you off this cliff, first."
"Nebula," Peter warned.
"It's the truth," she shrugged. "Avoiding it isn't going to help anyone."
Peter closed his mouth with a hard frown, not sure where she was going with this. His attempts hadn't gotten them very far, though, and at least Rocket was holding something like a conversation now. A violent one... But there was something in Rocket's voice, and in the way he was looking at the assassin that reminded Peter they had some sort of a history here, and he did his best to trust her judgment and wait.
She laced her fingers together over her stomach and turned back to Rocket, continuing as if Peter wasn't there at all.
"You and I both know how the Titan feels about giving up what he considers his. Your plan to run- how far do you think you'll get before he finds you?"
"Far enough."
"Do you really think such a thing exists?"
"It could." Rocket's tail was twitching now, and Peter thought he looked a little uncertain as his eyes adjusted to the new darkness.
"You know what happens when it doesn't, though?"
Peter could swear he saw a shudder pass through the tips of Rocket's fur before he answered. "So what? Asking nicely didn't work, so you're going to try threatening me?"
"No. I still don't care if you come or not. I don't think we need you anymore. Peter is already improving his ability to wield this Light. Once Ego finishes training Peter, any use you once had in all of this will be gone."
Rocket stiffened, clearly offended by her dismissal.
She settled more comfortably against her branch and closed her eyes. "I am just here to make sure you don't throw this idiot off the cliff. He won't let me rest so long as he thinks there's a chance to sway you. Hear him out, then run away and have yourself killed if you wish, but he will have to be satisfied that he did all he could, and we can all be done with this nonsense."
The rumble of the waterfall was the only sound to follow, as Rocket stared down at her through narrow eyes. Peter held his breath and didn't dare move as he watched Rocket's tail twitch thoughtfully, swinging back and forth like he was counting reasons in his head.
Having said her peace, Nebula seemed more than content to rest her eyes, and offered nothing more.
Slowly, so slowly that Peter almost didn't notice, Rocket's gaze shifted to bore into him instead.
"Well?" he grunted out.
Peter straightened up, afraid he had missed something. "Well?" he echoed.
"What are you deaf all of a sudden? You heard 'er. Just say whatever you came to say, and then we can all get some d'asted peace."
Startled by the sudden change of mind, Peter scrambled for the words that had once been on the tip of his tongue.
"What would it take to get you on our side?"
"If you know me so well, why don't you tell me?"
"Well, in my universe, I think you mostly joined because of Groot..."
"Groot? Pfft. You keep that overgrown courtweed away from me or I'll turn 'm into the pile of kindling he deserves to be."
It took Peter a moment to be sure he'd processed those words correctly. "Dude, what happened between the two of you?"
"What happened is he's a filthy traitor. A bleedin'-heart coward. You never shoulda sprung him from that cell. If you ask me, he was gettin' what he deserved!"
Peter probably resembled a cross between a fish and an owl at this point, his eyes were so wide they beginning to sting. "That can't be right. Groot would never-"
"Yeah well, it seems like you don't know any of us as much as you think you do."
Okay that hurt. Peter opened his mouth, but found no reply and instead bit his lip and let his shoulders slump miserably. "Everything here is backwards and wrong," Peter mumbled. "You shouldn't be like this."
"An asshole?" Rocket jeered.
"So scared."
A warning growl rumbled over the crash of the waterfall and Rocket's teeth flashed in a vicious threat.
From where she reclined on her branch, Nebula cracked one eye open.
"You were always an asshole, and a little bit of a coward, yeah, but not when it really mattered. You always came through."
"I'm not a coward," Rocket's voice was ice cold. "I'm a survivor."
"You're running away," Peter pointed out harshly. "That's what cowards do."
"It's what someone who wants to live does."
"For what? To spend your whole life alone and running?" Peter used the gnarly trunk to drag himself up to his feet. "To be afraid forever?"
"At least I'd have a life to spend."
"That's just what we're saying here Rocket; you wouldn't."
Rocket was beginning to shift his gaze into the branches around them and Peter got the feeling he was getting ready to leave and take the gamble that they wouldn't follow.
"The Nova Corps should be calling again tomorrow to discuss plans. I think it would be a good idea if you came. You could have your own say in things."
The raccoon scoffed and shifted up a branch.
"Aren't you sick of letting other people talk for you?"
Half-way into the next branch, Rocket froze, casting one last unreadable look over his shoulder at where Peter stood below, making no move to follow or stop him. Like all the times before, there was no farewell. One moment Rocket was there and the next he was lost to the shadows and Peter was left with a swirling ball of confusion about what his friend was thinking.
He heaved a deep sigh and ran his hands through his damp hair.
"Alright," he sighed. "Let's go back I guess."
Nebula pushed off the branch and deftly maneuvered her way through the branches to the shelf below, making Peter feel like a clumsy bull as he ripped chunks of soggy bark off in his hands and slid more than actually climbed his way down to join her.
On the shelf he immediately slipped on the loose dirt again and fell to his knees, sliding dangerously close to the edge before Nebula once more yanked him back to solid ground by the back of his shirt.
"See?" he panted, tugging his collar back into place and hoping it wasn't going to get all stretched out. "I told you it was a good idea to bring you along. I think he likes you."
-x-
"Are you sure you can't tell if Gamora's parent's are there?" Peter asked his own dark-eyed visage. "You know the planet now, it can't be too difficult, right?"
Eternity stood at the foot of the bed, shaking his head at the real Peter who sat cross-legged over the covers. "No, it is not that simple. There are many souls there. Certainly some could be those you are searching for, but I cannot see their faces as you would, only feel the energy humming within them. The closer we grow, the better my vision here. Each day I can differentiate more of the going-on's of this realm, and tell the individual souls apart, but as of yet they are no more than sparks of light, like stars in the darkness. I might recognize a star I know very well or one with a unique glow, as I do Thanos or you, but finding a new one from only their mortal heritage is not reasonable at this point without your eyes to look through."
It was the same answer he seemed to get every time he asked. Eternity just found a new way to word it each time.
Peter blew some air out through his nose and scrubbed at his tired eyes. "Then I guess asking if you could play scout and tell us what we're walking into would be-"
"Useless."
"Ah."
The cosmic being offered a facsimile of a reassuring smile. "Perhaps when we are closer, I will be more useful."
"Yeah," Peter yawned. "Maybe." It didn't seem very likely, though.
"You are doing well," the cosmic entity reassured. "Just focus on the future. We will achieve our goals."
Pairings: Peter Quill / Gamora (slow burn), Peter Quill & Nebula (friendship)
Genre: Adventure, general
Word Count: 6k
Rating: T to be safe, mild gore and cussing in some chapters
Links: Fanfiction.net || Ao3
Summary: The tension between Nebula and Gamora comes to another boil, but this time Mantis is caught in the crossfire, literally.
Author’s Notes: Title is from ‘The Queen of Peace’ by Florence + the Machine
Chapter 17: The Queen of Peace
Peter was so elated in the morning's newfound news he nearly forgot all about breakfast. He was so excited to get to work that he had to be all but dragged back to the greenhouse room and shoved into his chair before he was allowed to begin training. There he shoveled an entire plateful of food down so fast he didn't even taste it.
Marlowe and Cosmo had informed Peter that they would need more time to speak to Saal and the council about their options before any moves were made. They wanted to be cautious, and Peter found he couldn't blame them. For now, the Guardians would stay remanded to the planet, but Peter intended to use the remaining time as effectively as he could.
Ego surprised Peter by waiting for him in the courtyard outside the dining room.
"We're going to do something a little differently today," Ego told him. "We'll need a second body." His gaze swept across the gathered Guardians, settling on Nebula who was standing off to the side. "You. Blue one. Why don't you join us in the court today?"
Peter glanced back at Nebula, half-expecting her to laugh at being ordered around and refuse. Instead, she shrugged her shoulders and agreed with a disinterested "Sure."
Ego nodded and turned to make his way down the path to the seafoam court. Nebula broke from the group and followed after, leaving Peter scrambling to catch up.
"Will I need a weapon?" Nebula asked as she matched stride with the Celestial.
"I will provide one," Ego told her, and suddenly Peter was a little nervous about what he was getting into here.
In the court, Ego paused to address Peter.
"I think, if you're going to insist on following through with this stupidity, that it would suit you to know how to wield the Light in a more... aggressive fashion than the creation we have done so far. This is much earlier than I had hoped, but you will just have to make do. Focus on drawing and shaping the Light faster." Here he considered Nebula for a moment before holding his hand out, in it formed something that strongly resembled a broadsword, but its edges were terribly blunt, even from Peter's point of view. The whole thing appeared bulky and heavy and small designs that matched Ego's clothes decorated the blade and handle. "Try not to do anything permanent," he sighed as he handed it over.
"You're not going to give her a shield or something?" Peter asked as Ego turned to leave.
"Do you really think I'll need one?" Nebula asked offhandedly as she tested the weight of Ego's sword, not looking the least bit concerned for her own safety.
Peter glanced down at his hands. His powers were still pretty unpredictable. "Well, I mean, I don't want to hurt you."
Nebula's lips pulled into a smirk and she gave her new weapon a meaningful swirl.
"And I really don't want you to hurt me," he finished.
The assassin darted forward and the next thing he knew he was staring up at the sky, his shin bone ringing from where she had swept his legs out from underneath him.
"Then I suggest you stop worrying and start paying attention."
She stepped aside and allowed Peter to pull himself up and dust himself off.
"What's your strongest element?" she asked, a wicked glint to her eyes as she began circling him. "We'll start there."
Stone was probably the easiest for him right now, but he wasn't sure how exactly to weaponize it at this stage. Lightning or fire would probably work better. As he raised his hands up to begin summoning the Light, Nebula stepped in close and cracked the blunt blade across his shoulder, knocking him back.
"Ouch! What was that for?" he demanded, rubbing at the stinging spot on his shoulder.
"It's too obvious what you're doing." Her lips were pulled into a disapproving frown. "You're never going to get anything done like that."
Peter wrinkled his nose at her. "It's how I summon the Light," he told her, raising his hands back up and stepping quickly backwards out of her reach.
"It's cumbersome and unnecessary," she answered, darting forward again and striking his wrist this time. The Light he had gathered fizzled back out.
