Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Ay, Nova! How’s it hangin’?”

Peter tries not to wince at the sheer volume of Rocket’s greeting. He is nursing the absolute mother of all hangovers, and Rocket’s never been too good with the whole inside voice thing on the best of days. He pours himself a cup of coffee, staring straight through the steam and trying not to focus on how much his head is friggin’ pounding, and he lifts his now-full mug to the projection of Nova Prime’s face on their screen.

“Hey there, Nova,” he says in his best approximation of what a non-hungover voice sounds like. “How’s the rebuilding going?”

“Guardians,” Nova Prime greets all six of them sitting around the table with a bow of her head. “The rebuilding is going well, thank you.”

“That’s good to hear,” Gamora says with a smile.

Nova Prime looks a little better than she did the last time they saw her, Peter thinks — not that that’s saying all that much, though. If Earth was hit hard by Thanos’ forces during his stupid mission to get the Infinity Stones, well, Xandar was hit twenty times worse and then some. And they didn’t even win; Thanos reduced entire cities to little more than a bunch of smouldering heaps, and then he snatched up the Power Stone and was on his way without so much as a glance back.

Nova doesn’t look like she’s slept a full night in the last two months, but at least she seems to have washed some of the now ever-present soot from her hair. She even offers all of them a smile and says, “We appreciate you sending Mr. Obfonteri to aid in the relief effort, as well, and of course he sends his regards.”

“Eh, that wasn’t really us,” Peter tells her with a shrug. “That was all Krag’s idea.”

“Yeah, nothing like your whole planet gettin’ toasted to make you wanna go back home, I guess,” Rocket says, and if Peter were feeling a little more lucid he’d probably hit Rocket over the head with something for being so damned blunt all the time.

Gamora shoots him a look for it, at least, but he doesn’t notice.

Drax, Mantis, and Loki, on the other hand, all seem to unironically agree; Drax hums through a mouthful of the Contraxian noodles he’s eating for breakfast, Mantis nods, and Loki gives a little tilt of his head.

“Er— yes, well. He has certainly been quite the help,” Nova continues. “As for the rest of you, I believe I have a job lined up that you may find to your liking as well. I’m sending you a detailed file on the situation, and it should arrive… now.”

The little holoscreen built into the table lights up with a ping, and Peter settles in front of it with his coffee in one hand, bringing the screen to life with the other.

“Planet Uädar lies just on the edge of our jurisdiction,” Nova Prime tells them as the screen in front of Peter swirls with stars and planets. A map, with Uädar at its center and Xandar a tiny little blip down in the bottom left. Gamora leans into Peter’s side, her hair falling over his shoulder as she peers at the screen along with him. Nova continues, “The planet is rather well populated. Its largest city, Urunia, serves as a major hub for many intergalactic businesses, and as a home for all manner of different species.”

The map zooms in, and the little sphere of brownish purples and blues that is planet Uädar spins until Urunia sits at the center of their view, and it zooms in until the city’s all they can see. It looks like a pretty standard coastal city, Peter guesses, if a little unusually gigantic, a big old industrial area with a whole bunch of districts labeled here and there.

“And people are going missing, huh?” Peter asks, swiping away from the map and skimming over the report Nova just sent over — or reports, plural. Pages and pages of missing persons reports, all with ‘last seen’ dates in the past month.

“Indeed,” Nova answers with a solemn nod.

“Any idea what’s causing it?”

“I’m afraid not,” she says. “But there have been twenty-eight disappearances in three weeks, nine of which have occurred in the last four days.”

“So whoever is causing the disappearances is growing bolder,” Gamora says.

“That’s exactly our fear,” agrees Nova Prime. “The disappearances have occurred throughout the city’s Markets District and the surrounding areas, and unfortunately, being a hub of intergalactic business means—”

“Big crowds, lots of unsavory types, yeah,” Peter says with a nod, eyes still skimming over the reports. He knows the city, or at least knows of it, and he vaguely remembers having been there with Yondu once or twice, maybe, unless he’s thinking of someplace else. It’s definitely the sort of place where a few missing people would go unnoticed, but apparently not bad enough that twenty-eight in one month didn’t cause some alarm. “I gotta say, Nova, it’s probably just Kree slavers picking these people off.”

“That was our original theory as well. But the pattern does not quite match up with what we’re used to seeing from the Kree and their bounty hunters.”

Peter nods as he scrolls through the lists of missing persons again. A group of three older teenage Aakon boys all disappeared at once. There’s a few Krylorians on the list, mostly adults — but one of them is a teenage girl with a real rich family judging by the reward that’s been offered for her, not the kind of person anyone would want to risk kidnapping. There’s even a really, really old Easik woman, way older and more frail than most slavers would ever bother with.

All different ages, species, genders, sizes. Peter frowns. It’s not just that it doesn’t fit the pattern of a Kree slaver. There doesn’t seem to be a pattern at all.

“Some of the victims are very wealthy, according to their files,” Gamora notices, and she looks up at Nova. “Have there been any ransom demands?”

“None as of yet,” Nova Prime says. “The authorities on Uädar haven’t a clue who could be causing the disappearances. They’ve requested our assistance in investigating the situation, but unfortunately we simply don’t have the resources to spare at this time.”

“So you want us to go and play detective, huh?” Rocket asks. “That ain’t exactly in our resumé, you know.”

“Yes, well, I have the utmost faith in all of your abilities,” Nova Prime says with a smile, and Peter has a hard time figuring out whether she’s being sarcastic or not. Politicians, man. “I’m certain you will locate and put a stop to the culprit or culprits in a timely manner, and help us put an end to these disappearances. And as you so astutely pointed out, many of the victims come from highly affluent families, so I’m sure you will find the reward to be to your liking.”

Peter taps the bottom right corner of the file, and the offered payment pops up on the screen.

He chokes on his coffee.

Rocket hops up onto the table, ignoring Peter coughing into the crook of his arm as he waltzes up to the screen, and when he peers over it to get a glimpse of the amount, he lets out a low whistle.

“Yeah, that, uh— that’s to our likin’, alright,” Rocket says.

“Excellent. An Uädarian officer will meet you when you arrive, and they will be able to answer any other questions you may have. Do keep us updated on your progress, will you?”

Peter clears his throat and nods. “Yup, will do.”

“The Nova Corps thanks you for your service, as always, Guardians.”

The image of Nova Prime winks away, and Peter sits back, still staring at the number of Units on the little screen.

That's a lot of friggin’ zeroes.

Loki scoots a little closer, just enough to get a look at the screen, and he raises his eyebrows and takes a sip of his own coffee. “Does anyone else find it odd that they're offering such an exorbitant amount just to find some kidnappers?”

“We don't know for sure its kidnappers,” Gamora reminds him.

“And if some of the victims were wealthy,” Drax adds through a mouthful of noodles, “it would make sense for their families to offer such a high reward.”

“Dude,” Rocket groans.

“For real, man,” Peter agrees, “swallow, then talk.”

“Alright, but,” Loki says, tapping the screen to draw everyone's attention back to it, “they’re not offering the reward to find the victims, are they? They're offering it specifically to find those responsible. It says nothing about recovering those who have gone missing.”

“So they do not want us to find the missing people?” Mantis asks.

“Or they don't think anyone will be able to,” Gamora offers.

Loki lifts his mug to gesture to Gamora. “Exactly. It means they've grown quite desperate. The authorities on Uädar have likely had no luck whatsoever investigating it themselves.”

“Hang on,” Rocket speaks up, spinning around to eye up everyone at the table. “We ain't really considering turning this down, are we? ’Cause for that many Units I'll go find these guys my damn self if I have to.” 

“Oh, no, that’s not what I’m suggesting at all,” Loki says with a shrug. “Just because they've had no success doesn't mean we won't.”

Drax lets out one of his big booming laughs as he stands up, and he pats Loki on the back hard enough to nearly knock the coffee from his hands — Loki fumbles with it for a second, a green glow encasing the top like a lid before he rights the mug with a pointed glare that Drax doesn’t notice.

“They require the best!” Drax says. “That is why they have called upon us to find these kidnappers.”

“Still don’t know it’s kidnappers,” Peter adds, but Drax doesn't seem to hear him.

“I shall inform Nebula that we are to change course for Uädar,” Drax says, dealing a pat to Peter’s back as he passes — and Peter, lacking in the ‘God-level strength’ and ‘magic telekinesis’ departments, lurches forward and immediately loses his hold on his coffee, spilling it across the length of the table.

“Damn it, dude,” Peter whines.

Drax doesn’t notice that, either, and he continues on his way out the door toward the cockpit.

“How many jumps away is Uädar, anyway? Two?” Rocket asks.

“Three,” Gamora corrects, peering over Peter’s shoulder again to look at the map, and then she stands. “It shouldn’t take more than a day’s flight to get there.”

“Cool,” Rocket says, hopping off the table. “Guess I’ll go see what kinda dirt I can dig up on that city, uh— what’s it called? Orlonia?”

“Urunia,” Peter corrects, still slumped in his seat, eyes stuck on the puddle that used to be his coffee.

“Yeah-huh, got it,” Rocket says as he leaves, and then he’s out the door, too.

Gamora, at least, seems to take pity on Peter’s obvious hungover-ness. She takes his now empty mug and walks over to the coffee machine to refill it, and as she does so she calls out, “Rocket, wake up Groot and let him know where we’re headed, will you?”

“Oh, sure, yeah,” comes Rocket’s voice from out in the hall, “make me wake up the cranky teenager.”

By the sound of his faint grumbling, though, he does head in the general direction of Groot’s room anyway. Gamora shakes her head, placing the refilled mug in front of Peter, to which he's only capable of responding with a groan that sounds something like thank you, and she says, “It’s not healthy for him to sleep this late.” She tilts her head. “Probably.”

Peter nods in agreement; one of these days they’re really gonna have to pick up a book on what actually qualifies as healthy or normal for a growing Groot who spends all his time in space.

If there is a book on that. They’ve mostly been counting on Rocket’s knowledge the last few years.

He bites back a yawn. The headache, for just a second, does that thing where it intensifies into a spike through his temple, and he winces.

“I suppose I could do some research of my own,” Loki says, idly drumming his fingers on the table. “I’ve only ever heard of Uädar in passing, so…” he trails off, looking up to find Peter peering at him with narrowed eyes, and he raises an eyebrow. “What?”

“Are you not hungover at all?” Peter asks.

“Am I…?”

“Hungover,” Peter repeats. “You had, like, four of those Sakaaran beers, man. And we’re both running on, what, three hours of sleep? If that?”

“… Yes?”

Peter groans and, folding his palms over the top of his coffee mug, drops his forehead onto the back of his hands. His voice echoes oddly on the table as he asks, “You don’t even know what a hangover is, do you?”

“Can’t say that I do.”

“Oh, that is so not fair,” Peter whispers to himself, and he lifts his head to chug some more of his coffee. On the other side of the table, Mantis tilts her head with a curious expression on her face, and before she can ask, Peter clarifies, “It’s a thing that happens to humans if we drink a lot of beer and not a whole lot of water. Headache, mostly. It’s fine.” He shrugs it off. Much as it sucks, this is far from the worst hangover he’s ever had, anyway. “How ‘bout you, Mantis? You sleep okay last night?”

Mantis smiles. “Oh, yes, I slept well.”

So she doesn’t even remember having a nightmare at all. A good thing, definitely, for sure, but Peter finds it pretty damn typical that — out of the three of them — one had a terrible nightmare and a good ten minute cry, one had a midnight crisis and four ( four! ) of those crazy strong Sakaaran beers, and yet Peter’s the one paying for it with a massive headache and no sleep.

He sighs. Just another day, then.

“Uh, yeah, do some research, I guess,” Peter agrees, nodding toward Loki. “Can’t hurt.”

He taps the screen and moves the map of Urunia around, squinting at the labels. The big old Markets District sits just north of a region labeled Center City, sandwiched between that and a huge swath of uninterrupted trees and rivers to the far north. A Financial Sector’s labelled further south, Marinas and Waterfront Districts spanning the entire western border, suburbs surrounding the city to the south and east.

“Still pretty sure it’s the Kree, though,” he says, scratching at the scruff along his jaw. “Planet’s right smack in the middle of their usual scouting range.”

“Nova Prime seemed fairly certain this doesn’t fit with the pattern of a Kree slaver,” Gamora reminds him.

Peter shrugs. “The Kree don’t always follow a pattern. They’re a big, big civilization at this point, spread out all over the space, different factions and whatnot. Most of ‘em are pretty peaceful and normal — y’know, like the ones that made that peace treaty with Xandar a few years back. Some of ‘em ain’t,” he says, and he takes another nice big gulp of his coffee. “Be better if we had Krag along for this, though. Won’t be nothing we can’t handle, but he knows more about the Kree slave trade than I do.”

Maybe they can give him a call. Yondu never told Peter anything about the Kree, and growing up, Peter was always too afraid to ask. Seemed like a sore spot, to say the least.

Same couldn’t be said for Kraglin, though.

“I mean, yeah, let’s look at all our options, I guess,” Peter amends with another shrug. He yawns again, and this time his jaw gives a satisfying crack. “We can split up when we get there, get some eyes all around the city. But I’m telling you, whenever there’s people going missing on a big scale like this, pattern or no pattern, nine times out of ten it’s slavers.”

“Slavers? Nah, definitely not slavers.”

“You’re sure.”

The Uädarian who greeted Peter and Mantis as they stepped off the Benatar onto the police precinct’s roof, Sergeant Braz, is a stout little guy; the thinning wisps of lime green hair on his head barely reach as high as Peter’s chin, but he’s more than got the girth to make up for it. A round pot belly hangs over his belt, and he’s got a broad set of shoulders that would — well, maybe not put Drax to shame, not quite. But he definitely looks like he could suplex Peter through a wall.

And with the serious set of his jaw and the permanent crease in his bushy green eyebrows, he kind of looks like he would, with very little provocation.

“Course I’m sure,” Braz answers as they follow him toward the door into the precinct, like it was dumb of Peter to ask for clarification in the first place, like he never says anything unless he’s one-hundred-and-ten percent sure. “You don’t think we already followed that lead as far as it’d go, son?”

Peter shrugs. “Yeah, no, I believe it. Just seemed the most likely option, is all.”

“Well, we did, too, didn’t we?” He taps a key card to the lock by the door, and it unlocks with a clunk cli-clunk of some thick steel mechanism shifting within the walls. “But that just ain’t it.”

“How do you know?” Mantis asks.

They enter a metal stairwell and start heading down into the building, and the Sergeant’s heavy footfalls echo like drum beats against the walls. “Well, little lady, that’s exactly what I’ll be showing both of you. See, we’ve always had a bit of problem with the Kree and their slavers ‘round here, so my officers staked out some of the Kree’s favorite places to lurk. Hopin’ they could catch one of the sons of bitches in the act, you know.”

“Guessing that didn’t work out,” Peter says.

“Well,” the Sergeant answers with a shrug of his ham-sized shoulders. “Yes, and no, lad. I’ll show ya, I’ll show ya.”

He leads Peter and Mantis through a doorway about four floors down from the roof, which according to the sign on the door opens up to Floor 7, and the three of them weave their way through a sea of desks and cubicles and chairs and people, making their way toward a door in the back — the Sergeant’s office, if the little placard on the chain-link reinforced window is anything to go by. Braz holds the door open and gestures for the two of them to go ahead in first.

“Take a seat, go on,” he says, waving at the two chairs facing the only desk in the room.

Braz’s office is almost half as big as the rest of the floor, with its own bathroom and little half-kitchen and about a million filing cabinets lining the walls. He’s got the place decorated, too, with a couple weird prickly plants sitting on the windowsill and a bunch of taxidermied heads of all shapes and sizes sticking out of the wall. There’s a few standard ones that are probably some Uӓdarian equivalent of deer, then some kind of furry thing with huge tusks, another that looks like a shrunken version of one of those four-armed monsters that Thanos was using to try to take over Earth, and an elongated reptilian-looking head that’s goddamn huge. Like a too big, too skinny alligator with scarier teeth.

Mantis, of course, takes one look at all the heads and makes a face before turning away from them.

“Nova Prime mentioned you folks had a team,” Braz says, his voice as tired as ever as he circles his desk and plunks down into the seat opposite them. “That right?”

Mantis nods. “Yes, we do.”

“Best in the galaxy,” Peter tells him. “Rest of the team’s out gettin’ the layout of the city right now.”

Braz lifts one big bushy eyebrow. “They ain’t on their own, right?”

“Nah, we’re big fans of the buddy system.”

“That’s good,” Braz says with a nod, pulling at the collar of his uniform to loosen it. “That’s good. Folks disappearing left and right, aren’t they? Yeesh.”

He slides the cover off of a little keypad on his desk and types a few numbers into it, and behind him, a seven-foot-wide panel on the wall slides up and into the ceiling, revealing a holographic screen beneath. Braz types another few digits into the keypad, and the screen comes alive with a map of the city.

A map, and an absolute messload of notes. Little red circles ping all over the dark blue of the map, clustered mostly around the northern edge of the city near the Markets District and above them, in the unlabelled area between the city and the forest. A few of the dots are scattered down into the suburbs to the east. Only two ping down in Center City. Notes are inset beside each dot, some overlapped on top of one another, so many notes that it takes a second for Peter’s translator chip to catch up with what he’s reading, odd little squiggly symbols shifting into the English alphabet one by one.

“Are those the disappearances?” Mantis asks.

“Sure are,” Braz says as he spins around in his chair to face the map. “Best we could guess, anyway. Some of ‘em are just the last place the victim was seen. Could’ve gone disappearing from anywhere, really. Nova sent you the files on the missing persons, that right?”

“Yeah, she did,” Peter answers, leaning forward, eyes scanning over all the info. “Didn’t seem like there was a pattern at the time. Gotta tell you, though, I’m sure seein’ one now.”

Braz hums in agreement. “Real estate on the south end of the city’s skyrocketed the last few weeks. Don’t suppose any of your team’s up in the Markets District, eh?”

“Just Gamora and Nebula,” Peter answers with a shrug.

“They can handle themselves, I take it?”

Peter snorts. “Oh, yeah. I’ll almost feel bad if whoever’s behind this tries anything with them. Mission’ll be over a hell of a lot sooner if that happens, though, so there’s that.”

“I hope so,” Braz says, waving a hand at the screen, and a few of the dots toward the west end of the Markets District light up. “Just yesterday morning, two of my officers were staking out this area of the markets. And they musta found whatever was causin’ it, ‘cause I ain’t heard a peep from them since.”

He waves his hand again, and two sets of notes pop up, along with headshots of the two officers. An older Krylorian woman with a stern face, and a young Easik that could be any gender, it’s hard to tell.

Braz sighs. “Both of them are trained, both of them were armed, I just… can’t imagine how these sons of bitches could’ve got the drop on them. They were two of my best.”

“I’m so sorry,” Mantis says, tilting her head to the side. “You must be so worried.”

Braz nods distractedly, his eyes fixed on the images of the two officers, then he spins in his chair again to face the two of them. “You sure these two friends of yours ain’t in danger, son?”

Peter opens his mouth to say, Yeah, of course I am, and then he sighs, tapping his earpiece. Might as well check. “Hey, Gamora, you there?”

There’s a second’s delay, and then:

“Yes, is everything alright?”

“Uh-huh. Just checkin’ in. How’s the exploring going?”

“Uneventful for the most part. Nebula’s only attempted to decapitate” — there’s a pause, a muffled sound of arguing that is definitely Nebula in the background, and Gamora corrects herself — “sorry, to dismember one person so far. He tried to overcharge her for a bag of zarg nuts.”

“So it’s going good, then.”

“Of course.”

“Alright, cool,” Peter says, looking over the map again. Drax and Loki are somewhere in Center City. Rocket and Groot are exploring the waterfront. He chews on his cheek for a second and says, “How ‘bout you get Rocket and Groot to come up near where you guys are? I’m looking at a map of all the disappearances, and they ain’t too likely to find anything where they’re at now.”

That’s half the truth, at least. Peter’s not too keen on Rocket and Groot being alone, even if one of them’s armed to the teeth. He’d rather have everyone a little closer together.

“And we’ll all meet up in like… an hour? I’ll bring the Benatar down in that stretch between the Markets District and the forest. The uh, what’s that area up there?”

He glances at Braz, who helpfully answers, “Up by the forest? Fishin’ villages. Couple of restaurants.”

“Ooh, awesome, I’m starving,” Peter says. “Okay, babe? We’ll meet up in the fishing villages just north of the Markets District, get some grub. We can slap a plan together and figure out what we’re doing next.”

“Sounds great.”

“Cool, see ya then.”

He drops the connection. Mantis, who’s been staring at the map this whole time, speaks up and asks, “Why are you so sure this is not happening because of Kree slavers, Sergeant Braz?”

Braz had been opening his mouth to say something to Peter, but then he frowns, looks at Mantis, and shrugs. “Well, pretty simple, ain’t it? The Kree’s bounty hunters just aren’t this sneaky. Never have been. And let me tell you, there ain’t a thing the Kree can pull that any one of my officers ain’t fully equipped and trained to handle. Nah.”

He shakes his head, looks over his shoulder at the map.

“Whatever this is, it ain’t slavers. It’s something… different. Something I ain’t never seen before. Whatever it is, it’s got the people spooked,” he says. “Got me spooked, if I’m honest. I don’t like something I can’t explain.”

“Well, don’t worry, man,” Peter tells him, smiling and leaning back in his seat. “You got the Guardians of the Galaxy on the case now. We’ll have it figured out in no time.”

Chapter Text

“… Haunted,” Gamora repeats, struggling to hide the skepticism in her voice.

In her peripheral she sees Nebula cross her arms, eyes narrowing in undisguised suspicion at the elderly Uӓdarian woman in front of them, and honestly, Gamora can’t say she blames her.

But the woman only gives a sagely nod, her frizzy greenish curls bouncing with the movement, and she leans over her cart of goods to devote her full attention to the two of them.

“Oh, yes,” she says. Her eyes, pale icy-blue and ringed with bright orange make up, shine with tears that strike Gamora as something… less than genuine. “Yes, yes, absolutely. Can you not feel it? The energy that hangs around this place? It’s a terrible, terrible thing for a soul to find itself trapped in the world of the living. Just terrible.”

She tuts, clicking her tongue and shaking her head.

“And you think that these—” Gamora has to pause, willing herself to say it without sounding too condescending — “these souls are responsible for these people disappearing. Is that right?”

The woman hums in agreement, nodding again.

Nebula audibly scoffs, earning her an annoyed glance from the old woman.

And Gamora subtly side-steps so that she’s halfway between the old woman and her sister, because really, the last thing she needs is for Nebula to end up threatening dismemberment on another Uӓdarian citizen.

Plus, the woman may be elderly, but she’s hardly defenseless. She’s nearly of height with Gamora, in a sleeveless tattered tunic that makes it easy to see the wiry muscle beneath her wrinkling weathered skin, and Gamora hasn’t failed to notice the dagger holstered at the woman’s waist, too. And while she may not technically be a true threat to Nebula or to Gamora, an altercation with her would still likely lead to a genuine fight breaking out.

And Gamora would very much prefer not to be arrested today.

“What makes you think that these… souls are the reason for the disappearances?” she asks, her voice carefully level, hands on her hips. Her own skepticism aside, Gamora has to give this woman the benefit of the doubt; it’s been over an hour, and she’s the first Uӓdarian citizen at all that’s even seemed willing to speak with them.

The old woman directs another wary glance toward Nebula before those eyes are back on Gamora. She beckons Gamora closer, leaning in, and when Gamora obliges the woman lowers her voice to a conspiratorial whisper.

“Well, I’ve seen it, haven’t I?”

Gamora blinks in surprise, raising her eyebrows. “You have?”

“Mm,” the woman hums. “Afraid I did. With mine own two eyes. It’s a terrible sight to behold, it is.”

“You saw someone being taken? Or just one of those… souls?”

The woman nods again. “Aye, child. They haunt in the night, creeping about when the people are at their most… complacent, you know, when no one is on alert. And they snatch up anyone who’s found unawares.” She makes a quick grabbing motion in front of her with both hands. “Terrible, it is, just terrible.”

