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Sep. 21st, 2020 at 1:44 AM
Who: Peter & Gamora (and toddler!Groot)
What: Find each other
Where: The roof of Stark's tower
When: Sunday Evening
Warnings: Language (lets be honest, mostly Peter’s), discussion of sex
Vormir was dark and cold, just as she had imagined a planet existing solely to safeguard the soul stone would be. The light snowfall, the crimson faced keeper in heavy black robes, the rock formations jutting out from a barren landscape. The look on the mad Titan’s face as he realized his tears convinced the keeper that the deep well of controlling possession that tortured both her and Nebula for most of their lives meant he loved her.
That wasn’t love. Love was something she knew. Love was the look that Peter had in his eyes when he pulled the trigger a few hours ago in a futile attempt to keep the only promise she had ever asked him to make out loud. It was the way she woke up in the morning still in his arms and didn’t even try to stab him before she was fully awake. It was her sister grabbing her hand as she fell into a deep chasm on Ego and the feel of her sprout cuddling against her shoulder to fall asleep back when he had been small enough to hold in the palm of her hand.
Her knife turned to bubbles in her hand as she tried to end this on her own terms, knowing she couldn’t save herself, but she might be able to save the universe. In the end, she couldn’t save anyone. She beat ineffectively at the massive hand gripping her wrist, throwing her weight in the opposite direction. She might as well have still been the tiny girl whose hand barely wrapped around one of Thanos’s fingers, for all her fighting seemed to affect him. She fought him every long stride as he dragged her toward the edge of the cliff, begging for her life in a way she didn’t know she was capable of.
A flick of his massive arm and a sharp intake of breath and she was in free fall. There was nobody to grab her hand this time. Her father would win, as he always did, and this time, she would lose everything.
She hit the ground in the least graceful, most painful, landing of her life, but she was in fact still alive. Was this another reality stone trick? She forced air into her lungs and pushed herself up off the ground with a grunt of pain. She was back on a cliff, she thought, still gasping for air, and trying to make some sense of her surroundings in the dim twilight, her vision still blurred slightly from the pain.
She turned, and nearly wept at the sight of the Benatar at the other end of a long stretch of concrete. How did he find me? she wondered, stumbling toward the hatch. She leaned heavily on the side of the ship, pressing one hand on the biometric lock and using her access code. “Identity verified, Gamora. Access granted.” a robot voice announced through all the speakers on the ship and the ramp began to lower.
What: Find each other
Where: The roof of Stark's tower
When: Sunday Evening
Warnings: Language (lets be honest, mostly Peter’s), discussion of sex
Vormir was dark and cold, just as she had imagined a planet existing solely to safeguard the soul stone would be. The light snowfall, the crimson faced keeper in heavy black robes, the rock formations jutting out from a barren landscape. The look on the mad Titan’s face as he realized his tears convinced the keeper that the deep well of controlling possession that tortured both her and Nebula for most of their lives meant he loved her.
That wasn’t love. Love was something she knew. Love was the look that Peter had in his eyes when he pulled the trigger a few hours ago in a futile attempt to keep the only promise she had ever asked him to make out loud. It was the way she woke up in the morning still in his arms and didn’t even try to stab him before she was fully awake. It was her sister grabbing her hand as she fell into a deep chasm on Ego and the feel of her sprout cuddling against her shoulder to fall asleep back when he had been small enough to hold in the palm of her hand.
Her knife turned to bubbles in her hand as she tried to end this on her own terms, knowing she couldn’t save herself, but she might be able to save the universe. In the end, she couldn’t save anyone. She beat ineffectively at the massive hand gripping her wrist, throwing her weight in the opposite direction. She might as well have still been the tiny girl whose hand barely wrapped around one of Thanos’s fingers, for all her fighting seemed to affect him. She fought him every long stride as he dragged her toward the edge of the cliff, begging for her life in a way she didn’t know she was capable of.
A flick of his massive arm and a sharp intake of breath and she was in free fall. There was nobody to grab her hand this time. Her father would win, as he always did, and this time, she would lose everything.
She hit the ground in the least graceful, most painful, landing of her life, but she was in fact still alive. Was this another reality stone trick? She forced air into her lungs and pushed herself up off the ground with a grunt of pain. She was back on a cliff, she thought, still gasping for air, and trying to make some sense of her surroundings in the dim twilight, her vision still blurred slightly from the pain.