"Stop it!" he snapped, shaking his hands and dodging away from her again, trying to buy enough time to summon the energy her needed to form any sort of elemental help. "Aren't you supposed to be helping me practice using the Light 'more aggressively'?"
"I am," Nebula wasn't even breaking a sweat as she kept up with Peter's dodges, snapping the blunt sword against his arms and wrists every time he tried to pull out the Light. "But any tricks you manage to pull of with this new power of yours are worthless if you're dead before you can use them. Do it without that stupid ritual."
"I need the 'stupid ritual.' That's how it's done."
"No you don't. Ego doesn't do it." She paused in her assault long enough to wave a hand at his father who was standing off to the side, watching their exchange silently. "And you summoned the Light without it when we were arguing about Rocket the other night."
"Oh yeah..." Peter had forgotten about that. How had he done that? He held up his hands to stare at his open palms again as though they might provide an answer. He tried to remember what it had felt like but it had happened so quickly, and hadn't even realized that it was happening at first.
"I don't remember how I did that..." he murmured.
"Then you'd better figure it out." Nebula returned to her assault with a greater energy, swinging the blade for his shoulder so quickly he could hear it 'swush' through the air as he barely managed to dodge in time.
"Hey! Ouch!" Every strike he managed to avoid was followed by a handful that struck true. While he hurriedly back peddled about the court, his arms were kept too busy protecting his face and body for him to gather any Light. "Stop it! This isn't helping!"
"If you want it to stop, then stop me." Nebula made it sound so easy as she battered him and drove him across the courtyard.
The weapon struck him in the hip and he tripped over his own feet, sprawling back on the hard stone once more and scrambling desperately back up. The blows weren't actually that hard, Nebula was obviously holding back, intending to keep him off-balance, not hurt him, but they were relentless and stung where they connected against his joints.
"I mean it, Nebula!" Between blows, he snatched at the Light. Once or twice he thought he felt the hum of energy gathering in his veins, but it always flickered out as soon as she struck him again. She had driven him nearly a complete lap around the court. Without a weapon or shield of his own to so much as buffer the blows, and the Light's blatant refusal to come to his call, his frustration was rising.
Nebula darted around him and swung the sword in a backhanded arc, aiming a brutal looking swing down on his shoulder blade. Peter felt a flare of panic and tried desperately to twist around and throw his hands up in time. "I said STOP!" There was a burst of light and the air crackled around him, and suddenly the relentless blows ended.
Slowly, Peter cracked an eye back open, worried that he might have overdone it.
Instead, Nebula was standing just off to the side, leaning easily on Ego's sword and a smug quirk to her lips.
"Well that was... something."
"You're enjoying this way too much," Peter grumbled, wiping his hands on his pants in an attempt to rid them of a weird buzzing feeling that was crawling through his veins.
She just sighed and let her bored gaze wander around the court. "Enjoyment may be a bit too strong of a word," she mumbled.
Peter let out a scoff, and she hefted the sword back up. "But it is nice to stretch my muscles, even if I've fought against Orlani that were tougher than you."
"Hey-!"
His shout was cut off as she rushed him again.
-x-
"Uncle!" Peter gasped out as he flopped backwards spreading his arms out onto the cool marble beneath him. "I call uncle! Just-Just give me a second. I need a break."
A shadow passed over him as Nebula loomed above, blocking out the sun while she frowned down at him. "You still can't summon your Light quickly enough," she told him. "Get back on your feet."
"I just need a minute," he panted out, watching little spots dance across his vision and wishing for something cold to drink. "I'm getting better. I almost had it right off the bat last time. I'm sure if I rest I can get it."
"It's not even mid-morning," Nebula told him, kicking him sharply in the leg. "Up."
"That's enough for now," Ego interrupted, and Peter was never so glad for his meddling. "Go ahead and take a break."
The assassin turned her frown on Ego, but she stepped back with no further argument.
"Oh thank god!" Peter heaved his sore body up into a sit. "I need some water before I pass out."
He could hear Nebula's derisive snort even over his own panting.
"Fine." A sharp crack made Peter jump, and he looked up to find she had driven the dull sword into the marble. "Take your break." She released the sword, which remained standing on its own, and turned to Ego. "Will you be needing me again later?"
"Yes. Someone at least. It doesn't matter much who, I suppose."
She nodded and turned to leave.
"Ah!" Peter struggled to surge to his feet. "Wait for me!" His legs trembled underneath him, but held his weight. "I'll need someone to drag me back if I collapse on the way."
The assassin pursed her lips into another frown, but she waited for him to catch up before continuing on.
"Thanks."
"You're pathetic."
"No, I'm awesome. And I know you like me, or you wouldn't be willing to drag me back."
"I never said I'd do anything like that," she protested, then, a little quieter she muttered, "Maybe I hit your head too many times."
"You could have at least been softer," he confessed.
Again she snorted.
-x-
Peter managed to stumble his way back to the greenhouse, where he went straight to the sink in the storage room and chugged about four glasses of water before shoving his whole head under the tap.
"Ah, that feels much better," he sighed, slicking his wet hair back as he wandered his way back out to collapse on the top of the stairs. From here he could watch Mantis's training in the court below while he caught his breath.
Nebula was already sitting on the stairs, close to where he had chosen to collapse. Drax was standing on the steps some ways below so that they were more or less matched in height. They were probably discussing what had occurred in the court. Upon Peter's return, she rose and turned towards the nearby forests. "I'll return when you're ready to get back to work," she promised.
"Okay," Peter mumbled into his arms which were pillowed under his head. "Thanks for seeing me back."
Her footsteps were already fading away. "Whatever."
In the court below, Groot was standing in the center, his long limbs held up to swat lazily at Mantis, who was practicing stepping in and retreating under Gamora's careful eye. From his position atop the stairs, Peter watched Gamora's face as she schooled Mantis's steps and adjusted her timing, and tried to ignore the churning in his guts.
The longer he spent in this twisted universe, the more real it began to feel, and the more muddled his excitement over abandoning it entirely became. The timeline needed to be righted, he was sure of that, and there was no doubt in his mind or heart that Thanos needed to be defeated before any of the Universe, especially his loved ones, could be safe again, but things were becoming drastically less black and white with each new discovery he made. Here, the Nova Corps had burned, entire swaths of the universe with it, and the Guardians had individually suffered even more under Thanos's hands than before. It was bad. But also here, Yondu was alive, and all the Ravagers that had made up his family for all these years in space, and Gamora's parents as well, by all accounts so far. Even Saal was a dead man walking again. How could he just condemn them all back to death. How could he condemn Gamora back to a universe without her parents when he knew how much they meant to her?
These thoughts had been simmering in the back of his mind for some time, but now threatened to boil forth. He shoved them back as he had many times before, having no satisfying answer he could give them, and tried to distract himself with thoughts of what Gamora's parents might be like once they'd rescued them. He'd never met them, of course, beyond the glimpse he'd caught in her shattered mind, and his own Gamora claimed to only have the faintest of memories the one time Peter had dared to ask, drunk and hurting after the recent loss of his own father of sorts.
The sun was warm on his back and he drifted to sleep with thoughts of how Gamora might finally smile again once they found her parents, and rescued them. He dreamed of returning to his universe, to his own Gamora, with the news that her family had been saved, her parents in tow behind him, and Yondu with them. In his dreams he thought he saw Nebula as well, this Nebula, the one who his brain was bold enough to call 'his Nebula' when all others claiming that title belonged to the other timeline. She stood among the rest of the Guardians like she had always been there.
Some time later, not too much, according to the ache in his muscles, he was being gently shaken awake.
"Peter," Mantis's soft voice called out to him. "It is time to wake up. Ego wishes to return to work."
Peter blinked his eyes open and stared up at her blearily. "So soon?" As his vision cleared, he caught sight of Gamora, standing at the foot of the steps, probably waiting for Mantis to finish waking him so they could return to work as well. "Alright, I'm getting up. Thanks."
He rose and gave a languid stretch. "Have you seen Nebula? She said she'd come back when it was time head back to the court."
"I believe she is already there waiting for you."
It turned out Nebula was, in fact, already in the court. When Peter found her, she was in possession of the dull sword again and appeared to be in some sort of conversation with Ego. The Celestial was holding one hand out, a ball of Light rolling elegantly between various elements in his palm as she stared at it intently. As Peter drew near, however, the Light vanished and they fell silent.
"Okay, so... round two?" he asked, as he clapped his hands together, trying to shake some life into his perpetually sore muscles. He was going to be so ripped by the time he got home.
Nebula moved to meet him in the middle of the open court, but rather than attack like before she took up a defensive stance and waited. "I'll let you go first this time," she promised.
-x-
"Okay, okay, are you ready? Stand back, I don't want to hurt anyone!" Peter glanced over his shoulder to make sure the other Guardians were a safe distance behind him. After a very late lunch, -more of an early dinner, really- delayed by the second session with Nebula dragging on until Peter could not only summon the Light without gathering it for an inordinate amount of time first, but could do it reliably, he was eager to show off his new skill.
Satisfied that everyone had done as asked, he turned back to the fountain. The metal fish swirled in lazy rings above the water, and that's where he decided to aim, raising his hands up and shaping them into finger guns. There was a crackling hum running down his arms, and a moment later an arc of electricity burst from his fingertips. The metal where it struck lit up and the water spilling around it fizzled and steamed. Peter pulled his hands back, tipping one hand up to blow at his fingers as though they were a smoking gun.
"Wonderful!" Mantis was clapping frantically. A bright smile lit up her face as she bounced on her toes.
"I am Groot!" Beside her, Groot raised one arm to give Peter a thumbs up, a gesture he had already re-learned from his human companion.
The other Guardians were less vocal in their response, but Drax had an approving smile settled on his lips, and even Gamora was looking between him and the fountain with a renewed interest.
"You have made such marvelous improvements, Peter!" Mantis told him, making a blush rise to his face as he reveled in her unabashed praise.
"Thanks." Peter rubbed the back of his neck, suddenly feeling a little undeserving of so much enthusiasm. "Nebula helped a lot."
"Yes, she must be a wonderful teacher," Mantis said shyly, glancing at the blue assassin as though worried she might somehow offend her. They hadn't really interacted much beyond their first terrible interaction, and the Empath remained largely scared of the younger sister.
