Chapter Text
epilogue - Peter.
"You survived an Infinity Stone, Peter. Suck it up."
"I don't like needles, okay?" Peter complained, but Gamora ignored him, electing instead to listen to a newscast.
"Yeah? If you don't like needles, imagine how I feel," Rocket growled, squirming on the seat beside him. A small little pot of soil with a stick sat on the next seat, and Peter steadfastly tried not to look at it. It seemed crazy that they had lost Groot, and Rocket clearly wasn't handling it in a remotely sane manner, but Peter was okay with that. Whatever worked. Or didn't.
"Sorry." Peter offered, and Rocket's ears flicked a little.
"Don't mention it." Rocket frowned at the waiting room door. "How long do we have to be here? I don't like hospitals. We're obviously OK. No obvious wounds, just some bruises, maybe some mild concussions. Why the fucking bioscans and needles?"
"I know, right?" Peter warmed to his topic. It was Drax's turn right now, the big blue guy looking somewhat nonplussed at being the recipient of expert medical attention when he had been led away. Apparently it was a novelty for Drax. "Seriously. We should just get out of here. Fuck the system."
"Or we would," Rocket said dryly, "If someone hadn't smashed our ride into a ship."
"Aww, come on," Peter complained. "It was necessary, ok?"
"It wasn't in the plan!"
"The plan was to get into the ship!"
Rocket rolled his eyes. "There are less destructive ways of getting into the ship."
"You crashed a ship into the Dark Aster too!"
"I didn't realize that you totalled our ride!"
"All right, that's enough," Gamora said flatly. "So we have no ship. We'll... work it out. Perhaps the Xandarians can lend us one. We saved their planet, after all."
"Maybe." Peter cheered up briefly, before he started to scowl again. "I was really attached to that ship."
"So I thought." Gamora said mildly.
"Oh, not you too."
"It seemed," Gamora added, "That you were doing a fine job of keeping the ship in one piece until you spoke to that Denarian."
Peter stiffened. "Uh. What Denarian?"
"The one who drew up alongside the ship in a starblaster?"
"Nope! No recollection. Whatsoever. It's just one of the Nova Corps, right? One of a lot of them. Who all. Died." It hurt a lot less to say it, somehow. And it didn't blindside him this time.
"Saal," Rocket said soberly. "That was the Denarian's name. He was pretty boss."
"He was." Peter murmured, staring hard at his boots. "And it would've been the way he would've wanted to go. In the line of duty and all that. What?" he asked, irritated, when Gamora tilted her head.
"You're hiding something, Peter."
"Am I? What?"
"You know this Denarian?"
"Did I say that?"
Rocket snorted. "He's probably been arrested by all of them on various charges here and there."
"I'm going for a walk," Peter decided, getting up from his chair and stalking towards the door.
"What? What did I say?" Rocket asked, sounding puzzled.
The disinfectant scent of the corridor calmed Peter down a fraction, and he chose a random direction and started walking, hands shoved in the pockets of his coat. Xandar was an old chapter in his life, one that he wasn't too proud of, and he didn't want to revisit any of it. Besides. He had a different life now, and a new family. In a way. Still.
"I'm such an asshole," Peter muttered to himself, then he flinched as he heard a throat being pointedly cleared behind him. It was Rhomann, looking mildly surprised. "Uh. Hi. Rhomann. How's things?"
"Chaotic, but working out." Rhomann said absently, studying Peter's face thoughtfully.
"What? Something on my face?"
"Are you aware that you were listed as the next-of-kin for one of the Nova Corps?"
Peter blinked, absolutely puzzled. "Uh. Are there any Earthers in the Nova Corps?"
"No."
Okay. Next worst scenario. "Half... Earthers?"
This time, Rhomann actually smiled a faint, quick smile. "Not a half-Earther either. Do you know Denarian Garthan Saal?"
Peter felt his stomach drop all the way to his boots. "He's... why would he..." Peter swallowed hard. He was not going to have a meltdown in a Nova Corps hospital. He'd never live that down. "Uh, you need me to identify the... or... sign out his stuff, or..."
Rhomann's eyebrows rose. "Denarian Saal is alive. But barely. He's in critical condition. The pressure..." Rhomann hesitated.
"The pressure what?"
"Crushed most of his vital organs. If not for the Nova Force and his plate armour, he would be dead. It's a miracle he's still alive."