“You saw that happen?” Gamora asks, because the woman has yet to confirm it. “You saw it personally?”

“Of course,” the woman insists. “Like I said, child, mine own two eyes.” She widens those eyes now, pointing at them with two fingers.

“Where?” Gamora asks her. “And what did it look like?”

“Ooh, not to worry, child, not to worry!” the woman assures her, all sense of foreboding gone from her voice as she leans back, gesturing excitedly at the assortment of goods on her cart. Her face splits into a toothy grin, carving deep laugh lines into her cheeks. “I’ve got plenty here you can use to protect yourself and your— er, your scary little friend over there,” she says with another wary glance at Nebula. Then she lifts a potted plant off the corner of the cart and waves it in Gamora’s face. “You see, this here is a Contraxian Nightshade bush. The leaves wilt in the presence of evil spirits, so you’ll never have to be caught unawares—”

Nebula groans, rolling her eyes, and she snags Gamora by the upper arm. Not hard enough to force, but enough to make her meaning clear. “Let’s go. We’re wasting our time with this idiot.”

Gamora sighs, offering the woman an apologetic look that she doesn’t really mean, and she turns on her heel to follow Nebula through the bustling Markets District, easily slipping into the crowd and letting the natural flow of it carry them off.

Well, she thinks, that was disappointing.

“The first person to offer up any information at all,” Gamora laments aloud, falling into step beside her sister, “and it was a marketing gimmick.”

“It was,” Nebula agrees, shoving the bulk of a seven-foot-tall Kronan out of her way as she continues along the road. “But she did seem genuine. She may have actually believed it.”

Gamora raises an eyebrow. “What, you think this place really is haunted?”

“I never said I believe it,” Nebula says, rolling her eyes again. “I said she seemed to.”

“So, you don’t think it’s haunted.”

Nebula shoots her a look. “Obviously not.”

Gamora shrugs. She hadn’t believed it, either, and she knows the reason Nebula is saying as much, too. Both of them are plenty well acquainted with death by now, well enough that if something like souls trapped in the world of the living were a possibility, they’d both have known that a long, long time ago.

It’s the stuff of fantasy. The ravings of an old woman who’s either boldly lying to sell her wares, or who’s been chewing on one too many tranza leaves.

“So we have a grand total of one witness so far,” Gamora says as they duck and weave and shove their way through the crowd, making their way north. “And she’s of… let’s say very questionable sanity. Does that about sum it up?”

Nebula ducks around a crowd of Xeronians haggling with some kind of fish seller, and she huffs an annoyed sigh. “That sums it up, yes.”

“Does this place strike you as a bit odd?”

Loki wrinkles his nose at the crowds around him, unable to shake a strange feeling creeping up his spine. Something’s… off, and the fact that he can’t quite place the cause only puts him further on edge. And it’s so loud, all these people chatting and shouting over one another and the bustle of the markets. It’s exactly the kind of chaos he doesn’t like, the kind over which he has no control whatsoever, the kind in which he has trouble making his own voice heard above the racket.

In any case, Drax hadn’t been paying attention at all when he spoke — though that, of course, is no surprise. They’ve only just reached the Markets District from its southern end, the gleaming metal high rises of the city giving way to four- and five-story buildings of decades old beige concrete and blood red brick, the first ramshackle little stands just beginning to crop up as they walk further north, and already Drax has gotten distracted.

Loki turns to find him having stopped several yards behind. There’s a middle-aged Sivian pushing a rickety old cart piled high with all manner of swords and daggers, not to mention the assortment of what look like small grenades dangling from wires over the cart’s edge, and they’d evidently taken one single look at Drax and brought the cart to a halt in the middle of the crowd to let him look over the collection.

Typical.

Loki huffs a sigh and weaves through the crowd to join him.

“… best quality blades you’ll find this side of the galaxy, friend,” the Sivian is saying to Drax, who immediately pulls one off the pile to look it over. “Handmade with precision, every last piece.”

Loki steps up beside him, his hands in his pockets. Drax glances up at him, then looks back down at the blade he’s balancing between his hands. An ornate jeweled handle gives way to two feet of polished steel, the blade bent in an odd sort of curve with two points at its end.

“It is a fine weapon indeed,” Drax says.

Loki shrugs one shoulder. “The jewels are a bit much.”

“Ah,” Drax says, in the sort of tone that Loki has learned by now means he’s about to disagree, and he tosses the blade up into the air to catch it by its handle, “but think of how the ostentatious colors will distract my foes as I slice them into pieces!”

The seller nods. “Very true.”

Loki raises an eyebrow. “What foes?”

Drax opens his mouth to answer, closes it, and shrugs.

Loki rolls his eyes. “And at any rate, you’re hardly in need of a sword. We’ve already got more weapons than we know what to do with.”

That’s an understatement, of course, given Quill’s purchase-happy spending habits and Rocket’s kleptomania and the occasional weapons gifted to them after some of the assignments they’ve picked up. And that’s just what they’ve got stored on the ship, to say nothing of the hundreds of weapons he’s carrying on his person at any given time.

Drax makes a noncommittal noise from the back of his throat, tipping the sword back and forth, testing its balance, and Loki decides he’s better off not bothering.

He doesn’t leave — it wouldn’t do to lose Drax in this massive marketplace and have to go through the exhausting endeavor of tracking him back down — but he turns on the spot, directing his attention elsewhere, eyes scanning over the milling crowd.

Mantis and Quill should be finished meeting with the Uädarian officer right about now, and Loki expects to catch sight of the Benatar flying overhead quite soon as the two of them make their way to the rendezvous point Quill’s designated. Rocket and Groot should be trekking up through this area any minute now, making their way north from the Waterfront Districts, but as of yet Loki sees no sign of them; no confused looks from the crowd looking down as a two-foot-tall rodent gruffly shoves through their legs, no indignant shouts as Groot runs headlong into people because he refuses to lift his eyes from that ridiculous video game of his. No Gamora or Nebula, either, but he imagines they’ll have already left the Markets District by now anyway.

No faces he recognizes. And there are a lot of faces. Uädarian, Xandarian, Contraxian, Easik, all manner of species jumbled together and shoving at one another to get to wherever they’re trying to go. Loki spots the head of a Kronan above all the others, some thirty yards away, and he swears he catches a glimpse of a tentacle somewhere off to the right. An A’askavariian perhaps, though Loki’s not entirely sure.

It’s then that he spots it.

“Drax.”

“Hmm?” Drax asks, but Loki keeps his eyes forward, on the tiny little Krylorian clutching a poster in her hands. She’s barely four feet of pink skin and blue hair, dwarfed by a raggedy sweater that falls down to her knees and seemingly alone in this massive crowd.

But really, it’s not the child itself that concerns him.

It’s the poster. The girl is in the midst of an attempt to tack it up onto a shop wall, hopping up to try and get it high enough for the average patron to see it. Loki can only make out a few details from this distance and with the child’s erratic jumps, but he does catch the word stamped along the poster’s top edge in big, bold lettering.

MISSING.

“Excuse me!” Loki calls out, striding through the crowd toward her. He hears Drax dropping the sword back onto the Sivian’s cart and thumping along behind him, but Loki hardly pays him any mind.

The little Krylorian girl stops in her frantic jumping and whirls around, her already large eyes growing impossibly wide at the sight of the two of them walking in her direction, her fingers tightening on the edges of her poster so that the paper begins to crinkle. Her entire body tenses as she takes a tentative step back, and Loki recognizes that look immediately, the wary look in her eyes that says she’s about to start running.

If she does, the chances are slim that they’ll be able to find her in this crowd again.

Loki dodges around a particularly large Contraxian and slips past what is definitely an A’askavariian loudly haggling at one of the stands, and he raises one hand toward the girl in a sign of surrender. “It’s alright,” he says, at a normal volume now that he’s close enough that she’ll hear him, “we’re simply—”

His voice is cut off, though, by a meaty fist grasping the back of his collar and yanking him back, and Loki nearly bowls over a small group of Sneeper women before he rights himself and whirls on the culprit.

Drax doesn’t seem fazed by the fact that Loki is glaring daggers at him and very close to conjuring an actual dagger with which to stab him. In fact, he doesn’t so much as glance at Loki after pulling him back. His eyes remain trained on the little girl, and he steps right around Loki to plant himself firmly between them.

And then, bizarrely, he sits down.

He just… drops, sits down on his arse in the middle of the concrete walkway, heedless of the crowds all around them, just a few yards away from the Krylorian girl. And for a moment, Loki’s far too perplexed by what the hell he’s doing to give much thought to the idea of stabbing him anymore.

“What are you doing?” Loki asks, frowning at the back of Drax’s head and flicking his gaze up to the young girl.

Drax twists at the waist to look up at him. “You were frightening her,” he says, then turns back toward the girl. “Krylorians are weak and fragile, so their children are easily frightened. I am bringing myself closer to her height so that she may not notice how intimidating and powerful I am.”

Loki frowns, looking up at the girl. “… Right.”

But really, as ridiculous as Drax’s reasoning sounds, the girl has at least frozen where she is instead of running away. And Loki has to admit that he has next to no experience when it comes to dealing with children, let alone children of a foreign planet. The closest he’d ever come was on the Statesman in that precious short time between Ragnarok and the arrival of Thanos, and even that had been a scant few interactions, and all with Asgardian children, which are made of somewhat tougher stuff than most.

So Drax, as idiotic as he might be, is technically within his own area of expertise at the moment.

Loki bites back any snide comments and takes a reluctant step back, yielding the floor — er, ground — to him.

The girl still hasn’t run away. She’s taken, instead, to staring between the two of them with those wide, wary eyes, clutching the poster tighter.

“Hello,” Drax says.

And if Loki had been expecting him to sound uncharacteristically gentle, well, he was very wrong about that. Drax remains as gruff and formal as always, but surprisingly, his demeanor and general Drax-ness doesn’t seem to frighten the girl at all. Loki sees her chewing on the inside of her cheek, her attention less halved between the two of them now and more directed at Drax. 

She doesn’t respond to his greeting. Instead she says, “I’m not doing anything wrong.”

“Of course not,” Drax says, nodding. The girl’s eyes flick up to Loki and then back to Drax, clutching the poster more tightly to her chest. “We did not think you were.”

Her brows knit together. “Who’re you?”

“I am Drax the Destroyer, legendary warrior and Guardian of the Galaxy,” Drax answers without hesitation. Someone in the crowd runs right into him where he’s sitting, their knee jabbing into his shoulder, but aside from lilting to the side with a grunt, he doesn’t acknowledge it. Loki grabs a fistful of the person’s shirt and roughly shoves them away without a word, and Drax continues unimpeded, “You look like you have the bearing of a fine warrior yourself.”

Well that’s laying it on a little thick, Loki thinks on instinct.

But then he realizes this is Drax, so the absolute sincerity in his voice can be nothing but that. Actual, genuine sincerity. Perhaps he’s seeing something in this scrawny little thing that Loki isn’t, but whatever it is Loki cannot even begin to guess.

In any case, the girl seems to appreciate it. She draws herself up as tall as she can, lifting her chin.

“Yeah,” she says. “I can fight.”

“Truly, a warrior fit for future legends,” Drax agrees with a sagely nod. “And what is a fine warrior such as yourself doing in this place?”

The girl’s eyes move from Drax to Loki and back to Drax, the concerned frown on her face never once wavering, and she slowly pulls the poster away from her chest to glance down at it before returning her gaze to them. Loki has to tamp down on his initial shock that what Drax is doing actually seems to be working, and he schools his expression into one of perfect neutrality instead, waiting.

Eventually the girl answers, “I’m putting up a poster. I wanna get it up high where people’ll see it.”

“Ah, then perhaps we can be of assistance!”

The girl’s frown deepens, confusion nesting itself into her delicate features for a moment, and she asks, “You’ll help?”

“Of course,” Drax tells her, and the girl glances up to Loki as if maybe she’ll be able to sense any deception by keeping both of them in her sights. He gives a quick nod as well.

Drax plants one palm on the concrete beneath him and heaves himself up to standing with a grunt, but even when standing he keeps his knees bent so as not to tower over the girl quite as much. The prosthetic beneath his right knee gives off a near silent whirr from the effort of bearing his weight at the odd angle, but it holds, as it always does.

He reaches out for the poster, and miraculously, the girl slowly hands it over.

Loki reads it over Drax’s shoulder. There are no pictures at all, because the entire thing has been written by hand in the childish sort of scrawl that can only mean this girl crafted the poster herself. Beneath the large block lettering along the top proclaiming MISSING, there’s a description of a boy, aged fifteen, with pink skin and blue hair and large green eyes. His height is listed as what Loki imagines must be a foot or so taller than this girl, which would still have him at a full head shorter than Loki or Drax.

Loki asks, “Your brother?”

She’s not looking at him, her eyes unwavering from the poster. “Uh-huh.”

“You’re certain he’s truly missing?” Loki asks. “It says here he was last seen just this morning. He might have run off, or gotten lost.”

At that, she stiffens a bit, and she hesitates for a second before drawing herself up taller. “I know he’s missing. Everybody’s going missing. They get in their heads too much, and then they don’t come back.”

Loki frowns. They get in their heads too much? Now, what in the world could she mean by that?

Drax turns the poster over to see that the girl has already attached some sort of adhesive to the back, and then without another word he marches up to the shop wall and slaps the poster up onto it, just below his and Loki’s eye level, a foot or so higher than the girl would have been able to manage on her own.

“What do you mean by…?” Loki starts to ask, glancing down at the girl again, but he cuts himself off with an annoyed huff. “Well, that’s rude.”

“Hmm?” Drax turns, looking this way and that for the girl that seems to have vanished into thin air.

“She’s gone,” Loki says, rolling his eyes. “Got what she wanted and ran off.”

Not that he blames her, necessarily. She was small, and relatively helpless, and he and Drax hardly possess the friendliest of faces in even the safest of places, let alone a place like this. Loki shrugs, scans his eyes over the poster one last time and commits it to memory, and then heads off through the crowd in the general direction of the rendezvous point.

“Let’s see if the others had any better luck, then, shall we?”

“Yeesh.” 

Rocket shakes his head, carefully stepping on the cobblestones along the Waterfront District road, trying real hard to avoid all the sopping wet dirt between them that’s glistening like toxic waste and stinking up the whole place.

Already made that mistake once and got mud caked up to his damn knee a few minutes ago. Yick.

“This city’s a frickin’ dump, ain’t it?”

“I am Groot.”

“Yeah, we seen worse, but that don’t make it better.”

“I am Groot.”

“I know that’s the definition of better, I meant — never mind,” Rocket gives in. Groot’s getting a smarter and smarter mouth on him as the years go by. Frickin’ kids. He shakes his head again and pulls that holo-map out from his pocket so he can figure out where the hell they’re going. “Where’d Quill say the rendezvous was gonna be?”

“I am Groot.”

Rocket taps the blank region furthest north, right under the massive stretch of trees, and he shifts the screen back and forth. “Yeah, okay,” he sighs. “Just gotta fight our way through the frickin’ markets, I guess.”

“I am Groot?”

He shrugs, hopping off the last cobblestone onto the semi-dry dirt path that leads straight into the Markets District, and he pockets the holo-map again. “I dunno. How the hell should I know if they sell Xandarian batteries here?”

“I am Groot.”

“Well maybe if you’d put that thing down for two frickin’ seconds, the battery’d last a little longer.”

At that, Groot mumbles something under his breath that Rocket just knows is something he ain’t allowed to say, but he lets it slide this time. It’s been a long day, Groot’s in a mood, and Rocket doesn’t have the energy to play Dad right now anyway.

They’ve been traipsing through the Waterfront Districts all day trying to get any little scrap of info out of anybody about all these missing people, and it didn’t seem to matter who they asked or how they asked — not a single one of these idiots offered even the slightest bit of something helpful.

Rocket tried being his normal charming self. Then he tried being mean. He tried being threatening. He even tried being nice.

Nothing. Nada. Zip. It’s like these people think even talking about the disappearances is gonna jinx them into disappearing next.

Rocket sighs, closing his eyes. “New quadroshot hadron blaster, new quadroshot hadron blaster,” he mutters to himself. That’s how he’s gonna spend the reward money. He’s gonna pick it apart and extract the quadropole core and rewire the old Hadron Enforcer so it can fire multiple shots per second. It’s gonna be kickass, and this bullshit mission’ll be worth every stinking minute. “New quadroshot hadron blaster.”

The crowds start pressing in a little more the deeper they get into the Markets District, and Rocket starts having to weave around some legs to avoid getting kicked. Behind him, he hears Groot run into at least four separate people, but he doesn’t pay that much mind. Easy to know where Groot’s at, at least.

More people, though, means more people to question.

Cool.

“Hey!” Rocket shouts, looking around at anyone short enough for him to make eye contact with. “Anybody know anything about some people goin’ missing? Huh? Anyone?”

Predictably, most of them just shoot him funny looks and keep on moving.

“Hey, what about you, huh?” Rocket asks.

He pokes a lady in the hip, jabbing until she finally looks down and blinks at him with these big wide purplish eyes. “I— I’m sorry, excuse me?”

“Yeah, hey. Guardian of the Galaxy here.”

The look in her eyes doesn’t quite make it to recognition, but it’s something close. “Oh,” she says, glancing from him to Groot and back. “Well, I… um. What seems to be the problem?”

“We’re tryin’ to figure out what’s goin’ on with all these people gone missing, asking around, you know. Gettin’ info. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about any of that, would ya?”

Her face falls. “Oh, I’m afraid I don’t— um, no. So sorry—”

“Hey, lady, talking about it ain’t gonna do—”

But she’s already backing away, folding into the crowd and out of sight a second later, and Rocket groans, dragging his claws down over his face. Yeah. That’s been pretty much the norm so far.

New quadroshot hadron blaster, he reminds himself.

All gonna be worth it.

They make their way through the Markets District, and Rocket keeps trying to get some answers out of everybody they pass, with about the same success rate he’s had all day. For every ten people he asks, he’d guess about seven don’t say a single word to him — which is frickin’ rude — and of the three that do, two of them gets all twitchy and scared once he brings up the people going missing, and one says something all cryptic and creepy about how there’s something not right about it, which… duh.

“Oh, yeah, it ain’t right,” says a big burly Achernonian when Rocket asks him, somewhere on the northern end of the markets. He’s about four times Rocket’s height and twice as wide as Drax, shaking his head and chewing on something that reeks.

“What do you mean, it ain’t right, tiny?” Rocket asks, waving him along. “Come on. Details.”

Tiny shakes his head again, picks at his teeth with a pinky nail. “It’s somethin’ supernatural. Spooky. Ya know.”

“I am Groot?”

“Yeah, I’m Kardón. Nice to meet ya, little guy.”

Rocket doesn’t bother correcting him. Instead he translates, “Whaddaya mean, supernatural? Like magic?”

He shrugs his big old boulder-sized shoulders. “Dunno. Could be. Wouldn’t surprise me none. All’s I know is, you wanna stay away from that forest.” He shakes his head again. “Place ain’t right.”

“Let me guess,” Rocket deadpans. “It’s spooky.”

Tiny grunts in the affirmative, and Rocket rolls his eyes.

“Right. Yeah. Got it.”

A voice comes from behind him, then, low and croaky. “He is right, you know.”

Rocket turns around with a raised eyebrow, only to find what’s gotta be the oldest damn lady he’s ever seen in his life standing right behind him. And standing is a bit of a relative word there; she’s hunched over so much that it makes Rocket’s back hurt just to look at, both of her brittle little hands folded over the handle of a cane. Her mottled green-and-blue-and-yellow skin is blotted with brown spots all over, her eyes blank and milky white.

And she’s barely any taller than Rocket is, which is… not something he’s super used to seeing.

“Yeah?” he asks, once he’s registered what she said.

The little old lady nods, closing her eyes for a second, a frown set somewhere in that wrinkled face. “Oh, yes.”

“Yeah,” says Tiny, pointing at her. “See? She gets it. Spooky.”

He pops another glob of whatever gross stuff he’s chewing on, and he ambles his way through the crowd, evidently satisfied with the conversation.

Groot, looking up from his game and actually making eye contact with the old lady — definitely a first for the day — asks, “I am Groot?”

Rocket opens his mouth to translate, but the old bat beats him to it. “I cannot say if any of this is the work of magic,” she answers, so croaky it hurts Rocket’s throat, her words clipped with some kinda weirdo accent. She looks thoughtful as she smiles wryly up at Groot. “But I do know there is a terrible, terrible force in that forest.”

“The forest?” Rocket asks. “What, up, uh… that way?”

He points in the vague direction of north, and the woman nods. “You would do well to keep your distance, little ones.”

Little ones, she says, like Groot ain’t a full foot and a half taller than her.

“Right,” Rocket says. “And why’s that, huh?”

She shudders, and from the suddenly heartbroken look on her face Rocket starts getting a little worried she’s gonna start crying right here and now. Is she one of those people that’s insane enough to cry in front of a stranger? He really frickin’ hopes not.

“Something dark is taking over this place,” she says, shaking her head with a scowl and directing those blank white eyes up at their surroundings. “I have already lost so many of my own children to it.”

Ah, Rocket thinks. Okay. Well, that explains the maybe-almost-crying, anyway.

“I am Groot.”

“Yeah, he’s right. They ain’t lost forever, lady,” Rocket says. “Why you think we’re going around asking about it? We’re gonna get to the bottom of whatever it is and stop whoever the hell’s doing it.”

“Oh, I am not so inclined to think it can be stopped. Delayed?” She shrugs, tips her head to the side. “Could be. But never stopped. Many have tried. Just as many have failed.”

“Yeah, well,” Rocket shrugs. “You got the Guardians of the Galaxy on the case now. Ain’t nothing to worry about.”

The old lady smiles, just a little, like she doesn’t really believe him. “I will keep that in mind, little one. You both… take care, yes? Look out for one another.”

“Yeah huh,” Rocket says, nudging Groot along so they can keep walking. “Will do, lady.”

Groot smiles and waves goodbye to her as they keep on moving through the markets, and then his attention is right back to his video game.

“The forest, huh?” Rocket thinks aloud as the crowds start thinning out; they're getting closer to the fishing villages up north, judging by the smell. “First lead we got, really. Guess I’ll take it. What’s the deal with them thinkin’ it’s all something supernatural, eh?”

“I am Groot.”

“Nah, there ain’t nothing magic around here other than His Royal Crankiness, and it ain’t like he’s making people disappear.”

“I am Groot.”

“Yeah, I know if he can do magic then other people probably can, too. But we ain’t never seen anyone using magic to make a bunch of people disappear.”

“I am Groot.”

“That’s— okay, yeah, technically he was tryin’ to. Nebs stabbed his eye out before he could though. It don’t count. And no one here’s got a fancy Uru gauntlet, neither.”

“I am Groot.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Rocket says, glancing up as the telltale sound of the Benatar whirs overhead. “We’ll look for some Xandarian batteries later, smartass.” Then he beckons Groot forward and hops up onto a little bridge that leads out of the Markets District. “Come on. We got a rendezvous to get to.”

Chapter Text

As the Benatar lifts off from the police precinct’s roof, a ping sounds from the ship’s communications system, and Peter looks over his shoulder to see Mantis bringing up the caller’s info on the little handheld module built into her seat.

“There is a call coming in from…” she says, and she leans over the module’s screen, squinting at the name. “I do not know how to pronounce it.”

Peter leans back in the driver’s seat and cranes his neck to get a look, but Mantis isn’t close enough for him to make out the letters. She decided she wanted to sit in her usual seat near the back of the cockpit for some reason, even though they’re the only ones on board and, if you ask Peter, Drax’s seat is definitely the comfiest.

“Eh,” he shrugs, turning his attention back to the windshield. “Throw it on up, let’s see who it is.”

She does, tapping a few buttons so the line successfully connects, and the vague silhouette of a person flickers into view on the right hand side of the windshield.

As the police precinct shrinks below them and the wide expanse of Urunia opens up all around them, the image on the screen sharpens up until they can make the guy out a little better; he’s an older Aakon dude who’s got a sort of drawn look to him — high cheekbones, a slight nose, close-set eyes — that give the unsettling impression that someone took that neon yellow Aakon skin and pulled it as tight as they could over the guy’s skull.