At Mantis's praise, Nebula straightened up a little and shot her sister a smug sideways look.
"Perhaps you could help teach me some time as well?" Mantis's voice had grown quieter still as she ventured the offer, like she half-expected to press her luck too far at any moment, but her eyes were bright and hopeful.
Nebula opened her mouth to say something, but Gamora overrode her answer.
"Maybe later. You need to finish learning the basics first."
As quickly as it had come, Nebula's smile vanished, replaced with a dark frown. "What's the matter? Afraid I might put a scratch on your precious new student?" She looked past Gamora and met Mantis's eyes. "I'll spar with you."
"I said she's not ready," Gamora insisted, stepping in front of Mantis.
"Well, why not? It's been days. She should be more than ready by now, but you've been babying her!" Nebula spat out. "You're the one that wanted to teach her something in the first place, so she could stand a chance in a real battle. She's about to be, from the sounds of it, so shouldn't we test her skills here, first?"
"We're being careful."
"That's not really your style," Nebula hissed, and Gamora looked for a moment as though she'd been slapped. In her moment of stunned silence, Nebula reached forward and snatched the diamond and wooden staff from her hand and turned to the open part of the court, motioning for Mantis to join her. "Why don't we find out if this new 'careful' Gamora is worth anything?"
Mantis glanced nervously between the sisters, but picked up her own staff and stepped forward to meet Nebula in the center of the court, away from the other Guardians.
"Nebula." Gamora's voice was dark with warning as she watched the two square up.
"Relax, sister," Nebula called back. "I'm not going to throw her over the cliff or anything."
Again Gamora looked like she'd been struck by her sister's words, her lips pressed into a thin, pale line and she fell silent.
The ominous promise didn't really make Peter feel any better, and he found himself suddenly worried he was going to be diving over the cliff edge to catch someone. He really didn't think Nebula would do that to Mantis, but whenever the sisters interacted there was always a subtle threat of violence lurking just under the surface.
Nebula allowed Mantis enough time to settle into her own defensive stance and then stepped forward, staff swinging in a fearsome arc. From his experience with the younger assassin Peter could easily tell that she was, in fact, taking it easy against her current opponent. As easy as he had ever see her be, at least. Mantis even managed to meet the first several blows, though they still left her stumbling back from the sheer force behind them. An underhanded strike caught the empath straight in the ribs and she let out a yelp of pain, redoubling her efforts to block the strikes before they could make contact and stepping back just a little faster as Nebula pressed her back.
Within moments it became apparent that Mantis was terribly outclassed, even with Nebula aiming the worst of her assault at her opponent's weapon rather than her body. Her frantic efforts to match Nebula's blows began to fail more often than not and a panic was slowly taking over her face.
"Nebula, stop this!" Gamora demanded from her spot on the sidelines.
A sweeping blow knocked Mantis' legs out from underneath her and she landed hard against the stone beneath. Peter winced in sympathy. It was the same move she had used on him several times today already.
"Do you want to stop?" Nebula asked, pulling her staff away and holding one hand out. Mantis took it and Nebula yanked her back to her feet.
"No," Mantis panted, sounding uncertain as she readjusted her own staff and found her balance again. She appeared to be favoring her left leg now. "I am alright. I can continue."
"Good," Nebula tossed a victorious look at her sister and returned to their spar.
"That's enough Nebula!" Gamora stepped into the circle. "I said stop!"
"It is- alright," Mantis panted out between strikes that knocked the breath from her.
Another blow glanced off her emerald staff and cut down onto her shoulder, eliciting a gasp of pain.
"Stop this before you really hurt her!" Gamora lunged forward, grabbing the diamond staff.
"So what if I do!?" Nebula shouted, twisting around to face her sister and trying to yank the weapon back. "That's how she'll learn!"
"It's not right!"
"You never had a problem with it before!" Nebula raised a leg and kicked Gamora in the gut, ripping the staff from her sister's hands as Gamora doubled over. Mantis gave a squeak as Nebula returned to their spar, barely giving her enough time to bring her own weapon up to block the next blow. Nebula hardly got a second strike in, however, before Gamora drove her shoulder into her sister's back, swinging a leg under to hook Nebula's ankle and send the blue assassin stumbling forward.
This time Gamora managed to successfully grapple the diamond staff from her unbalanced sister's hands. There was another gasp from Mantis when the Blue assassin lost her balance completely and crashed into her.
"I said stop." Gamora held the staff away from her sister. "This isn't accomplishing anything."
Nebula gave a low growl of frustration, yanking the emerald staff rather viciously from Mantis's hands as she untangled herself from the empath and leaped back up. "Why are you being so soft on her!?" she demanded.
Gamora opened her mouth, but after a moment closed it again, her eyes flickering from anger to something pained. When it became apparent she wasn't going get an answer, Nebula gave another snarl and swung her staff at Gamora this time. "Just tell me!"
The sound of their staffs cracking together echoed through the court and over the canyon as the sisters lost themselves in a violent spar. All the anger that Nebula had been holding on to these last few days had finally found a way out. Her blows were nothing like the animalistic rage that had taken over her in the Milano's engine room, but they were serious. She was clearly not holding back anymore, now that Mantis wasn't her target. Gamora refused to be cowed, however, and pushed back against her sister's onslaught.
"Hey!" Peter shouted and waved his arms, trying to catch one of the sister's attention.
Mantis, still struggling to find her feet when the sister's fell into battle, was quickly caught up in the storm of their rage. Nebula's staff caught her a couple times in the back swing and Mantis gave up trying to flee and instead dropped to the ground, covering her head. "Please stop!" she begged, but her voice was lost in the chaos.
"Guys, hey!" Peter stepped in, circling the furious sisters and trying to find a way in beyond the whirling weapons.
A hard shove sent Nebula stumbling back again where she tripped over Mantis, still huddling on the ground, practically trampling the terrified girl in her efforts to keep her feet and return her sister's next blow as Gamora stepped in after her.
Suddenly Mantis found herself trapped between the two warring sisters, a terribly dangerous place to be. "PEACE!" she cried, reaching up and grabbing them both by the wrist as her antenna glowed a brilliant white. The effect was immediate. Nebula jerked back as though she'd been burned, ripping her arm from the empath's grip and retreating across the court, staring back at her in wild-eyed disgust. Gamora froze in her tracks entirely, her own staff clattering to the ground as it dropped from her hand.
Panting and trembling, Mantis released Gamora's wrist and carefully stood. "I am sorry!" Her voice was a loud, squeaking gasp as she frantically apologized, turning to Nebula and reaching a hand out. "I panicked, I did not mean to-"
"Just stay away from me!" Nebula snarled.
Mantis flinched back and hung her head, her hands raised up as though prepared to sheild herself from a blow.
"Fine. Have it your way, sister." Nebula's voice was low and dangerous as she threw the emerald staff across the court where it clattered across the stonework and bounced against Mantis's legs. "But it'll be your fault when she's slaughtered like a hapless animal. I suppose your conscious can't get much dirtier than it already is, anyways."
Gamora barely seemed to register what her sister had said in her stupefied state, but Peter could swear he saw something like a tear shining in the corner of her eye, and as she raised her hands to stare at them, they were shaking much like they had been when her mind had been stripped on knowhere.
Nebula gave a final disgusted roll of her eyes at her sister's state and stalked up the stairs, probably heading out into the canyon to walk her frustration out.
Mantis chewed on her lip as she took a step after Nebula then seemed to think better of it and turned to Gamora instead. "I-" She stilled when Peter placed his hand gently on her shoulder, turning her wide eyes on him. "I did not mean to upset them. Is there anything I can do?"
Peter did his best to give her a reassuring smile. He was just wondering the same thing, however.
"I am Groot," Groot spoke up tentatively as he stepped in.
"Yeah, that's a good idea," Peter agreed. "Why don't you guys go take a break?"
"Yes," Mantis wiped at her eyes and pulled her lips into a rough attempt at a smile. "I can show you the water gardens with the Andrean Lily's," she offered. When she pulled her hand away from her face, her knuckles were wet with tears.
"Are you okay?" Peter asked, suddenly worried she'd been hurt more than he realized.
"I am fine. They are not my tears." Mantis took his hand in hers and leaned in to whisper, low enough that Gamora could not hear. "She is filled with such sorrow, and regret. It causes her great pain." She gave his hand a light squeeze then released it to join Drax and Groot who escorted her from the court.
Peter heaved a sigh as they vanished from sight as well, leaving him alone with Gamora. When he turned back, he found that she had moved to sit at the edge of the canyon, her legs hugged loosely to her chest and her head hung low.
"Hey." Peter joined her on the cliff, dangling his legs over the edge. "Are you... okay?"
There was no answer, but the threatening tears seemed to have vanished from her eyes and the trembling had stopped.
"Gamora? Please say something."
"It's too late isn't it?"
"What?"
"She was right. Her whole life, I've done nothing but destroy her. There is nothing I can do to fix the space between us. Every time I try I just make things worse."
"Come on, there must have been something, some good memory the two of you have together? I mean, she's your sister. You always loved her, right?"
"I don't know." Her voice was hushed and she stared over the canyon with empty eyes. "I remember loving her- I do. I swear I always did, but... I also remember throwing her over that cliff. I remember nearly killing her over and over and over again. I don't even know anymore, how many times Thanos had to bring her back... just so I could do it again. How could I have done that to someone I loved?"
"You were... trying to help her," Peter ventured carefully, feeling hopelessly out of his element. He knew very little about their past together, and what he did know only made him glad to not know more.
"She was just a kid," Gamora lamented, drawing her knees tighter. "She was just a little kid."
"So were you."
"I was older. I was stronger, and faster, and she never stood a chance against me. Never- why couldn't I see that? If I had been smarter- If I could have seen through what they did to me-"
"It wouldn't have mattered," Peter told her, and she finally turned her head and let her gaze meet his. Some miserable mixture of doubt and fear and dread swirling behind them. "It ended the same in my timeline. Her head, her eye... her arm. She had all those modifications the first time I met her, in my universe, as well."
Gamora's shoulder's slumped and she turned back to the canyon. "Do you know what happened to her arm?" she whispered.
"Thanos took it right?" Peter asked, really, really hoping that she was going to nod and affirm that, but knowing already that she wouldn't. "That's what she said."
