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"I wish I hadn’t done nothing right. I’m damn lucky you my boy.”
It is far too late when Peter realises what is happening, when they are flying towards open space and Yondu retrieves a disc from his pocket, pressing it onto Peter’s chest, activating a space suit around him. “Yondu, what are you doing?” He asks, an increasing sense of urgency becoming apparent in his voice, but all Yondu does is stare at him with that sickening, irritating smile of his, jagged teeth peeking through slightly parted lips in a familiar expression of
(love)
mock. Peter can do nothing to stop him as they soar upward, upward into vast space, and it is within mere moments that frost begins to form on Yondu’s skin, his expression morphing into one of pain and suffocation, and there’s a heavy lurch in Peter’s chest that carves a deepening crater within him. The only thought running through his head, his only priority is save Yondu, yet there is nothing he can do. He wants to scream—there were so many things he needed to tell Yondu, then and there, realisations he had come to far too late, yet the only thing he manages to muster is a devastated no.
No. This can’t be happening.
He grasps at the disc stuck on his chest desperately, but it continuously slips through his grip. He watches in horror as Yondu, through an expression of agony, still manages to reach out his hands to caress Peter’s face, his fingers against Peter’s face deathly cold, and Peter is grasping at Yondu’s chest, crying, thinking no, please, no, anything but this, no no no no no nononono—
Peter lurches upright from his bed, chest tight in a fit of unbridled panic, palms clammy and sweat dripping from his forehead, shaking furiously, tears streaming down his face as he screams no no no no no. It’s okay, it was a nightmare, just a nightmare—except it hadn’t been, it had happened right before his eyes and he had been able to do absolutely nothing, it was real and he couldn’t save Yondu and he was dead because of him, everyone he cares about will die right in front of his eyes because of him and he won’t be able to do anything—
“Peter—"
“Quill, what’s happened—"
It takes him many, many moments for him to regain even an inkling of his composure, despite the outpour of reassurances from his friends that it’s alright and it wasn’t real and there’s nothing to hurt you now, we’ll protect you, but they didn’t know, they didn’t know jack shit about what he had to relive every night and they didn’t understand, they don’t and they won’t fucking ever.
“Quill.”
Peter nearly jumps out of his skin when Drax approaches him so suddenly, resting a steady hand onto Peter’s shoulder. “Drax,” he grunts in return, shrugging the bigger man’s hand off of his shoulder. “You could stop sneaking up on me for once.”
“I did no such thing. You were just staring off into the distance.”
Had he been spacing out? It was then he became vaguely aware of his surroundings. And for how long? He turns to Drax and realises he had been regarding him with a concerned expression very unlike his usual self, and Peter began feeling very uncomfortable.
“Yeah, well. Is that all you have to say?” he replies curtly. Drax says nothing, instead dragging a stool towards Peter and settles himself onto it with a small grunt, and Peter sighs, preparing himself for a characteristic long drone as is habit of The Destroyer.
“My wife, Hovat, and my beautiful daughter, Kamaria, I loved them very deeply. I still do.”
Peter fails to withhold another sigh; thankfully Drax took no notice or offence to it. It had already been rude enough for him to do that, so he refrains himself from stopping Drax’s spiel to come. “I know.”
“It had been very painful, to watch them die.” Drax was uncharacteristically sombre, lowering his head as he dredged out a deep sorrow from within him. It wasn’t like him to say such things unprompted. So what... “I had not been able to do anything. I held their deaths over my head as a fault of my own, and it drove me into a spiral of vengeance. It took me far too long to realise that they would not have wanted that from me—being with all of you was what helped me truly come to terms with it, and for that I am eternally grateful to be here with all of you now.” He pauses for a moment, raising his head to meet Peter’s gaze. “What I’m saying, Quill, is… Yondu, he—"
“Alright, thanks,” Peter immediately cuts him off, standing up and preparing to return to his quarters. He knew where this conversation was heading, and he didn’t need to hear this now or ever. “I appreciate it, Drax, I really do, but I’m fine. I’m busy, so I gotta get going, we’ll talk next time.”