As soon as he sees Peter and Mantis, though, his mouth opens in a wide smile that makes him seem way friendlier than a face like that should probably allow.

“Ah!” he says, leaning back in his own seat and clapping his hands together. “Guardians of the Galaxy, am I correct?”

“Yep, that’s us,” Peter tells him, piloting them up and in the general direction of the fishing villages up north. “Or, y’know, we’re about a quarter of ‘em, anyway. Mr., uh…” he cocks his head to the side, squinting at the letters lining the bottom of the screen, “… Axe-hat?”

“Axzhaat,” the guy corrects, not unkindly. “I take it you are Mr. Starlord?”

“Just Star-Lord’s fine.” Peter gestures with a nod back at Mantis. “And that there’s Mantis.”

Axzhaat bows his head in Mantis’ direction, and Peter notices he’s wearing what the people on this planet consider formal attire, which Peter still thinks just looks like a shiny robe with a couple metal-and-gold emblems sewn onto it. Guy must be a diplomat or something.

“Pleasure to meet you both,” Axzhaat says. “Now, I don’t want to bother you for long, so I’ll get right to it. I hear you and the rest of your team are conducting an investigation, is that right? Looking into all these people going missing?”

“Uh… yeah, that’s right,” Peter says, shooting a quick narrow-eyed look back at Mantis. How in the hell did he know that? Peter shakes his head and looks back at the screen.

Who is this guy, anyway? He seems nice enough, and he’s not setting off any of Peter’s internal something ain’t right alarms, but…

“Look, Mr. Axzhaat, we really shouldn’t, uh, talk about it with anybody outside the team,” Peter tells him. “Y’know, not ‘til we got a better idea of what’s going on. Better to keep everything tight. Confidential. You know how it is?”

“Oh!” Axzhaat says, eyes widening in apparently genuine alarm, and he shakes his head, waving his hands back and forth. “No, no, no, Mr. Starlord, you misunderstand. My apologies, my apologies. I should have explained properly. I’m not a mere concerned citizen or a member of the press or a police officer, you see. I’m a benefactor.”

“A what now?”

“A benefactor! Well, the benefactor, really,” he says, tilting his head and pulling a face like he’s almost embarrassed to admit it. “You were all offered a handsome reward for successfully finding whoever is responsible for all the disappearances, yes?”

“Uh, yeah, but…”

“Well, where did you imagine all those Units are coming from, Mr. Starlord?”

Peter blinks, sitting back in his seat as the Benatar levels off and coasts through the clouds. “Oh. Uh, I dunno, I guess we just figured it was a bunch of the missing people’s families.”

“That is true, it is,” Axzhaat agrees, nodding enthusiastically. “So many Uӓdarian citizens have been affected by this, and so, so many of them have contributed to the reward, too. You’ll find that that’s quite reflective of the Uӓdarian people — we’re a community, you see. And nowhere more so than in the great city of Urunia. However!” He lifts a finger. “I personally took it upon myself to arrange and organize all the contributions into one cohesive reward, to… help expedite the discovery of whoever is responsible for all this nastiness. More than half of the funding comes directly from my company, as well.”

“Your company?” Mantis asks.

“Yes, yes, of course,” Axzhaat says. “I’m the head of Urunia Mining Supply, so I’m in the unique and fortunate position of having more than the funds to spare to help bring an end to these disappearances. Anything to make the people in my city feel safe again. And that,” he says as he leans forward, gripping the armrests of his chair and raising his eyebrows — or what passes for eyebrows on a hairless Aakon — at both of them, “brings me to the reason for my call.”

Peter asks, “Which is…?”

“Preemptive funding!” Axzhaat exclaims, leaning back and bringing his hands together again.

Peter raises an eyebrow. “You wanna pay us up front? You serious?”

“Of course, of course. Or, well, at least a portion of the payment, at any rate.”

Mantis asks, “But why would you want to pay us before we’ve completed the mission?”

“Because…” Axzhaat hesitates, then sighs. Some of his cheery demeanor flags a little. “Listen, Mr. Starlord, Miss Mantis, I’ll be blunt, yes? I have quite a lot riding on this person, whoever they are, being caught and these disappearances being put to an end as soon as possible. I honestly don’t care what it takes. It might be terrible of me to say, but… well, I don’t even care all that much if the person is caught alive or dead.”

He winces, like he hates the fact that he had to say that out loud, and really, Peter’s not too surprised by that. They’ve been talking for all of five minutes, and Peter can already tell that Axzhaat is the sort of bubbly, cheery, idealistic guy who’s been swimming in cash his whole life and who’s never had to get his hands dirty. Probably never even seen anyone get their hands dirty.

“I mean, I have children of my own, a family here in the city, not to mention my customers and my employees…” Axzhaat adds, shaking his head. “What I’m saying is, obviously there is a generous reward waiting for you, should you catch the person responsible. But should you need any funding upfront, anything at all that might help you seek this person out more efficiently — money for weapons, equipment, whatever else the case may be — I will be more than happy to provide it.”

“That’s awful generous of you, man. Thanks.”

“No trouble at all, no trouble at all. So I take it you’ll accept upfront funding, then?”

Peter glances away from Axzhaat’s image on the screen to dip the Benatar down below the clouds. Technically, he supposes they don’t actually need any extra funding while they’re on the mission — they’ve already got just about every weapon under the sun, and anything else they might need Rocket’s sure to able to rig together with whatever they’ve got on hand.

Still. A little extra cash would lift everyone’s spirits a bit, get them motivated, make them a little less likely to be at each other’s throats when and if the mission gets tough.

“Yeah,” Peter says, nodding. “Don’t see why not.”

“Excellent! I will have it wired directly to your ship, yes? I will admit I have no idea what sort of funds are required for this type of thing, but how’s… oh, one hundred thousand Units to start?”

Peter has to cough to cover up the fact that he almost just said holy shit out loud, and he clears his throat and nods.

“Yep, that should, uh— that should cover it. Thanks.”

“Wonderful. Good luck on your mission, Mr. Starlord, Miss Mantis,” he says with a cordial little bow of his head at each of them. “I’ll be in touch!”

The image winks away, and Peter lets out a low whistle, dipping the Benatar down a little further.

“He was very nice,” Mantis observes.

“Yeah, very nice and super friggin’ loaded,” Peter says, nodding. “A hundred thousand Units before we even catch the bad guy. Damn.”

“It is quite a lot.”

“Yeah. Something tells me that guy’s never even seen a gun, let alone knows what weapons usually cost.”

“He could be overestimating on purpose. He seems to want us to complete our mission and catch the person responsible very badly.”

Peter shrugs one shoulder. “Yeah, true. Guess we can’t blame him for that, huh? Especially if he’s got kids.”

“Oh, no. Certainly not.”

Peter watches as the northern end of the city races beneath them, a flickering mesh of blue and red and glistening silver. He shouldn’t be surprised by the amount of cash Axzhaat’s offering them, really. Urunia and all its people so far have pretty much reeked of money, all those huge high-rises and gorgeous clay-and-brick buildings smushed together and all the people milling about in between them like a bunch of very busy, well dressed ants. 

At least, that much was true of the Financial District, where the PD has its headquarters and where Mantis and Peter have spent all their time so far. It’s been true of everyone they’ve talked to so far, too.

And because of that first impression, Peter’s gotten a very particular image in his head when he thinks of the fishing villages up north.

He pictured boathouses. Docks and big old sailboats dotting the edge of a sun soaked bay, the kind of thing you’d see on a postcard back on Earth. He pictured houses two or three stories high, all pressed in close together like they were in the city.

And that is… not what greets them when he lowers the Benatar down over the fishing villages.

Peter frowns at the drab muddy hill and the little creek running through it, the little itty bitty huts here and there looking a few bad days away from falling apart, and honest, the first word that comes to his brain is yikes.

Off to the left, there’s a faint twinkle of the distant ocean off the west coast of the city. To the right, the forest stretches on and on and on as far as the eye can see, even from this high up, except for a few places where it looks like the city’s erected a few construction zones and started downing trees, forming little brownish blemishes in a nearly unbroken stretch of blue and purple leaves.

Below them, though, it’s nothing but brown and yellowish brown and greenish brown. Peter passes the whole strip of the fishing villages and dips the Benatar all the way down to the ground, parking her under a little shade at the edge of the forest.

As soon as he and Mantis get out of their seats and open up the door to get outside, Peter wrinkles his nose and blinks against the stinging in his eyes.

“Hoo boy. Yeah, this is definitely a fishing village, alright.”

“Yes, it is,” Mantis agrees as they step down the ramp. “That is what Sergeant Braz told us.”

“That’s— no, I meant like, the smell.”

“Oh,” Mantis says. She closes her eyes and takes in a slow inhale. “Is this what a fishing village typically smells like?”

“Uh. No, it’s what fish smells like. Y’know, like… low tide?”

“Oh, I see.” Mantis nods. “Okay.”

Peter chews on his cheek, looking at her out of the corner of his eye. Even after all these years, it’s still a little disheartening when he gets a reminder of just how much Mantis has yet to experience, just how much she was sheltered from in the years she spent growing up with only Ego around.

At least they’ve made a dent in that list, what with all the traveling they’ve done together.

“Like the aquarium we went to on Earth, remember?” Peter asks, smiling and nudging her with an elbow as they make their way down the dirt-and-mud path that winds from the edge of the forest down to the muddy hill dotted with little thatch-roofed huts. “The… what, fourth stop on the road trip?”

“Oh, yes,” Mantis says. “The aquarium. I remember. Rocket shattered the tank that was holding the octopus.”

Peter sighs. Course that’s the part she remembers the most. “Yep, that’s the one.”

“It was very funny.”

“Yeah, well anyway, the penguin exhibit smelled just like this.”

Mantis tilts her head. “Are penguins a type of fish?”

Peter snorts. “Nah, they just eat fish.” He shrugs. “Lots of it, I guess.”

They keep on walking toward where the team said they’d meet up, and the huts along the path, at first, seem entirely abandoned. Boarded up windows and empty front lawns — if you could call them lawns, anyway, given there ain’t much in the way of grass around here. As they make their way further and further along, though, the place seems to gain a bit of life. Some of the huts have their doors thrown open. There’s the sound of voices chatting in a few of them, plus some kind of music floating through the air from someone’s radio with a half decent beat to it. A few tan-skinned green-haired Uädarians are ambling along the path, too, and although their gazes linger on Mantis’ antennae a bit, they don’t seem to pay the two of them much mind.

After about half a mile of walking, a teetering three-story building looms up ahead on the dirt path, a crooked wooden sign posted over the door that says:

FISH N’ STUFF
Open 517 Days a Year!

“Ah-ha,” Peter says when he spots it. “There we go.”

“Is that where the others are?”

“Should be, assuming we didn’t beat ‘em here,” Peter says, squinting at the entrance. There’s some dude sitting at a little booth by the door, and beside him, Peter can just barely make out a gleaming mass of gunmetal gray sitting in the dirt. Hard to tell from this distance, but it sure looks like a waist-high pile of weapons. “Oh, yeah, that’s gotta be them.”

He ends up being right, of course. Only Nebula and Rocket would have left a pile of weapons that big outside a restaurant; those two alone probably made up about eighty percent of it. The rest, Peter sees as he and Mantis pass it on their way inside, is a couple of Drax’s and Loki’s daggers, and at the very bottom and tucked underneath everything else, Peter catches the handle of Godslayer.

The guy in the booth barely glances up at him and Mantis as they pass, but Peter tosses his phaser pistol on top of the pile anyway. Better safe than kicked out of the restaurant.

The door gives a ting as they step through it, and the inside of the place is almost totally empty, just one lone worker behind the counter and another emptying the trash bins against the back wall. Other than the Guardians of the Galaxy all packed together in the corner booth — Groot and Rocket and Nebula on one side, Loki and Drax and Gamora on the other, all of them already chowing down on plates piled high with all kinds of fried junk — there ain’t a single other patron in this place.

“Hey, thanks for finally joinin’ us! Took ya long enough.”

“Yep, good to see you, too, Rocket,” Peter answers, sliding into the booth beside Gamora and giving her a quick kiss on the cheek.

“The hell’d ya do, walk here?”

Mantis, taking the seat beside Nebula, nods and answers, “Yes, we walked from the ship.”

“I had to park her in the shade, man,” Peter defends, snagging what looks like a sauce-smothered french fry off Gamora’s plate and stuffing it into his mouth. Damn, he’s starving, and apparently she can tell, since she slides the rest of her plate over to him without a word. “Up by the woods. You know she gets overheated if I park her in the sun too long, and this planet’s got two of ‘em.”

“Yeah, well, while you’s two were having a nice stroll, we were busy—”

“Eating?” Peter asks, stuffing another few fries into his mouth.

Drax grunts his unironic agreement through a mouthful of… something, and when Peter leans forward to get a look it doesn’t much help him pinpoint what. Something deep fried.

On Drax’s other side and half leaning into the wall, Loki’s eating something that might be sushi, and he swallows a bite and says, “It’s not as if we’ve accomplished much else in the ten minutes we’ve been here.”

“That’s… very true,” Gamora agrees.

“That is not true,” Rocket argues, and he points at himself and Groot. “We found out that all these disappearin’ people got something to do with that forest.”

“But you don’t know what it has to do with the forest,” Gamora reminds him. Then, for Mantis and Peter’s sake, she adds, “Someone in the Markets District told them to stay away from it, apparently for their own safety.”

“Yeah?” Peter asks. “Who?”

Rocket shrugs, returning half his attention to his plate of fried Orloni legs. “I dunno. Some bigass Achernonian dude and an old bat.”

“Did they say why?” Mantis asks.

“Yeah. Said it’s spooky. Tellin’ ya, this whole planet’s just a buncha superstitious wackjobs.” 

“I am Groot.”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

Nebula looks up from the giant meaty leg she’s been working on, and she adds with a nod at Gamora, “A woman we spoke to believed that this area is haunted.”

“Haunted?” Peter repeats, making a face. “What, haunted haunted?”

Mantis asks, “Like ghosts?”

Gamora nods. “She seemed to believe so, yes.”

“Like I said.” Rocket shrugs. “Wackjobs.”

“I am Groot.”

Rocket snorts. “Yeah, the old lady even called it a dark force takin’ the place over.”

“A dark force?” Drax speaks up.

Peter shakes his head. “Not literally dark, dude. He means like magic.”

“Ah. I see.”

There’s a shift all around the table, then, as every single one of them turns and directs their attention to Loki, who’s midway through popping another roll of what Peter is now positive has got to be some Uädarian equivalent to sushi into his mouth, and he freezes when all of their eyes land on him. He looks from one of them to the other, deliberately chewing as slowly as possible, like he’s waiting for one of them to speak again.

When no one does, he rolls his eyes, swallows, and asks, “What?”

“What do you mean, what?” Peter asks. “Give us your input, Mr. Magic Man.”

“Yeah,” Rocket says. “So far our options are lookin’ like ghosts or magic—”

“— and you’re the only one here that knows anything about the second one,” Peter finishes for him, then he squints. “And… maybe the first one, too?” he asks, to which Loki makes a face and waves his hand in the universal gesture for so-so, and yeah, they are definitely gonna circle back around to whatever the hell story that might involve, but for now Peter just shrugs. “Okay, so, you’re our resident magic expert. What do you think?”

“Well, obviously it’s far more likely that it’s neither ghosts nor magic,” Loki says, sending them all a look that makes Peter think he’d tack on a duh at the end, if Loki were the kind of guy that would ever say duh.

“But it’s possible,” Gamora says.

“It’s always possible,” Loki answers, then shrugs one shoulder. “Technically.”

Mantis, who’s been busy eating all the vegetables off of Nebula’s plate, looks up and asks, “Would you be able to tell?”

“If someone were using magic to make these people disappear?” Loki asks. Mantis nods, and he takes another bite and chews thoughtfully, tilting his head from side to side. “In theory, yes. More or less. It’s more accurate to say I could sense if any magic were being used around me, not necessarily what it’s being used for, and it would depend on the type of magic being used, how much magic is being used, how powerful the magic is, how skilled the caster is and how much effort they put into hiding it from other sorcerers…”

“Cool,” Peter says. “So how do we turn on the magic radar?”

That one earns him a look, that very particular look he’s super used to getting at this point, and Loki tells him, “It’s not radar, and it’s not simply something that can be switched on like a machine. It’s passive.”

“So you’re saying…”

“I’m saying that there is very likely nothing magical about these disappearances at all,” Loki says. “Do you have any idea the sheer amount of magic that would be required to make nearly thirty people disappear without a trace? And not have any of them pop back up at the most inopportune moments?”

“I do not,” Drax mumbles through his food.

Peter sighs. “A lot, I’m guessing?”

“I’d have felt it before we breached the upper atmosphere,” Loki tells them, returning to his food. “If there is any magic taking place on this planet, it’s an insignificant amount, and certainly not our concern.”

“What about ghosts?” Mantis asks.

Loki opens his mouth like he’s about to make some smartass comment, but instead his shoulders drop half an inch and he sighs. He’s got a habit of softening his barbs when it comes to Mantis, even if he’s never gonna admit it — not that that should surprise Peter all that much, given Nebula’s the exact same way.

“Not… exactly my area of expertise,” Loki admits. “But spirits are exceedingly rare in the living world. It is remarkably unlikely.”

“Hey, that’s fine by me,” Peter says, leaning back. “Give me some good old fashioned bad guys any day. You guys find anything else?”

Drax grunts an affirmative, then clears his throat as he sets down the last of his deep fried somethings. “Yes, Loki and I spoke to a very small Krylorian child in the Markets District.”

“Mm. Right,” Loki nods. “She said her brother went missing just this morning. So we have a twenty-ninth disappearance to add to the list.”

“So they’re not stopping,” Gamora says.

“Awesome,” Peter says with a heavy sigh. “No pressure, then.”

He digs around in his pocket for the holoscreen, and he pulls it out with a flick that projects a map into the air beside their table, backed up enough that all of them can see it.

“So here’s what me and Mantis got. The guy we talked to at the precinct, Braz, he’s got all the disappearances mapped out based on where they went missing from. And… yeah, the Markets District is definitely the worst, but now that you mention it—”

“It seems the closer you get to the forest, the more likely you might be to go missing,” Gamora finishes for him, eyes scanning over the map.

“But we’re right smack in the middle of that range right now,” Rocket says. “And this place don’t seem so spooky to me.”

“I am Groot.”

“Oh, sure, now you think the place is a dump.”

“I am Groot.”

“Yeah, but a dump ain’t spooky.”

“A dump could be spooky,” Mantis argues, “if it were haunted.”

Nebula smirks at that but doesn’t comment. Rocket, on the other hand, shoots Mantis a look and asks, “And where the hell’d you ever hear of a haunted dump, huh?”

“It doesn’t matter whether we think it’s spooky or not,” Gamora interrupts. “Clearly the townspeople do.”

“Yeah, and I mean, it ain’t like we got any other leads,” Peter admits, looking over the map again. “Could be a coincidence, though. If there are slavers scooping people up, it’d be in a nice crowded place like the Markets District or in a, uh… less well-off place like here.”

Gamora nods. “And because these places border along the forest’s edge…”

“That might be making people think it’s got something to do with the forest,” Peter finishes, nodding along. “Especially since the people ‘round here are pretty superstitious.” Then he slaps his thighs and adds, “But hey! We still gotta check it out, right? Who’s down for a hike through the woods?”

With the exception of Mantis smiling and raising her hand, the rest of them answer with either resounding silence or varying discontented grumbles.

“Rhetorical question, a-holes,” Peter says. “We’re all going.”

“Nuh-uh,” Rocket objects. “Someone’s gotta stay behind and watch the—”

“I call staying behind to watch the Benatar,” Nebula immediately cuts in, to which Rocket lets out a loud groan and smacks her in the arm.

“That ain’t fair!”

“She called it first,” Drax says with a shrug. “That is the rule.”

“Guys, seriously, it’s not gonna be that bad,” Peter tells them, opening up his hands. “Come on. We’re just gonna pop in, keep our eyes peeled, wander around a little, and pop right back out. Won’t be more than a couple hours, tops.”

“Then, with any luck,” Gamora adds, “we will have a new lead.”

Peter slings an arm around her shoulders. “Exactly, and we’ll be that much closer to all that reward money. Oh! And, uh, speakin’ of which,” he remembers. “The guy that’s offering up all that reward money called us up on the way here—”

“Guy?” Drax asks. “I thought it was multiple guys.”

“It is, technically,” Peter says, “but he said he’s the main, uh, benevolence?”

“Benefactor,” Loki corrects without looking up from his food.

“That was it, yes,” Mantis says, nodding. “A benefactor.”

“Anyway,” Peter says, raising his voice a bit so they quit interrupting, “he’s apparently filthy friggin’ rich, and he offered us some upfront dough to help us with the mission.”

“I am Groot?”

“Hundred thousand Units,” Peter answers.

“A hundred thousand?” Gamora asks, tilting her head and shooting him a look with a raised eyebrow.

Peter shrugs, one arm still over her shoulders. “Like I said, filthy friggin’ rich. He’s a nice guy, owns the city’s big mining company or something. Got kids and stuff, so I guess he wants us catching the bad guys sooner rather than later, you know?”

“A hundred thousand Units,” Rocket mutters, sitting back in his seat and looking a little starstruck already. “Oh, man, I’m buyin’ that quadroshot blaster now.”

“Uh, no, you’re not,” Peter corrects him. “‘Cause we still gotta split that eight ways, man. Hundred thousand divided by eight is… uh…”

“Twelve thousand five hundred,” Nebula says, in the sort of tone that says she’s appalled that he couldn’t figure that out on his own.

“Exactly.” Peter points at her. “And that blaster’s what, thirty thousand alone?”

Rocket grumbles something under his breath, sinking into his seat and returning his attention to his fried Orloni legs.

“Hey, all the more reason to follow every lead we got, right?” Peter asks. “We’re gettin’ paid good money, and we’re gonna get paid even better money once we’re all done. So… that means we’re going for a hike in the woods. No buts.”

Rocket rolls his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

“I think it sounds like fun,” Mantis says.

Peter waves a hand at her. “Thank you, Mantis!”

“I am Groot?”

“Yes, we’ll grab some Xandarian batteries first,” Rocket says. “Relax, would ya? I got some stowed on the Benatar. Sheesh.”

Between all eight of them finishing up their food, a petty argument breaking out between Rocket and Groot over the high scores on his video game, Loki nearly stabbing Drax for spilling sauce on the book he pulled out of thin air to read at the table, Nebula and Drax ordering three more plates of food each, and the absolute chaos of paying for it all, it’s a full hour and a half later by the time they pack up and go. And then it’s another twenty minutes or so before they all gather up their respective weapons from the pile they’d left outside.

Gamora pauses to tip the guy in the booth for watching over their stuff, and then, finally, they’re off.

The brighter of Uӓdar’s two suns is sinking down toward the trees by now, casting long shadows all over the fishing villages that are only slightly offset by the second, dimmer sun directly above.

Peter guesses they’ve got about another four hours of solid daylight left, and that’s… not super ideal.

“You think we should wait ‘til the morning?” he asks Gamora, falling into step beside her at the front of their little group as they make their way back up the dirt-and-mud path toward where he parked the Benatar. “Don’t want it to get dark while we’re in there, you know?”

Gamora considers that, humming as she glances up at the cloudless sky. “No, I think we should be alright. As long as we limit our search to a short one.”

“Yeah, I don’t plan on spending too long in there anyway,” Peter admits, scratching the back of his head. “Trying to keep track of everybody at once is bad enough when it’s not in some bigass possibly haunted forest.”

Gamora doesn’t quite laugh at that, but a smile spreads over her face. “It’s not haunted, Peter.”

“Hey, I’m pretty sure I remember Loki saying ‘remarkably unlikely.’ That don’t mean it’s impossible. I’m totally calling it right now: haunted forest. There’s gonna be ghosts all over that place.” He wraps an arm around her shoulders and then raises his voice and shouts over his shoulder, “Right, Loki?”

Loki, who’s somehow managing to keep his feet even while he’s got his nose in that thick-as-hell textbook he’d pulled out at dinner, doesn’t even look up. “Mm-hmm. Of course.”