"We were searching for the Orb, and she became entangled in lazor-thorn wires. They cannot be severed with a metal blade, so I gave her my knife and I left her to carve off her own limb and the corner of her face, and crawl back home on her own."
Peter couldn't help but wince at the gruesome thought. He did his best to shove it aside and focus on the here and now.
"Thanos gave me my orders, and I saw them through without question. I never even looked back."
Peter didn't know what to say here. He lifted a hand and reached for Gamora's, then pulled it back, not knowing how to give her any sort of comfort she would accept.
"So you're taking things so slow with Mantis because-"
"I don't want to make the same mistakes all over again."
"You won't."
Her brown eyes flickered back to stare at him from the corner of here vision, glowing a warm amber with traces of gold in the bright sun.
"It's not you," Peter told her. "It was never you. You're not like that. You're the kindest, most amazing person I have ever met, Gamora. The Guardians of the Galaxy wouldn't exist without you. You're like our moral compass. When the rest of the Guardians start falling off track, you're the one that always pulls us back and reminds us what we're here for."
Beneath a thousand layers of guilt and misery and trauma, Peter thought he saw a spark of hope somewhere in the depths of her eyes.
"You inspire me, Gamora. You make me a better person every day. I'm not just some outlaw now, I'm a hero. That's because of you. No matter what the universe threw at us, and it threw a lot, you were always steady and brave and there to help. When Ego told me he killed my mother, and then Yondu died in my arms, you held me together. Peeled me and Rocket up off of I don't even know how many bathroom and bar floors, made sure we didn't do anything too stupid. When Groot burned up on Xandar, you helped raise him again, watered him, played his music, and looked after him when things got hairy. He even called you mom. Through a big fit when Rocket had to explain you weren't actually his mom. Whenever things get really bad here or feel impossible, I think to myself 'what would Gamora do' and then I do my best to do that.
"I know you don't remember any of that because, here, it never happened, but that's the Gamora I know. That's the Gamora I fell in love with, and that's who I know you are, beyond everything that twisted Titan did to you. If you can't be the moral compass of the group right now, that's fine. Maybe it's time for me to step up and return the favor. I can totally be the the bigger person here. I've got this. So you just sit back and focus on saving your parents. I'll take care of everything else."
Gamora regarded him silently for a moment, then the faintest traces of a real, honest smile crossed her face. "Thank you, Peter."
"Any time."
They sat in silence after that, watching the canyon glow gold then fade to scarlet as the sun set behind them.
Pairings: Peter Quill / Gamora (one-sided), Peter Quill & Nebula (freindship)
Genre: Adventure, general
Word Count: 6.6k
Rating: T to be safe, mild gore and cussing in some chapters
Links: Fanfiction.net || Ao3
Summary: The Guardians get a very important message.
Author’s Notes: Title is from ‘News from Nowhere’ by Greame James
Chapter 16: News from Knowhere
As Ego had predicted, Peter wasn't all that useful after the great burst of power. A couple of statues later, diminished in size, and more disfigured than even Peter could excuse away as artistic flare, and he had been dismissed.
"Just go eat lunch early or something," Ego had told him with a look of tired disgust. "We will continue this once you are recovered enough."
Despite his bone-deep exhaustion, Peter couldn't help but feel enlivened by what he had accomplished. Even as he wandered back down the winding path to the main court, Peter was playing with a ball of Light between his palms. It was uncannily heavy in his hands, and slow to respond to his commands. Or maybe he was slow to give them.
"Are you going to tell me what that was about?"
Peter gave a yelp and the Light in his hands responded with a brief flare, but he managed to keep it under control as Nebula sidled up next to him on the trail. Her hands were clasped loosely behind her back as she stared at him from the corned of her eye.
"What are you doing here?" he asked, releasing the energy in his hands which was quick to flicker away.
"I came to see what happened. And what that mountain is doing there all of a sudden."
"Mountain?" Peter paused to look back at the towering stone still visible above the trees even from here and felt a small swell of pride. "I don't know about a mountain, but yeah, I made that. It's pretty impressive, right?"
Nebula rolled her eyes, but for once didn't rebuke his boasting as she continued on down the trail. "Well what do you know," she drawled with just the faintest flicker of a smile teasing her lips, and a new note in her voice he didn't think he'd ever heard before, in this universe or the last one, "you might be useful in the long run after all."
By the time they made it to the main court Peter was positively beaming under the glow of the backhanded but strangely sincere praise.
"You're back early," Drax commented as Peter and Nebula returned to the group. He had been busy polishing his blades at the top of the steps, but lowered them at the pair's approach.
"I am Groot?" Groot asked, scrunching his face at what Peter was sure looked like a rather dopey smile, but try as he might, he just couldn't seem to wipe it away.
As much as Peter wanted desperately to poke some fun at the assassin and make some crude joke about them sharing a bonding moment, it wasn't worth ruining Nebula's good mood so instead he gave the most lackadaisical shrug he could muster and said, "Oh nothing, I'm just excited about my powers coming along. How does an early lunch sound?"
-x-
From there the day ran with an air of predictability. Ego returned to set him back to work shortly after Peter had finished a light brunch and short nap in the sun, and they returned to their usual work. The towering stones had been cleared away and there was no mention of Peter's sudden burst of power from earlier.
They broke again briefly to answer a hail from the Nova Corps, though this time Ego pulled up a screen from the center of the court rather than have them return to the main cathedral, and insisted that it was Peter's turn to open the hail. Interacting with the planet was a strange sensation, one separate from the creation he had been doing thus far, but he managed, with enough proper instruction, to open the hailing frequency and see Dey's smile wink to life on the screen.
The Nova Corpsmen had nothing much to report; Marlowe had found a few leads which had lead to nothing, and the crew of the Starburst was still divided on how to deal with the Guardians, but he offered a few bright compliments when Peter displayed some of his newfound abilities.
When the training wound to an end for the day Peter returned to the court to find that Mantis and Gamora were once more working on blocks and dodges. It looked like Mantis was gaining some confidence in her movements, and Peter found himself settling down to watch them train in silence rather than immediately calling on Eternity. Five days left. This strange little bubble of peace would be shattered soon. One way or another. It couldn't hurt that much to want to spend a few minutes watching Gamora in the courtyard below. In the setting sun, with the stones shimmering gold, and a faint sheen of sweat on her brow, she almost looked like she was dancing as she traded soft parries and blows with her partner.
All too soon, it was time for dinner.
"Are you going to be calling on eternity again tonight?" Mantis asked, from her seat across the table. Her eyes were trained with obviously forced nonchalance on her food.
Nebula hadn't been at the court when Peter returned, and she wasn't at dinner now. Her usual seat across from him was empty, and Peter was using it now to prop his feet up while he ate.
"I probably should," Peter answered after he'd swallowed his bite of food. "It really takes a lot out of me though, and I'd like to stay up and try to see Rocket again tonight. Maybe I'll just try to talk to Eternity later. After I've seen Rocket." Or after he'd given up waiting. Whatever came first. He was hopeful the raccoon would make an appearance, though.
"Oh," Mantis sighed, seeming to deflate slightly.
"Why don't you stay up with me?" Peter asked. He doubted Mantis had an actual bedtime that she had to adhere to.
"Really?!" The empath immediately perked up. "I would love to!"
From her spot at the end of the table, Gamora cleared her throat loudly.
"You should be resting," she said. "You are training right now."
Again Mantis shrunk back down into her seat. "Of course, Gamora. You are correct."
"Oh come on," Peter tried, giving Gamora his most beguiling smile. "I'm sure staying up a little late won't hurt anything. She's an adult. She'll be fine." Gamora was probably not going to forget his undermining her anytime soon, but Mantis looked so crushed at the flat refusal that he couldn't help but try. "Besides, if you're worried, maybe you could join us?" All the powers of the universe combined couldn't have stopped his eyebrow from raising into a suggestive arc as he made the offer. It was really more of an automatic habit than an intentional quirk at this point in his life.
Gamora's response was as predictable as it was disappointing.
"No."
"You sure? I can make fire now, and we can find something to roast over it in the storeroom. It'll be like a sleepover!"
Gamora's nose wrinkled as her face formed into a dangerous sort of frown. "What could possibly make you think I want to sleep with you."
"No, that's not what I-!" Peter's voice broke into a squeak and he paused to cough into his hand and recollect himself. "That's not what a sleepover is. It's an Earth thing. It's just... friends... hanging out... at night..." He trailed off miserably, a blush burning against his cheeks. The rest of the table was staring at him blankly and he finished, "...I mean... there's not even much sleeping going on."
Gamora scoffed and rolled her eyes, collecting her plates and leaving the table.
"Not like that! I didn't mean anything! I wasn't trying to..." Peter gave up and threw his face into his hands. "Yeah, I'll just see you in the morning."
Across the table Drax was chuckling into his own plate of food and not even pretending to be subtle about it.
-x-
"So what is your friend, Rocket like?" Mantis asked as she tucked her legs neatly underneath herself on the steps. She'd brought a pair of soft cushions out with her to provide them some relief from the stone. Peter had his bundled under his head while he watched the stars above.
"Grumpy?" Peter hazarded. "But not usually this grumpy, and deep down he's kinda a softy once you get to know him."
"He looks quite soft on the outside, too," Mantis sighed. When Peter glanced over, she was staring up at the stars, too. "I think I would very much like to pet him."
Peter let out a soft chuckle. "I wouldn't recommend it. Even in my universe he almost bit your hand off for trying that. Trust me, it's not a fun experience." He waved his left hand, the pale flesh still healing over the tooth-marks from Rocket's drug-withdrawl fueled assault flashed bright under the starlight.
"He bit you!?" Mantis seemed alarmed.
"Ah, yeah, but he didn't really mean it, I think. He was pretty out of his mind at the time." Peter rubbed at his healing hand as he spoke. The brace had been removed as soon as he was done training, and the thin scars from Rocket's teeth felt strange under his fingers. "I guess Thanos uses some sort of drug to control his people sometimes. And coming off of it gets pretty nasty."
"This Thanos, he is a terrible person, yes? He has destroyed may planets, and taken many lives?"
"Yeah, he's pretty terrible."
"And you are going to stop him?"
"That's the plan."