“Quill,” Drax rises from his seat and calls out to him, but Peter does not stop in his tracks. He needed to get away from Drax. He could already feel the tendrils of anxiety tightening around his chest—he didn’t need this now, he really didn’t. “What happened to Yondu, it wasn’t your fault. It couldn’t have been helped. It was what Yondu wanted.”
“Couldn’t have been helped?” This makes Peter stop dead in his tracks, face contorting in pure rage as he turned right around and stomped straight towards Drax. Drax does not back away from his sudden approach, staring him straight down unflinchingly, and Peter raises a hand and shoves him hard against a wall, not that it fazed Drax in the slightest. “How—How dare you say that? You weren’t there, how could you understand—he died, right in front of me, he could’ve put on the fucking spacesuit for himself, but he—he put it on me instead, and—" Peter’s voice began to tremble, his gaze locked dead on Drax’s wavering, but the bigger man held his gaze solemnly.
“To this day I hold my family’s death above my head, as my own responsibility—something I could have stopped somehow,” he says, calmly. “I could have protected them, but I failed to. But I am not letting it hold me back. As I’ve said—they would not have wanted me to feel this way; just as I would for them, they would have done anything to let me live on. And for their sakes, it is what I am doing to this day, until I can finally help them find peace.” He takes a breath to continue, but Peter completely loses his composure.
“You—god, shut up, shut the fuck up.” Peter raises his voice, almost yelling at him, and then cuts himself off, turning around and storming towards his quarters for good.
“Talk to us, Peter, I beg you,” Drax calls out behind him, but does nothing to reach out towards him. “We are your family, we are here for you. Let us help. You do not have to face this alone.”
I don’t need your fucking help, I can deal with this on my own, there is nothing you can do to make me feel any other way. He wants to shout back at him, but he’s choking back guilt and tears, and keeping his mouth shut is all he can do to not completely lose it right in front of the other man.
He reaches his quarters and shuts the door behind him forcefully, leaning against it and sighing exasperatedly, trying to suppress his feelings. His gaze falls onto the Zune lying on his bedside table—the Zune Yondu left behind for him—and his rage surges outwards; he grabs the damn Zune, opens his room door and throws it out with a roar, the machine smashing against the adjacent wall, before he collapses onto the floor, screaming into his hands in frustration and grief.
Ego’s planet is crumbling around him. All of his friends dying right before his eyes—Ego’s tendrils are everywhere, grasping onto his friends and dragging them towards their inevitable doom; the collapsing planet envelops everything around him. Tendrils reach forward and wrap themselves around Peter’s arms and legs, rendering him immobile; another surges straight through his chest and begins sapping the cursed power his father had given him out of himself, his fate of becoming a mere battery for Ego’s wicked goals gradually coming to fruition.
“You know we both want this, Peter,” his father tells him while his being reforms in front of him—there’s just no way to defeat him, is there? There is nothing he can do. Him being rendered helpless and immobile, watching his friends, the people he cared so deeply for die right before his eyes – Mantis, Drax, Rocket, Groot, Nebula, Gamora, Yondu—and he can do nothing, absolutely nothing to save them—
He wakes up in the midst of another panic attack, hyperventilating and trembling what he imagined to be rather pathetically, holding his palms over his mouth in an attempt to quell his panic and sobs, as to not attract the attention of anyone else within the ship, but to no avail.
He barely notices when his door opens and Mantis comes towards him, having sensed his surging panic despite his useless attempts to keep it to himself. He didn’t want Mantis anywhere near him but fails to resist when she steps towards him and presses a cool hand onto his forehead, her antennae lighting up as he feels his panic subside to a manageable degree and exhaustion overcoming him in place. He meets her eyes after managing to calm down at last, and she is merely smiling at him in return, impossibly empathetic.