"Well," Peter said angrily, before he could stop himself, "God knows the Worldmind fucking owes him." At Rhomann's startled blink, Peter added, in a calmer tone. "So what do you want from me?"
"Authorisation to try a few experimental bioengineering advancements," Rhomann said uncomfortably. "There's a failure rate of-"
"Just do whatever you need to make him better," Peter cut in, and Rhomann nodded, selecting something on his wristfeed as he turned away. "Wait. Can I see him?"
"He's not conscious."
"I don't care."
Rhomann hesitated for a longer moment. "It's not pretty."
Peter had been steeling himself for the worst, but as it turned out, all he could see through the medical obs window was a heavily bandaged head, sticking out of some sort of chrome cocoon. It looked really uncomfortably like a coffin missing the part on the top, and Peter had to look away quickly, jerking to the side as Rhomann reached over to pat him on the shoulder, walking, then running through the hospital, blindly trying to find the way out.
Gamora found him balanced high on the safety rail of the carefully trimmed hospital gardens, staring out at the still-smoking ruin that the Dark Aster cut against the sleek white contours of the city of Xandar, and climbed up to sit beside him, following his blank gaze.
"Denarian Dey talked to us."
Peter nodded slowly.
"Family?"
"No."
"Friend?"
"Someone from the past," Peter said tightly, and Gamora nodded again.
"I always wondered where you got that Nova Corps blaster. In your ship's cargo armoury," Gamora elaborated, when Peter glanced at her.
"Guess what." Peter blew out a sigh. "I'm the biggest asshole whom I know."
"There's... Ronan."
"Ronan's dead. Nice try."
"There's... Thanos."
"Thanos is insane. There's an insanity defence. We should still kick his ass, but he's too batshit crazy to be a real asshole. Stop trying to make me feel better."
"There's... Yondu."
"True," Peter admittedly. "But not even close." He kicked his heels briefly against the silvery rail. "Once upon a time, I was a really stupid kid. I was so sure that I was always right. And I didn't really care whom I hurt. But by the time I got over myself and thought about going back, or calling in to apologise or something, it just felt too hard, you know? Or too dumb. Or not enough. Seemed better to just let it slide."
Gamora nodded slowly. "So what next?"
"I guess we find a way off this rock. I'll talk to Nova Prime."
"You're still a stupid child, then," Gamora noted. When Peter glared at her, she added, dryly. "You can't run away from everything, Peter. You faced down Ronan the Accuser with nothing but courage and a stupid dance. You can do this. Right an old wrong."
"It wasn't a stupid dance," Peter muttered mulishly. "And I don't think that I was in the wrong." Under Gamora's stare, he added, "Okay. Maybe. A little. Things could have been handled better. Okay?"
"That's the first step to solving a problem," Gamora said encouragingly. "Recognising that you have one."
"Okay." Peter exhaled loudly. "Okay. I can do that."
"So who is he?" Gamora asked gently.
"Someone..." Peter began, then he shook his head slowly. "Someone who loved me. A long time ago."
x
He had almost expected the other guardians to chafe at the delay, but he found them philosophical, instead. Rocket spent a lot of time in the top-level Xandarian gardens, with Groot's pot. Apparently he and Groot, like many bounty hunters, maintained a room in a small low rent housing project on sublevel five. Drax seemed content to train, or sit about the gardens with Rocket.
As to Gamora, she spent most of her time researching the Worldmind's records on Thanos. "It's good to have some downtime," she told Peter, when he reluctantly broached the subject once over dinner. The others had simply looked mildly surprised that he had even said anything, and Peter dropped it.
He had thought that he would get bored, stranded planetside with nothing to do, but Peter was wrong there, too. Time seemed to flow faster than it should. He tried to help Gamora with the research, did some light reading on possible (low trouble) scores, and dozed off in the stretches between, half-sprawled on the hospital cot, waiting for Garthan to win his latest battle for survival.
And so it was that when Garthan finally woke up out of his induced coma and pressed a shaky hand lightly on the back of Peter's neck, Peter might have screamed. A little. Not in a girly way. While lurching blindly out of sleep and falling out of his chair and onto the floor.
Garthan's eyes were unfocused when Peter crawled back up, mildly bruised, but he still seemed amused as he blinked slowly at Peter, watching as Peter settled awkwardly into the chair.
"Hey." Peter said softly.