"Good." Mantis nodded her head, a sharp gesture that made the star shine on her hair ripple. "I will be glad to help you. I would like to make it so that he cannot make others suffer anymore. So he cannot destroy people's homes or families. Like mine, and Drax's... and even Gamora's."
Peter turned his head, unable to suppress a look of surprise.
"Drax told me," Mantis confessed in a whisper. "He has told me many stories of his own world and his time on Sakaar, and even many of the amazing things he has done since meeting you and Nebula."
"Oh." That made a lot of sense. The group had a lot of time to kill while he was busy with Ego, after all. "You do know that you don't have to come, right?"
"What?"
"I wanted to free you from Ego, but no matter what he sais, I don't own you or anything. You don't have to go with us if you don't want to. I just want to make sure you know that." Maybe he was being a bit over dramatic about the topic, and he hoped she didn't think he was trying to disuade her from joining them again, but Ego's attitude about her was really getting on his nerves, and Rocket's whole situation may have already set him on edge.
Mantis just turned her bright smile from the stars down to Peter. "I am sure. I would like to help. Perhaps I will even earn some scars like you have."
Another laugh escaped before he could stop it. "Not if I can help it. It's a pretty rough life out there as a Guardian of the Entire Universe, though, so who knows."
This thought seemed to please her, and she turned back to the stars, her eyes shimmering bright with excitement as though already imagining what kind of adventures were waiting out there this time.
"Could you tell me some stories about your universe?"
Peter did, quite happy to lose himself in memories of his old team. Memories growing more startlingly distant with each passing cycle. Mantis listened with earnest, silent except for the occasional gasp or exclamation.
At some point he drifted off to sleep, and awoke to a sharp pain in his side.
"Ow!" he gasped, rolling away and clutching at his side as something struck him again. "What the-?"
Nebula loomed above him in the darkness, the edges of her enhancements glinting in the star light as his eyes re-adjusted to the night. She drew her leg back for another blow and Peter rolled away again to avoid her. "Stop kicking me! What the hell!?"
"How an idiot like you survived so long on your own is beyond me."
"Well now you're just hurting me on the inside, too," Peter told her, moving one hand from his ribs to clutch at his heart instead. She rolled her eyes, the gesture nearly invisible in the night, but stepped back so he could sit up and stretch the kink from his spine. Maybe they should have brought more cushions out. "Where's Mantis?" he asked, glancing around.
"Leaving. And you are too. As ridiculous as it is, our lives all depend on you right now, and, somehow, you seem to keep forgetting this. Go back to your room and get some real rest."
"I was waiting up to talk to Rocket. Then I'll go to bed."
"You're too late."
"What?"
"He came and went," she told him. "You slept right through it."
"No!" Peter leaped to his feet, suddenly alarmed, and whipped his head around as though he might catch Rocket still.
"Bed," Nebula snapped, stepping in towards him before he could decide which direction to go. "NOW."
"I need to talk with Rocket," Peter snapped right back, losing his patience with her badgering.
"I'm sure it can wait-"
"It's important!"
Peter swept his hands out in irritation, and sparks of Light danced across his finger-tips, surprising even him. Nebula stiffened, her hands curled into fists and her weight rocking subtly as though preparing for a blow. The sight of her reaction, and the ghostly memory of the smell of burnt flesh in the engine room, was enough to sober him, and he quickly dropped his hands back down to his side.
"I'm sorry." Peter rubbed at his hands nervously. The Light had come so easily, unconsciously, even. He needed to be more careful with it. He'd hurt her once in his anger, and the thought of doing that again was enough to shame him into a temporary defeat. "I didn't mean to do that- didn't even know I could. It's just- Please Nebula, it's really important to me."
"Get some sleep," she repeated, uncurling her fists, but a tenseness remained that made it clear he was not forgiven, and she kept his hands in the corner of her eye. "Some proper rest, and tomorrow, if you are not too worn out, I'll take you across the canyon."
"Really?!" The offer was more than he expected, and he found himself half-expecting her to snatch it right back. "You promise."
"Sure," she drawled through her teeth. "I promise. If you keep your end of the deal. And I can only show you the path across. I can't promise he'll be there."
"I get it." Peter stooped to snatch the cushion from the ground and brush the dust off before tucking it under his arm. "Thank you, though. I appreciate it. I'll go... get some rest now."
It was probably only about midnight or so, so he had a good number of hours left, and the thought of collapsing onto his mattress wasn't all that bad, now that he had a plan in mind. By the time he reached the edge of the court, however, it became apparent he was going alone and he paused to look back at Nebula who hadn't moved.
"Aren't you coming?" he asked.
"In a bit."
"You can walk with me," Peter laughed. "I promise, I won't tell anyone. You're reputation as a lone badass is safe with me."
Nebula gave her eyes another roll and turned to walk towards the still dimly-lit dining room instead. "Goodnight Peter."
"Suit yourself," he shrugged, walking backwards down the path to their rooms for a few steps, "but I'll have you know I am an excellent late night stroll companion, and a perfect gentlemen."
As he turned away from the court her voice drifted back to him through the darkness.
"You have already proven to be neither of those things."
-x-
The next day breezed by in a haze of creation. Ego finally let Peter move on to fire, officially, and by lunch he was learning to both shoot it from his hand in a small but effective stream and to condense it and send electricity prickling up and down his arms. Briefly Peter wished there was someone around who he could taze with this newfound gift, but settled for practicing on some nearby rocks and trees. The time for that would probably come sooner than he'd like, anyways.
In his call from the Nova Corps, Dey let slip that they may have found a more promising lead which Cosmo was chasing down on Knowhere. The Denerian was careful to impress that it was still a wild shot at best, but all Peter heard was hope, and he practically danced his way through the remainder of the day's training. He even had energy to help out with Mantis's lessons, a simple, slow-paced spar that didn't take much of anything from him, and left him with plenty to spare by the time Nebula made an appearance.
"Ready to go?" Peter asked, tossing his staff aside and abandoning the sparring circle to jog up the steps towards the blue assassin.
"We'll get some food first," Nebula said, walking straight past him.
"Food?' Peter asked as he trotted to catch up to her. He'd already eaten earlier, in anticipation of the trip.
"You're pretty useless to him without it."
"Oh. Right."
A pair of bowls were filled with food that traveled well and tied together with some bandages from a small medical kit Mantis had showed them, then strung over his back. Archaic, but effective, and this way he could carry it without the loss of either one of his hands. The sun was still in the sky, not quite touching the horizon, when they reached the edge of the canyon and Peter was sizing up the jump down in his head. Nebula was already half-way down the cliff face, making short work of the jagged wall with jumps that he was sure no normal person could make without breaking a leg. He waited until she was nearly at the bottom and then took a small running start, leaping from the edge with a small whoop.
Despite their early start, and the path Nebula took him down which was, as promised, surprisingly fast, the sun was still sunk below the horizon by the time they made it to the far wall.
"Do you want me to wait for you?" Peter asked, as he craned his neck up to judge the leap he would need to get up to the top.
"Do what you want," Nebula told him, finding a handhold among the stone and beginning to make her way back up the cliff. The wall here looked like it had suffered a few rock-slides along the centuries, creating a sort of slanted path and providing a relatively easy climb up. Peter was pretty sure even he could manage it safely. She wouldn't be long, and really didn't need him hovering over her shoulder.
After a brief moment's consideration, Peter decided not to wait. The longer they took, the longer Rocket had to hear them coming and decide to leave, if he hadn't already.
As his boots touched down on the grass at the top, he gave out a low whistle at the sight of what had become of Ego's shuttle.
Nebula wasn't kidding when she had called it rubble. The whole thing had been ripped apart, and it lay in pieces scattered across the landing pad and adjoining field. Several larger hunks loomed out of the grass here and there where it appeared Rocket had tried to construct something new from the savaged pod, but they all lay abandoned.
"Hey Rocket?" Peter called out into the growing darkness, picking his way through the debri and working towards the tree line. "I just wanted to talk to you again. I brought food!"
He held up the bowls of food, still tied neatly together, so they could be seen if Rocket was watching him from the trees. "I mean, it's no Eiyrian Frosted Sunash, but it's still pretty okay."
There was a rustling from somewhere nearby as Peter reached the edge of the field and he froze.
"What the flark is Sunash?" Again, the gravelliness of Rocket's voice caught Peter somewhat off-guard. It was something that was going to take some getting used to.
"What?! No! It's your favorite!" Peter exclaimed. "It's like a weird little pastry thing with these awesome sprinkles that pop in your mouth when you eat them. You made us fly half-way across the galaxies just to get a box of them. You ate like, all of them. Which was a dick move, because we agreed to share them but- not the point."
A flash of red caught Peter's eyes as Rocket suddenly melted from the undergrowth off to the side, just one shadow separating from the others in the twilight. "Never heard of it."
"That can't be right!" Peter didn't dare take a step closer, so he just continued to shout from where he was. "As soon as we get the Milano back, we're all going out for some. I'm sure I can find my way back-"
"I don't care." The raccoon cut him off harshly. "I'm not interested in running snack errands with you, Stalker-lord-"
"It's Star-lord."
"-or any of your Sentinels of Shit-"
"Guardians of the Galaxy."
"Whatever. You're not going to bribe my favor with that dehydrated crap, so just go back the way you came and leave me alone."
"This isn't a bribe," Peter sniffed. "It's a thanks."
The glowing red eyes narrowed into thin slits.
"For the advise you gave me about Gamora's parents," he explained. "They've already found a lead, and Cosmo is chasing it down as we speak. Couldn't have done it without you."
Rocket snorted. "You got that right at least." The arrogance was so much better than the side-winding hate that Peter had been met with so far that it tugged his lips into an even wider, and much more genuine smile.
"So, thanks. We don't have much here, but I brought dinner, hand-delivered, and the promise of Sunash at the first opportunity."
Rocket gave no answer, but as Peter's eye adjusted to the dark, he could make out the ringed tail twitching thoughtfully behind him. A familiar habit of his own Rocket's which gave Peter the feeling he was making progress finally.
"Look, it's fine, if you don't want to come get it then how about I just toss it to you?" Peter asked, testing the weight in his hand and calculating the overhand throw he'd need.
"Don't you-!"
But Peter was already lobbing it into the space between them. "Here it comes!"