“It is alright,” she tells him, understanding his silence as a sign of gratitude. Then she hesitates, as if unsure what she wanted to say next was the right thing to say at this time. "You are... feeling immense guilt about what happened with Ego. Peter, you are not to blame for what he did."
But I could have stopped him somehow, he wanted to retort. If I was stronger, none of this would have happened. But he was in no state to do so, so he just listened silently.
"I... I could have stopped him. I knew what he was doing to his children before you," Mantis' voice took on a grave tone, her head lowered in shame and guilt. "But I felt that, because he raised me as his own, I was indebted to him. He took me in when I was meant to be left behind. But what he did to his children... It still felt—wrong. It was only after feeling Drax's love towards his daughter that I truly realised that." After a moment's silence, she raises her head and smiles at him. "He tells me that I am not to blame for it all. But I can't help to think that so many of Ego's children would not have met such horrible fates had I realised and done something to intervene earlier. I'm... sure that this is part of how you are feeling about what happened. I understand."
Peter says nothing in response. Mantis was too innocent for her own good. She couldn't have done anything to stop Ego—he would have definitely killed her if she had tried to—but Peter could have. He could have done something to end it better than the way it did. He could have stopped Yondu from dying. He could have stopped his mother from—
“Would you... like me to help you sleep?”
Mantis' words abruptly cuts off his train of thought. Peter visibly flinches at the notion—help him sleep the way she helped Ego? The last thing he wanted to turn into was something resembling that poor excuse of a father. But in such a miserable state it was an offer he found himself unable to refuse; he nods warily, and before he has the time to rethink his decision she smiles at him, pressing a hand onto his forehead and sending him spiralling into a dreamless sleep.
Knuckles rap against his door in quick succession—light and swift, easily distinguishable from everyone else’s brash intrusions into his quarters. Peter sighs, lying on his bed, taking his gaze off of staring at the ceiling listlessly and rolls onto his side, his back turned to face the door.
“Peter, we need to talk.” Gamora calls out to him.
“About what?”
“You know what.”
“I don’t. And I’m busy right now. We can talk another day.”
“Busy doing what? Moping like a pathetic fool?”
“Yeah,” Peter doesn’t bother coming up with a smart quip in return. He was beyond exhausted, and it was Gamora. Despite the way he had been feeling, he still gave enough of a damn to watch his words with her. “Real busy with that. Come back later.”
“You’ve been holed up in your damn room for days. You haven’t eaten at all. Come out here or so help me I’ll drag you out on my own.”
I would love to see you do that, the words die on Peter’s tongue before he manages to utter them. Why even bother. He stays silent, eyes shut and trying to fall back asleep.
There’s a brief rattling at his door, and he hears it slide open with a forceful, violent jerk.
“Peter.”
“Gamora,” he returns.
“You need to stop doing this, Peter,” Gamora says, and Peter tries to drown her voice out. “Get up and look at me.” When he doesn’t respond, a hand grips his shoulder forcefully and shoves him onto his back, grabs his chin and forces him to look at her. Still, he averts his gaze, and she growls in frustration.
“You’re worrying all of us, Peter. You can’t keep doing this.” Gamora is stern but her voice is tinged with utmost concern. “Talk to us, Peter. Talk to me. I know—I know all that’s happened has been hard on you. That’s why you need to let us help you—"
“Don’t need any damn help,” Peter mutters, jerking his chin away from Gamora’s grasp. “Just leave me alone. It’s fine.”