“Whatcha readin’, bud?”

“A book.”

Peter opens his mouth, then closes it. Yeah, that’s fair enough. “See?” he says to Gamora. “Haunted. Totally technically possible. We’re gonna be fighting ghosts, babe.”

Gamora laughs, rolling her eyes.

“Who ya gonna call? Guardians of the Galaxy!” Peter sings in a dramatic stage whisper, pulling her closer and whistling what little he remembers of the theme as they continue along. “You know, we haven’t gotten to that one yet, have we? Ghostbusters?”

“What is that?” Mantis asks, picking up the pace to walk beside them.

Peter sighs. “Yeah, that’s a no. Man, I am a failure of a captain if I don’t show you guys Ghostbusters. Alright, I’m announcing it now so none of you assholes can back out: Soon as this mission’s over, we’re having our next movie night and we’re all watching it. Ghostbusters, total classic on Earth. You guys’ll love it.”

“It sounds frightening,” Mantis says.

“Nah, it’s a comedy, don’t worry,” Peter assures her.

Drax hums in thought. “It does not sound frightening to me.”

And Peter is either the luckiest guy in the world for having this joke perfectly set up for him, or he’s the unluckiest for being surrounded by people that won’t get it, but he feels a surge of giddiness over it all the same. It’s not like he can resist. He leans back and asks over his shoulder, “Would you say you… ain’t afraid of no ghosts, Drax?”

“I am not,” Drax answers, all matter-of-fact, because of course he does.

Ah, well. Win some, lose some.

As they trudge a little further up the hill, the Benatar slowly peeks into view, still parked by the edge of the forest with her glossy paint reflecting reddish purple in the shade of the blue leaves overhead.

“Alright, cool. Nebula, you keep the Benatar company while the rest of us go on our hike,” Peter says. He double taps the earpiece of his helmet, making sure it’s all in working order, just in case — they might come across some unfriendlies in there, who knows. Then he flicks the holoscreen again so he can take a look at the map. “Figure we can go in… ‘round there,” he says, pointing off to the right. “We’ll just go straight due north and then double back. Piece of cake. Everybody—?”

“I am Groot.”

Peter sighs, not taking his eyes off the map. “What do you mean you don’t wanna go, bud?”

“I am Groot.”

“What’s the problem, your game’s dying? ‘Cause Rocket said he’s gonna grab some—”

“I am Groot.”

Peter blinks, shaking his head and then turning to raise an eyebrow at Groot, who’s standing a few yards back with his video game clutched in both hands. He’s not looking down at it, though, and he’s not looking at any of them, either.

Huh, Peter thinks. That’s… a little weird.

“Groot?” Rocket asks, voice edging on concern. “What’s goin’ on?”

Groot shakes his head, his big brown eyes as wide as Peter’s ever seen them, and he doesn’t look away from the forest straight ahead. “I am Groot.”

“Why do you not want to go?” Drax asks.

“I am Groot.”

Gamora takes a step toward him, tilting her head. “Groot, what is it?”

“I am Groot.”

“Hey,” Peter says. “Give us something other than ‘I don’t wanna go.’ Work with us here, kiddo.”

“What, are ya scared?” Rocket asks, hands on his hips. “Quill was just kiddin’ about it being haunted, Groot.”

“I am Groot.”

“Okay, okay,” Peter jumps in. “You’re not scared, we believe you.”

He’s lying through his teeth, obviously. Really, he doesn’t think he’s ever seen Groot looking as scared as he looks now.

Damn, he’d have kept his big fat mouth shut if he’d known all that talk about ghosts was gonna freak the kid out this much.

“So what’s the problem?” Rocket asks.

“I am Groot.”

“Yeah, no, ‘I just don’t wanna’ ain’t gonna cut it.”

“I am Groot!”

“Hey, it’s alright,” Gamora murmurs, nice and gentle. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. We’re all more than capable of protecting each other no matter where we go.”

Mantis nods. “We will all stick together, Groot.”

“That’s right,” Peter adds. “Ghosts or no ghosts. Ain’t nothing we can’t handle.”

“I am Groot.”

Loki sighs, snapping his book shut and vanishing it. “If he doesn’t want to go that badly, why should we force him? We’re wasting daylight arguing this.”

Peter runs a hand over his face. He’s got a point there.

Rocket shoots a look at Groot that would be scolding if he didn’t look so concerned and confused, but after a second or two of internal debate, he apparently decides to leave it alone. He shrugs, lifting his arms and dropping them to his sides. “Alright, alright, whatever. Have it your way, kid. You can stay behind with Nebs while the rest of us—”

“I am Groot!”

Woah. Okay. Kid’s a little more than just scared, then.

It takes a second for any of them to figure out what to say to that, but Rocket’s the first. “What, so now none of us are allowed to go?”

“I am Groot.”

“Well, some of us gotta,” Rocket tells him. “Seriously, what’s the problem here?”

“I am Groot!”

And Peter has no idea what’s got Groot so worked up, he has no idea how to get Groot to tell them what’s got him so worked up, and he has no idea what to say to make him any less worked up — but he sees Groot take a shaky step back, his big brown eyes shining like he’s this close to bursting into furious tears.

So Peter makes a decision right then and there.

“Okay, okay, look,” he says, lifting his hands in surrender. “Let’s postpone the hike, huh?”

He exchanges a look with Gamora and sees, instantly, that she’s every bit as concerned as he is, and every bit as at a loss for what to do about it. Loki raises an eyebrow at him, Rocket looks at him like he’s grown a second head, but Groot—

Groot calms down a fraction. His hackles lower just a little, but he doesn’t say anything, just keeps frowning and staring at Peter like he’s expecting the other shoe to drop.

And if Peter’s got anything to say about it, it’s not gonna. He really doesn’t like seeing Groot all freaked out like that.

“Seriously. It’s cool, we don’t have to go right this second.”

Rocket asks, “You sure, Quill?”

“Yeah.” Peter shrugs, carefully casual. “We got other leads we can look into.”

Drax asks, “Like what?”

“Well…” Peter trails off, mouth hanging open as he stares into space, the gears turning. “Don’t you worry about that, ‘cause I got a new plan anyway.”

“Do you,” Nebula says, leaning her back against the Benatar with her arms crossed.

“Uh, yeah, I do, thank you,” Peter answers, turning toward her with a little mock bow. “Course I do. I always have a back-up plan.”

“You often do not,” Drax speaks up.

Peter directs a deadpan stare straight ahead at the forest. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, man. And anyway, I do now.”

He twirls on the spot to look around at all of them in turn — not failing to notice that Groot looks significantly more relaxed now, even while the rest of them are all staring expectantly at Peter waiting to hear this wonderful back-up plan of his — until his eyes land on Loki.

Ah-ha, he thinks, the beginnings of an idea finally beginning to spark.

“In fact,” he announces, “I’ve got a great plan. A perfect plan. Totally foolproof.”

Yeah, he thinks. This’ll work. Or most of it will, anyway.

He can wing the rest as he goes.

Chapter Text

“This is absolutely ridiculous.”

“Oh, come on,” Peter says, leaning back in his seat and kicking his feet up on the Benatar’s piloting console. “It’s totally gonna work.”

“I never said whether it will work,” Loki grumbles through the earpiece. “Though, for the record, it hasn’t yet. What I said is that it’s ridiculous.”

“So you do think,” Peter observes, holding up a finger even though Loki can’t see it, “that it’s gonna work.”

“I never said that, either.”

The Benatar is parked on the top of a particularly high-up skyscraper, well out of the way and hard for anybody to spot. Through the windshield there’s just miles upon miles of buildings of all shapes and sizes in every direction — or at least their roofs. All the gleaming metal and slick concrete walls interspersed with buildings of ancient near-crumbling brick, the last bits of sunlight from Uӓdar’s biggest sun reflecting golden-pink off the rooftops. From this height, it’s easy to see how old the city of Urunia really is, how the modern structures seem to crop up like shiny metal weeds and engulf all the older ones. A mile or so off to the left, Peter can just make out some of the blue and purple treetops of the forest, but that ain’t his concern at the moment.

In the bottom right corner of the windshield, a screen shows a crystal clear view of a busy street somewhere in the Markets District.

It’s a churning crowd of carts and motor cruisers and people all shuffling around. There’s Uӓdarians and Contraxians and Xandarians and Krylorians and Aakon and a few Kree and one or two Xeronians — Peter even swears he sees the tentacles of an A’askavariian somewhere in there — and yet the one thing everyone seems to have in common is that they’re all in a hell of a hurry to get where they’re going.

Except, of course, for the young Krylorian girl standing by the curb.

Rocket, sitting in the co-pilot’s chair with the device he used to hack the traffic cams sitting in his lap, sneers at the screen and says, “Relax, Prince of Whining. Give it time. You look great.”

The girl’s a full head shorter than even the shortest patron in the marketplace, small enough that she doesn’t register as a threat to anyone passing by. She crosses pink-skinned arms over her chest, shooting a glare directly at the traffic camera with the sort of venom that looks way out of place on her innocent features.

“I have been wandering around this disgusting place for hours,” Loki complains, and the Krylorian girl’s mouth moves in time with his voice.

In the Benatar’s back seat, Groot mutters without looking up from his game, “I am Groot.”

“He’s right, dude,” Peter says. “It’s only been forty-five minutes.”

“Which feels plenty to disprove your theory, don’t you think?” Loki shoots back, and the Krylorian girl raises a thin purple eyebrow at the camera before scanning her eyes over the crowd. “No one here seems like the kidnapping type. Hardly any of them have so much as looked in my direction, Quill.”

As he says that, though, he’s proven wrong pretty much right away. A Xandarian woman passing by spares a glance down at the young girl, blinks in surprise, and hastily continues on her way until she disappears into the crowd.

Peter winces. “Uh, hey, Loki? Maybe nix the whole ‘speaking in a fully grown dude’s voice’ thing for a bit, yeah?”

The Krylorian girl shoots another look at the camera, rolls her eyes, and looks away. “Fine,” she says in a perfect imitation of a young girl’s voice, though it’s laced with annoyance that sounds very, very Loki. “Better?”

Rocket snickers. “Aw, ain’t he adorable.”

“Rocket,” warns the Krylorian girl as she starts to wander further through the street. “Did you know I once magically removed all the hair from the head of an elite Asgardian warrior while she slept, just for a bit of fun? It didn’t grow back for months. Think about that, will you?”

“You magic my fur away and I break the thermostat in your room, Jerk of Ass-Guard.”

“Ah, so it’s a challenge, then—”

“Guys, come on,” Peter cuts in, leaning his elbow on his seat’s armrest and massaging his temple. “Can we focus?”

Peter chooses to ignore the grumbling that comes from the both of them, watching instead as the Krylorian girl weaves through the crowd and Rocket taps a few buttons on the device in his lap so that the screen switches over to the view from a different traffic camera.

“I will give this ridiculous plan another fifteen minutes,” the girl says, keeping her voice low. Though she still sounds annoyed, Peter can see in the camera that Loki’s doing a pretty good job of looking lost — hands fidgeting in front of her, bright wide eyes darting this way and that. Occasionally she even stands up on her toes, trying to see over the shoulders of everyone else shoving past. “Then I will be leaving this repulsively overcrowded district immediately.”

“Dude, you’re like a million years old,” Peter says. “How are you this impatient?”

“I am not a million years old.”

“You’re close enough.”

“Fourteen hundred is nowhere near one million.”

“Like I said, close enough.”

“Your math is baffling,” she says, rolling her eyes. “Can you not count, Quill?”

“Probably not to a million, no. Never tried,” Peter admits with a shrug, leaning back in his seat. “So wait, you’re fourteen hundred? Like, exactly?”

The girl shrugs as she squeezes through a pack of Xandarians and Uӓdarians waiting outside a particularly packed shop. “Going by the length of Midgard’s years… roughly fourteen-ninety-eight, perhaps fourteen-ninety-nine?”

“What? Dude, you’re hitting a milestone soon! When’s your birthday?”

“I don’t—” the girl shakes her head, visible only because Rocket just shifted the view to a different traffic cam to follow her. “A milestone based on Earth years, perhaps, which mean little and less to me. And even less so when we’re not even on Earth.”

Peter sags back into the seat, squashing a little surge of disappointment. He wants to point out that Loki didn’t actually answer the question about his birthday, but then he realizes what Loki might’ve been about to finish saying before he cut himself off.

I don’t know.

Damn, if that’s really what he was gonna say, that sucks a big one. Even with the whole ‘adopted from another species’ thing, did his parents not even fake a birthday for him? Did they not make one up? Hell, do Asgardians not even celebrate birthdays? Honestly, that might actually make a lot of sense, Peter thinks, given how many of them they’re bound to have.

Still.

Before he can think too hard on it, though, the communications console in his seat lights up and pings, and Peter throws his head back with a groan.

Someone’s really calling now?

He sucks it up and taps the console, throwing the caller’s image up on the windshield, just above the view of Loki ducking and weaving his way in the Markets District. Within a few seconds, he’s got a high-res view of the top half of a shiny head and some thinning green hair inset over the vast view of Urunia’s sprawling buildings.

“Mr. Quill,” Sergeant Braz’s voice comes through, gruff and annoyed. Peter’s pretty sure that’s the guy’s only setting. “You there?”

“Hey, Sarge.”

The camera view shifts as Braz tries to get his head into the frame, and even when he gets it right, he’s still a little too close to the lens for comfort, blinking his big old green eyes and furrowing his bushy eyebrows at all of them. “You meet up with your team alright, then?”

“Yep, like I said, big fans of the buddy system,” Peter reminds him, even as his eyes drift down to the screen where Loki, in direct contradiction of Peter’s words, is wandering the Markets District very much alone.

Whatever. He’s not exactly worried about the literal god on their team all that much, especially not when they got cameras trained on him every second of the way.

Hell, he’s hoping someone tries to snatch him up. That’s the whole point.

“Yeah-huh,” Braz answers. “That’s good, that’s good. Who’re these fellas?”

“Oh, uh, right. My bad,” Peter says. He’d gotten distracted watching Loki shove his way past a massive Achernonian guy and send him stumbling a few steps — did he forget that little Krylorian kids aren’t supposed to be that strong? Peter shakes his head. “That’s Rocket,” he says, pointing, “and that tree morphing together with a video game is Groot.”

“Yeah. Pleasure,” Braz says, in a way that doesn’t sound like it’s really all that much of a pleasure.

On the screen below him, Loki keeps moving quick enough that the Achernonian doesn’t catch sight of him and start asking tough questions. So that’s good, at least.

“Look, Mr. Quill, reason I’m calling is we been getting some funny calls ‘bout some goings on in the Markets District. That’s around where you’re at, ain’t it?”

“Uh… yeah,” Peter says, tearing his eyes away from Loki and shooting a confused look up at Braz. “Why? What kinda goings on?”

“Well, apparently some folks have been calling in about gettin’ threatened with dismemberment by, uh,” Braz pauses, glancing down as there’s the sound of a paper flipping, “some Luphomoid broad?”

Peter clears his throat, eyes widening. “Oh? Yeah?”

“Luphomoid,” Rocket repeats, making a face as he looks away from the screen.

“I am Groot?”

“Yeah, ain’t that what Neb—?”

“I dunno, Sarge,” Peter cuts him off, raising his voice a little higher and hiding his mouth behind his fist. “That sounds like some run of the mill stuff to me.”

“You think so?”

Peter closes his eyes and nods. “Yep. Yeah. Definitely run of the mill.”

“Huh. Just we ain’t never seen any Luphomoid around here. Not as long as I’ve been around, anyway.”

“Could’ve been something else,” Peter says with a shrug that he hopes doesn’t look too exaggerated. “Centaurian, Kree, lots of species kind of look like that. Blue, y’know.”

“Suppose so,” Braz admits. “Ah, well. Figured it might be worth mentioning on the off chance it’s related somehow. Guess I’ll just send my regular boys after whoever it is, but you keep your eyes open, will ya?”

“Course. Yup.” Peter holds up a hand with his thumb and pointer finger together, even if he’s pretty sure that the Earth symbol for OK doesn’t extend to Uӓdarians. “You got it. Eyes wide open, Sarge.”

He clicks the communicator off before Braz can ask anything else, the image winking away so that they’ve got a nearly complete view of the city again, and he sinks back into his seat, shaking his head and rolling his eyes at the ceiling.

“If we could visit one planet without somebody getting arrested, that’d be friggin’ swell.”

“Who’s getting arrested now?” Loki asks through the mouthpiece. “Is it Rocket?”

“Hey!”

“I’ll give ya two more guesses,” Peter tells him.

He watches the Krylorian girl tilt her head in thought, and then she asks, “Nebula?”

“Ding, ding, ding,” Peter drones. The Krylorian girl snorts, an amused grin pulling at her cheeks, and Peter asks, “What’s so funny, huh?”

“Nothing, nothing,” she assures him, slipping through a crowd of human-looking shoppers. “It’s just I’m nearly fifteen hundred years old and I’ve never before been the least likely person to be sought out for arrest. It’s a… novel experience.”

“You’re not the least likely, man,” Peter reminds him. “That’s Mantis. You’re like, maybe the third or fourth least likely.”

The girl shrugs. “Even still.”

“What’s so illegal about dismemberin’ somebody anyway?” Rocket asks. “Or threatenin’ it.”

“Everything, Rocket,” Peter says, massaging the bridge of his nose. “Literally everything about that sentence is illegal.”

“Well, what if they deserved it, huh?”

“Oh, no. No way, we are not getting into that argument again,” Peter decides, shaking his head and returning his attention to the screen. “Loki, how’re we looking?”

“Ten minutes,” Loki reminds him. “Then I’m leaving.”

“Oh, come on, give it another half hour at least, man.”

“I will not.”

Peter huffs, rolling his eyes for the third time in what feels like five minutes. “Fine. Whatever. It was just a hunch anyway,” he admits, though he spares a glance over his shoulder and sees that Groot has looked up from his game to watch the camera footage, his eyes wide and worried.

“Honestly, if you ask me, it’s far more likely that there’s some sort of large predator or a sinkhole in that forest,” Loki continues, still in the young girl’s voice.

Peter raises an eyebrow, skeptical. “You think so?”

“Of course I do. Think about it, Quill. People wander into the forest, they disappear, stories begin to spread that it’s the work of some supernatural entity, and more people grow curious about it and wander into the forest to disappear. It’s easily the most likely cause of all this.”

“Yeah,” Peter mutters, chewing on his cheek. “Probably”

“It’s fairly simple, and not to mention any one of us would be more than well-equipped to—”

“Loki. Shut it.”

Peter turns to look at Rocket, but Rocket is staring at the screen with his ears perked straight up.

“Double back and go in a wide circle, will ya?”

“Why?”

“Because you’re bein’ followed, that’s why.”

“For real? By who?” Peter asks, straightening in his seat. He watches as Rocket hops off the seat with the hacking device clutched in one hand, walks up to the windshield, and taps one claw to a spot in the crowd near the leftmost edge of the screen.

There’s a guy right where Rocket points, a thin older guy that might be from Xandar by the look of him, shuffling along the street and occasionally peering up in the general direction of the lonely little Krylorian girl standing on the curb.

“I am certain I would know if I were being followed,” Loki says, even as he doubles back anyway.

“You probably can’t see him,” Rocket says. “You’re too short right now.”

“You do realize I’ve not actually shapeshifted, don’t you?” Loki asks. “It’s an illusion. I’m still the same height I’ve always been.”

“Dude, stop talking,” Rocket says, and… oh, yeah, Peter sees it now, the guy is definitely keeping a close eye on Loki as he weaves slowly through the crowd, keeping a good distance away so he doesn’t get spotted. And he probably wouldn’t, Peter thinks, if not for the traffic cams.

“Why would—? Oh,” the girl says, even though she never once turned to look for her pursuer. “I see him.”

“Yeah, keep it moving, man,” Peter says. “Get out of the crowd and get to the alley. See if he follows you.”

The Krylorian girl squeezes behind an unusually heavy set Easik dude haggling at one of the stands, stealthily avoids being rolled over by a moving cart, and ducks through a small crowd of shopping Aakon women. Rocket curses, hopping back onto his seat so he can get them into the next traffic cam, and Peter taps his earpiece.

“Not so fast, dude, you don’t want him thinking you spotted him.”

“Quill, relax,” the little girl says, with a mischievous smile that’s just downright creepy on such a young face. “I’ve been playing tricks since the time of your ancestors, remember?”

“So what?”

“So, how about a little faith, hmm?”

She pivots where she stands, and the smile falls away as if it was never there in the first place. She wrings her hands together, bites her lip, glances all around with worried eyes. A few dozen yards back, the man pursuing her stops, too — he must be able to see the girl’s face now, but in her frantic scanning of her surroundings she never once lets her eyes fall on him, like he registers as nothing more to her than another stranger’s face in the crowd.

The girl looks once more to her right, then her left, and then she turns on the spot and continues toward the edge of the Market District.

The man pursuing her picks up his pace.

“Eh. Not bad,” Rocket admits.

“Three blocks ahead, then turn right,” Peter tells him, glancing down at the map on the holoscreen in his hand.

The crowd thins out as the girl heads further downtown, trepidation written plain on her face as she stares up at the buildings towering above her on either side. By the time she reaches the third block, there are only a few pedestrians wandering around, and once she makes that right turn and heads down a narrow cobblestone street lined with abandoned homes and boarded-up windows, she’s the only living thing in sight.

At least until the man slinks around the corner some fifteen yards behind, his hands stuffed into his pockets, his hood pulled up to hide most of his face.

“I am Groot?”

“Dude, Loki could snap that guy in half,” Peter reassures Groot. “He’s fine.”

“I am Groot.”

“He just looks like a kid,” Rocket clarifies. “Weren’t you listening?”

“And he’s almost there anyway,” Peter says. Then, to Loki, “One more block up, and it’s the alleyway on your left.”

Rocket, chuckling to himself, taps a few more buttons until the screen flickers again and switches over to a security camera in the alleyway.

Peter frowns. “Thought you said that camera was busted.”

“I fixed it,” Rocket tells him. “You think I was gonna miss this? C’mon, it’s free entertainment.”

The view is dark, too dark to see anything beyond a few hazy shapes, but then Rocket types something into his device, flicks a switch, and the view lights up in shades of green and black as the camera’s night vision kicks in.

The Krylorian girl strolls into the alley a second later, the nervous look on her face melting away and her posture straightening to her full height. The green of the camera’s night vision makes it hard to tell, but Peter thinks he sees a sort of ripple effect warping the girl’s image as a smile spreads over her face. She tilts her head from side to side, cracking her neck, then rolls her shoulders.

And Peter has to admit, Rocket has a point.

There’s something awfully entertaining about some scumbag trying to stalk a nervous looking little girl, rounding the corner she just disappeared into, and then nearly smacking face-to-chest with a dude that’s over six feet tall and decked out in leather armor.

The fact that said six-foot-something man is now smiling down at him with a downright predatory look in his eye only makes it better.

“Surprise,” Loki says in a sing-song voice.

The guy stumbles back a step. He looks up, since Loki’s got about seven or eight inches on him now, and his hood falls back to reveal a look on his face that’s… well, not exactly as terrified as he should be. A little scared, maybe, but mostly just confused. And angry.

So, Peter thinks, he doesn’t know who Loki is. That’s for damn sure.

“An’ just where the hell’d you come from, eh?”

Peter looks the guy up and down, taking in the jumpy way his fingers keep twitching, the way he keeps glancing around the alleyway like the kid he was following is just gonna pop up out of nowhere. On instinct Peter’s eyes go straight to the guy’s waist, where there’s a little bump in his shirt that’s definitely some kind of weapon tucked into his pants. A knife or a blaster or whatever he’s got, Peter’s not sure, but it isn’t really any kind of threat to Loki.

Sure would’ve been enough to get the average scared kid to go along with him wherever he wanted to go, though.

Huh. Son of a bitch, Peter thinks. We actually got the guy.

He’ll never tell Groot, but he really hadn’t expected this plan to actually work. But you know what? It’s about damn time they had some real, bonafide good luck if you ask him.

“Hey,” the guy scowls at Loki when he doesn’t say anything. “I’m talkin’ to you. The hell’d you come from?”