The mess of bowls traveled true and Rocket caught it stiffly between his fingers, the hair visible beneath the suite seemed to poof out. His face drew into a grimace and he froze for a beat, as though he expected the thing to blow up in his hands. When it did nothing more than what would be expected of a hastily strapped together pair of bowls containing travel food, he unwound slightly and fixed Peter with a glare that was dirtier than ever.
"What the hell is wrong with you!?" He snarled, taking a threatening step forward and pulling the ball back like he intended to chuck it right back at Peter's head, then just as suddenly as he had moved, he froze.
The soft crunch of grass in the resulting silence brought Peter's attention to his side where Nebula had finally joined him and was returning the Raccoon's gaze with a hard look of her own.
The two liberated war criminals held each other's gaze for a long beat, but Rocket was the first to relent, his fur laying back down as he took a step backwards, lowering the bowls of food from their threatening position.
"Just, leave me alone, will you." His tail twitched one more time and then he vanished back into the forest, his footsteps fading almost as soon as he was out of sight.
"Well, I'd say that went even better than expected!" Peter exclaimed happily.
-x-
It was well past midnight when Peter returned to his room, tired and sweaty and smelling of forest, but triumphant.
Nebula had returned with him and continued straight to her room, vanishing into the shadows of the dark hallway before his farewell finished echoing around them.
Alone again, it was tempting to just stretch out on the bed and fall asleep, but he had one more thing to do tonight. After kicking off his boots and changing into a pair of loose pajamas, one of many he had discovered in the dresser drawers of his room, he settled onto his bed with his legs crossed and reached for the Light.
"It's been too long, Peter."
Peter opened his eyes and Rocket was standing on the foot of his bed, stars leaking from his eyes, and frosting the tips of his fur.
"We have so very little time to waste."
"It wasn't wasted," Peter defended. "I've been busy. I'm trying to learn something that took a real Celestial thousands of years to master in a few days, in case you hadn't noticed. And-"
"Nevermind that," Eternity cut him off with toss of Rockets head. "You are already exhausted. We don't have time to dally tonight."
Briefly Peter wondered what Eternity could do if Peter decided to simply sever the link and fall asleep then and there. The thought of more nightmares sprang to mind so he resigned himself to dealing with the strange entity before him. "Alright, what've you got tonight?"
"I have been thinking on your concerns over the forms I take, and believe I have arrived at a compromise that will suit us both from here on. Someone familiar enough to pull the details from your mind with ease, but one that won't be construed with another living vessel."
The first thought to cross his mind made Peter's heart freeze in his chest. If Eternity was going to turn into his mother again- But the shifting form before him settled into a much more familiar visage. Standing his bed where Rocket had been a moment before, so that Peter had to crane his neck uncomfortably to meet the swirling stars of his eyes, was his own reflection staring back.
"Well," Eternity asked, hopping down from the bed with his arms spread out as though asking for an opinion on a new set of clothes, "what do you think?"
Too many things. For a long moment, Peter stared wordlessly into his own possessed eyes and suppressed a dark shudder crawling up his spine.
"It's... fine," he eventually bit out. He'd get used to it. It was better than the alternatives, even if it gave him the creeps in ways he couldn't quite put into words. The way a dark forest or decrepit church might send one's instincts screaming to flee from some impossible fear.
"That's settled then," Eternity moved on, apparently oblivious to Peter's discomfort. "How did you enjoy my gift the other day? Useful, is it not?"
"Useful, yes." The image of the tower of rocks piercing the sky above the court came to mind once more. "But I couldn't really do anything afterwords."
"I'll be more careful next time," Eternity promised. "And you will grow stronger with practice as well. And capable of so much more than a measly outcropping of stone.
"My sister has made no moves in the mean time. Thanos's army continues to gather, but I have yet to discover their intent or target. You must be ready when they do, but for now all you can do is gather strength as well. I will continue watching as best I can through the veil as you continue to learn. The stronger your bond with the Light becomes, the greater my reach into this realm."
The dark feeling returned at the thought of whatever bond was forming between himself and Eternity as well.
Eternity glanced up, as though looking at something far beyond the four little walls they were enclosed in, and then slowly brought his attention back down to Peter. "I will leave you be for now. Rest. And grow stronger."
-x-
The pounding on his door the next morning came so early and so loud that at first he believed he hadn't escaped the nightmares after all until Mantis's voice rang through the wall. "Peter? I apologize for waking you, but the Nova Corps have called and say it is urgent."
Peter rolled over and lifted his head from his pillow to stare blearily at the door. "Whaaat?" he groaned, clawing his way somewhat unwillingly back towards conscious thought.
"They say they have found some news about Gamora's parents and wish to speak to you abou-eek!"
Peter was out of bed, shoving his shoes on and yanking the door open so fast Mantis startled back with a squeak.
"THEY FOUND SOMETHING!?" he cried, hopping on one foot as he tugged his second boot all the way on before bolting for the doorway, grabbing her wrist and tugging her after him as he ran. "Why didn't you say so, let's go!"
He made it to the main cathedral in record time, huffing and gasping like a madman, with Mantis panting at his heels. "I'm here!" he cried.
Ego was standing in the center of the room, his hands clasped behind his back and a screen hanging overhead, displaying Marlowe in a cleaned and pressed uniform, her fingers laced together on the desk in front of herself as she waited patiently for Peter to catch his breath.
"I'm here," Peter repeated, moving to stand before the screen. "What happened? You found them?"
"Not exactly."
Peter's heart skipped a beat. "What? But Mantis said-"
We have found very promising news. Something that could solve more than one concern. Cosmo's golden snout suddenly popped into view as he stood to place his front feet on the desk next to Marlowe. A broad smile covered his face.
"Cosmo!" This was a pleasant surprise. "You look great!"
Cosmo feels great! And not just because wounds have been healed.
"What did you find?"
Cosmo has spent much of this time chasing every trail that gave sniff of hope. Most lead to nothing but dead ends, but rumor of a rumor lead Cosmo to The Jubilee, a junker vessel which frequents Knowhere.
On this vessel is an Agullo with one leg and many, many scars. It seems when Thanos took their homeworld he was enslaved. Before he escaped, or rather, was left for dead by Thanos's army when his ship was destroyed as collateral damage in a battle, he was part of a crew transporting supplies for Thanos's army. Specifically, it seems, he would oversee stock before it was loaded, and manage incoming inventory.
Marlowe tapped one finger against the desk and Cosmo sped along.
Forgiveness, he panted, I say this because it was during these transactions that he would deal with the populace of the planets, other slaves, ones forced into menial jobs and heavy labors, providing things necessary to maintain such a vast warring empire, and it is his belief that he may have once seen these parents of your assassin friend's shortly before he... stumbled upon his freedom.
"Where!?" Peter hardly dared believe it.
Marlowe pulled a Tablet from off-screen, sliding it across the desk until it sat in front of the camera. At her touch, a holo map of an unfamiliar star system burst to life above it.
"It seems he wasn't in a position to have access to most pertinent information, and has a very limited knowledge of the universe, so he could not give us exact coordinates or even a name. From what we can gather with the information he gave us, however, narrowed down by what you gleaned from Experiment 89P13, we believe it would be somewhere in this quadrant. According to our own records, the most likely candidate in this area would be the Planet Villam."
"Villam?" Peter repeated, squinting at the screen and wishing he could zoom in. "Why does that sound so familiar?"
A deep voice rumbled out from behind him. "Likely because that is my home planet."
Peter spun around to find the rest of the Guardians filtering into the room. Drax was looking between Peter and the screen with a mixture of surprise and suspicion. "Oh! Hey guys-"
"What interest do you have in it?" the Destroyer rumbled, squaring his shoulders and crossing his arms over his chest so he could stare down at the others.
"They think that Villam might be where Gamora's parents are being held." While he spoke, Peter tried to catch Gamora's eye, but she was staring straight past him at the screen.
Good, Cosmo chimed in, green assassin friend is here. Cosmo is hoping perhaps this new knowledge may how-you-say jog her memory.
"Villam," she whispered, but Peter couldn't tell if it was familiar to her as well, or she was just feeling it out.
Drax curled a lip up into a sneer, as if the sound of that word from her lips was unpleasant, but all that came from his mouth was a curt; "Manure and dirt. These are the only things you and the rodent could recall. That would make sense. My planet is one rich in land and resources, and my people skilled in tending to it. I do not know what became of it, or those few survivors, after I was sent to the Colosseum."
"Yes," Gamora breathed out, her fingers trembling slightly. "I think, maybe, that could be it."
"Do you remember anything new?" Marlowe pressed, zooming the map in to get a closer view of the planet. "Anything to confirm their whereabouts or prepare us for what else might be there?"
Gamora shook her head miserably.
"We?" Peter asked. He was grateful that Marlowe and Cosmo had put so much work into finding this news, but he hadn't expected them to be going with him. It wasn't bad news by any means, but it was surprising.
"We believe there might be more on that planet than its imprisoned citizens and a couple of Zen Whoberi." While she spoke, Marlowe tugged the tablet closer to herself. "With Cosmo's help, we tried tracing our way back through transport routs that may have brought people to that planet. If it's a recent acquisition, they would have to be transported from whatever their last location was. Instead, we found this." The map winked away and a moment later was replaced with a projection that looked like it had come from a sorely outdated security system. A dozen or so people huddled together in the corner of a small room. Peter couldn't tell if they were on a ship or a planet somewhere, but it was obvious they weren't there by choice. Heavily armed guards, Kree, Peter thought, though the image was of such poor quality he could be mistaken, stood in a ring around them, weapons at the ready.
"Who is that?" Peter asked, wishing again that he could see the image better.
"Xandarians." Marlowe's voice was tight as she stared at the video as though looking at a ghost. "Members of an outpost. We thought they had all been killed when Xandar fell. All the outposts and loyal planets were burned alongside our capitol planet, but if they somehow survived- if they've been imprisoned on a planet this whole time, we can't just leave them there." There were tears shining in her eyes and Peter could hear them in her voice as she whispered, "There could be others there, too."
"We'll get them back." Peter promised without thought.
Marlowe took here eyes on the holo image and back to Peter. The pain vanished as quickly as it had come and she was right back to business. "How is your training coming along? Can you wield the stone yet?"