“Fine? Fine?” Gamora bursts out in anger. She grabs Peter by his shirt, forcing him to sit upright. He does nothing to resist, still refusing to meet her gaze. “You are nothing like yourself right now. How are you fine? You need help. Let us help you. You can’t keep doing this, Peter. You know Yondu wouldn’t have wanted this—"
“Yondu, Yondu, Yondu—" Now Peter is the one who explodes at her, catching Gamora by surprise and making her recoil. “Forget what Yondu doesn’t want. I don’t fucking want this either. Yondu should’ve lived. He died—he died saving me. And I couldn’t do anything.” He’s choking up now, but he doesn’t care—he had to get it all out of his chest. “I had to watch him—watch him fucking die right in front of me. He—I—I didn’t get to tell him, how much he meant to me, after he told me how he really felt about me. All this while I – I was so fucking stupid, couldn’t see how much he cared for me, thought he only ever saw me as a thieving rat, with the way he loved beating me up and threatening me, but he—he killed himself saving me, and I can’t—I can’t fucking tell him that he was like a father—no, he was a father to me, much more than Ego was or would ever be.” Peter is crying now, his breath hitching with ugly sobs, and he doesn’t bother holding back his tears. “He’s—I just—I just want him here. I want to tell him that. Why did he have to die? Why couldn’t I be the one to save him? That should be the way things are now. But he's dead. He's dead now, and it's all my fault.
“You’re—You’re all going to die, too. I—I won’t be able to save you all when something bad happens. You’re my friends—my family—and I can’t – I can’t stand not being able to protect you all again when I need to. And Ego, he – he showed me eternity, and I—I almost lost myself in it. I could've ended up killing all of you. I can't stand that. I can't stand losing myself and hurting all of you. I can’t stand any of you dying in front of my eyes ever again.”
“Peter—” Gamora hesitates—she had never seen Peter in such an emotional and vulnerable state prior to this—then leans forward to hold him, drawing him close to her when he doesn’t resist or pull away. “Peter. You’ve saved me once before, remember? You made me put on your mask when I was stranded in space and almost killed yourself doing it. You're not going to hurt any of us. You won’t let any of us die, either. I’m sure of it. None of us are going to. But avoiding us and keeping it all to yourself isn’t the way to stop it from happening. We’re here for you, Peter. Let us be here for you. You can’t shoulder this all on your own. And—" She swallows. “Yondu would really have wanted you to be alive now. He cared about you – that’s why he died to save you—"
“But I don’t want it this way,” Peter chokes through sobs. “I want him to be here. To be alive. I’d rather be dead in his stead than him in mine. He’s—God, I, I miss him. I just want him here.” There’s a short pause. “I miss Mom, too. I miss her so much.”
Gamora doesn’t know what to say. She couldn’t imagine what Peter was going through. So she simply holds him, and says, “I’m sorry, Peter.”
Peter’s arms rise upwards to hold onto Gamora, and he drowns his wails into her chest.
Peter steps out into the main control room and notices Rocket messing with the ship again, Groot perched beside him and examining the parts he tore out and reassembled with great interest. “Rocket, I thought I’ve told you a dozen times to stop doing that,” he sighs, exasperated.
“Oh, so this is what makes you stop holing yourself in your room,” Rocket sneers in reply, turning to meet Peter’s annoyed expression. “Would’ve stopped doing it if I knew that.” Groot notices Peter and lets out a little cry of joy, running towards Peter and stretching his hands upward, asking to be picked up, and Peter does so, placing him onto Peter’s shoulder.
“Hey, buddy,” Peter says, and Groot clutches onto him, returning the greeting with his usual “I am Groot”. He turned his attention back to Rocket, scowling. ”Thanks for the warm welcome.”
“No problem,” Rocket replies. Peter rolls his eyes but doesn’t bother arguing with the creature, instead turning around to leave. “Hey, mopey-face,” Rocket calls out to him, and Peter stops for a moment before looking back to Rocket to respond. Something is thrown towards him and Peter scrambles for a moment before being able to grasp it properly in his hands.
It was his Zune. The Zune Yondu had gotten for him. And didn’t get to give him before he—
Peter snapped out of his train of thought. “What—Why do you have this?” He asked.
