Chapter Text
“Hey buddy, everything okay?”
The voice is high, and far too inquisitive for a space port bartender. Charlie upends his glass, lets the last dribble of brew burn down his throat.
There’s some tinny cover of a Andoran pop song ten years past it prime whining out of the sound system. It’s playing over and over on repeat, scraping and scuttling across his skin. His blaster presses heavy between his shoulder blades, and he shifts.
He’s only three drinks into what’s clearly a ten drinks kind of evening. Time to start fixing that.
“‘Nother one,” he gently bumps his glass towards the bartender, some blue-haired kid who looks way too fucking young to be calling him anything so familiar. They’re definitely too young to be dishing up the kind of skin-stripping pain-thinner masquerading as alcohol that’s served here.
The kid just looks at him. Charlie squints back.
The hell are they waiting for.
“C’mon, whatever shit’s cheapest ’s fine,” Charlie dully taps the side of the glass with a blunt nail, once, twice. It’s sitting just shy of it’s two empty fellows so he nudges it neatly into line, the three of them squatting in dispassionate rank.
Yondu would have made fun of him for that. He’d always shoved his cups into precarious wobbling stacks, laughing uproariously when they inevitably tumbled and shattered on whatever poor soul was unfortunate enough to bump them.
Charlie’s shoulder bunch tight enough to hurt, send a spike of pain into his scalp. He makes himself relax.
The kid shifts, scrunches their lips up.
“Dunno what you’re trying t’drink away, but there’s cheaper ways to get dead,” their voice is quiet enough no one’s gonna here them over the dull resentful hum of the bar, but Charlie scowls, fingers blanching as they press into the bar top.
“Pretty sure you don’t get paid enough to be spouting off opinions on my personal habits.”
He doesn’t have the patience for this tonight. If the kid’s any kind of smart, they’ll know a warning when they hear one.
“You ain’t been here long, but I have. You running away from something, this ain’t the place t’do it.”
Guess they won’t. Kid’s got a scrote, gotta give them that. Most take one look at Charlie’s size, the flame on his chest, and decide putting up a fight isn’t gonna turn out well for them. Even out here on the edge of nowhere, there aren’t many willing to piss off a Ravager.
They're practically a baby too, can’t have more than fourteen or fifteen years on them. Before he leaves this shitstain of a space port, he’s gotta check into that, make sure no one’s doing them wrong. Wouldn’t be the first kid he’s had to relocate from their keepers, with a few gentle threats so the scumbags didn’t get any ideas about following.
Charlie raises an eyebrow. “You give advice to all the spacers, or am I just special?”
“You seem like you need it,” the kid shrugs, “and you tip, so.”
Charlie eyes the oozing spout. It drips amber and thick, smells strong enough to choke a horse.
He need another.
“If you ain’t gonna serve me,” Charlie leans on the edge of the bar until it creaks weakly in protest, “s’ppose I’d better be taking my business elsewhere.”
The kid holds up their hands in surrender.
“Fine,” they grumble, “When your buddies show up, not gonna say I didn’t warn ya.”
Charlies snorts. Right. Like any of them are gonna pull themselves outta their own heads long enough to think about him right now. Stakar’s doing his damnedest to pretend he doesn’t care. He hadn't even looked at Charlie when he’d told Stakar he was taking off on a “scouting job.”
Not that Charlie hasn’t earned the leeway. He’s been with Stakar since the beginning, since Stakar had blasted some snarl-mouthed Badoon off a bloody, screaming Charlie, grieving and incoherent and utterly alone. Stakar had stayed with him, after that. He’d known what is was like too, after all, to lose everything.
Aleta had fucked off to who knows where, not that Charlie blames her. Yondu had been her boy in all but blood, and losing kids twice?
Charles scrubs a hand across his face. Martinex hasn’t showed his face since the trial, and who the hell knew where Krugarr and Mainframe were.
And Yondu… Yondu’s probably gone by now, if that scraggly bug-eyed first mate of his has done his duty. There hasn’t been a challenge in years, but every Ravager has heard the stories. And a dead code-breaker won’t be given honors, won’t be send gently off with the colors and the horns.
If the new captain’s generous, Yondu will be incinerated. If not, his body will be thrown out the airlock. Charlie can see it every time he closes his eyes, red eyes frozen over, blue skin cracked and burst.
His friend, alone, hanging frozen in the cold, dark space between stars.
Charlie’s throat feels like it’s closing up, and he coughs but it doesn’t help. He should’t have left. He should have stopped it, damn the Code. What’s that saying? Fool me twice, shame on me? Charlie’s gut twists, sour and heavy. He should have learned his lesson last time he tried to do the right thing, tried to follow orders.
And this time, there isn’t even a body to grieve over.
“Here,” the kid slides Charlie’s drink begrudgingly over to him. He downs it in one go and slides the empty glass back with a grunted,“‘Nother.”
It joins the others, lonely glass soldiers in their aimless rank and file.