"No." Ego's voice was absolute. "There is still too much risk."
"There will always be risk," Marlowe countered. "You wanted an opportunity to prove your worth and earn the crew's goodwill. If ever there was an opportunity to do just that, this is it."
"I could try-"
"NO." Ego cut him off. "Not yet. You need more time."
"Will you do it then!?" Peter snapped.
Ego reared his head back, looking outright offended by the suggestion.
"I've been working myself to exhaustion here. If I haven't made any progress towards using the Stone, then what has all this been for?"
"He has a point Peter." Nebula spoke up. She was staring at him rather unsympathetically as she took his father's side. "If you can't use the stone effectively, then it's best you don't try yet."
Drax surprised Peter by lending his support to Ego and Nebula as well. "I will have to agree as well. I do not wish to see you do harm to my planet or people."
"Okay," Peter sighed in defeat. "No Infinity Stone. We'll just have to do this the old fashioned way."
On the screen, Marlowe looked disappointed, and somewhat dubious. Even Cosmo had closed his mouth, his panting smile lost in favor of a look of deep thought.
"Don't worry." Peter squared his shoulders and put on his best smile. "We'll get everyone out of there. The Xandarians, Gamora's parents, Drax's people, and anyone else they're holding. We'll save them all. I promise."
Pairings: Peter Quill / Gamora (one-sided), Peter Quill & Nebula (freindship)
Genre: Adventure, general
Word Count: 4.5k
Rating: T to be safe, mild gore and cussing in some chapters
Links: Fanfiction.net || Ao3
Summary: Eternity has an offer to make, and Nebula seems bothered by Mantis and Gamora’s training.
Author’s Notes: Title is from ‘Hot Blood’ by KALEO
Chapter 15: Hot Blood
The next morning couldn't come soon enough. Despite managing only a couple of hours of sleep after Rocket left, Peter was all but skipping down the pathway towards the main court while the rest of the Guardians made their sluggish way to breakfast.
"I cannot make a call," Mantis informed him apologetically. "Only Ego can."
Peter let out a groan, and let his skipping die down to an anxious pacing. "Is he at least done pouting today? The sooner I can talk to Marlowe the better." Seven cycles. He had seven standard cycles left. And that was with Gamora letting the time difference between the Starburst and Ego's planet work in his favor. He didn't need to lose more time to Ego's apparent spat with Eternity.
"I have not seen him, yet." Her voice was quieter now. She always seemed to get uncomfortable when Peter insulted Ego outright. "Perhaps he will come after breakfast."
"Can't you call him or something?"
"No, when he needs me he finds me..."
Gamora, who had been suspiciously quiet and withdrawn since Peter had shared Rocket's insight, spoke up now. "What if you need him?"
"Ego knows everything that happens here. If I am injured or unwell, he will find me."
"Which doesn't really help us at the moment," Peter grumbled.
"Let us wait until after breakfast," Drax suggested. "If he has not shown up by the usual time, perhaps we can injure Peter and see if that summons him."
Peter whipped his head around to give the maniac a dirty look and Drax broke out into laughter, clapping Peter on the back. "I am joking," he clarified, but his bright smile was not nearly as convincing as he probably thought it was. "We will find some other way."
Breakfast rolled by slowly, with Peter sharing the last night's encounter in greater detail between taking bites of his food and glancing restlessly at the door.
"Oh!" Mantis exclaimed. "I thought there were less plates than usual. I wonder what he has been doing with them?"
"Probably throwing them into the canyon," Nebula supplied without looking up from her own food.
"Yes," a familiar voice drawled out from the doorway. "He has quite the arm on him."
"Ehggo?" Peter choked out around a bite of food as he nearly leaped from his chair. "Thur y'hrrr!"
"Yes, here I am."
Peter swallowed his mouthful of dry biscuit as quickly as he could manage, which only left him hacking and having to hold up one finger to stall his father as he took a big swig from his cup of water. "I need to make a call," he finally got out.
"Can it wait?" Ego asked, his usual arrogant tone seemed tamped down, and there was a strange tiredness to his features.
"Not really, I need to call the Nova Corps as quickly as possible."
Ego made a face at that, but relented after a moment and waved Peter after himself as he turned around and left the way he had come.
-x-
It took some time for their hail to be answered, and then the patrol had to send someone back to inform the main fleet of Peter's request to speak with Marlowe or Saal. It took nearly an hour for them to receive a hail back. In that time, Peter had finally thought to asked after a brace. Ego summoned one of such nice quality and with such offhanded ease, hardly more than a twitch of his finger, that it left Peter with a burning pit of envy in his chest, and left him considering how very little he could do with the Light in comparison. Gamora and Mantis returned to their practice in the court, and once his brace was set, Peter relocated to the stairs to sit next to Groot and watch them until Ego called him back in.
Peter relayed the information to Marlowe, who appeared a bit tired and disheveled herself as she answered his call. Apparently he was interrupting her late lunch break, which she was now forced to take on a shuttle outside of the magnetic fields. He got the feeling, from her flat expression, that she didn't quite consider his, admittedly not very specific, information as big of an emergency as he did.
"Well," she mumbled around a spoonful of some sort of soup that sat on the small makeshift desk in front of her, as she held up a tablet with her other hand. "If it's a more recent acquisition, that doesn't really narrow it down all that much. Thanos has taken a lot of territory with these last few pushes. Ronan's front alone has-"
"But it's gotta be easier to check the ones closer to the front lines, right?" Marlowe's complete lack of enthusiasm was undercutting his earlier optimism.
"Not necessarily." She glanced up from her tablet to shoot him a look for the interruption, but rather than say anything about it, she took another bite of her lunch before continuing. "The newer ones will have more security and higher levels of traffic in the surrounding space. Finding out who's there will be a lot more difficult. I'll check our records and see if there have been any recent refugees who have been through any of the more newly indentured planets, maybe one of them will have seen something."
Peter's disappointment must have been written plainly across his face, because when she looked up next, she paused and lowered her spoonful of soup back into the bowl, giving him her full attention for the first time since answering the call and assuring it wasn't an emergency. "At least we have a direction to move in now," she told him. "Keep your chin up. We're not slacking off up here, so just focus on developing your powers and leave this to us, okay? If you find anything else out that might be useful you can let me know during the usual call. It's risky enough sending out these communications once a cycle, we don't need to be drawing even more attention to ourselves. We can count this as our communication for today."
"Okay," he muttered. "Thanks again, Marlowe. Sorry."
Marlowe narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips slightly, like she wasn't sure if Peter was being sarcastic or sincere. After a moment she relaxed and offered him a faint smile. "Keep yourself safe, Peter."
The call ended then, and Peter was left once more with the terrible sensation of having to sit around and wait for someone else.
"I saw you were trying to move on to fire," Ego told Peter as he waved the screen away. "Let's work on refining your control over the more physical elements first. You can still barely create anything larger than that staff your companion is using, and you could use some finer control of the form as well if you intend to do anything useful with this power."
"So you're going to keep training me?" Peter asked. He'd honestly been a bit worried after Ego had just up and left so quickly after meeting Eternity.
Ego grit his teeth and worked his jaw for a moment before answering. "My reasoning behind my offer to train you has not changed. This only confirms the Titan's interest in you, and shortens our timetable considerably. A clash with him at this stage is inevitable. I would prefer to not have to deal with Eternity at all, but it seems that, too, is... inevitable." His face dropped into a scowl and Peter wondered what he had been up to during this time. Had he been meeting with Eternity? Did Ego know more about this 'stepping out of reality' nonsense? Peter opened his mouth to ask him just that when Ego seemed to anticipate his intent and spoke over him. "Say goodbye to your friends, you can see them again later."
Peter followed Ego back to the Seafoam Court, waving a brief goodbye to the Guardians in the court as he passed. Gamora was busy adjusting Mantis's stance and grip on her weapon while Drax observed intently. Nebula was sprawled on her back staring into the sky some distance away, and didn't seem to notice Peter's departure. Groot was the only one who waved back.
-x-
Training with Ego was was somehow both brutal and mind-numbing in its repetition. Lunch time was spent largely with his forehead pressed against the table as he drifted in and out until Nebula shook him awake and informed him the others had all returned to the fountain court without him.
His plate had hardly been touched, so he brought it with him to pick at while he sat on the steps. It seemed Drax had finally grown bored enough to step in and help with Gamora's lessons. Mantis was sitting cross-legged on the ground while the maniac and assassin held a mock battle to, if Peter was understanding Gamora's distant words correctly, demonstrate how to use the bo staff to defend against a blade wielder. Nebula had hung around long enough to make some disparaging comments about Gamora's teaching methods, before wandering off to some undisclosed location.
By the time he was released for dinner, Peter had expanded his repertoire of stone to include everything from flaky sheets of shale, to a smooth polished marble, and all the lumpy, grey things in between that Nebula or Rocket could probably prattle off all sorts of names for with ease, but Peter found undeserving of any title beyond 'rock.' He could also form a larger range of shapes now. An oversized Pac Man statue now loomed over the seafoam court. Ego didn't seem to find its hungry grin nearly as amusing as Peter did. He doubted it would still be there when they returned tomorrow.
-x-
Once dinner was eaten and cleared away, Peter settled down as comfortably as he could on the steps beside the fountain. The sun was setting in a fiery display and the first stars were beginning to freckle the sky, but as much as he longed to flop onto his bed, he needed to at least try to contact Eternity before he could do so. As he tugged his legs into a more comfortable position and scrubbed at his eyelids which seemed to weigh a thousand pounds each, Gamora, Mantis and Groot, who had followed him down here, found there own places to rest as well. When Peter opened his eyes Gamora was perched neatly on the edge of the fountain, watching him with a thinly veiled interest and haloed against the water which was glowing gold in the fading light. He was so distracted by the sight that he didn't notice Mantis approaching, so he nearly jumped out of his skin when she dropped down to sit right in front of him.
"Eagh!" Peter shouted, throwing his arms up, suddenly much more awake than he had been. "Way too close!"
"I am sorry!" Mantis squeaked out, but only scooted a few inches back, looking torn. "I was... hoping your eyes might light up again..."
"Oh, um..." The alarm melted away and Peter let himself relax back into something like a meditation pose, ignoring the heat crawling onto his cheeks at Gamora's faintly amused grin from where she was watching silently. "Okay. That's fine I guess, just, a little warning next time."