“You’ve got Kraglin to thank,” Rocket says simply, and Groot, still perched on Peter’s shoulder, nods furiously. “He found the thing smashed outside your room, probably when you were throwing a hissy fit. Gave it to me to fix. You’d think you’d treasure the thing your dead pops left you better than that.” Peter examines the music player in his hands; he didn’t know how badly he had damaged it, but it looked as good as new, and it still functioned as it did before. He did throw it out in a fit of rage, didn’t he? Why did he do that? Rocket was right—that was unbelievably idiotic of him to do even if he was mad.
“Thank you, Rocket,” Peter says after a moment, his eyes still on the Zune, scrolling through the 300 songs inside of it. The Zune Yondu got for him and which he broke stupidly, and Rocket fixed it up as good as new, even if Peter hadn’t done anything to deserve it. “Just—thank you.”
“Yeah, yeah. Didn’t do it for you anyway—it’d be a shame for Yondu’s final gift to you to be broken by your stupidity just like that.” Rocket replies in his typical Rocket way, and Peter manages a smile in return. There was an element of truth to what Rocket said, after all – from what he knew Rocket and Yondu had formed a bond in his absence, and Rocket had been trying to make it up to Yondu even beyond his death however he could; in a way doing something like this was a form of catharsis for him as well.
Groot lets out a little whine. “Oh—you’re hungry, Groot?" Peter asks, and Groot nods enthusiastically. "Me too. I’m starving—haven’t eaten in days. Let’s so grab some grub.”
“Hey—Quill.” Rocket calls out to him once more, and Peter turns to face him.
“Yeah?”
Rocket averts his gaze, pretending to fiddle around with some mechanical parts. “It’s a pain in the ass to have you back to your old self.”
Peter smiles. “Good to see you, too.”
“The cap’n loved you, Peter. He really did.”
Peter said nothing in response. He and Kraglin sat at the ship’s common area, Peter twiddling with his Zune, scrolling through its 300 songs listlessly.
“You were always his favourite, an’ that made me real jealous, y’know? Pissed the rest of the crew off too, I’m sure. They all said he'd gone soft because of you. Which was true, even if the cap'n never admitted it.”
“And your point is?” Peter snaps. “Oh wait, lemme guess. Yondu would’ve wanted this. You wouldn’t be the first person to tell me this.”
“That's 'cause it’s true, an’ it don’t seem to be goin’ through that thick skull o' yours.” Peter doesn’t respond, and Kraglin sighs. “Point is he’d beat your ass to a pulp if he saw you mopin’ around like this all the time.”
“Yeah, he would. But he’s not here to see that anymore.”
“You ain’t the only one all hung up about his death, alright? Stop actin' that way.” Kraglin rises from his seat suddenly and shouts at Peter. Peter is taken by surprise. But of course—Kraglin had been undeniably loyal to Yondu, it was no surprise he was in such a state of grief as well. It was stupid of Peter to be unaware of that until now.
Kraglin composes himself, shuffling on his feet for a few moments before settling back onto his seat. “The cap’n—he meant a lot to me too. He raised me like he did you. But he wasn’t ever fond of me as he was you. He’d bring you up all the time while talkin’ to me even after you left. Y’know that? He always fussed about you even when you weren't around, even if it seem like he didn’t give a crap about you. When you left his ass hangin' he let you off every single time. He wasn't the best man out there but he very well gave more than a damn 'bout you. You gotta know this."
“I fucking realise that,” Peter replies, a bitter edge to his tone. “And I realised that too late. Why do you think I’m so damn hung up about it in the first place? He isn’t even the first person to die right in front of me. My mother died in front of my eyes, and that son of a —my father, did too. And he died by my hands. They’re all – they’re all gone.”
“And what’s bein’ hung up about it gonna do? Bring them back?” Kraglin retorts, and Peter flinches. “You couldn’t’ve helped what your momma went through. Ego woulda killed the entire galaxy if you hadn’t stopped him. Yondu saved you ‘cause he loved you like his own boy, Peter. You can feel this way but you gotta find a way to get over it, y’know?”