She turned, and nearly wept at the sight of the Benatar at the other end of a long stretch of concrete. How did he find me? she wondered, stumbling toward the hatch. She leaned heavily on the side of the ship, pressing one hand on the biometric lock and using her access code. “Identity verified, Gamora. Access granted.” a robot voice announced through all the speakers on the ship and the ramp began to lower.
Comments
He didn't know where to start, "Did you see the hologram?"
“Peter, I got shoved off a cliff in the name of twisted sadistic love so that my father could get a stupid rock, and hit bottom 50 yards from the ship. I haven’t seen anything.”
As if on cue, the comm unit lit up and a hologram message began to play.. It didn’t actually make sense to her. If they were dealing with an alternate reality, was this even her Peter?
“How long?” She asked, watching his face, “How long have I been gone?”
"Too long," he threw a dirty t-shirt off the bed, "Want to sit down?"
“Quill, your ship is disgusting,” she said with a smirk, leaning down to kiss him. “I’m a little afraid to sit anywhere.”
"I know what you would have done, Gamora. You would have killed Thanos, kept the Guardians together, and saved the world." He left the words, Unlike me, who failed everyone unsaid.
A crash came from outside the door, Peter gave Gamora a rueful smile, "Tell you what, you check to see if Captain Chaos is okay, and I'll find the clean sheets. That way we can at least sit down."
But something else crashed in the galley before she could find the words, and Gamora nodded, "To be continued, then?"
She found Groot inside one of the galley cabinets, tossing canned goods he didn't like over his shoulder. "I am groooot," he said, at least pretending to look sheepish. "I can see that," she said, pulling him out of the cabinet, "but just because the song ended doesn't mean you need to make dinner."
Gamora carried the squirmy little sprout to his bedroom and turned on the holo-screen, "I just need a little bit of grown up time with your dad, and then the three of us can get dinner together. I'll put on a movie for you, okay?" She pulled up a menu and choose Tarzan, based solely on the number of leaves in the title image. "You'll like this, it's about trees."
Once he was engrossed in the cartoon, with his pot of candy in his lap, Gamora closed his door and crossed the hall back to Peter. "That one is 100% you," she said, leaning in the doorway.
"The good news is we have clean sheets. The bad news is that I'm thinking the thing that smells like it died.... it might be me." His half smile was embarrassed at how much of a fuckup he was.
"Maybe after the twig passes out we can jump in the shower?"
Edited 2020-09-22 03:26 am (UTC)
She sat down on the bed, suddenly unsure of how much to share and how much she was allowed to ask. "Are you okay?" she asked, figuring that was open ended enough that he might tell her something.
"I had a lot of time to think," Peter felt stupid. In all the fantasies he'd had about Gamora suddenly appearing and telling him it had been a big mistake and that she wasn't dead, none of them included him awkwardly sitting next to her clutching her hand like a twelve year old.
"I thought we'd have time to...." he stopped, hating that he felt like a goddamn teenager. "I thought we'd have enough time to say everything. I didn't think the first time we said I love you out loud it would be in front of your father while he laughed at us."
Thor would probably have her naked already, Peter thought bitterly,he'd be all fucking smooth and noble and mother fucking well adjusted.... He wondered why Groot never interrupted when Peter needed him to, in time to save his ass. Finally, he said, "I want us to talk. I just don't know where to start or what to ask,"
Edited 2020-09-22 04:57 am (UTC)
"I have loved you," she said finally, "for so long Peter. I was just so scared of feeling. It's why I wouldn't let Mantis come anywhere near me. I thought that if it was said out loud, then that left me more vulnerable to you deciding that one woman was never going to be enough for a guy like you." She took a deep breath. "And then all our plans... I didn't account for the reality stone. I thought that at least we'd save so many people, that somehow it would feel noble. I never would have put you through any of that if I had realized how stupid and hopeless it was."
When she started talking, Gamora had decided that the details of Vormir were something that would be too painful right now, but suddenly they were pouring out of her like a flood. "I was standing on that cliff, and it was so full of shit, Peter. The keeper of the stone told him that he would have to sacrifice what he loved most, and once again I thought I had won because he has no concept of love. That love was knowing I'd move galaxies to get back to you." Gamora was angry at the tears that spilled down her cheeks. "But I just kept failing, because the keeper decided that that sociopath was capable of love, I couldn't stab myself, I couldn't hurt him, I couldn't break away. You think I would have saved the day, but I failed us both. Over and over. I'm supposed to be the most dangerous woman in the galaxy, but all I ever really was was his pawn."