"Peter?" Garthan's voice was a hoarse whisper. He frowned as his hand slipped on the bed, but after a shaky try, Peter grabbed Garthan's wrist awkwardly, folding Garthan's palm between his own.
"Um. You're not dead. And. You're in hospital. And yeah, you're kinda really messed up."
Garthan started to laugh, then he coughed instead, as though it hurt to laugh, then frowned a little and closed his eyes. "I missed you," he said, sounding a little confused.
Peter's eyes stung a little. "Sorry. Um. You shouldn't have listed me as next-of-kin, by the way. I probably okayed every possible legal and semilegal drug in your system right now. Maybe worse."
Garthan squeezed his hand lightly. "M'sorry."
"You? Sorry? About what?"
"Pushed... too hard. Blamed you. When you left. Told Rhomann that you were... an asshole."
"Well," Peter said, with a startled laugh. "Don't worry about it, man. I deserved all of that."
"Told... Nova Prime. Not to trust you."
"Yeah. Don't worry about it. You had every right."
"Didn't say... I didn't," A ghost of a smile pulled at Garthan's mouth. "But it was. Unprofessional."
"Only you would get almost killed, then lie on a hospital bed and worry about being unprofessional," Peter said, and he tried to laugh but end up making a choking sound instead that he swallowed hurriedly when Garthan started to frown.
"Need... to sleep. Will you. Still be here?"
"Yeah." Peter was choking up again. "I'll be here."
He pressed Garthan's hand back on the bed, then rubbed his eyes roughly, angrily, as Garthan's breathing evened out, and blew out a long sigh.
"A long time ago, hm?" Gamora asked from the doorway, her voice soft. Peter turned sharply, his eyes narrowed, but Gamora seemed wistful instead. Preoccupied.
"What?"
"How did you even meet a Corpsman? Unofficially?"
"Without getting arrested, you mean?" Peter asked dryly. "It was a long time ago, like I said. I was looking for the star map. The one that eventually led me to the Infinity Stone. It was a messy business."
"Ah." Gamora looked solemn. "The Kree incursion. On Kryn?"
"What. How did you know? I thought it didn't become public news-"
"Thanos," Gamora said succinctly. "He has a love of First Races artefacts. He was... looking for something. Hints to the locations of the Infinity Stones, I believe. The Kree paid him in shiploads of the artefacts, wherever they could find them. Wiped out the market for over a cycle, I hear."
"So that's it." Peter blinked. "I always wondered about that part of the business. So Thanos was behind the brain cube creepy drug?"
"With his Black Order, yes. I only heard pieces of it. I was in Sanctuary then. Training." Gamora's lips thinned. "Thanos was obsessed. He even murdered a family of First Races artefact museum curators. They were Luphomoids. He stole their daughter."
"Nebula?"
Gamora nodded. "She cried for weeks. But they too had a star map. An almost identical copy of yours, I believe. Though it was coincidence that you reached Morag around the same time as Korath."
"Yeah." Peter stared at Garthan's sunken frame. "Crazy assholes."
There was a long silence, filled by the humming whirs of the machines in the room, their cables and drips snaked under the gray blanket, and Peter picked up Garthan's limp palm again, turning it up. Unlike human hands, there were no life lines, all strange, unbroken skin, marred only with calluses.
"Found a ship yet?" Peter asked, half dreading the answer.
"No."
"How long will that take?"
"As long as you need," Gamora suggested, and smiled when Peter glanced up at her. "But I heard that Denarian Dey was working on some sort of surprise present. It's all secret right now."
"That's... cool? I guess?" Peter hoped it wasn't a medal. He wasn't really sure about medals. But before he could ask, Gamora nodded, and slipped away, and the question died unsaid. "That's one of my new friends," he told the sleeping Xandarian instead, softly. "I'm not sure if you would'a liked her."
x
"What's weird?" Garthan asked, when Peter told him this. They were sitting in the hospital gardens, the still partly-paralyzed Garthan on a floater seat, Peter cross-legged on a bench. They were watching sundown again, and it felt like the last time was only yesterday, when Peter had been young and stupid and hungry to see the universe.
"You talked to my friends and nothing exploded."
Garthan shot him an amused glance. "You don't need my approval on that front. They're a collection of savagery and trouble waiting to happen. To someone else."
"Don't you mean that I can't get your approval on that front?"