Of course he knew that. But that wasn't the problem now. "I didn't get to tell him how I felt before he died. I hadn't even realise until it was too late. And now he'll never know."
This makes Kraglin pause. "I'm sure he knows, Peter." But he doesn't, Peter thinks. “An’ even if he don't, they still with you. Your momma and Yondu. That Zune’s a part of Yondu, y’know. Like your Walkman was your momma. As long as you have that, an’ I have the cap'n’s arrow, Yondu’s still with us. Don’t let them die for no good.”
Peter says nothing in response. He was right, of course, but it was just... hard for him to think of things that way. They both sit in silence for a moment, before Peter gets up to leave. “I just... need time. That’s all.”
“Take all the time you need, Peter.” There’s a brief pause. “Sorry for pushin’ you like that.”
“I appreciate it, Kraglin.”
Peter musters a weak smile towards him, then turns around to leave.
“Cap’n.”
It takes a moment for Peter to realise that Kraglin was calling for him. He turns back to look at the other man, who regarded him with a smile.
“One more thing. Ego wasn’t your father. Yondu was. You’d best remember that.”
"Where are we going,” Peter whines, shuffling his feet through fallen leaves and twigs in the forest, trailing behind Yondu, his overcoat fluttering gently behind him with the forest breeze. The man had dragged him out to this place alone, hadn’t allowed him to take his Walkman along, and wouldn’t tell him what was going on. He was upset, reasonably so.
“Quit yer whinin’, boy. We’re almost there.”
Peter lets out a frustrated noise, kicking a pile of leaves into the air. Yondu scoffs but otherwise ignores him, and they keep walking, until they reached a small clearing in the forest, targets propped in the middle of the empty space sans greenery like a firing range. Peter frowned.
“What—"
“We gon’ teach you how to shoot today, boy,” Yondu says, removing his gun from the holster on his belt and dropping it into Peter’s hands. “Fittin’ in tight spaces and being good for thievin’ ain’t gonna take you far. You gonna need to learn to shoot.”
The boy’s palms immediately go clammy; he had never, ever held a gun prior to this, much less a space alien gun (as appealing as that would have been to him prior to being “picked up” by Yondu), and now he’s expected to learn to shoot. Peter never wanted to think about having to shoot anything, ever. It almost slips out of his grip as he tries to hold it properly; it was heavier than he expected, for someone like himself.
“Boy, you can’t even hold a gun proper? You’re a hopeless case aren’tcha? May as well feed ya to the crew,” Yondu mocks him, but he didn’t sound as threatening as he usually did. In fact, he was being far more patient with him compared to when he was chewing Peter out in front of the other Ravagers, which puzzled him greatly. Not that Peter minded; he was grateful for this period of respite.
“I know how to hold a gun,” Peter grumbles, and Yondu lets out a sharp cackle. Peter’s hands are shaking as he finally manages to grip the gun in what he imagined was the right way, and turns towards Yondu for assurance. Yondu simply grins crookedly. What was that supposed to mean?
“Aight, I want you to shoot those targets o’er there.” Yondu points forward, and Peter swallows his nervousness. His hands tremble as he raises the gun upward, until he’s pointing it at the targets, or at least he hopes so. His finger hooks onto the trigger, but he hesitates. “Go on, boy,” Yondu urges, and Peter tries to tell him he can’t, but his throat is dry and his voice comes out as a nervous croak.
Yondu huffs out of his nose loudly, in what must undoubtedly be disappoinment, and Peter feels tears prickling the corner of his eyes as his breath hitches. “I can’t shoot,” he finally manages, tears starting to stream down his face. “I can’t.”
