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It was not that Nebula had the slightest interest in anything to do with her Terran shipmate's life back on his home planet; it was just that he never. Stopped. Talking. (Mother of Stars, he did remind her of Gamora's Terran ... and that was a thought she had to duck away from, hurrying off to busy herself throwing knives at a crude purple drawing of Thanos she'd sketched on the wall of the ship's galley.)
Nebula kept herself busy working on new and ever more creative plans for killing Thanos when they managed to find him. The Terran mechanic kept himself busy fixing things on the ship (by the time they got to Earth, the entire ship had been upgraded in ways that Nebula had never seen before) and ... talking. A lot.
He never talked about the people who had died on Thanos's homeworld. Instead he talked about a bunch of other people that Nebula had never even met. Nebula glared at the walls and sharpened her knives and polished her guns and occasionally thought about killing him. She spent a lot of her time either avoiding him or pretending that his voice was just part of the rattling vibration of the ship's repaired engines.
"If you have all of these friends," she ground out at one point in a combination of homicidal rage and despair that he was ever going to shut up, "why did you go off to fight Thanos with two people, one of them a child?"
"All right, first of all, I didn't intend to fight Thanos. It was a thing that happened. An accidental thing. Space powerbar?" He held out a ration bar in her general direction.
"Fine," she said, snatching it away from him.
"Secondly," he said, focusing on the disassembled parts of whatever he was doing to the ship's guns, rather than looking at her, "we're not exactly on speaking terms these days. Them and me. Me and them. Well, not most of them anyway. I mean, as such. I realize you don't care --"
"I don't," Nebula said loudly, in the hopes that this would stop him from telling her.
"-- which is probably why I can even talk to you about it. I haven't talked to Pepper about most of this --"
"I don't care."
"Right. See? Case in point. Bruce ... you remind me of Bruce, in that way. Did I tell you about Bruce?"
"Many times," Nebula said between clenched teeth. She took a bite of the ration bar and imagined that she was biting off his head.
What followed was a rambling story, in bits and pieces over the next few days, about his parents being killed ("My parents were murdered in front of me when I was a small child, and then I killed the parents of a million other children at Thanos's command," Nebula contributed, just to make sure he was aware that no sympathy would be coming from this quarter, before realizing she had inadvertently admitted she was listening) and something something everyone else took the side of the killer or something ("My sister spent our entire childhood trying to kill me") blah blah something about the killer escaping to the protection of something something oh god she didn't care ("This is why orbital death lasers exist, Terran. This ship alone has enough armaments to flatten one of your cities from space." "Yeah, not that you're an expert on that or anything, I'm sure.") something something metal arm ("My entire body was replaced with metal, one piece at a time. The pain was excruciating.") blah blah betrayed by closest allies etc ("I never had any friends, not a single one. Did I mention the only sister I didn't hate spent most of her time trying to kill me?").
"It's not a tragic backstory competition, you know," the Terran said at one point, sounding deeply peeved.
"You're only saying that because you know you're losing."
*
In any case, against all odds, they made it to Earth without killing each other.
By the time they got there, Nebula had already decided that she was going to find and kill the killer of Tony's parents, if he was still alive. Mainly it was just because she hated to see a good assassination screwed up this badly. It was a matter of professional pride.
But it turned out he wasn't; he'd been one of Thanos's fifty percent, along with most of Gamora's annoying friends. (Except for the loudmouthed fox. That just figured.)
And then one thing led to another and more people died and Time Stones happened and, eventually, in the end, it was all undone and most of those who had fallen to Thanos's genocide were alive again, and Thanos was not, and Nebula was somehow still alive herself and had to figure what to do with the rest of her life.
*
She didn't intend to stick around on Earth for any longer than it took her to find a working ship. Gamora and Quill (who was still just as annoying as she remembered) had invited her to come along with them, whenever they managed to get a ship working again. She refused to admit that the offer was tempting.
It was a large, motley, and somewhat uneasy group, in the meantime, who were all wandering around the Avengers headquarters in upstate New York. Nebula had never in her entire life experienced "fitting in" or "camaraderie", and she still didn't think this was it, but she was starting to think this might be ... almost ... what it might feel like. No one here had problems quite like her problems, but everyone had their own preoccupations, too much to bother her (most of the time). And yet, when there was food, someone came to find her and let her know -- one of the Guardians, or Tony, or Sam, or someone else entirely. If she cared to skulk into one of the common areas and just watch (from the shadows) people playing board games or watching entertainment on their flat, primitive screens, no one seemed to mind or even really notice. She actually had to compete for good lurking spots; there was nothing quite so annoying as slinking into the common room only to find that Loki or the Widow was already lurking in her favorite shadowy corner.