He takes another step back—

—and steps right into a solid wall of muscle.

Rocket lets out a howl of laughter, and Peter can’t help smiling either as the guy freezes, eyes widening as he turns to find Drax standing behind him, his arms crossed and his broad shoulders entirely blocking any chance this guy might have thought he had at exiting the alleyway and running off.

“What’s goin’ on here?” the guy asks, his voice shaking just slightly, and he half-turns, trying to keep Drax in his peripheral even as he directs his questions to the… well, the slightly less intimidating of the two. Probably. From his perspective, anyway. “You’s two tryin’ to mug me? Huh? Well I ain’t got—”

“Mug you?” comes a third voice, and Gamora steps out from the more shadowed end of the alley.

Her boots tap on the cobblestone ground in a slow rhythm as she purposely takes her time, stalking around Loki, bringing her so close to the guy that he actually starts retreating back toward Drax.

“That hardly seems adequate, does it, sister?”

“Oh, I agree,” Nebula purrs as she steps out from the shadows, too, stepping around Loki’s other side. And to Loki’s credit, he seems perfectly content to stand back and watch the absolutely terrifying sisters work. Nebula holds her dagger in her left hand, tapping a finger of her right hand to its razor sharp tip, her black eyes never leaving the guy who’s now looking about ready to crap himself. “A coward who takes young girls from their homes. Must be my lucky day.”

“You don’t—” the guy starts to say, then gulps and licks his lips. “You don’t know what— You can’t prove I was—”

Gamora gives him a faux sympathetic pout. “Oh, I think you’ll find that we can.”

Nebula stalks a little closer, grinning in a way that feels sort of like the Nebula that none of them have seen since before Thanos kicked the bucket two months ago, or even further back than that. Cold, vindictive, ready to slice somebody open and enjoy every second of it. The guy backs up far enough that he bumps into Drax again, stammering incoherently as he tries, and fails, to get his bearings.

On second thought, Peter thinks, maybe this was a little overkill.

It’s getting hard to hear over Rocket’s hysterical laughter — he’s actually fallen off his seat now — but Peter taps his earpiece and says, “Uh, guys, keep him in one piece, okay? We still gotta interrogate him.”

Nebula scowls, rolling her eyes. “I know that. What do you think I’m doing?”

“We gotta interrogate him on the ship, like, officially. And record it with something that ain't a hacked security camera.”

“Why?”

“Rules, Nebula,” Peter answers with a shrug he knows she can’t see. “We gotta follow ‘em. That means leaving him in one piece until the authorities get a hold of him, too.”

“I have no intention of removing anything vital,” Nebula assures him, to which the guy gives a terrified little squeak. She returns her eyes to him, flashing another bone-chilling smile. “… Yet.”

“Nebs. Work with me here,” Peter says. “We really don’t need you getting arrested again, and you’re already on thin enough ice with the UPD as it is.”

“What? Why?”

“It’s—” Peter sighs. “Look, don’t worry about it. It’s nothing we can’t talk our way out of, long as you don’t go skinnin’ this guy alive in broad daylight.”

Nebula groans, rolling her eyes again, and she grumbles, “Fine. I suppose we will do it legally.”

She says the word legally like even saying it aloud makes her want to gag, but she does take a step back. And from the other side of Drax, Mantis finally shimmies her way into the overcrowded alleyway, too.

The guy jumps, looking with wide eyes at this newest addition to the group trapping him in the alley, and his eyes go straight up to her antennae.

“Hello, I am Mantis,” she says, her face stretched into one of her trademark creepy smiles. Peter gets the distinct feeling she’s doing it on purpose; he’s seen her smile normally after all, he knows she can do it. “You are going to go to sleep now.”

The guy sputters, “I— I’m— I’m what?”

“Going to sleep,” Mantis says with a nod. “And then we are going to interrogate you, because you are a criminal.”

The guy bristles a little, despite the obvious fear that’s still got him stammering, “You— You can’t— None o’ you’s can prove—”

“Sleep.”

They end up taking the guy up to the Quadrant, which was sitting in orbit all day while they used the Benatar to get around the city, and it only takes about twenty minutes for Peter to start feeling claustrophobic in the little side storage area that they’ve rigged into a makeshift interrogation room. It’s too cramped and too stuffy and too warm, and the air’s just a little too stale, and even though technically Peter knows that’s the point — even though Gamora and Drax and Nebula and Loki and Rocket all remind him that that’s the point, every time he voices a complaint, like he ain’t never seen an interrogation before and he doesn’t know — it don’t mean he has to like it.

About half an hour into it, Loki ducks out and says he’ll be waiting in the Living Room and they can come get him when they’re all done. Probably can’t handle the heat, which Peter guesses is fair.

But then Groot gets on up and follows him, and Rocket gets up and follows him. Then, after about an hour Peter takes pity on Gamora and Drax and Mantis and tells them to go on ahead, too. Drax and Gamora were both doing a bang up job of standing off to the side looking intimidating, and the guy seemed terrified of Mantis after the whole sleeping thing, but…

Well, the guy is being tight-lipped as hell, and Peter’s the captain. Only fair he takes the more tedious jobs sometimes.

By the time he trudges out of the interrogation room and starts making his way down the hall, it’s been almost three and a half hours. He’s got a kink in his neck and a big old sweat stain running down the back of his shirt, a dull throb in the side of his hand that he is definitely not gonna tell anyone is from slamming his fist into the table when he was trying to pull off the Tough Guy Interrogator act — and Nebula sure as hell better not tell any of them that either. He’s got that itchiness behind his eyes, too, the kind that means he’s gonna be out cold the second he hits the sack tonight.

Which, preferably, is gonna be sooner rather than later. He is still running on about three hours of sleep, after all.

As he passes a porthole in one of the halls, he sees nothing but pitch black outside, and it takes him a second to remember that it’s not because they’re back in open space. He friggin’ wishes. It’s because the interrogation went into the middle of the damn night and both of the Uadärian suns are on the opposite side of the planet.

The others’ voices start to pick up a bit the closer he gets to the Living Room. Drax’s rumbling voice carries a little further, though it’s impossible to make out what any of them are saying until he’s right down the hall.

“… and that,” he hears Rocket saying as he nears the door, “is how ya get banned for life from the Orloni fighting pits.”

He hears Mantis ask, “But why would anyone want to get banned from these… Orloni fighting pits?”

“No, no, Mantis, you’re asking the wrong question,” Loki’s voice sounds from the room, too, and Peter crosses the threshold to find everyone all gathered around either on the couch or the floor, except for Drax who’s sat on the beanbag chair with his legs stretched out in front of him.

Loki’s sitting cross-legged on one end of the couch, his back to the armrest, facing Mantis on the opposite end with Rocket between them. That textbook he was reading earlier is propped open by his lap, apparently forgotten. He points at Mantis with a cracked open Sakaaran beer can and continues, “What you meant to ask is, ‘Why would anyone want to go to the Orloni fighting pits?’”

Gamora, sitting on the floor in front of them, snorts a laugh and tries to hide it.

“Oh, okay, Mr. High-and-Mighty,” Rocket shouts, as always a few decibels louder than necessary. “Just go ahead and tell me you ain’t never — hey, Quill — been anywhere that ain’t all hoity toity five star royalty, eh?”

“Oh, he definitely can’t do that,” Peter speaks up, crossing his arms and leaning sideways into the doorframe.

That earns him an instant confused look from everyone in the room, narrowed eyes and tilted heads and creased brows. Or, at least, from everyone in the room except for Loki, who shoots him a warning glare that pretty clearly says shut your goddamn mouth.

“I am Groot?”

“Yeah,” Rocket says, “whaddya mean, he can’t? Why not?”

And of course it’s not like Peter’s actually gonna spill any of the crazy stories Loki told him last night while they were getting wasted on alien beers. He’s pretty sure “secrets told when your friend is blitzed out of his mind are supposed to be kept secret” is, like, buried deep in the Ravager code somewhere.

Plus, even if it wasn’t, it’d still be a dick move to do otherwise.

Peter waits for a beat anyway, maintaining eye contact with Loki’s death glare for about three seconds before he shrugs one shoulder and says, “Ah, nothing. I’m just messin’ around.”

Rocket only looks more suspicious, but before he can call bullshit out loud, Gamora speaks up.

“I take it the interrogation is over?”

Rocket scoffs, as always perfectly content to be distracted by the opportunity to make fun of Peter. “Pfft, yeah, or Quill couldn’t crack him and needed to take a break.”

“Nah, it’s, uh… it’s all done,” Peter admits, nodding and chewing on his cheek and suddenly kind of wishing they could get back to the subject of Orloni fighting pits and all the weird shit Loki got into in his younger days. “Nebula’s taking him in the Benatar now to turn him over to the Urunia PD.”

“Seriously?” Rocket asks. “You got him to talk?”

“It is more likely that it was Nebula who got him to talk,” Drax speaks up, pointing with a beer can of his own. “She is quite terrifying.”

“Uh, yeah, Nebula did the actual cracking,” Peter tells them. “He talked.”

Gamora frowns, her brow creasing. “Then what’s the problem?”

Peter’s unable to stop himself from shooting a worried glance over at Groot before he decides to just come out with it. No sense in putting it off. He puffs out a sigh, shoulders slumping, and tells them, “He’s not our guy.”

There’s a second or two in which all of them just stare at him, dumbfounded, and then all of them try to talk at once.

“— whaddaya mean he’s not—”

“— am Groot—”

“— and I felt that he was—”

“— thought for certain that—”

“— and you’re sure—”

“— could have been lying—”

“Okay, okay, settle down, settle down!” Peter shouts, waving them all down. “Yes, I’m sure,” he says in answer to Gamora’s question. “I’m totally one-hundred-percent positive he’s not our guy.”

“You cannot be one hundred percent,” Drax says.

“I’m pretty damn close, dude. Like, at least ninety-nine.”

“But how?” Mantis asks. “I felt his emotions when I made him sleep. I told you—”

“I know,” Peter says, nodding. “I know, he was pissed off that we stopped him from abducting… you know, what he thought was a kid.”

“And I confirmed it,” Loki reminds him, and again Peter’s reminded of that weird magicky thing he’d done at the beginning of the interrogations by pressing his palm to the guy’s forehead — and the scowl on his face afterward as he shook out his hand like he’d dipped it in something gross. “He was, without doubt, approaching my illusion of that girl with ill intent.”

“I know,” Peter tells them. “He is a scumbag, yeah, but he’s not our scumbag.”

“What do you mean?” Gamora asks.

Peter sighs again, running his hand over his face. “He was working as a slaver for the Kree, just like I thought he must’ve been, right? But he’s a newbie. He’s never actually caught anybody before. He came here to Uӓdar because he heard a bunch of people were going missing and he figured a few more people might fly under the radar. He said it felt like… and don’t judge me, I’m literally quoting him here, like ‘low hanging fruit’ for his first mission. Wanted to try and pad up his numbers to impress the higher-ups in charge of him.”

Gamora leans back into the foot of the couch. “So, people haven’t been going missing because he’s here.”

“Yeah. He’s here because people have been going missing.”

“But he is going to prison, right?” Mantis asks. “He will not be able to make anyone else go missing?”

“Oh, yeah, for sure,” Peter says. “And even if he wasn’t, I’m, uh… I’m pretty sure he ain’t ever gonna so much as think about slaving again for the rest of his life.” He scratches the back of his head. “I… kind of got tired of him not talking and, uh, you know. Put the fear of Nebula in him.”

Gamora asks, “You let Nebula interrogate him alone?”

“Mm-hmm.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Does he still have all of his limbs?”

Peter’s wince deepens into a cringe. “I gotta be honest, that really depends on what you call a limb.”

Drax chokes on his drink, and Gamora’s eyes widen as she blanches just a little.

Loki, apparently unaffected, tilts his head and says, “Well, he certainly won’t be a problem to anyone in the future, at any rate.”

“Yeah, but he ain’t gonna be the only one, y’know,” Rocket tells all of them, sounding more sober than he had only a few minutes ago. “Makes sense he showed, but he’s just gonna be the first one we dug up. Stuff like this always draws the crazies outta the woodwork.”

Peter nods. “Yeah. I know. I radioed Braz and told him as much. He’s already been increasing patrols a ton in the Markets District the last few weeks, but— oh,” Peter says, suddenly remembering. “Uh, right, that reminds me, we can add another three disappearances to the list—”

“What?” Gamora asks.

“Yeah. Apparently it’s getting harder to find cops that are willing to stake out the area for more than a couple hours at a time, ‘cause they just… keep going missing, too.”

“Somehow,” Loki says, “I doubt that’s a coincidence.”

Mantis frowns thoughtfully at the far wall, then looks up at Peter. “Perhaps whoever really is causing the disappearances knows that the police are on to them?”

“Could be,” Peter admits. “If the police were on to them. They still ain’t got a clue what’s going on.”

“This shortage of police will leave the Markets District with fewer patrols,” Drax speaks up, looking concerned. “Which leaves an opening for more slavers like the one we apprehended.”

“That’s true,” Peter says. “And that brings me back to my first thing. Nebula’s gonna volunteer to help weed the bad guys out for ‘em. Like, she’s gonna officially volunteer, soon as she’s planetside in about…” He checks his watch and guesses, “… twenty minutes?”

“She can do that?” Rocket asks. “Even with the whole…?”

“Yeah, I managed to talk her skills up enough that Braz is willing to drop the whole ‘assault charges’ thing.” Peter tilts his head. “For now.”

Gamora raises an eyebrow. “And she’s willingly doing this? Working for the police?”

“Yep. Said she is, quote, ‘disgusted at these simpletons and their inefficiency.’ So she’s gonna try her hand at bounty hunting for the next few days, I guess.”

At that, Gamora tilts her head, eyebrows raised and mouth open, hesitating like she wants to make a complaint but can’t quite fiure out if she should, and Peter sure as hell knows the feeling. Nebula is so not gonna follow the law to the letter, already hasn’t, and she’s sure to be the biggest jurisdictional pain in the ass Sergeant Braz has ever seen, but she could do a whole hell of a lot worse than hunting down bad guys and stopping future kids from getting kidnapped.

It’s a big step up for her, and Peter’s not about to criticize her for it, much less get in the way.

“Still,” he says, “that means we’re down one more member for a bit, and we still don’t have any idea what’s been causing all these people to disappear. All we know so far is it probably ain’t slavers. At least not yet.”

Gamora winces, closing her eyes. They’ve just come to the part of the conversation that Peter’s been dreading, and he knows she’s just realized that, too.

She sighs, “Which means…”

Peter wrinkles his nose and sends the most apologetic look he can manage in Groot’s direction. The kid’s watching him over the top of his game, trying and failing to be subtle about it.

“Yeah,” Peter says. “Means we gotta check out the forest.”

Chapter Text

“Mornin’, Krag. How’s it hanging?”

“Ain’t mornin’ here, Pete,” Kraglin tells him. “Just ‘bout dinnertime.”

Peter watches with a bemused smile, cheek in hand, as Kraglin struggles with his camera. The image on the little holoscreen built into the table shakes and wobbles as he apparently moves it around, the view fading in and out. First it’s nothing but a fuzzy view of the left side of his forehead, then just a stretch of wall behind him, then his shoulder, and then finally Peter can actually see his whole face. He falls back onto his bed with the contented sigh of a person who’s been up and active for way too long, settling the camera on his chest.

“Ain’t too bad, though,” he says in response to Peter’s question. “Can’t complain, I mean, Nova hooked me up with a pretty swanky place while’s I’m here. How ‘bout you, huh? How’s the mission goin’?”

Peter opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again. On the other side of the room, Drax and Mantis are both noisily rifling through the storage cabinets for something to eat for breakfast, and down the hall Peter can hear Rocket yelling… something. He can’t tell what. Groot’s still nowhere to be seen, but that ain’t nothing out of the ordinary. He’s always the last one awake.

He drags his hand up into his hair for a second and sighs. “It’s, uh, it’s going.”

“Eugh.” Kraglin winces. “That bad, huh?”

“Nah, nah,” Peter dismisses, waving a hand. “Just no leads yet, you know how it is.”

“Mm, yeah, I getcha. What’s it again? Buncha missin’ people?”

“Yeah, thirty-two as of yesterday,” Peter tells him, leaning his cheek into his hand again. “In like, less than a month, dude. And that’s including a bunch of cops that were looking into it before we showed up.”

“Yeah?”

“Mm-hmm. And I swear it feels like just about everyone on the planet’s all set on it being, like… ghosts or magic or something, but I dunno. I don’t buy it.”

Kraglin makes a face. He looks like he doesn’t buy it either, and he shrugs. “It ain’t just Kree?”

Peter lifts his head up, throwing a hand in the air. “That’s what I said!”

Behind him, Gamora reaches out and scratches his back as she passes on her way to grab some coffee, and she says over her shoulder, “Good morning, Kraglin. It’s good to hear from you.”

“Mornin’, Gam. Good to see ya, too.”

“Oh, so she doesn’t get the smartass comment about the time difference,” Peter mutters, rolling his eyes.

“Is that Kraglin?” Mantis asks, elbow deep in a box of granola bars. “Tell him I said hello!”

“I say hello as well,” Drax says without looking up, arms laiden with more food than he could ever possibly need for one meal.

“Drax and Mantis—”

“I heard ‘em,” Kraglin nods. “Hey there, guys!”

“He said hey, guys,” Peter calls after them, since they’re already heading out of the room and down the hall. “Anyway, yeah, no, it doesn’t seem like it’s the Kree. We tried that angle already.”

“And what, it didn’t lead to nothin’?”

“Nope,” Peter says, popping the ‘p’ at the end. He shrugs. “Actually managed to catch one of their slavers yesterday. But, turns out he was only here ‘cause he heard about all the people going missing, and he figured he could, you know—”

“Cash in on it,” Kraglin finishes for him.

“Yeah, pretty much,” Peter says. “Called it ‘low hanging fruit.’”

Kraglin scowls like he just got a whiff of something nasty — which, by a Ravager’s standards, is pretty damn high bar to reach — and he shakes his head. “Those guys’re like vultures, Petey. Ain’t never seen a bad situation they can’t make worse, I’ll tell ya that.”

“Yeah,” Peter sighs, drumming his fingers on the table. “Figured as much. That sounds like it checks out, though?”

“Oh, that checks out, alright. He say anything about what got all the disappearin’ started, though? ‘Cause he might’ve known what was goin’ on, y’know. Then maybe that’s how he got the whole idea to show up and go making it worse.”

“Nah. He had no idea what got the disappearances started.”

“He told ya that?”

“Yep.”

“Well, how you know he wasn’t lyin’?”

“‘Cause Nebula interrogated him, that’s how.”

Kraglin snorts a laugh, smiling and shaking his head. “Oh, yeah, that’d do it, alright. Guy still got all his bits and pieces attached?”

Peter raises an eyebrow. “What do you think?”

That only makes Kraglin snort again, which turns into a full belly laugh that sets the camera to wobbling all over again. “Hoo-ee! That is fan-freakin’-tastic, Pete. Awesome. Remind me to grab her somethin’ nice for doin’ that before I make my way off planet, will ya?”

“Yeah, sure thing,” Peter says. “So when’s that gonna be, anyway? How much longer you plan on sticking around Xandar… what, building bridges? Schools?”

“Eh. Mostly just a lot of runnin’ around, cartin’ supplies everywhere,” Kraglin says, shrugging one shoulder. “They figured out I can pilot an M-class, so that’s what they got me doin’ most of the time.”

“You even have a license for that?”

“Nope. And they don’t care! Need all the pilots they can get.” He shrugs again. “But nah, shouldn’t be too much longer. Maybe another couple weeks, tops.”

“Cool. We’re missing you here, man.”

“Aw, I’m sure,” Kraglin says, face splitting into a wide toothy grin. “Y’all must be goin’ nuts without my pretty face ‘round there, huh?”

“You wish,” Peter says, rolling his eyes with a smile. “For real though, soon as we get this mission done and we get paid, we’re all heading back to Earth for a bit. You should try to get done by then so you can come along.”

“Yeah?”

“Yup. It’s almost July on Terra, and apparently Gramps is having some big old annual barbecue at his place in a few weeks, so I don’t wanna miss that,” Peter tells him.

He also just plain misses his grandpa, of course, after thirty-some-odd years of being gone and then only sticking around for one week or so. Plus, it’ll give Loki a good excuse to swing by New Asgard for a visit, because even though he won’t say it out loud… well, Peter knows homesickness when he sees it.

“So you better wrap things up there, you hear? At least long enough to take a break. Gramps’ll be insulted if not everybody shows.”

“Ooh, yeah, he gonna make that— what’d he call that stuff, again? Pulled pig?”

Peter snorts. “Pulled pork, dude.”

“Dunno why you Terrans gotta name meat somethin’ different after it’s cooked,” Kraglin mutters, and then he shrugs. “But yeah, Pete, I’ll try and get outta here in time. Shouldn’t be too tough.”

“Cool. Keep me posted.”

“Yeah, and you, too, alright? I wanna know if you figure out the whole missin’ people thing.”

Peter nods. “Yeah, we’re heading out into the forest near town for a bit today, gonna see if that’s got anything to do with it. I don’t really expect to find nothing, but it’s about the only lead we got.” He shrugs. “It’s only gonna be a few hours though. I’ll shoot ya a call when we’re done.”

“Ya better not. Few hours from now I’m gonna be sleepin’ like a baby.”

“Aw, all the more reason for me to call,” Peter says. “You must miss getting woken up in the middle of the night. It’ll feel just like home, won’t it?”

Kraglin snorts and rolls his eyes. “Oh, yeah, really miss it. I’m turnin’ my dang ringer off.”

Peter laughs. “See ya soon, Krag.”

“See ya, Pete.”

The image winks away, and Peter leans back in his seat, tapping the holoscreen so it folds back into the table. The room’s empty by now, just him and a humming coffee machine and a bunch of thrown open cabinets that Mantis and Drax never bothered closing, but he can hear the general chaos of everybody running around the ship getting ready for the day. Gamora’s boots clunk on the metal floor upstairs, probably making her way back to their shared quarters. Over near what sounds like the starboard side, he hears the indistinct racket of a few different voices, of which he can only single out Drax’s.

But what he doesn’t hear anymore is Rocket yelling, which… might be a cause for concern. Rocket being quiet is never a good thing.

Peter sighs, pushing his seat back and heading down the hall.

He runs into the others first. They’re in Mantis’ room with the door thrown wide open, with Mantis sitting cross-legged on her bed, right beside Nebula who’s lounging back with her hands behind her head and her boots kicked up onto the wall. Drax is sitting on the floor in the midst of stuffing a bunch of snacks into his knapsack.

Peter knocks on the door frame, cutting off what sounds like a debate about the proper way to knock an opponent unconscious, and all three of them look to him standing in the doorway.

“Uh, Drax,” Peter says. “You know we’re only gonna be hiking for like, three or four hours, right?”

Drax nods. “Yes, of course.”

“So why do you look like you’re packing a week’s worth of food there, man?”

Drax frowns, opening his knapsack and peering inside, like he thinks he must have missed something. “I have packed the exact amount needed for sustenance over the course of four hours.”

Peter opens his mouth and then decides to drop it — far be it from him to police Drax’s diet, after all — and he turns his attention to Mantis and Nebula. “What about you guys? You all set?”

Mantis smiles and nods. Nebula, upside down from where he’s standing, raises an unimpressed eyebrow at him like it was stupid of him to ask at all, which is both par for the course with her and, technically, fair; she’s not even gonna be a part of their hike through a possibly-but-probably-not-haunted forest, anyway. She’s dropping them off at the outskirts and then heading off in the Benatar for the Urunia Police Department to get started on the whole bounty hunting thing, so really, it doesn’t matter to Peter whether she’s ready or not.

“Cool,” he says anyway, tapping the door frame. “We’ll head out soon, then. You guys seen Rocket around?”

Drax nods, humming an affirmative.

Mantis answers, “Yes, we heard him just a few minutes ago. He was yelling at Loki for spending too much time in the bathroom.”

“Oh, boy,” Peter sighs, running a hand over his face. “Okay. Uh, meet me at the Benatar in like ten minutes? Ish?”

