Chapter Text
The Quadrant’s training room has seen better days, though Gamora won’t begin to guess when they were. Dusty mats lie haphazardly stacked in the corner, the free weights are scattered around the room, and one of the exercise machines has been ripped apart, gears and bolts strewn everywhere. Gamora’s not sure whether that’s one of the former Ravagers’ work, or Rocket’s.
She sighs, pulling her hair up into a makeshift knot before she picks up the nearest weight. She tests it out, then places it on the rack. Then, after she stands in the center of the room for a moment, she leans down to pick up another weight.
Then another.
You don’t have to put everything back in order, she tells herself, even as she discards a handful of screws into the trash bin. You don’t have to make it look like...
She closes her eyes, willing herself not to think of the stainless steel walls she hated seeing every day – yet still called ‘home,’ once.
She stands there, trying to push past memories of clean surfaces and an organized training room. She would have been startled when the door to the training room swings open, if she hadn’t heard the heavy, measured footfalls which she knew could only be associated with one person on the ship.
“Drax,” she says, picking up another weight and placing it on the rack. “Thought you were asleep.”
“I couldn’t,” he says, crossing his arms over his chest. “Groot keeps waking me up, begging me for more candy.”
Gamora wouldn’t have been able to tell a couple months ago, but there’s a deliberate pause between some of his words. He’s lying.
She gestures to the room, half of it still in disarray. “Want to help me clean the rest of this up?”
“No.”
She’s about to roll her eyes, but Drax uncrosses his arms and silently heads over to the pile of mats.
He carries them out without another word, and Gamora smiles as the door swings shut behind him.
When he returns with the dust shaken from all the mats, Gamora has the training room back into relative order. The broken machine is unsalvageable, but Gamora isn’t really here for that.
As if he knows what she’d been thinking, Drax places the mats down, rearranging them into a square at the center of the room. Gamora helps him put half the mats into place, and then, when they stand up, Gamora knows why he had lied to her.
“Don’t make this too easy for me,” she says as she walks on top of the mat over to one end, and Drax saunters over to the other side. She’s partly trying to lighten the mood, something she’s picked up from Peter – and she’s partly trying to warn Drax.
He nods, and they both do a quick warm up stretch on opposite sides of the mat.
Then, when they meet in the middle, Gamora throws a punch right at his face.
It’s been a while since either of them have fought hand-to-hand. Gamora’s used her sword a fair number of times, but the past two months she’s spent with the Guardians has mostly comprised of flying in the Milano, searching for lost people or items, and providing intel for Nova Corps. Gamora’s muscle memory takes over, and she dodges Drax’s blows, dropping down to sweep his legs out from under him, and she almost catches him off guard.
He evades the move and, in the back of her head, she hears, You’re getting soft, Daughter. In more ways than one.
She shoves the thought aside as she rolls over on the mat, just in time to avoid Drax body slamming on her.
You should have left them long ago. They will only make you weaker, the voice whispers at her as she flips back up onto her feet. She tries to kick Drax off the mat when he stumbles, off balance, and she –
Remembers Nebula, the first time they faced each other in Thanos’s arena. Nebula, terrified and looking so much smaller than she had during regular training. Her wide eyes are plaintive as Gamora, also a child, rains blows on her with her wooden sword. Because Gamora cannot afford to be a disappointment.
“Please,” Nebula sobbed as she curled into a ball on the floor, “Please don’t!”
Gamora, barely four years older than when she left – was taken from her planet – raised her weapon as Thanos watched. Gamora, her once round cheeks now flat, her spine taut and her hearing changed, improved – brought down her wooden sword.
In the training room, on the Quadrant, Gamora hesitates.
Her right foot lands on the mat incorrectly.
And she falls, hard, the wind knocked out of her as she slams down on the mat.
She gasps, tears springing to her eyes not because of the pain, but because of the memories that won’t stop. She’d seen Nebula dragged away, and brought back to the same arena to face her with a metallic arm. She’d seen, out of the corner of her eye, her people gunned down. She didn’t even know what happened to her parents’ bodies. Were they buried with her grandparents? Do they know peace now? Does Nebula?
She sobs, hating herself for letting Drax see her like this. And she lies on the mat, curled up on her side, hating the room and all its newly refined order, and hating Drax for being here with her, hating herself for losing, but most of all, hating herself for making it this far.
After a long time, the tears subside, and Gamora blinks, looking up.
Drax is standing above her, holding a clean towel out toward her, along with a bottle of water.
Wordlessly, unable to even speak with her hoarse throat, she takes the water, wondering how he could stand to see her like this. She’s supposed to be the strong one. She’s never fallen apart this way in front of the others. She needs to maintain control, or at least the appearance of it.
She expects Drax to leave as she gulps down water, but he stays.
And he doesn’t say anything.
Then, as Gamora lowers the bottle, wiping her lip as she takes the towel from his outstretched hand, she realizes that he had needed this as well.
He talks frequently and openly about Hovat and Kamaria fondly, with pride and love. But she knows that he too, also can’t shake his regret. His guilt at surviving when his family did not.
As she slowly gets to her feet, Gamora doesn’t know what to say to him.
So, she simply says, “Thank you,” and he nods before they leave the training room.