And one of the many people skulking around the Avengers building was Tony's parents' killer. She hadn't been exactly sure at first, but as she observed the others, and in particular observed how Tony left the room whenever the metal-armed man walked into it, she decided that it was indeed him. And she actually thought ... well ...
She wanted to kill him for Tony's sake, not just because it was a job undone (seriously, Stark, he's RIGHT THERE and so are you, how can you be so bad at this) but also because she thought it might actually be something nice that she could do for him, perhaps the first nice thing she had ever done for anyone. Tony was obviously not very good at this killing thing, but she was good at it. It was her main and in fact her entire skill set.
It was, she thought, even the sort of thing Gamora would probably approve of. Gamora was all about using her Thanos-given fighting skills and body mods to protect the weak, avenge the innocent, and that sort of drivel. There was a time when just knowing that Gamora would have wanted her to do something would have made her do the opposite, but now she found the thought strangely pleasing.
Barnes was not going to be an easy target. Watching him with that in mind, she speculated that Tony might have wisely decided to bide his time until Barnes was alone. He was extremely difficult to find without that Captain America person around, and when they weren't together, Barnes had his own skulking places that were so well hidden even she couldn't find them. He was also a formidable warrior, as she knew from watching him fight. Subtly, undetectably, she studied the way he moved, teaching herself the patterns of his movements and habits.
("That blue space lady is staring at me again, Steve."
"She's probably just curious about the arm, Buck.")
It was just a matter of picking her moment, choosing her time. She finally got a chance outside the gym. Barnes had been sparring with the Black Widow (disgusting really, the way people in this bunch liked to cozy up to him, as if he was a normal person and not a stone cold killer), but when the Widow turned away to go to the showers, Nebula sidled out of her spot behind a rack of exercise equipment and closed on him.
"We shall speak," she declared in an undertone, crowding him in the general direction of a hallway she'd already determined, with careful surveillance, was rarely used and had no inconvenient cameras.
"Uh ... okay," Barnes said, agreeably enough. He was always like that, quiet and polite, rarely disagreeing with anyone or saying no to anything. Nebula didn't particularly care if it was an act or not; the important part was that he didn't put up a fight.
As she sidled into the dark hall with him, Nebula lowered her hand and extended the knife from her wrist, hidden by her palm. She had thought about whether she wanted him to die with a declaration of his victims' names ringing in his ears, but decided it was probably better, given what she'd seen of how well he could fight, to simply rip the knife through his throat without warning. His neck was flesh and blood, from what she could tell. When a knife severed his aorta, he would die as readily as any humanoid.
"So what did you want to --" Barnes began.
She whipped around with the knife. One thrust. And she was fast enough that she was reasonably confident she could beat any attempts he made to deflect her. For that, at least, she could thank Thanos's modifications.
She was not, however, faster than the fiery ring that spun through the air between them, or the glowing rope that whipped around her ankle and yanked her through the portal. Her last sight was a glimpse of Barnes's face looking startled and somewhat resigned.
She landed facefirst in the snow. This was definitely not that New York place. Nebula sat up, furious, and the first thing she saw was the infernal magician floating a few feet away in a serene meditative pose.
Nebula flung a knife at him. It sailed through him and landed in the snow. He did, however, open his eyes to look at her.
"Oh, come now," Strange said. "You don't think I'd let you kill Captain America's best friend, do you?"
Nebula looked around wildly for the portal. It was nowhere in sight, just endless snow and a screaming, bitter wind lifting it in whorls. She struggled with the urge to shriek in frustration, and settled for scrambling to her feet and brushing off as much of the snow as possible. Raising her metabolism by a few degrees, she crossed her arms and glared at the damned magician.
"How did you know of my intentions? What form of diabolical magic is this?"
"It's mainly that you've been stalking him around Avengers headquarters for days," Strange said dryly.
"He is a murderer," she spat.
"Isn't that what you are?"
Nebula decided not to dignify that with a response. She was also starting to get slightly chilly despite her body's increased rate of warmth. Trying to make it look like it was her decision in the first place, she stalked over to an overhanging ledge of rock that provided some protection from the screaming wind, and glared at the annoying magician from there.
"You know, one reason I brought you here instead of merely dropping you in the Hulk-proof cell in the Avengers' basement is because I thought you should have a chance to explain yourself to me before you try to explain to them."