Mantis and Drax both nod, and he taps the door frame one last time on his way out, heading down the hall toward the bathroom at a speedwalk.

When he gets there, he finds the hallway mostly empty and just about totally quiet except for the occasional clink of metal or a low muttered curse from Rocket, who’s currently clinging upside-down to the wall a few feet to the right of the bathroom door with a laser cutter between his teeth and a screwdriver in his hand.

“Hey there, Rocket.”

Rocket looks up from what he’s doing, which seems to be tapping the wall with his screwdriver in a pattern that only he recognizes, and speaks around the laser cutter still held in his mouth, “Oh, hey, Quill.”

“What, uh…” Peter starts to ask, frowning and tilting his head. He clicks his tongue. “Whatcha doing there, bud?”

“Hell’s it look like?”

“Uh. Gotta be honest, man, I really don’t know.”

Rocket huffs and rolls his eyes, then spits out the laser cutter and holds it and the screwdriver in one hand, still clinging to the wall with the other. “What I’m doing is deactivating the lockin’ mechs on the door. His Royal Douche-ness is hoggin’ the damn bathroom.”

“Riiight,” Peter says, nodding slowly. “Yeah.”

“Yeah, now shoo. I designed the lock on this door so it’s a little tough to get to circumventin’.”

“And, uh… Is the locking mechanism embedded into the wall about four feet over from the door? ‘Cause I would’ve thought it’d be, y’know, in the door.”

“Yeah, obviously it’s in the door.”

Peter narrows his eyes. “So… why’re you messing with the wall, then?”

“Huh? What’re you talkin’ about, I’m…” Rocket starts to say, shooting a confused look at Peter and then at the wall in front of him. It seems to dawn on him, slowly, and he points at where he’s been poking and jabbing at the wall with his screwdriver, marked by a series of ticks and scratches and dents in the metal. “That ain’t the door, is it?”

“Afraid not.”

“Oh, I’m gonna kill ‘im,” Rocket hisses, hopping down from the wall. “Quill, go send Thor a funeral invite ‘cause he’s frickin’ dead—”

Peter snorts and tries to cover it up, but luckily Rocket’s too worked up to notice.

“— mess with my goddamn head, I’ll put all your insides on the outside, swear to— Quill, where’s the frickin’ door actually at, I’m gonna—”

The door unlatches, cutting off his tirade, and apparently whatever spell Loki was working wears off, because Peter barely throws an arm out in time to stop Rocket from actually making the fight physical as Loki steps out, wrapped in the biggest fluffiest black-and-green bathrobe Peter’s ever seen and with a wide shit-eating grin on his face.

“It’s right here,” Loki answers. “Really, Rocket, all you had to do was knock.”

“I did knock! Fifty goddamn—”

“Loki,” Peter cuts him off, trying and probably failing not to look amused by this whole thing. “C’mon, man, you know the rule.”

Loki shrugs. “I do. But in my defense, he was attempting to break into the bathroom while I was still in it.”

“You been in there for two hours—”

“It’s still a rule,” Peter says, raising his voice over Rocket’s. “Mantis doesn’t change our emotions to end arguments, so you don’t get to use magic to get in anybody’s head to do it, either.”

“Well, I would have simply cast an illusion, but I’m afraid he would have discovered that a bit too quickly for—”

“Dude. Come on. Work with me, here.”

He sighs, all melodramatic about it as he leans his shoulder into the door frame. “I suppose you’re right. Not exactly fair, is it?”

“Yeah! Exactly.”

“After all,” Loki says, flashing a grin down at Rocket, “I don’t imagine fooling any of you without magic would be that difficult—”

“Oh, that’s it!” Rocket shouts, launching himself forward and brandishing his screwdriver and laser cutter like he’s dual-wielding swords, ready to tear Loki a new one—

— only to fall straight through him.

The image flickers away like a hologram, and Rocket falls ass-over-teakettle in the bathroom doorway, his tools skittering across the floor. Probably should’ve seen that one coming, Peter thinks, but he keeps that much to himself. He ain’t looking to lose any fingers today.

“Oh, alright, that’s how it is,” Rocket mutters, standing up and shaking out his shoulders. “Here’s what I’m gonna do, tell ya what I’m gonna do, first I’m gonna break the damn atmo-regulation in his room, and then I’m gonna put a turd in—”

“Rocket,” Peter gently cuts in. “You can get all the revenge you want later, alright? We gotta get going, man.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, right after I find the right size turd for—”

“Dude,” Peter says, hands on his hips. “We’re leaving in like five minutes and I still gotta go make sure Groot’s up.”

“Ugh,” Rocket groans. “Fine. Yeesh. Whatever.”

“Hey, tell you what,” Peter says as he starts heading down the hall again and Rocket picks up the pace a few steps ahead. “I’ll help you smuggle some bleach into his shampoo when we get back, if you want.”

Rocket’s ears perk up at that, stopping in his tracks for a second, but then he shakes his head. “Nah, he can just magic his hair to look like it’s still normal.”

“Yeah, but he’ll know it’s not,” Peter says. “Trust me. It’ll drive him nuts.”

Rocket tilts his head from side to side, considering, and then he shrugs and turns right when the hallway branches, heading off in the direction of his own room. “Yeah, alright. But after this little hike’s over I’m still puttin’ a turd in—”

“In his pillow, yeah.”

“Nuh-uh, Quill,” Rocket says, spinning around and pointing at him as he continues to walk backwards down the hall. “Not his pillow. Gotta switch it up sometimes. I’m gonna put it in his air vent.”

Peter cringes, but Rocket’s already spun back around and turned another corner and disappeared, so Peter doesn’t have time to tell him all the reasons why that might not be such a good idea.

Ah, well, whatever. Can’t win ‘em all.

He turns left, heading toward Groot’s room, already putting every other conversation out of his head and bracing himself for what’s bound to be the most unpleasant one of the morning. Groot’s probably still out cold and is gonna be grumpy as hell that he’s being woken up for a trip he doesn’t even wanna go on, and Peter doesn’t like arguing with Groot even under the best of circumstances, let alone when they’re about to start a hike into a forest that Peter got Groot all worked up about in the first place with his talk about ghosts and whatnot.

But he finds, surprisingly, that the door to Groot’s bedroom is already cracked open.

“Uh, hey, kiddo?” he asks, a little uncertain as he knocks on the door frame. “You—?”

The door opens the rest of the way, cutting him off mid-sentence, and all of a sudden he’s face to face with a spindly little teenage tree looking expectantly up at him with one hand on the door.

“I am Groot?”

“Oh— uh, yeah,” Peter answers, blinking. “Yeah, we’re leaving in… like, five minutes?”

“I am Groot.”

“Okay. Yeah. Cool,” Peter says, nodding again so that he feels a bit like a bobblehead. Groot doesn’t sound pissed off or upset or scared anymore, which should be one hell of a relief, but Peter finds it’s mostly just concerning. “So you’re coming with us, then?”

“I am Groot.”

Okay, so there’s a little bit more of the attitude Peter was looking for. It didn’t seem too obvious yesterday that Groot was gonna be alright with coming along on this hike, but Peter reins in the urge to call him out on that.

“Course, yeah,” he agrees instead, shrugging one shoulder. “Obviously. Just, you know, double checking with everybody.”

“I am Groot.”

“Yes, with everybody, not just with you, kiddo,” he says, lying with the sort of convincing swiftness he’s long since learned is necessary as Groot gets older. “Gotta make sure everyone’s on board, that’s the captain’s job.”

“I am Groot.”

“Never said you were,” Peter tells him, raising his hands in surrender. “Probably the furthest thing from it, especially compared to the rest of us. Hell, I’m way more of a baby than you are. It’s like I told ya, I’m just checking in with everybody.”

Groot narrows his eyes at him, then frowns and asks, “I am Groot?”

“Nope. Everyone else is on board, too,” Peter tells him. “I mean, Nebula’s gonna stay behind and get started on her whole bounty hunting thing, but the rest of us are all going together. We’re gonna go in as a group, take a quick peek around and see if we can’t spot anything out of the ordinary, then we’re coming right back here.” He tucks his hands into his pockets and shrugs. “Nothing to be scared about, long as we stick together.”

“I am Groot.”

“I know you’re not. I just said there’s nothing to be scared about, didn’t I?”

Groot rolls his eyes, finally turning away, and Peter glances around at the room and suppresses the urge to make a face. Damn is his room a pigsty, but now’s really not the time to start scolding the kid for it again. He already feels like he’s on thin ice as it is.

“Alright, kiddo, so five—”

The door swings shut, not hard enough to slam, but quick enough that Peter has to jerk back to avoid getting hit in the nose.

“— minutes,” he finishes lamely.

Silence is all that greets him from the other side of the door.

“So you gonna meet us in the Benatar, then? Five minutes?”

“I am Groot.”

“Okay, yeah, yeah. Got it,” Peter quietly relents, backing away from the door. “You’re coming. Got it.”

“Alright, so let’s say… what, four hours? You come and pick us up, same spot?”

Nebula rolls her eyes, already turning away from Peter to make her way back up the Benatar’s ramp.

“In four hours,” she says over her shoulder, “I will have already accomplished far more than what those imbeciles at the precinct have managed in thirty days.”

“Y’know, I actually totally believe that.”

“Bye, Nebula!” Mantis yells from over by the forest’s edge. Behind her, the others are looking up at the overhanging canopy of leaves or sizing up a possible point of entry, but she just smiles her brightest, widest smile and waves enthusiastically with one hand while the other clings to the strap of her backpack. “Good luck with your bounty hunting!”

Nebula looks in her direction, raises an eyebrow, and Peter definitely sees the tiniest bit of an actual smile on her face before she offers a single nod and makes her way back up the ramp.

Peter steps back, watching as the engines fire up and the Benatar lifts off, sending ripples of hot air over the grass and blowing his hair out of his face, and he looks up and gives Nebula a salute just before she flies off.

“Okay,” he says, clapping his hands together as he turns and makes his way toward the others. “Let’s get to hikin’!”

He pulls the holoscreen from his pocket and opens up the map of Urunia, pinching and zooming until all he can see is the forest.

“Alright, so it’s mostly just… you know, forest,” he says, scratching the back of his head. “But there’s a couple trails marked here and there for at least the first mile or so, and if anybody wandered into the forest and disappeared, they’d have probably stuck to the trails, too. So that’s what we’ll do, too. We’ll go in right around…”

He scans his eyes over the map and it’s holographic 3D canopy and its sparsely labeled lines marking the trails, then looks up at the unbroken expanse of tree trunks and bushes in front of him, and he points to an opening a few dozen yards to the right.

“There,” he finishes. “That trail looks like it goes due north for the most part, so we’ll just follow it for a couple hours and turn right around and head due south to get back. Easy peasy. Sound like a plan?”

“It is a plan, yes.”

“Thank you, Drax,” Peter says with a little nod in his direction. “Let’s get going, then!”

They all start making their way toward the opening, Mantis skipping ahead with Drax, Rocket following behind next, and Groot apparently trying his damnedest not to stray more than two feet away from Rocket’s heels as they step out of the sunlight and into the shade of the forest canopy. Gamora speeds up a bit to catch up, subtly matching her pace with Groot’s.

Peter, though, slows his steps a little bit until he’s side by side with Loki, who’s still reading that thick-as-hell foreign looking textbook he keeps on manifesting out of nowhere, and he doesn’t look up from it until Peter nudges him with an elbow.

Loki raises an eyebrow at him. “What?”

“Do you…?” Peter starts to ask, glances ahead at Groot again, and then he lowers his voice. “You’re not picking up any magicky vibes from this place, right?”

Loki sighs, shutting the book and vanishing it, and to his credit, he actually humors Peter’s question without immediately dismissing it. He looks up, his eyes trailing over the tree branches overhead, the drooping vines, the fireflies blipping in and out of sight, the bioluminescent flowers sprouting from all around and casting their dull bluish glow over everything. Then he closes his eyes without slowing his pace — Peter tenses in preparation to catch him in case he goes tripping over a root or something, but he doesn’t.

He opens his eyes, shakes his head. “None whatsoever.”

Peter’s shoulders drop. “Huh. Really?”

“Really.”

“No ghosts, either?”

“Not that I can know for certain, but… no, most likely not,” Loki tells him. “Spirits also leave— well. It’s not quite magic, not per se, but I would still very likely know if a spirit had entered the living world in this vicinity. It would require the presence of a sort of… A sort of rift between worlds, through which they could theoretically travel, and I’ve been… especially attuned to the presence of such rifts.” He shrugs, tilts his head. “At least in the last few years or so.”

“Yeah? Why’s that?”

“Not important,” Loki says, which leads Peter to believe it definitely is, but he doesn’t push it. “Suffice it to say, I am one-hundred-percent certain that if there is any magic happening here, as I said before, it is a very insignificant amount. Certainly nothing that concerns any of us, especially given that I’m here.”

Peter nods. Up ahead, Mantis hops up onto a giant tree root, balancing on one leg for a few seconds before she hops down and keeps walking.

“And ghosts?” Peter asks, still carefully quiet. “What percentage are you on that?”

Loki pauses for a beat, and only a beat, before he says, “Eighty-seven.”

“Oh. Okay. That’s— uh, pretty damn sure, then.”

“Pretty damn sure, indeed.”

Peter chews on his cheek, his eyes on Gamora a few yards ahead. She’s in the midst of what seems like a real one-sided conversation with Groot, who hasn’t so much as looked at her as far as Peter can tell. Instead Groot keeps trying to halve his attention between his video game and the forest, alternating between stubborn concentration and a wary, sweeping look at their surroundings.

“What is it?” Loki asks.

Peter sighs. “Just…” He nods in Groot’s direction. “I kinda thought maybe he might’ve been on to something, you know? Maybe this place is haunted or magicky or something, and only, like… you know, Groots can tell.”

“That’s not a thing.”

“Really? It couldn’t be like…” Peter trails off, thinking, “… I dunno, psychic plants, or something?”

Loki sends him a sidelong glance, clearly judging him. “That is definitely not a thing.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m very sure,” Loki says, looking ahead again. “He’s a child, Quill. Children tend to be easily frightened.”

“I dunno, man. Groot ain’t your typical kid.”

“Even so,” Loki insists, “he’s a child who heard all of us theorizing over whether we may be venturing into a forest riddled with ghosts from which some thirty or so people are supposed to have disappeared. It’s only natural that he should be nervous.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Peter concedes. “So if it’s not magic, and it’s not ghosts, and apparently it ain’t slavers, then what the hell are we dealing with here?”

Loki thinks for a second. “Personally, I still hold to my large predator theory.”

“A large predator,” Peter repeats, deadpan. “You don’t think someone would’ve noticed a giant monster eating thirty-two people in a month?”

Loki shrugs. “Large predators, then. Or a sinkhole.”

“I dunno, man. Predator sounds bogus. Sinkhole would be cool though, I always wanted to see somebody get stuck in quicksand.”

“That is not—”

“Quicksand?” Mantis asks, falling back a few steps to come up next to the two of them. “What is quicksand?”

“Sand is not quick,” Drax says without turning around.

“It’s just sand that you sink into,” Peter says, miming like his hand is dive bombing down into a big vat of it. “Bloop.”

“Oh,” Mantis says. “Does it lead somewhere?”

“No,” Loki tells her. “It would just kill you. It would be like drowning in sand instead of water.”

Mantis blanches, eyes widening. “Oh, that sounds frightening.”

“Yeah, but it could be the reason a bunch of people are disappearing,” Peter says, pointing at her.

Mantis hums thoughtfully. “Yes, I suppose it could. That would be quite sad, though.”

“Which is why we’re here,” Peter offers with half a shrug. “So we can find it, and then no one else gets caught in it.”

Rocket asks, “We really goin’ with quicksand now?”

“Yeah, I’ll vote quicksand,” Peter says. “Why not?”

Loki makes a face. “Because it’s idiotic, that’s why not.”

“Dude, you were the one who suggested it in the first—”

“I did not. I said it could be a sinkhole, which is far different from—”

“Yeah, potato tomato, dude, it’s the same thing.”

Loki opens his mouth, then closes it, stopping in his tracks for a second. “Potatoes and tomatoes are not the same thing!”

Chapter Text

“Hey, bud,” Peter murmurs, falling into step beside Groot. “How’s it going?”

Groot doesn’t answer, though, because as soon as Peter speaks there’s another noise that sounds off from somewhere off in the distance — a twig snapping, a rustle of leaves — and Groot, already tense, startles and looks with wide eyes toward the source of the sound.

“Woah, hey, it’s cool,” Peter tells him, gently placating. “Just an animal or something.”

Groot frowns, looking up at him and resuming his speedwalk. “I am Groot.”

“Uh, actually I do know that. ‘Cause it’s a forest. Whole lot of different animals probably live around here, kiddo.”

Groot just shrugs, and he doesn’t slow down in his hurried strides along the path.

A few yards ahead, Mantis has been trying to entertain herself by hopping on top of every other tree root that’s grown into the path, for lack of anything better to do. The roots are getting more and more packed in as the path gets less and less clear, so she’s got more than enough stuff to jump on top of, but apparently Loki’s gotten bored enough to start summoning little glowing green platforms for her to hop up on instead, climbing them higher and higher without, apparently, much regard for how high up is too high up. Rocket’s running around somewhere up above, getting a bird’s eye — or raccoon’s eye — view of the place, in case that helps him spot anything important. And Drax and Gamora are idly looking around at their surroundings, keeping their eyes peeled like they’re supposed to, but not one of them’s seen anything out of the ordinary yet.

It’s been just over an hour, and Peter’s starting to think this whole forest theory is a bust. 

Just seems like a forest. Nothing too special about it.

But Groot still seems on edge. Somewhere off to the left, way far off where they can’t see past all the densely packed tree trunks and waist-high ferns and bushes, another twig snaps, and Groot jumps again.

Peter’s heart sinks a little bit. They only have a couple more hours to look around, sure, but he would still feel a hell of a lot better if he could just figure out some way to make Groot a little less scared—

Oh. Wow, he thinks. Duh.

“Hey,” he says, latching onto the idea as soon as it comes, and he unwinds the earbud wire from where it’s been hanging around his neck. “You feel like taking a turn on the Zune, bud?”

Groot stops, turning to frown at Peter. “I am Groot?”

“Yeah, nah, I just don’t feel like carrying it.” He shrugs. “Figure somebody should get some use out of it, though, right?”

“… I am Groot.”

“Exactly,” Peter says, bulldozing straight through the kid’s hesitant tone like he didn’t notice it at all, and he hands off the Zune without another word.

And of course Groot makes a real show of acting like he doesn’t need it, like he’s only going along with taking it because he’s being asked to, but he takes it all the same. Peter knows that whole act when he sees it. Groot casts another wary glance at the surrounding forest before he puts the earbuds in, and before he presses play, he asks, “I am Groot?”

“Yeah, course I’m sure,” Peter tells him. “I don’t need it. I can make my own music, you know that.”

Groot rolls his eyes, but he’s got the tiniest bit of a smile on his face that Peter is totally gonna count as a win.

“Seriously,” Peter says, grinning wide as he starts shaking his hips and hopping along the sort-of-path they’re now carving through the grass and shrubs. “Who needs a recording? I got all the music I need right here.” He pokes at the side of his head. “Ain’t that right, babe?”

Gamora looks at him over her shoulder and nods. “Of course.”

“See, she gets it!” he shouts, extending a hand out like he’s reaching for her. “And I… I’m getting too close, again…”

She recognizes the tune immediately, covering her mouth to hide her smile. Groot, on the other hand, lets out an embarrassed groan and sticks his tongue out like he’s gonna gag, and he presses play on the Zune to block out Peter’s impromptu serenade.

But Peter’s officially found his entertainment for the rest of the hike, and hell if he’s about to stop now.

“I don’t wanna see it end…”

Gamora snorts, shaking her head as Peter bounds up to walk beside her.

“If I tell you tonight, would ya turn out the light, and walk away…” Peter drones, half an octave lower than he’s used to, belting it out all gravelly and deep and dramatic and not at all like the actual song sounds, “… knowin’ I looove yooou…”

In front of him, Loki lets out a groan to echo Groot’s, throwing his head back. “Quill, for the—”

“I’m gonna take ya by surpriiise, and make you realiiize, Gamora!”

Mantis tilts her head and asks, not unkindly, “Oh, this song again?”

Loki mutters, “Yes, this song again.”

“I’m gonna tell ya right awaaay, I can’t wait another daaay, Gamora!” Peter shouts, pulling Gamora close to his side.

Drax reminds him, as he does every time, “That is not how the song goes.”

And Peter keeps on going, as he does every time, totally undeterred. “I’m gonna say it like a maaan, and make you understaaand, Gamora! I luh-huve yooou…!” 

He stops singing for just long enough to plant a kiss on her cheek, with a big old mwah sound and everything, and he takes more than a little pride in the way she’s blushing purple and biting her lower lip to hide the fact that she’s grinning like a teenager.

Before he can get into the next verse, though, Loki’s voice cuts him off.

“Quill, if I have to hear you squalling that song at her one more time,” he says, shooting him an unimpressed look over his shoulder, “in some strange and horrible attempt at serenading, I swear I am going to lose all restraint and finally embed a dagger into one of your vital organs.”

“Aw, Loki!” Peter shouts, unwinding his arm from around Gamora and smiling even wider.

And Loki knows that tone by now, so he turns fully around, leveling him with a warning glare as he continues walking backwards.

“If you wanted me to serenade you instead, buddy—”

“No, absolutely not—”

“— all you had to do was ask.”

“Don’t you dare start with that horrible—”

Peter hikes up the pitch in his voice as high as he can possibly get it and screams, “COME ON HOME, GIRL, HE SAID WITH A SMILE…!”

“Quill—”

“You don’t have to love me, but let’s get high a while!” Peter belts it out, definitely missing the right notes by a mile and a half, but who cares? Who’s even around to hear him other than these guys? He hops up onto a tree root and pulls one of his blasters out of its holster so he can sing into the butt of it like it’s a microphone.

“Quill, I swear on—”

“But try to understand—”

“I will stab you—”

“Try to understand!”

“Which of your lungs would you prefer—”

“Oh, oh, oh… Tryyy to understand!”

“Final warning—”

“Try, try, try to understaaand,” Peter croons, dropping down from his perch on the root and trying to throw an arm around Loki’s shoulders, only to be shoved off within half a second. But he doesn’t get stabbed, which means he successfully called Loki’s bluff, so he feels pretty safe in continuing, “He’s a magic maaan, Mama!”

Loki groans again, dragging a hand over his face. “All this time I thought I knew what real torture was like.”

“Ah, come on, you love it.”

“I do not.”

“Ooh, he’s got the magic hands,” Peter sings, holstering his blaster and then extending both arms straight out toward Loki, wiggling his fingers like he’s casting a spell.

And Loki, predictably, runs out of patience and swipes one hand through the air in front of him, green sparks dancing along his fingertips.

Peter’s entire center of gravity lurches like he’s at the bottom of a dip on a rollercoaster. His feet are yanked out from underneath him and his head nearly smacks right into the ground — but the magic holds tight, swooping him up into the air and dangling him by his ankle, totally unharmed except for a boozy sort of dizziness behind his eyes.

“Oh-ho, damn, that is better than a carnival ride,” he says, grinning wide and pretending like all the blood in his body ain’t in the process of rushing to his head.

Loki doesn’t say anything to that, just keeps on walking and stepping over bushes and downed branches, all while Peter dangles in the air beside him, bouncing along like he’s hanging from an invisible hook.

“Hey, uh, Loki?”

No response, naturally.

“Loki. Yoo-hoo. Lokster. Loki, Loki, Loki.”

Peter grunts with effort as he swings his torso in Loki’s direction, swatting at his shoulder and missing by a hair.

“Psst. Hey, buddy. How about letting me walk again, huh?”

“I will not,” Loki says, eyes straight ahead and a small smile on his face. “You have officially lost walking privileges.”

Peter twists at the waist, peering around and trying to see if anyone else is gonna come to his defense any time soon.