Somewhere behind him, Groot gave a reedy chuckle and it took a great deal of willpower to pretend he didn't hear it and close his eyes instead. Reaching out to the Light was surprisingly easy and the soft burbling of the fountain and distant rustling of the empty forest quickly lulled his mind into an empty state.
"Hello again."
Peter opened his eyes to find that once more the world around him had been stolen away and replaced with Eternity's starscape. Only a portion of the steps he had been sitting on and a small patch of courtyard underneath Mantis remained. The empath's eyes were glittering back at him from over a grin that was as familiar as it was concerning by now. Eternity was uncomfortably close, but Peter at least had been expecting this and managed to avoid flinching.
"We really need to work on your entrances," he grumbled as he scooted back on the limited amount of solid ground behind him.
Eternity's lips twitched, clearly amused. "Does this form not please you?" he asked. "You seemed fond enough of her when you risked your life and so many others' to get her back."
"That's not what-"
"Yes, yes, you mortals and your attachment to these bodies," Eternity stood and disdainfully flicked a strand of Mantis's hair back. "I suppose it's to be expected to an extent, being such an integral part of this realm, but do you truly struggle so hard to tell it is me?"
"It's not that," Peter struggled to form his complaint into words. "It's just... creepy."
Eternity opened his mouth and Peter held up a hand.
"Knowing it's not them doesn't help. It's still creepy. Mantis doesn't," Peter waved at hand at the weird scowl that was painted over her features. "Well, she doesn't make that face. She doesn't... look like that. She doesn't sound like that."
Mantis's face just screwed up even more. "She looks and sounds exactly like this," Eternity stated. "All of this is pulled from your own mind."
"No, I mean, yes, but not like that." This really wasn't what Peter had been planning to waste all of his time on. "Seeing someone I know so well behave so differently is... off-putting..."
"I see," Eternity murmured, though he still looked a bit dubious. "I cannot remedy this, however, and we have more pressing matters to discuss with our limited time here. You will have to make do."
Peter blew a raspberry at that, but the divine being shoved into the petite and unassuming form of the Guardians' least violent member had a point.
"Have you had time to think further on my offer?" Eternity inquired.
To be honest, Peter hadn't. He'd been kept so busy this past cycle that while the knowledge of his last encounter with Eternity had never once really left his mind, he still hadn't found the time to sit down and decide what to say once he saw the cosmic being again.
"Not really, and I think I'm still not clear on what your offer is, exactly. A few vague promises of help and power, in exchange for... what? What exactly is my half of he deal here? I'm not into making magic deals where you steal my soul and put it in a jar for your collection or something."
A laugh burst from Eternity. "I need an agent in this plane. You are most suited to that job. I do not need your soul in a jar. As long as you live, it is already mine anyways."
That did little to reassure Peter.
"You and I both want my sister thwarted. For now, isn't that enough?"
Peter narrowed his eyes. He hadn't been living as a Ravager for all these years for nothing. Eternity was clearly hiding something behind his back, but as things were now Peter had no way of making him reveal what it was. As much as the cosmic being gave him the heebie jeebies, though, he would be stupid to dismiss his help entirely. Peter would just have to go with it for now and watch his words carefully until Eternity tipped his hand. Historically, this wasn't his strong suit.
"But perhaps a small demonstration would be helpful. Trust is earned, after all, not given, and I am not above paying my dues. The next time you are practicing drawing on the Light, call to me as well. You may be pleasantly surprised by what occurs. Allow me to help you for now, and I will ask nothing in return."
"Just like that?"
"I believe in time you'll come to see my assistance is... invaluable."
"And then you can ask for whatever you want?"
"You are so determined to find something wicked in me." Eternity clicked his tongue and shook his head as though disappointed in Peter. "Now, we are nearly out of time again, and there are other matters which demand our attention. I have been keeping an eye on the movements of the universe. My reach into this realm is limited without your aid, but lately I have found new stirrings in Thanos's army. As of yet, they have made no moves, but I fear they are gathering for something. My sister is preparing for the next step of her plan. Whatever it is, it seems it will require a great deal of power or care. I am hoping that if we can discover her intent and circumvent it, it may provide a way to cripple her efforts."
"So... what do you want us to do about it from here?"
"For now? Nothing. Keep focusing on building your relationship with the Light. You will likely need it for the next step of your journey."
"Have you found anything about-"
"It is time to go." Eternity reached up to tap Peter lightly on the forehead and the world around him crumpled away.
-x-
Worn out from his long day and the missing hours of sleep from the night before, Peter was especially difficult to rouse the next morning. According to Groot, Mantis had spent a good several minutes knocking on his door with increasingly frantic words before Drax, with a total lack of regard for personal space, and perhaps in some small spirit of revenge, had merely shoved the door open and dragged Peter bodily from his mattress. Despite this, once awake, he was feeling rather well rested and refreshed. Even the cuts on his hands weren't itching like they had before, and the skin was knitting back together nicely. He was hopeful they wouldn't even scar once all was said and done.
Drax's wound, too, was healing swiftly, sped along by the break they had all been given on Ego's planet. While Gamora and Mantis returned to their stretches and warm up in the court, Drax sat at the top of the stairs where Nebula was helping him remove the metal stitches from his chest.
"And you're sure they're ready to all come out so soon?" Peter asked as he eyed the seam in the flesh where it was still growing back together. "You don't want to leave a few in for support?"
"It will be fine," Nebula muttered as she worked the next band free. She was using some sort of tool in her bionic hand to help break the bands apart before removing them. Two small holes at the start of the wound were still oozing blood from where Drax had been simply ripping them out before Nebula had taken over.
"We are doing nothing to aggravate it here," Drax added. "Besides, they have begun to itch."
"You won't strain it practicing with Gamora and Mantis?"
Nebula let out a loud snort that shook her shoulders. "A toddler wouldn't be strained at the rate they've been moving."
"Why is this bothering you so much?" Peter asked, tugging one leg up so he could rest his elbow against it.
"It's not," Nebula answered easily enough, but over her head Drax shared a look with Peter that showed the maniac believed her about as much as Peter did.
"It sure seems to be."
"There are six other life forms on this planet, Peter. Can't you go be nosy with someone else and give me some peace for once." Nebula yanked out Drax's next staple with a bit more force than was probably necessary. A tiny dot of red beaded against the skin where it had been removed.
"Well yeah, sure," Peter said and Nebula seemed to relax just a fraction. "I mean, I won't, but I could-"
"That's it." Nebula pulled out the next staple in her hand a viscous twist and flicked it away as she rose to her feet. "I'm done."
"Hey!" Peter shouted, but Nebula was already stalking off. "Nebula, come back, I was joking! Nebula! Aaaaaand she's gone. Very mature."
"You could not have waited until she was finished?" Drax grumbled, plucking at the small handful of remaining staples.
"Sorry. Let me help with that."
-x-
Ego came not too long after that and it was back to the court. As predicted, there was no more Pac Man statue. They began with the usual routine of Peter summoning as much material as he could at one time while he chewed over Eternity's proposal from the night before in his head. He had no clue what was supposed to happen if he called on Eternity here. Wouldn't it just take him out of his body to that weird starscape land? That hardly seemed useful.
"It's improvement," Ego nodded to himself as he considered the twisting pile of rock before them, solid and shaped loosely to resemble the Milano, but barely any taller than Peter himself. "I think you could do more if you pushed yourself harder. Let's try again."
Peter let out a long breath and began gathering the Light again. This time, as he summoned it he tried to reach out for Eternity. At first nothing happened except a brief stuttering of the energy between his palms, and it took some time for Peter to figure out how to focus on both things at once. As he began building the next form out of stone, he felt the sensation of something reaching back for him. All at once, a tingling burned through his veins and the ball of Light in his hands seemed to burst into a life of its own and rip from his control.
"AHHH!" Peter yelped in surprise, leaping back as if he could bodily yank himself from the Light and stumbled, landing hard on his ass. The connection severed and the energy around him settled down, pooling from his body as quickly at it had come. "Whoah!" Where he had been building a reasonably sized statue a moment ago, there now loomed what would be more accurately described as a small hill. The spiked edges of the pile of stone spilled beyond the edges of the court and loomed high above the surrounding forest. "Well that's... pretty useful."
Peter glanced up at Ego, who was standing to the side, his face frozen like it had been etched from ice and his hands balled into tight fists as he stared at the miniature mountain of stone.
"How's that for improve-" he began, leaping to his feet only for the world to lurch around him, sending him tumbling right back down. Okay. Whatever that was was probably going to take some getting used to. Peter rose to his feet again, more carefully this time, as his legs trembled like jell-o underneath him. "Whew. I don't remember the Light having such a kick last time."
Perhaps, I overdid it. Eternity's voice, sounding something like Ego, but distant and warped, rang through Peter's head. I did not account for the natural amplification so close to Ego's core... The cosmic being sounded much more bemused than apologetic, but Peter was too busy being elated by his newfound power to feel insulted by that.
There was a long beat of silence then, save for the distant creaking of some trees straining under the new weight of his sudden assault. "I take it you have made contact with Eternity," Ego finally ground out through a tight jaw.
"Uh, yeah."
Ego gave a disdainful sniff and looked as if he had quite a few unpleasant things to say about that, but instead when he opened his mouth next the only thing that came out was a curt. "I see. I would suggest you think very carefully about whatever... help he believes he can offer you."
Peter wanted desperately to point out the hypocritical nature of that comment coming from Ego, who had literally forced Peter to come here and accept the Celestial's version of 'help' under threat of his friend's safety, but when he turned his head to say something to that point, the world spun too quickly around him and he stumbled right back to his knees.
"You are going to be useless for a while."
"No, no, I'm good." Peter heaved himself back upright, trying to be subtle about how he had to spread his arms out slightly to find his balance again. "I can keep going, I'll just uh, tone it down a bit, maybe."
It is not a gift you should use carelessly, Eternities disjointed voice echoed strangely through Peter's mind again, fainter now, like it was fading along with the strange burst of Light through his veins.But it may come in handy along the way...
"Yeah, I would say so," Peter panted, shaking his head when Ego gave him another look. "Nothing. Where were we?"
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