“Yes you can, boy. Now stop cryin’. Ravagers don't cry.” Yondu says without a moment’s hesitation. He grabs onto Peter’s arms and shoulders and shifts them, nudging his feet into a proper stance, fixing his posture and aim. “Jus’ like this. Now shoot. And watch yourself when you do.”
Peter swallows, trying to regain his composure, then, slowly, carefully pulls the trigger. The gun fires, wildly missing its intended target, and Peter stumbles backward from the recoil, backing up into Yondu, who grips onto his shoulders to cushion him. “S-Sorry,” Peter sputters, stepping away from him.
“S’alright. T'was a good shot. Now try again.”
Peter nods, then raises the gun once more, pointing it towards the target. He fires, and completely misses once more, except this time he’s braced for the recoil, and doesn’t stumble backward. Peter bites his lip, a tinge of disappointment in his chest. “I can’t do it,” he says, unable to hold back the frustration in his voice and the tears starting to pool in his eyes. “I’m too dumb for this.” Kid logic.
“There’s no such thing, boy. Lemme in you on a secret,” Yondu says, and Peter turns to stare at him, curious. He had expected a chewing out from Yondu, but it never came. The man points towards the target. “You don’t shoot with your head; you shoot with your heart. It’s how I fly this arrow o’ mine.” He draws back his coat to reveal the red arrow tucked in his belt. When Peter only gives him a blank look in return, Yondu smacks his lips and readjusts his coat. “You’re probably too young to understand that. S’alright. You’re not gonn' get it right the first time. Try again. Don’t focus on hittin’ the target so hard—jus’ do what you think is right. And if you do it wrong do it again, and again, and again, till you get it right.”
Peter presses his lips into a frown, but raises his gun and points it towards the target once more. Shoot with your heart, whatever that means. He focuses on the target carefully—just do what you think is right—and when he thinks he’s finally got it, he fires.
He blasts a hole through the target; granted it’s not square in the middle, more closer to the edge, but he did it. Peter can’t contain his cry of joy, and when he looks towards Yondu he mirrored Peter’s smile, jagged teeth peeking from under his lips. “Look—Look! I did it, I did it!”
“Sure did, son!” Yondu laughs, patting Peter on his back, and it slips by Peter how uncharacteristically Yondu was behaving. Peter hardly ever felt this much joy and belonging since joining Yondu and his crew—Yondu was proud of him like a father of his son, and that had made Peter immensely happy. He had never felt this way before—never had a father figure to look up to, for that matter—and he wanted to keep making Yondu proud, just like this. “I told you so didn’t I? But you still got lots to learn. Now, listen close, here...”
Vast whiteness stretched before Peter. Among all that whiteness was a familiar figure in the distance, his Ravager coat trailing behind him with the wind.
Yondu, Peter calls out to him. He turns towards Peter, that familiar yet wistful smile on his face carving holes into his chest. Yondu. He runs forward with an outstretched hand, desperate to reach him, but he is unable to do so. Yondu merely throws his head back and laughs at the sight—god, Peter missed that laughter so much—then turns back and begins walking into the distant light ahead of him.
Don’t go, Peter cries. There’s so much I need to tell you.
Nothin’ to be said, son, Yondu replies, and he keeps walking. I already know.
Dad—
Peter wakes up with tears in his eyes again, but this time it’s a serene feeling that settles in his chest.
There are days Peter sits and stares out into the vast emptiness of space for hours on end, songs the Zune pumped into his ears drowned out by a million thoughts running through his head, thoughts of what if and why couldn’t I. Gamora comes up to him and wraps her hands around him, grounding him back to reality, giving him reassurances everything is alright, and he returns the hold with gratitude. It’s the only thing that’s unspoken between them, now.
Other days he is lost in thought, Drax will come up to him, dragging a seat and settling down next to him, beginning another tale of his family and home back when they were still around. Peter doesn’t stop him, listening silently, and occasionally chimes in with his own stories, treasured time spent with his mother back on Earth, or when he was still part of Yondu’s crew; it fills the both of them with a sense of peace and lifts a heavy weight neither of them knew they bore, and helps them come to terms with hang-ups they have about past happenings. He shares sentiments with Kraglin in a similar way.