No such luck. Mantis and Drax are now in a heated discussion about which one of them remembers the real words to Boston’s Amanda (neither of them are right, he notices — Drax thinks the name is supposed to be Delilah, Mantis is convinced it’s Jessica), Groot is fully engrossed in his game now that there’s no noise to distract him, and Rocket’s still nowhere in sight. Gamora’s grinning just as much as before, looking plenty entertained by Peter’s predicament and like she’s not planning on intervening any time soon.

… Which is fair, really. It’s not like Loki’s gonna let him get hurt or anything.

Probably.

“Well,” Peter says, crossing his arms over his chest. “Maybe I wanted to lose walking privileges, huh? Maybe this is all a part of my big master plan.”

Loki hums, nodding like Peter’s just made a really great point. “Of course.”

“Seriously. All part of the plan. I was getting tired of walking anyway. I wanted you to carry me the rest of the way.”

“Oh, well in that case.”

With no warning at all, the invisible hook on his ankle vanishes into nothing, and Peter lets out an involuntary yelp as his head plummets toward the ground— for all of about half a second, anyway, before the magic takes hold again and hefts him up a few feet higher than he’d been before.

“Not cool, man!” Peter yells, putting a hand on his chest where his heart’s busy hammering away at a mile a minute. “So not cool.”

Loki just smiles wider at that, and Peter swings himself forward again to try and hit him, to no avail.

“Get — closer, you slippery little—”

“Why all the hostility, Quill? Did you not just finish saying you’d planned for this?”

“You almost dropped me!”

“Oh, relax with the theatrics, I wouldn’t have dropped you.”

“But you almost—!”

A harsh pop nearby cuts Peter off, like the twigs that were snapping in the distance except it’s louder, closer. Maybe something big stepping on a thick tree branch and breaking it in half.

“What was that?” Loki asks, their argument all but forgotten as he frowns in the direction of the noise.

Quick as anything, everyone else is on alert now, too. Drax has his hands on his still holstered daggers, Gamora’s already preparing to draw Godslayer, Mantis is nervously glancing around at their surroundings with her hands held in front of her, and Groot’s looking up at all of them and pulling the earbuds away.

“I am Groot?”

“It could have been nothing,” Gamora says, though her eyes narrow as she looks around.

The pop doesn’t happen again, and the forest descends into a quiet that somehow feels thicker than anything they’ve heard out here yet. Is that just because none of them are talking? Peter can’t tell.

He feels a gust of cold wind at his back, Loki’s magic gently reorienting him to right-side-up in midair before its hold on him vanishes, leaving him to land lightly on the balls of his feet in the knee-high shrubs and ferns.

Peter taps his earpiece and keeps his voice low. “Rocket? You there, man?”

The line buzzes with static for a second before it comes back. “Yeah—” Rocket’s voice comes through, barely. “— goin’ on, Quill?”

“You nearby?”

“Yeah, ‘bout—” more static — “couple hundred yards east? Why?”

“Get over here and keep it quiet.”

“Uh-huh. Got it.”

Peter drops his hand away from the earpiece, pulling his blaster out again. The area’s still deadly quiet, the kind of quiet that he doesn’t like one bit. Seriously, has the forest really been this quiet the whole time they’ve been here? Have they just been filling up the silence until now?

There’s a faint rustle of leaves somewhere off to his left, and every single one of them turns toward it. Mantis is the closest, and despite Peter’s harsh shushing and waving at her to back the hell up, she keeps both hands poised in front of her and her eyes directed straight ahead as she takes a careful, silent step forward.

The rustling sound happens again, except now that Peter’s listening for it, he recognizes it for what it is. Something, or someone, is stepping through the underbrush toward them.

The tangled shrubs and grass in front of Mantis parts, and a thin reptilian nose pokes through.

“Mantis,” Peter hisses, since anything other than directly saying it doesn’t seem to be working, “back up.”

She does, extending her arms out to the side so that everyone behind her does, too.

The animal noses its way through the underbrush, and soon an entire reptilian head is visible — narrow and elongated, slick scales glinting in the dim bluish light of the forest, black beady eyes all the way at the back, nostrils twitching up at the front — and Peter raises his blaster to aim at it, just in case. The thing’s bigger than a damn crocodile and could probably take a good chunk out of one of them, if it decided to.

Mantis doesn’t seem too worried, though. Slowly, very slowly, she sinks into a crouch so that she’s closer to the thing’s eye level, her arms still out to prevent anyone else from getting closer to it.

“Hello,” she says, smiling. The creature lifts its head in her direction. “We do not mean to—”

Peter’s heart jumps straight out of his chest, because Mantis is interrupted as the thing launches itself at her, so quick that almost none of them have time to react. One second it’s lurching forward with an ear-piercing screech, the next it slams face first into a wall of shimmering green light, just in time for Mantis to stumble back with a startled shout and — apparently on instinct — throw one hand forward to smack it on the nose.

Her hand passes harmlessly through the magic shield, and the instant her fingertips make contact with the creature, it collapses in a heap in the dirt, fast asleep.

“Je-sus,” Peter shouts, trigger finger twitching where he’d almost fired. “You okay, Mantis?”

“Y— yes, I’m alright.”

Loki, shaking out a hand as the shimmering shield dissipates, says, “Perhaps next time we refrain from talking to the large apex predator, hmm?”

“I was trying to placate him,” Mantis insists, clearly irritated. “We must have frightened him. He was confused and very afraid.”

“He almost just ripped your damn throat out,” Peter reminds her.

“Because we frightened him!” She turns toward the rest of them and crosses her arms over her chest. “We are the ones who do not live here. It must have been frightening to see so many people here in his home where they do not belong.”

“We are trespassing,” Drax quietly admits. “Technically.”

“Alright, alright,” Gamora says, sheathing Godslayer again. Peter hadn’t even noticed she’d fully drawn it. “This one is asleep and therefore no longer a threat to us. Let’s move on and try to keep our interactions with the forest’s… residents to a minimum, okay?”

“Yeah, sounds good to me,” Peter agrees, warily eyeing the creature as it rolls over onto its back, letting out faint little snores. He tilts his head, recognition dawning. “Say, Mantis, does Sleeping Beauty look familiar to you?”

“Hmm?”

Peter points at it. “The thing’s head, it looks like the one in Braz’s office, don’t it? You think he’s gone hunting around here?”

Mantis frowns, her brow creasing as she looks down at the creature. “No, I do not think this is the same kind of creature that he had— um, mounted in his office.”

“What? You’re joking, right? It looks just like it, like a… longer crocodile, or something.”

Mantis shakes her head. “No, the one in his office was much bigger. At least three or four times as big.”

“You sure?”

“Oh, yes, very sure,” Mantis nods. “The head alone was as big as me. And I believe it had more scales, and it looked more blue than brown. I do not think that this one,” she says, pointing down at it, “could even have been the same species.”

“Yeah, guess you’re right,” Peter concedes, regarding the creature with his head tilted. “There’s probably a few different kinds of these guys living ‘round—”

“Quill,” Loki cuts in, his voice tense.

Peter turns and raises an eyebrow at him. “Yeah, man? What’s up?”

“We need to move,” Loki says, shooting a nervous sweeping look over their surroundings. A greenish glow is flickering and flowing around his wrists, dancing along down to his fingertips. “We need to move now.”

“Uh, okay. Yeah, I mean, we gotta get back on track anyway,” Peter says, taken aback but not about to second guess the urgency in Loki’s voice. Still, he asks, “Why, what’s going on?”

“If I’m right,” Loki says, directing a pointed look at the not-quite-a-crocodile snoozing away on the ground, “that thing looks so different from whatever creature the two of you saw in the Sergeant’s office because…”

His voice dies off as his eyes return to Peter — and then keep on looking past Peter, at something behind him. His face falls, eyes widening and unwavering on whatever it is he’s looking at, and Peter even sees him gulp.

“… because,” he continues, lowering his voice to a whisper, “that one is a baby.”

The others follow his gaze, and Peter watches as every single one of them suddenly looks like they’ve seen a ghost, all of them tensing up in preparation for a fight, Gamora putting a hand on the hilt of her sword again but not moving, not just yet.

Peter freezes right where he’s at.

“Damn it,” he whispers, scrunching up his nose and squeezing his eyes shut for a second. “Damn it. There’s a bigass Sleeping Beauty right behind me, isn’t there?”

Only Mantis nods. The others look a little too tense to respond at all. Loki brings a finger to his lips, and that green light that had been gathering in his hands starts to pulse, spreading and beating outward like ripples in a pond.

When I give the signal, his voice sounds in Peter’s head and, presumably, in all of their heads, run like hell in that direction.

He jerks his head to his left — er, his right, Peter’s left — and the air around them starts to thrum with a sort of low static, making the hair on Peter’s arms and the back of his neck stand on end. A low growl sounds from behind him, so deep he feels it rumbling up through the soles of his boots all the way up through his chest, and it is super goddamn close, holy shit, and half a second later—

“NOW!”

Not one of them wastes a moment. Peter doesn’t even bother looking over his shoulder to see the thing, just high-tails it out of there right at the heels of Gamora, who’s running right behind all the others and tearing indiscriminately through the shrubs like a bat out of hell.

He doesn’t see what Loki does, but he sure as hell hears it.

Overhead, the faint greenish light that was hanging over all of them just zips right back, sucked up in Loki’s direction like he’s gathered it all back into him, and then there’s a woosh of displaced air and a deafening roar from the creature as it’s attacked. Half a heartbeat later, there’s the unmistakable sound of something very big and fleshy smacking into a tree trunk and snapping the damn thing clean in half.

The ground shakes a little bit from the impact, and Peter shoots a glance over his shoulder to see Loki jogging up behind him.

“You good, man?”

“Keep moving,” Loki puffs, shoving at his back, and they all keep clambering their way through the forest. Up ahead, Peter sees Drax elbowing aside whole trees to clear a path as Gamora slices through vines and branches with her sword, with Mantis and Groot following close behind them.

Then, from somewhere off to the right, something absolutely massive smashes through the trees and launches itself into their group.

Gamora reacts fast, ducking around Drax and leaping up and bringing Godslayer down on the creature’s neck all in one fell swoop — and holy shit is that thing huge, Peter thinks, taller and longer than the little one had been but also bulkier, thicker. It was standing up on its hind legs and was at least twice Peter’s height, but now its head, sliced clean off, hits the ground with a thunk as the rest of its body follows suit, displacing an explosion of dirt and leaves and twigs with its landing on the forest floor.

“That’s not the same one,” Gamora pants, lifting her sword and twirling it so that it’s at the ready for another attack, her eyes wildly searching their surroundings.

“What did I say,” Loki reminds them all, irritable and anxious. “What the hell did I say? A large predator—”

As if on queue, a deep bellowed roar sounds from back behind them, shaking the ground beneath their feet. Then there’s another one, further away and somewhere up ahead, that sounds off in response, and then another somewhere that might be to the east or might be to the north. Peter’s not sure; he’s gotten a little turned around by now.

“Shit,” Peter breathes.

“How many?” Drax asks, tightly gripping his daggers.

Loki answers, “At least three, maybe more.”

“Shit,” Peter repeats, because he feels like it bears repeating, and he taps his earpiece to bring the mask out. The bluish purplish forest around him disappears behind a film of red, and he taps the earpiece again until the view switches over to the deep navy screen that’s the background for thermal vision. “Okay,” he says, spinning in a slow circle, watching as two giant masses of reddish-orange show up on the screen some eighty yards away, then another one forty yards away in another direction, and then—

Shit.

Double shit.

Goddamn fuckity shit.

“Uh. Okay. There’s, uh, there’s eleven of ‘em.”

“Eleven?” Loki asks.

“Eleven,” Peter confirms, pulling out both blasters now and keeping the thermal view on his display. Everybody starts automatically gathering together, standing in a circle in the messy little clearing they’ve made, their backs to the center. “Two at twelve o’clock,” he says, pointing, “one at two o’clock, three comin’ in from four, three from seven, and another two from nine o’clock.”

“How big are they?” Mantis asks.

“Uh… big,” Peter tells her, because there isn’t any use in lying. “First one’s coming around—”

And that’s all the time he has to speak before there’s another roar from directly behind him, and one of the creatures comes storming in from the trees. Peter glances over his shoulder just in time to catch a glimpse of Drax letting out one of his signature battle cries and throwing himself at it — there’s a spray of blood when he makes contact and the high-pitched, pained whine of the creature’s roar cutting off — and Peter directs his attention forward again.

The first of the two coming from directly ahead bursts through the trees, and Peter, already poised and waiting for it, delivers a blaster shot straight through the thing’s skull. It collapses to the ground, several tons of flesh smacking into the dirt with all the force of a crashed M ship, and Peter has to stagger back a step to avoid getting crushed by it.

The rest of the monsters descend on their little clearing all at once, and the entire place dissolves into friggin’ chaos.

Peter manages to take out a second one of them with his blasters, then turns on the spot to find another one nearly on top of Mantis, but she ducks out of the way of its snapping jaws and clamps a hand down on its leg, bringing it down to the ground with only a grunt of effort on her part.

He spins around, his view through the mask shifting in an almost dizzying blur of blue-red-orange-blue, and he aims and fires at the first giant reptile shaped blob of red he sees. It was part of a group of three that were descending upon Groot and Drax all at once, and it takes a hit to its side, which draws another one of those deafening roars from it as it turns and directs its attention to Peter instead, bounding after him.

“Shit, shit, shit,” he mutters, backpedaling and firing another shot into it’s chest as it rears up on its hind legs, and then another that hits it in a front leg, and then one that finally makes it clean through the creature’s skull.

The thing keels over and nearly crushes him just like the first one, and Peter throws himself back—

— only to collide right into another one of them.

Peter whips around to find one of the things’ snapping jaws just a few inches above his face, and with a panicked yelp he swings his arm up and smacks it upside the head with one of his blasters, which naturally does just about jack shit to deter it. The creature opens its maw wide and lunges to swallow him up from the head down, but Peter dives to the side quick enough that it misses his head.

And, instead, its jaws clamp down on his right thigh.

“Shit!”

White-hot pain ratchets up his leg from where the creature’s teeth have sunk in, and Peter, through a haze of adrenaline and a string of curses that would have put even the filthiest of Ravagers to shame, fumbles with a blaster to try and get the muzzle on the thing’s head to shoot it off of him.

He’s not quick enough. The creature jerks back — and holy shit on a stick if he thought that hurt before, it’s goddamn blinding now — and uses its grip on his leg to fling him aside, launching him several feet into the air and several dozen yards across the clearing until he tumbles over himself and smacks back first into a tree. The helmet, or the magneto-whatever shield installed in his helmet anyway, cushions the impact enough so it doesn’t kill him, and then it retracts back into the earpiece.

By the time Peter’s vision swims back into clarity and he manages to scramble up to stand on his one remaining good leg, the creature’s already racing after him and closing in fast, and shit, shit, shit, he doesn’t even have his blasters anymore, he must have lost his grip on them when he was thrown—

There’s a strange sound coming from somewhere above, one that Peter fails to notice until it’s directly over him.

It’s an odd sort of metallic thunk followed by a thin whirr, and a second later the creature coming after him crumples with a pained shriek, flames bursting and rolling all over it from a series of darts that — now that it’s fallen — Peter can see sticking out from all over its back.

The creatures all around the clearing quickly follow suit, collapsing in a pile of flaming limbs and tails and snapping jaws, letting out high-pitched shrieks as they sputter out their last dying breaths. Loki rolls his eyes, vanishing the dagger he’d been about to throw at a now-dead target, and Drax sinks one of his daggers into the nearest creature with a howling laugh and without, apparently, noticing that it’s on fire and very much already dead.

“Yeesh!”

Rocket’s voice comes from somewhere up in the treetops, and then Peter sees him scrambling down a tree trunk to join them, dragging that crazy bazooka he likes so much behind him.

“Rocket, you said you didn’t bring that one!” Gamora shouts, panting as she sheathes Godslayer. “You could have set the entire forest on fire.”

Rocket wastes no time in droning right back, “Oh, thank you, Rocket, we wouldn’t’a survived that without you, Rocket, nice of ya to save our asses, Rocket!”

Gamora swipes the back of her hand over her forehead, rolling her eyes, but she doesn’t argue that.

“I leave yas alone for a few stinkin’ minutes,” Rocket continues, shaking his head, “and you wake up every frickin’ predator on the planet.”

The clearing is about twenty or thirty degrees hotter now, what with the smouldering bodies of the several-ton creatures all scattered around them and making the air in the forest almost too hot to breathe, like the sweltering smoke is reaching down Peter’s throat and gripping at his lungs. He fumbles for the front of his shirt and misses once, twice, three times before he finally gets a grip on it and tries to air it out a little bit, fanning himself, but it doesn’t help.

Jesus, his leg is killing him. It’s throbbing like a sonuvabitch, and the pain’s starting to creep up into his stomach now.

How bad is it, he wonders? Because shit, he really has no idea. Maybe he should sit down, get a good look at it, figure out exactly how bad it is and what he’s gotta do to patch it up.

He is feeling a little light-headed, so maybe sitting down would…

It’s not until he figures out that the rest of them have been talking all this time and he hasn’t been hearing a word of it, and not until he spots Gamora looking at him from across the clearing and reaching up with both hands to cover her mouth, and not until he sees Loki look in his direction too and sees all the color leave his face, that Peter realizes.

Oh, okay, he thinks, distantly, numbly, as the forest and the burning creatures and everybody’s faces all blur together in a dizzying swirl of brown and orange and blue as the ground rushes up to meet him—

So that’s how bad it is.

Chapter Text

Gamora has seen many terrible, heart-wrenching things in her long and arduous life.

Entire planets razed to the ground. Populations mowed down like inconvenient weeds. Innocents tortured to within an inch of their lives, and then a bit further, just because. Children pitted against each other in gruesome fights to the death.

And she is, of course, well acquainted with loss. She tried to harden herself against it as a child, and she very nearly succeeded. She endured the demise of her parents, her people, and then so many sisters and friends that she had to stop thinking of them as such for the sake of her own sanity. And then, when she finally opened herself back up and allowed herself to consider the others as her friends — not family, not yet, not just yet — the losses didn’t stop. There was Groot, shattered into splinters in the fight against Ronan. Then Peter, or so she thought, left behind as Ego burst in a great fiery explosion in the vacuum of space. Then half of Xandar, destroyed in a wink because they were fool enough to believe that the Nova Corps could keep the Power Stone safe.

Again and again and again, she has felt that horrible swooping feeling in her gut, the sinking of her heart that comes with the belief that she’s about to lose someone else.

And somehow, that repetition does not make it any easier.

As Peter’s knees give out, she hears someone scream his name, a high-pitched and panicked sound, and it takes her a moment to realize that the sound came from her. By then she has already sprinted across the clearing, vaulted over however many smouldering bodies in a haze of smoke and heat and breathless fear, and crashed to her knees beside him.

“Peter?”

On instinct alone she reaches for his leg, but she flinches back before she can touch it. Over the years she has become quite well versed in Terran anatomy, but this—

This looks very, very bad. Too bad for her to risk aggravating it any further with touch, not yet. Instead she snakes an arm under his chest and gently lifts him up, finding him limp as a ragdoll, completely and utterly pliant to her touch. Her heart plummets further.

No, no, no, don’t you dare.

“Peter—”

“What happened to him?” Drax asks, suddenly right behind her.

“Peter,” she tries again, bringing one hand to the side of his face and swiping a thumb over his cheek. His eyes are closed, and there’s not so much as a flutter of his eyelashes as she shakes and pleads with him. She feels for a pulse; it’s too faint and too quick, but it’s there, at least. For now.

“I am Groot?”

“The hell’s wrong with—”

“Move,” Loki practically hisses, cutting off Rocket’s question and shoving himself into the tight circle they’ve all formed, carefully sinking to his knees on Peter’s other side. He doesn’t look at Gamora, but she can tell he’s addressing her when he orders, “Move him. Let me see it.”

Gently, as gently as she possibly can, she shifts him around so that his head rests on her shoulder, easing him back and carefully sliding his legs out from under him. At the forced movement he gives the first sign of consciousness she’s seen from him at all — a weak twitch, a low groan from the back of this throat — but she’ll take it.

God, she’ll take it.

“What’s the… oh,” Rocket says, the angry annoyance in his tone gone in a flash.

“I am Groot?”

“It’s, uh… Nah, he’ll be fine,” Rocket quietly assures him, or maybe he’s assuring himself, watching with the rest of them as Loki’s hand hovers over Peter’s leg, green light already encasing the entire thigh. “Humies, they… uh, they got a lotta blood to spare. Y’know.”

“I am Groot.”

“Yeah, I know it’s a lot, but—”

“Loki,” Gamora says, because while she loves both Rocket and Groot dearly, she will snap at them if she does not cut off that conversation right now. “What are you doing?”

She’s gotten Peter almost fully into her lap now, or as best as she can with him being so much bulkier than she is. His shoulder blades are slumped against her stomach, his head tipped back into the dip beside her collarbone, one of her arms looped beneath his and wrapped tight over his chest to hold him steady, her free hand already tangled in his hair.

And Loki, looking for all the world like there’s no one else in this forest except for Peter, answers her question all the same.

“I… might be able to do something for him,” Loki says, eyes fixed on the absolute mess that Peter’s thigh has become, a horrible sticky mishmash of torn denim and far, far too much blood. Gamora’s stitched an incalculable number of wounds in her life, and she’s not even sure where she would start with this. Loki’s hands hover uncertainly, but he steadfastly maintains what still looks to Gamora like a translucent cast around Peter’s thigh. “Maybe.”

Rocket asks, “Seriously?”

“Maybe,” Loki repeats, and his eyes flick up toward Gamora’s. “It’s— all I’m doing at the moment is… staunching it. I don’t know if—”

“Loki,” Gamora interrupts. “How bad is it?”

She has to ask, because although she can see it, sort of, and although she has some working knowledge of exactly how fragile a Terran’s body is, she has no way to know for sure.

And she needs to know.

“I’m not… entirely certain,” Loki answers, and Gamora’s heart sinks all over again. “Humans have… It’s an artery, in each of their legs, that provides a truly startling amount of blood flow and it looks like his has been punctured, judging by all—” he tilts a head at all the blood coating Peter’s leg, since neither of his hands are free to point — “that.”

“Can you save him?”

Loki hesitates.

“Loki,” Gamora says, as stern as she can manage when she can already feel her voice edging into hysteria. “Can you save him.”

“I’m… fairly certain. Probably.”

Rocket asks, “Whaddaya mean, probably?”

“I mean probably,” Loki hisses, shooting a warning glare in Rocket’s direction. “Humans are… remarkably fragile.”

“But you got magic, right?”

Loki tilts his head. “I do, yes.”

“I thought you said you could not do healing magic,” Drax says.

“I never said I couldn’t do it. I said it was not my forté. And besides, I’ve been…” Loki hesitates, just barely, with a glance toward Drax and the subtlest little sweep of his eyes over the prosthetic leg before bringing his attention fully back to Peter, “… I’ve been reading up on it, as of late.”

“You’re just goin’ off stuff you’ve been reading?” Rocket asks. “You never even done this before?”

“Well, it’s simple telekinesis when you really get down to it.”

“I am Groot.”

Loki huffs, rolling his eyes and then gritting his teeth. “Simple to me, then.”

“Loki,” Gamora presses. “How certain is fairly certain?”

“I’m not—”

“C’mon, man,” Rocket cuts in. “Give us a percentage. What kinda odds are we lookin’ at here?”

“It will be zero if all of you do not shut up and let me focus,” Loki finally barks at all of them, grimacing as one of his hands makes genuine contact with Peter’s leg and comes away sticky with matted blood. His eyes move from Peter’s wound all the way up to his face, and Loki says, all the anger gone from his voice and replaced with urgency, “Mantis. I need him awake.”

Mantis has been watching all of this with her eyes wide and worried, both hands over her mouth, but she lowers them now and asks, “Are you certain? Won’t he be in pain?”

“Oh, I imagine quite a lot, yes. But better in pain than dead, don’t you think?”

Mantis sets her jaw and nods, kneeling and fitting herself on Gamora’s right side, and she lays a hand on Peter’s upper arm.

“Wake.”

The response is instant, as it always is. Peter gasps the long, sharp inhale of a man who’s just nearly drowned — but it’s cut off midway through as his breath catches and he tenses up from head to toe, one arm flailing about for something to grab onto. He lands on Gamora’s upper arm and stays there.