"I think they've amply proven that... troubled as they are, they'll watch your back," Garthan said, more soberly. "They'll die for you and they won't sell you out. I think that you can trust them. If they're the family that you've chosen, you're lucky."
"Oh." Peter was thrown for a moment before he recovered. "We're going to get a ship," he blurted out, finally. "Another one. Um. Gamora hasn't been around the block, not out of her own will, and Drax too. I was thinking, maybe we'll check out some of the ringworlds near Astraval."
"Peter." Garthan reached over to squeeze his palm. "What happened to me is not your fault."
"I know that-"
"So go and get a ship. You won't be happy planetside."
Peter stared at Garthan in surprise, then an uncomfortable thought wormed to the surface. "You don't want me to be here?"
Garthan didn't answer, staring blankly over at the view of the cityscape instead. Finally, he murmured, "It's good to see you again. But it's also painful beyond belief." Garthan pulled his hand away, folding it in his lap.
Stung, Peter unfolded his legs. "I guess I should have figured that part out. Sorry. I'll go."
"I want you to stay," Garthan said, sounding a little confused, and when Peter frowned at him, Garthan added, with an uneven smile, "You never did visit."
"Yeah." 'Sorry' seemed an inadequate thing to say.
"Were you happy? Out there?"
"Yeah." Peter said uncomfortably. "I still have a lot of the 'verse to see. Sorry."
"That's good," Garthan said, with something like relief. "I hoped that you would be."
"Really?" Peter asked, unable to help himself. "I thought you'd rather that it sucked, and I came back."
Garthan shot him a puzzled look. "Why wouldn't I want you to be happy?"
"Even out there? Away from Xandar?"
"Of course."
"I think," Peter said, with a rueful smile, "That you're kinda utterly wasted on me, Denarian. Should'a found a nice Krylorian wife, like Rhomann, and settled down and had a lot of cute half-Krylorian babies."
"I don't think so," Garthan said, with a little frown, then he inhaled sharply as Peter leaned over precariously to kiss him on the cheek. "Peter."
"I'll come back this time," Peter promised. "Really. When you've got fewer drugs in your system and if you still want to give this a shot." When Garthan merely stared at him, Peter added. "Okay. I'm kinda sensing disbelief here."
"Really. Whatever gives you that impression?"
"I'm sorry about before, okay? You're right. I'm an asshole. I was also a really dumb kid. Still am, in many ways. But I promise you, this time I will really try. To be. Less of an asshole." Peter frowned. "This isn't really coming out right."
"Not particularly," Garthan noted, though he smiled faintly.
"Here." Peter took the walkman from within his coat, along with the headphones, and put them on Garthan's lap. "That's my promise. That I'll try. That I'll come back."
"What is it?" Garthan turned the walkman over in his hands, and Peter reached over, fitting the headphones gently over Garthan's ears after a few adjustments.
"It was from my mom." Peter pressed the 'play' button, and Garthan blinked. Peter could hear the first, faint, lazy chords of Come and Get Your Love start up, and he grinned as Garthan looked more closely at the walkman, studying it, running an index finger over the dints and scratches. "Yeah, it's an old thing, from Earth. It's my treasure. My promise."
Garthan pulled off the headphones, very carefully. "I can't take this."
"Sure you can. I heard that physio's going to be real boring. So this will keep you going. It works for me. Don't argue, OK?" Peter added hastily, when Garthan opened his mouth again. "I'm not giving it to you. You're just holding it for me. And I'm going to be really pissed off if you lose it, just saying."
"... All right." Peter's wrist feed chose this moment to ping him, and Garthan added mildly, "Rhomann wants to tell you something."
"Pretty sure he can wait."
"Not for this," Garthan said, a little cryptically, and Peter stared for a moment.
"No. Really?"
"Try to act surprised."
"Well then," Peter said, a little helplessly. "I guess I'll go get the others. Um."
"Go."
"I could stay a few more days-"
"What for?" Garthan asked, his smile wry. "You won't be happy, knowing that there's a ship ready for you right there. That you don't have to be planetside. Go and see the ringworlds. Send me a 'postcard'."
"Seriously," Peter said softly, leaning closer. "Maybe you should rethink your stance on half-Krylorian babies."
Garthan shook his head slowly and reached out, tugging Peter close, and their first real kiss in over a decade felt more like the world coming into sync, like reaching land after years adrift, like a promise rather than goodbye.