He moved back on the bed, kicking off his shoes before stretching his long legs out on it, "I'm sorry, 'Mora. Come here... please. I'm sorry, I tried to find you. You didn't fail, he was just too much."
Gamora slid up next to him, laying her head on his shoulder. "It all happened so fast, there was nothing anyone could have done. When we got back to the ship, he was torturing Nebula, literally ripping her body apart. So I held out all of 3 minutes before I told him everything, and then we were on Vormir and then it was over." Gamora squeezed his hand. "And then I was here and so were you. I got the better end of this deal Peter, it's been... I don't know, a day? And you know those words all got said, and here we are."
"I don't think watching your sister be tortured and being thrown to your death was a better deal." His calloused palm snagged against a tear in her shirt. He went still thinking of how lucky he was that the fall into this reality hadn't killed her.
"You know the very first time I saw you, it was as if my center of gravity changed," Peter could see the image of her leaning against the wall outside the broker's office on Xander. The feeling of her eyes traveling over him while her lips sucked the juice from a ripe yaro had kept him awake for days.
"When I realized he'd killed you , it felt like everything that held me together flew apart. Nothing mattered. Not even stopping him." Peter's hand slipped under the hem of her shirt to rest against her lower back.
“Guys like me aren't supposed to fall apart because they lose their girl, but I did.”
“Guys like you?” She asked instead. “Are we talking about the macho man-whore with no feelings you make half-hearted attempts to pretend to be? Or are we talking about the man who rescued the woman who got him thrown in the Kyln from being murdered by a prison mob, shared his most painful and loving memories of his dead mother in their first conversation together, didn’t even flinch when she made him slow the fuck down on the romance and taught her what it meant to have a friend? Because that guy? The actual you? He’s the kind of guy who feels everything. Not the kind of guy who sucks it up.”
Trailing kisses down his neck, she murmured, “We are running out of screen zombie time...”
He didn't want to tell her how much of a coward he was. That because Peter Quill couldn't man up for five minutes a boy far too young to be on the battlefield almost died. He didn't want to tell her just how fucked up he’d been afterward. He really didn't want to tell her how he'd tried to avoid the pain of losing her. You just got her back, man. Now you're going to ruin everything. She's probably going to take Groot and leave.. Peter stared at the silent cassette player, it occurred to him that he didn't have to tell her everything. That it might even be better for her if he didn't. He'd be protecting her from the worst of himself.
Would Stakar out right lie to Aleta?He asked himself and knew instantly and unequivocally that the answer to that was no. Would he lie by omission? Peter considered that….and realized that the answer was also “absofuckinglutelynot”. He steeled himself and tried to figure out where to start.
Unconsciously, his arms tightened around Gamora, wanting to hang on as tightly as possible while he still could. Peter cupped the delicate line of her jaw, and kissed her wanting to cling to the taste and feel of her for as long as possible.
“Baby, I need to tell you something.”
He definitely did not have that look on his face right now. He looked like he was being tortured “What’s wrong?”
Edited 2020-09-22 09:47 pm (UTC)
She imagined her broken body at the bottom of the long fall, as it would have been in his version of reality. "How many? Did.... Did you leave someone behind when you got pulled here? Are you cheating on someone else with me right now?"
She flexed her hands, not knowing what to do with the tension in her body. "Do you have my sword?"
"Your sword is under the bed," he loathed the fact that the person he loved most in the world was hurting and it was entirely his fault.
"There were five." Peter wanted to reach out and touch her, he knew he had no right," I didn't leave anyone behind...I wasn't having relationships. I was just...."
Now it was all she could think about. His hands burning across someone else's skin, another woman's legs wrapped around his hips, his mouth turning up in that 'you know you want me' smirk. In her mind, these women were agreeable and soft and pretty. A long line of Baby Housemans, Ariel Moores, and C.J. Parkers who were all the things she wasn't.
"Okay." She said again, closing her eyes in an attempt to block out the images. "You're going to go take a shower, and I'm going to go hold our baby and finish his movie. Then we can go get dinner as a family, because that's what I told him we would do. Then I'm going to find something to stab. Okay?"
He was responsible for that pain.... the only person stupid enough to turn a second chance into a catastrophe was Peter Quill.