"What is to explain? You truly think anyone cares if I choose to rid the world of one more killer?"
"Er ... yes," Strange said. "Admittedly I doubt if most of them would care personally, aside from Rogers and possibly Romanov, and in fact a few of them might agree with you on general principles, but oddly enough one of the things that makes them heroes is that they have a problem with people being murdered in front of them."
"Heroes," she sneered. "I guess it's a good thing I'm not one, then."
Strange sighed. "Don't you want to know anything at all about why Barnes did what he did?"
"No. It matters not at all. Not to his victims, I expect."
Strange raised an eyebrow. "You're in the business of avenging victims now?"
"Isn't that what you people do?" she shot back at him. "At least I thought so. It's implied by the name."
"I'm not an Avenger, technically ... but that's not the point. You know, there are extenuating circumstances with Barnes. He was brainwashed."
"So?" Nebula snapped. "I was also brainwashed by Thanos. It was still my hands that killed. It doesn't take away his responsibility for what he did or make his victims any less dead."
Strange looked at her oddly for a long moment and said, "Ah."
"Ah? Ah? What does 'Ah' mean?!"
"It means I'm not going to let you kill an active member of the Avengers while I'm around." He shrugged. "Sorry." He didn't sound sorry.
"You not being around could be arranged," Nebula said darkly.
Strange smiled. "Really? You think you can kill me?"
"I killed Thanos --"
"-- we killed Thanos --"
"-- and next to that, what kind of threat are you?" she scoffed. In truth she was not nearly so confident; he did seem hard to kill. She was fairly sure he wasn't even here right now, wherever "here" was.
"You know, you're really not convincing me that it's a good idea to send you back ..."
"Then don't!" she shouted at him. "I never wanted to be part of their happy little party in the first place! You can send me somewhere else, can't you? Some other planet. Somewhere I don't have to look at their stupid idiot grinning faces and watch them acting like everything is wonderful and all life's problems are fixed now that Thanos is gone. And the one problem I tried to fix, you won't let me."
Strange sighed and dropped out of his meditative pose, resting his feet on the snow. Nebula was no longer entirely sure that he wasn't actually here. The cloak failed to flutter in the wind, but that was usual for Strange's cloak; it rippled in winds of its own devising.
"Does it make any difference," he asked, "if you know that Barnes is going to be tried for the murders he committed? The ones on U.S. soil, anyway. It was part of ... well, no need to go into details, but that's basically the condition of having him working with the Avengers and being back in the U.S. in the first place. He's technically under a sort of informal house arrest. Or hadn't you noticed that he's never left alone?"
"I just assumed Rogers was hovering," Nebula muttered.
"Well ... true. But he's not allowed to leave the building, and he won't, until the trial. It's possible, in fact likely, that he will actually be executed if they find him guilty. Does that make you feel better?"
"It's not the same as thrusting my knife through his throat," Nebula muttered, kicking at the snow. She had been really looking forward to that.
"I'll take your word for that. It is, however, a great deal less likely to make the Avengers track you down and put you on trial."
"Oh, and it's so much better that way, is it." She tucked her hands under her arms. It wasn't that the cold bothered her as such -- it was purely psychological, it had to be -- but it made her mechanical parts brittle, their lubrication growing sluggish. At least she was spared the indignity of her teeth chattering, due to the all-metal jaw. "If I do it, it's murder. If a government does it, it's justice." She sneered the words with all the disdain she could pack into them.
"An interesting philosophical conundrum, to be sure. One that many words have been spilled over, in the past." Strange's hand closed over her arm, completely solid. "And one best discussed somewhere warmer."
He twirled his hand in the air, and stepped through, dragging her semi-unwillingly along with him, into the echoing vastness of a dim library with shelves of books rising to the lofty, shadow-shrouded ceiling.
"This isn't the Avengers' place," Nebula said, looking up as she stomped snow off her feet.
"No, this is where I live. I'm not taking you back there for a while, mainly because I suspect you're still planning on killing Barnes as soon as I take my eyes off you."
"Oh, what, so I'm stuck here with you now?"
"Better than a Hulk-proof cell, isn't it?" He flicked his hand and the cloak sailed off for parts unknown.
"I am going to kill you next, if you're not careful."
"I would be disappointed if you don't try at least once. In the meantime, I was just about to eat." He gave her one of his brief smiles, ignoring her glower. "Care to join me?"
"No," Nebula muttered, and followed him up the stairs.