Some nights he wakes up with his chest tight and breaths ragged from another nightmare; Mantis senses his distraught feelings and comes to him, helps him quell his panic with her empathic abilities. On some days she helps him fall back asleep; other days he refuses, in a bout of irrational fear of turning into someone like Ego, and she leaves him lying on his bed alone, listening to his Zune and letting exhaustion run its course until he falls back asleep.
At moments he is weighed down by events of the past; Rocket notices this, riffs at him a little more than usual, bringing the life back into Peter. He knows when to back off if Peter doesn’t seem into it, and it’s then that Groot settles himself onto Peter’s shoulder for the rest of the day, keeping him silent company throughout the day, something that Peter is immensely grateful for, but isn’t able to voice. Groot understands.
Some days he is alone when bad moments resurface and he’s forced to deal with it on his own, and he does; he knows he’ll never truly move on from the events that have transpired throughout his life—he continues to struggle, but he also knows now that despite all that’s happened, he isn’t alone and he would never be; that he had his friends—his family, with him, and they would gladly help him through times of need, as he would for them in a heartbeat, and things wouldn’t have and be any other way, whether it was his mother, Yondu or his friends now.
Whatever had, has and will happen, things would be alright.
"C’mere, Peter!”
Peter’s expression breaks out into a ginger smile as he runs towards his mother, who’s sat up on the grassy patch outside their home, beckoning him with one hand as she holds something wrapped in the other.
"Yeah, mom?”
“I want you to have this,” she hands him the present and he flips it around in his hands, bouncing on his toes, already unable to suppress his excitement. “It’s a little late, but happy birthday. Sorry I couldn’t get it done sooner – I was working on something really special, just for you.”
“Can I open it?” He asks excitedly.
“Of course you can, sweetheart! I want to know if you like it or not, too.”
Peter tears open the wrapping paper, and his grin split from ear to ear when he retrieves the sleek blue Walkman from within it. He can’t contain his excited squeal—he always wanted a Walkman of his own! – as he bounces on his feet, chanting “thank you thank you thank you” in joy. His mother laughs in return; it’s the most beautiful sound he's ever heard, better than any music out there. There was already a cassette tape inserted into it – labelled “Awesome Mix Vol. 1”.
“All of our favourite songs are in there,” his mother explains. "'Songs that remind me of your father, and you."
Peter launches forward to give his mother a massive hug, and they both collapse onto the grassy field, laughing together in pure joy until they ran out of breath.
“I’m being admitted for treatment tomorrow, Peter,” his mother says after they’ve stopped, her voice taking on an uncharacteristically sombre tone, and Peter looks up to see her smile tinged with sadness. Something in his chest knots. “You know that, yeah? You’ll be a good boy to your grandpa while I'm gone, won't you?”
“...Yeah.”
“That’s good. I know you will. I'll be back before you know it.” His mother ruffles his hair. How long would it be till the next time she does that to him? As if being able to read his thoughts, she smiles at him. "Don't be sad, now. With this—" She lays her hands over his, which was still grasping the Walkman tightly, “I’ll always, always be with you, my little Star-Lord.”
Peter struggles to maintain his smile. He sniffles, tears beginning to form in the corner of her eyes. “Yeah.”
“Now why don’t we listen to this together?” Peter perks up and nods excitedly, lying down beside his mother and pressing play on the Walkman. Blue Swede, Hooked on a Feeling, 1974 fills the silence between them—their song. His mother knots her fingers around his own; he turns to look at her, and she is smiling so serenely at him; for a moment he forgets all the worries surrounding him. Then and there, it was only Peter, his mother, and the music playing from his Walkman. It was a moment he would preserve in his mind for as long as he could.
Everything was okay.