“It’s alright,” Gamora tells him, whispers into his hair as she tightens her grip on him. “It’s alright, you’re alright.”

“Oh… man,” Peter groans, blinking sluggishly up at his surroundings without a single sign of recognition. “A’body… get that, uh… that plate number?”

Rocket frowns. “Huh?”

“He is delirious,” Drax says.

Mantis nods. “He is also very tired.”

“Yes, obviously he’s delirious and tired,” Loki snaps, sounding like he meant to lace more venom into those words but couldn’t quite find the wherewithal for it. “He’s lost something like a quarter of the blood in his body. Just keep him awake.”

Peter blinks again, slow and lethargic, and finally seems to focus in on some of their faces. A grin spreads across his face, the dopey, half-drunk kind.

“Oh, hey guys,” he slurs, sagging back into Gamora and closing his eyes. The motion is so terribly, achingly familiar that it sends a pang through the center of her chest. “Glad you… you guys’re here.”

“We’re here,” Gamora agrees, gently combing through his hair. “You just stay awake, alright?”

Peter frowns and hums at that, a sound that borders on a whine. “But ‘m tired.”

“I know you are, it’s okay.”

He hums again. “An’ it… hurts, ‘Mora.”

Gamora bites the inside of her cheek, hard, until she no longer feels the sting of tears in her eyes. Then she nods. “I know, but just hang on a little while longer, okay?”

He pouts, purposefully jutting out his lower lip. “How much longer, though?”

“As long as I need,” Loki interrupts before she can answer, “to stitch your ridiculously complicated mesh of arteries back together. Assuming they’ll even hold after I do so, mind-blowingly delicate as they are.”

“Hm,” Peter nods, deadly serious, like Loki’s teaching him some important lesson. Though the effect is a bit lost with his lethargic movements, the nod happening in what seems like slow motion. “Think I caught ‘bout… thirty p’cent of that, buddy.”

Loki grunts in annoyance or effort, it’s hard to tell which, and he shoots a half-hearted glare up at Peter’s face before his eyes are back down on the wound he’s working at stitching. Green light coils around Peter’s leg like a latticework of tiny green snakes, pulsing as though commanded by a heartbeat.

Then, sounding like it’s only half directed at Peter and more like he’s distractedly thinking aloud, Loki grumbles, “What you were even thinking getting so close to one of those creatures is beyond me. Easily the most fragile of all of us, and you thought — what, you might try your luck at hand-to-hand combat with a fourteen-foot-long reptilian beast? Is that it?”

Peter just hums an I dunno, lazily shrugging one shoulder, and he turns his head a bit to get more comfortable against Gamora’s chest.

“Mantis,” Loki says.

“Got it.”

She dutifully touches his upper arm again, jolting him awake with a startled whine, and this time she leaves her hand right where it is.

Peter groans, “Oh, man, that’s like— ugh, ‘s like a dunk tank.”

“Honestly,” Loki huffs, angrily shaking his head. “I have half a mind to leave you like this. You’ve certainly earned it, at any rate.”

And Peter actually giggles at that, a bubbly drunk sort of giggle that tapers off into another light groan. “Aw, that’s… that’s cold, man.” He snorts. “Heh. No, uh… no pun ‘ntended.”

Loki glances up at Peter with a look that Gamora honestly has trouble deciphering before he looks back down at the wound again.

“But you don’t gotta… be like that all the time, y’know,” Peter continues, weak but evidently undeterred, his voice thrumming lowly along Gamora’s collar bone. He’s got one hand still loosely clinging to her arm, but he flops around with the other one until he ends up jabbing Loki in the shoulder with all the strength of a sick infant. “Not ‘round us… We know you’re all… warm ‘n fuzzy, inside.”

He drops his hand to his side, onto Gamora’s lap, and takes a long, slow inhale that culminates in a heavy puff out. His body tenses up again as he holds his breath for a second, and Gamora pauses in carding her fingers through his hair to press a kiss to the top of his head.

“… Ow,” he says after the spike of pain evidently passes, wrinkling his nose. “But yeah, uh, that… You know. ‘S what counts, buddy. The inside.”

There’s a brief moment in which Loki says nothing to that, far too focused on what he’s doing. The light twists and pulses, emerald snakes writhing. He sucks in a sharp breath and lets it out deliberately slow and steady in a near echo of Peter’s own pained breaths, and when Gamora glances up at him she sees sweat beading on his forehead.

Then, considerably gentler than before, Loki says, “Yes, well, quite a lot more of your inside is going to end up on the outside if you don’t let me focus on saving you, alright?”

“Mm. Yep. You gotta focus. I, uh… I hear ya.”

“That means shut up, Quill.”

“Ohhh,” Peter says, nodding. Again he flails a bit with his free hand, only this time it seems to be with the intention of poking his own face, for whatever reason Gamora can’t fathom. Eventually his pointer finger comes to rest on his cheek, then he scowls in annoyance and moves it until it’s on the tip of his nose. “Mm. Gotcha. Shh- ing now.”

He falls silent, just as the rest of them do, too, everyone other than Peter watching what Loki’s doing with rapt attention. The only sound is that of the gently crackling flames all around them — a pleasant sound if not for the putrid stench coming from the same source — and the distant pattering noises of the forest.

Gamora takes a breath to steady her nerves, and she gently tightens the arm she’s got looped around Peter’s torso, pulling him up a little more securely into her lap. Warmth radiates from him, a feverish heat that seeps straight through his shirt and into the crook of her arm, even while goosebumps rise along the top of her forearm from the biting chill of Loki’s magic. Again she peers down at what he’s doing, but to no real benefit. She is no expert when it comes to magic, not by a longshot. She can’t tell just by looking whether it’s working or not, whether it’s doing anything for Peter at all, whether it’s going to prevent him from—

Stop.

Don’t think that.

She squeezes her eyes shut and presses another kiss to the top of his head, runs her fingers through his hair. Under normal circumstances the latter alone would have him drifting off to sleep in minutes, but not with Mantis continually dedicating herself to keeping him awake.

And, for the first time since Mantis sat here and fitted herself at Gamora’s side, it occurs to her that every single emotion coursing through Gamora now, the frayed nerves and the dread and the tremulous hope and the paralyzing fear that she’s trying her best to squander, all of it must be affecting Mantis as well. Guilt sinks into her stomach at the realization — which, oh, of course Mantis will have felt that, too — but still, she can’t find it in herself to move away.

Mantis is… calming her, she thinks. To some degree. Not on purpose, she imagines, not with her power. Just with the contact, the silent support.

Behind her, she hears a whispered, “I am Groot?”

“Nah,” Rocket answers right away. “Loki’s got it.”

A beat of silence. Then a skeptical, “I am Groot.”

“And how would you be able to tell that, huh? You some kinda magic expert all of a sudden?”

“I am Groot.”

“Mm, hey, now,” Peter murmurs, lifting his free hand again and lazily waving it in an aborted attempt at a come here motion. “I’m fine. ‘S fine. C’mere, bud.”

Gamora seconds it, lifting the hand that was carding through Peter’s hair to beckon Groot forward.

“I’m, uh…” Peter groans, scrunching up his face again as an apparent surge of pain comes and goes. Groot sits down on Gamora’s other side. “Don’t worry ‘bout… ‘bout me, kiddo. I’m good.”

“I am Groot.”

Peter hums a tired little laugh, smirking up at Groot. “Well, that’s rude. I think…” He pauses, takes another breath to huff it out all at once. “I think I look damn good.”

“You do not,” says Drax, who’s now circled around them to stand behind Loki, watching the magic over Loki’s shoulder with his arms crossed over his chest. He sweeps an appraising look over Peter and adds, “You are even paler than usual.”

Gamora can’t help agreeing, but Peter just shrugs one shoulder.

“I could… prob’ly rock the pale look,” Peter murmurs. “Flatters me, I think.”

“It does not,” Drax assures him.

Peter doesn’t answer to that, just grumbles a little as he shifts an inch or two to get more comfortable — or as close to comfortable as he’s likely able to get, in the state he’s in. He takes another breath, slow and heaving like it takes every ounce of strength he has just to draw air into his lungs.

And it’s then that his eyes seem to catch on something.

It’s something over Loki’s shoulder and far off in the distance, through the trees. Peter’s mouth opens, head tilting to the side as he openly stares at… whatever it is he’s seeing. Gamora tries to follow his gaze up to find it, but there’s nothing there at all. Just endless trees and leaves and shrubs, the glow of some of the plants’ bioluminescence shining like hazy blue beacons near the treetops, the faint flicker of fireflies blipping in and out of existence.

“You guys…” Peter murmurs, and Gamora sees him bite his lip for half a second. “Any of… you guys seein’ that, too?”

All of them except for Loki follow his lead and look toward it.

“Seein’ what, Quill?” Rocket asks.

Peter opens his mouth, then closes it, his eyes unwavering on whatever it is he thinks he’s seeing. His grip on Gamora’s arm tightens.

“It’s… uh. It’s nothin’, I think,” he says, barely above a whisper as he forcibly drags his eyes away. Gamora frowns, something in her gut telling her that she should ask what he saw, but she knows he’s in no real state to answer. Not yet. He tilts his head again, lazily rolling it against Gamora’s chest until he’s looking down at Loki. She sees him gulp, sees his jaw shake a bit as he bites his lip again. “You, uh… you got this, right, man?”

Loki takes another slow breath, purses his lips and blows it out even slower. He reaches up with one hand and swipes his wrist across his brow.

“That depends,” Loki answers without looking up. “How are you feeling?”

“Tired,” Peter answers without hesitation. He gulps again. “Tired as all hell, but it’s… weird tired. Like… my brain ‘n my eyes want me to go t’sleep, but… but not the rest of me, y’know what I mean?”

“I do,” Loki says, eyes still downcast. “But I was talking about your leg.”

“Mm. Hurts.”

“Anything more specific than that?”

Peter mumbles another I dunno, then adds, “Got pins ‘n needles in my foot. That help any?”

“It… actually does. Somewhat,” Loki admits. “Only your foot?”

“Mm-hmm.”

Loki nods. “Alright. Mantis, you can let go of him now.”

Gamora’s eyes widen, a stab of panic running through her because— he’s not giving up, is he?

“Are you certain?” Mantis asks.

Loki nods. He still hasn’t looked up, the green light from his hands reflecting harsh angles against his face, sweat glistening on his forehead and trailing in rivulets down his neck. Mantis carefully lifts her hand away from Peter’s arm, remaining poised to touch him again at a moment’s notice if need be, but Loki doesn’t change his mind.

Peter lets out a deep sigh of relief, deflating like a popped balloon as his muscles relax.

“Oh, that… that’s better…”

His eyes are closed within seconds, and his breathing evens out as Gamora presses another kiss into his hair.

Rocket is the first to speak up. “Is he gonna—?”

“Shh,” Loki hisses, still focused on Peter’s leg.

“I am Groot—”

“One,” Loki grits out through clenched teeth, “moment.”

The emerald snakes at the bottom of Gamora’s peripheral begin to blur and blend together as the light expands, pulsing again, beating out like rippling water until everything seems washed in that hazy greenish light.

And then, slowly, incrementally, the light fades. The forest sinks back into its own bluish bioluminescence — along with the fiery orange glow of the smouldering corpses still scattered throughout the clearing — and Gamora blinks away a series of blots swimming in her vision to find Loki carefully lifting his hands away from Peter’s leg, moving a millimeter at a time as if he expects he’ll need to jump back into action at any moment.

The silence stretches on until it’s nearly unbearable, and then Loki huffs the heaviest sigh she’s heard from him yet and rocks back onto his heels, dropping his hands to his sides.

He plants one hand on the ground by his hip and slowly, fumblingly, reorients himself so that he’s sitting on his butt in the dirt with his legs crossed in front of him.

Then, without looking at any of them, he breathes, “Ninety.”

“I am Groot?”

“Excuse me?” Gamora asks.

“I am… ninety percent sure…” Loki trails off, his voice verging on a pant like he’s just finished a marathon race. He props his elbows on his knees and lets his head fall into his hands. “I am ninety percent sure that he will wake up without any complications.”

“Seriously?” Rocket asks.

“Mm,” Loki hums, nodding without lifting his head. His shoulders rise and fall with a deep, labored breath, and then he adds, “I don’t… actually know all that much of Midgardian anatomy. I’ve done a fair bit of reading on all sorts of species, and on healing magic in general, but it’s not… an exact science. It’s complicated. And humans are…”

“Fragile,” Gamora finishes for him.

Loki hums in agreement.

“But he’ll live,” she says, because there is quite a significant difference between complications and death.

Again Loki nods, and the feeling of relief that starts at the center of her heart spreads, making her limbs feel weak and tingling all the way down to her fingertips.

Before she can say anything, though, Loki mutters through his hands, “Drax?”

Drax looks up from where he’d been pensively staring down at Peter, and he raises an eyebrow at Loki that can’t possibly be seen while Loki’s got his head in his hands like that.

In any case, Loki doesn’t wait for an answer. “Would you be able to move—” he shifts the weight of his head into one hand and waves vaguely at the forest behind him, at the burning reptilian creatures — “all of that? Without burning yourself?”

Drax turns to appraise their surroundings, and he gives a single nod. “I would. My skin is more durable than most.”

“Ugh, thank the Norns.”

“Where should I move them?”

“Anywhere. Anywhere other than right here,” Loki murmurs, massaging his temple with a thumb. “Feel like I’m… drowning in sweat. It’s disgusting.”

“There’s a big ass lake ‘round that way,” Rocket speaks up, and he waves at the trees to Gamora’s left. “Saw it ‘bout a hundred yards in that direction. You could throw ‘em in there and you won’t end up burning nothing to the ground.”

Drax looks in the direction Rocket indicated, gives one last grunt of affirmation, and sets about lugging the first of the smouldering several-ton reptilian bodies over his shoulder to transport it. Gamora watches him go, knowing that with her own augmented skin she could and probably should help, but given the heavily injured two-hundred-something pounds of her unconscious significant other sprawled across her legs and stomach, she elects to leave it up to Drax. At least for the moment.

Instead, she gets Peter settled in her lap a little more comfortably, or so she hopes, and lays one hand over his chest so she can feel it rise and fall, feel his heart thudding against her palm.

He’s not going to die.

There is a ten percent chance, evidently, that he may experience some complications, but he’s not going to die.

“Loki,” she says, quietly and earnestly. “Thank you.”

The only response she gets is a low hum, a hum that might mean you’re welcome, but could also mean I’m too exhausted to acknowledge one single emotion at the moment so please stop talking.

He doesn’t lift his head from his hand, though.

She opens her mouth to ask if he’s alright, shakes her head when she remembers that he’ll only deflect if she asks that, and checks her wording. “Are there any side effects that come with healing someone?” she asks, absently running her hand through Peter’s hair even as she keeps her eyes on Loki. “Anything we should look out for?”

Loki groans lowly into his hand. He knows exactly what she’s doing, and she’s not sure whether he appreciates it or if he’d rather she left it alone. Either way, she’s not going to leave it alone, and he knows it, so he doesn’t ignore the question.

“I’ve read of… mirrored symptoms,” he grumbles. “Right leg’s a bit numb, but that should… fade. The headache, too.”

Gamora nods. “How long until you’re fit to walk again?”

“Well, that’s a moot point,” Loki tells her, finally lifting his head so that Gamora can see the exhaustion painted in dark strokes beneath his eyes. He drops both hands, forearms draped across his knees, and directs a pointed look at Peter. “He’s not going to wake any time soon, and we shouldn’t move him. Not until we know it won’t aggravate his injuries and set him to bleeding out all over again. As… thrilling an experience as that was, I’d much rather not repeat it.”

“So what,” Rocket says, “we’re stuck sitting around here ‘til he wakes up?”

“On his own?” Mantis asks.

Loki shrugs. “That would be as good an estimate as any for when it would be safe to move him, yes.”

Groot frowns like they’re all idiots, a look he gives them quite a lot these days. “I am Groot.”

“Well… yes, that is true,” Gamora admits. “Nebula would be upset at cutting her own mission short, but she given the circumstances…”

“She can’t just come round us up, she ain’t gonna be able to see shit flyin’ overhead,” Rocket argues, and Gamora looks up to see him squinting up at the canopy.

Gamora shrugs one shoulder, which is all she can comfortably do with Peter on top of her. “She could figure something out. Or one of us could always climb up above the canopy to signal our location to her.”

“‘One of us,’ like that ain’t gonna be me,” Rocket mutters, shaking his head, and then he sighs. “Yeah, yeah, alright. Give her a call, I guess.”

Gamora taps her earpiece. “Nebula?” she asks, waits a few seconds for a response, and asks again, “Nebula, are you there?”

She waits another moment, listening to the monotonous static coming through from the other end, but Nebula’s voice does not break through it. Nothing does. She taps the earpiece again, this time a little rougher than the first, as if the cause of the silence is a malfunction on her end and a mere jostling might fix it.

“Nebula,” she tries again.

“What, she ain’t answering?” Rocket asks.

Gamora shakes her head.

Mantis frowns. “But why wouldn’t she answer?”

“Perhaps she’s busy,” Loki says. “Or she’s not listening for us.”

“Or maybe your comm’s glitching,” Rocket offers with a shrug, and he taps his own communicator. “Nebula?”

His voice pings back through the airwaves, ringing clear in Gamora’s own earpiece, but evidently not in Nebula’s. The rest of them watch his cautiously concerned expression morph into one of confusion, and that’s all they need in order to know that she hasn’t somehow answered only on his comm, either. Even before he tries again.

“Hey, Nebs, come on. Where ya at?”

“I am Groot?”

“No,” Gamora answers right away. “No, I’m sure she’s not in any danger. No one on this planet would pose any sort of threat to her. I’m sure it’s just an issue with the communications system.”

“I am Groot.”

“Well obviously she don’t know for sure, she’s just sayin’ what’s most likely,” Rocket mutters, tapping the communicator again. “But this planet ain’t got even close to the worst she can handle, Groot. Relax. She’s fine.”

Mantis tries her own communicator, just to be sure. “Nebula? Can you hear us? If you can, please answer.”

She has no luck either. Her antennae droop.

Rocket groans, long and drawn out as he throws his head back. “Guess we’re frickin’ camping now, huh? Ugh.”

“At least for a little while,” Gamora hastens to add when she sees the look on Groot’s face. God, in her panic over Peter she’d nearly forgotten all about Groot’s nervousness with this place. “Just until Peter wakes up, alright? And then we’ll all go right back out the way we came.”

Rocket rolls his eyes. “No’s goes on takin’ the first watch.”

“That’s fine, I’ll take it,” Gamora says. It’s not as if she’ll be willing to sleep until she sees Peter open his eyes again — and there should only really be one watch anyway, not a first and a second and so on, given that they’re only waiting until Peter wakes up and then they’re leaving. She grabs his left arm and pulls it up over his stomach so she can peer at his watch. “It’s about… two hours until the first sundown. I don’t think it was supposed to rain,” she says, tipping her head back and peering up at the forest’s canopy, “but it still might be best if we at least find something that passes as a form of shelter before…”

When she looks down, though, she sees that Loki has already peeled off the top layer of his armor and laid it out on the ground beneath him, manifested a large black pillow from thin air, and curled up around it right there without another word, his eyes already closed.

She sighs. “Or we could just stay here.”

Chapter Text

Peter’s pretty sure he’s been hit by a truck.

Or maybe not a truck. Maybe one of those fancy bullet trains he saw speeding around Urunia’s financial district on those lofted rails. Big and loud and just crazy fast, powerful enough to knock him on his ass and keep him there for a while.

Waking up is… not fun. He comes into awareness in pieces at a time, and each piece sucks a little worse than the last one did. First it’s his eyes, all gummy and sticky like he’s been out for a goddamn year and a half. Then it’s what he’s seeing in front of him; he’s lying flat on his back, apparently, judging by all those tall skinny trees reaching up to a deep dark starless sky. And then without warning those trees start moving, lazily churning around each other in a spiral, spinning round and round and round each other, and Peter scrunches his eyes shut against it. He’s already dizzy enough as it is.

After that it’s his head, and Christ does his head hurt like a sonuvabitch, and then the rest of him slowly trickles in. Chest, shoulders, neck, everything feels like someone took a baseball bat to it, and his right leg—

“Peter?”

Jesus, forget the damn baseball bat. Someone’s taking a goddamn jackhammer to his right thigh, driving it in deeper with every throb of his pulse.

“Oh, he is awake!”

“Yeesh. ‘Bout frickin’ time.”

Mantis and Rocket both sound kind of far away, but with the new (is it new?) sharp pain ratcheting its way up from his knee into his stomach, everything starts feeling a little clearer. He groans as he tries to sit up, but before he can manage to move more than a few inches he feels a gentle hand on his spine and another gentler hand on the back of his head.

Oh. Okay.

He knows those hands.

“Mm,” is all he can manage at first as Gamora helps him up, his entire face scrunched up and his eyes shut tight. Then, his voice a little too croaky for his liking, he grunts out, “Hey, babe.”

She laughs at that, nothing more than a puff of breath. “Hi.”

He waits until he’s sitting fully up, and then a few seconds after that to let his inner ear catch up with the change in position before he cracks his eyes open again. The trees aren’t spinning anymore, thank God, but he still feels dizzy, like somehow the world is still knocked off its axis.

Gamora’s sitting right in front of him, though. So that’s nice.

“What, uh…”

Peter doesn’t finish the question, though, because it’s right around then that he starts to remember exactly what, uh. All of it comes back to him like a bad dream clawing its way up into the clarity of a real memory — the crazy huge crocodile monsters, the gunfire, the fire fire, the howling and the claws and the teeth. Another spike of pain courses up his leg at the thought of it, and he has to hold his breath for a second as it passes.

“Right,” he says instead. “Yeah.”

“Yeah,” Gamora echoes him. Her face is just a few inches away from his, and from this close up it’s easy to see the way her eyes are shining as she critically looks him over, trying and failing to be clinical about it.

She’s looking at him like…

Well, like she can’t really believe she’s looking at him, alive and whole and awake. Peter’s pretty damn familiar with that look by now, having been on the receiving end of it once or twice, and on the giving end plenty more times than he’d like.

(And if he’s being honest, he’s a little surprised to find himself alive and whole and awake right now, too.)

“Oof,” he says anyway, forcing himself to crack a smile. “That bad, huh?”

Gamora looks up from his leg to direct a deadpan look at his face, but she breaks and gives a small smile.

“Yes, it was,” she answers, gently, and she reaches up to brush some of the hair from his forehead and then swipe a thumb over his cheek, which he can’t help leaning into. He’s tired, man.

“Mm. Sorry.”

“It’s alright,” Gamora assures him, and her hand trails down to the back of his neck so she can gently pull him toward her and press a kiss to his forehead. He leans into that, too.

“Is it?” he asks as she pulls back. “Alright?”

She nods. “It is now. There was a while there where we weren’t sure it would be.”

“Yeah, I, uh… I remember that.”

Peter glances away from her, at the clearing all around them. Mantis sits cross-legged a few yards away, her tongue stuck between her teeth in concentration as she glares down at Groot’s video game and presses buttons at rapidfire speed. Rocket’s standing behind her, watching over her shoulder and backseat playing.

Drax and Groot and Loki, on the other hand, are all knocked out. Drax is starfished flat on his back in the dirt, Groot’s lying with his head pillowed on Drax’s stomach and his legs kicked over Loki’s waist, and Loki’s hugging a bigass pillow to his chest and curled up on his side facing away from both of them. Neither Groot nor Loki seem to be having any trouble sleeping right through Drax’s lion-worthy snores, but how they’re managing that Peter has no idea.

Finally he tears his eyes away from all of them, sweeping a look over their surroundings. Just to… check, maybe, if what he saw earlier is still there.

Not that he expects it to be, but—

“What is it?” Gamora asks right away, like she’s read his mind. Like she was already waiting to ask, which maybe she was.

But there’s nothing in the trees. Nothing off in the distance where he’d seen… what he’d seen, and nothing anywhere else, either.

He had to have imagined it. He must have been seeing things, it must have been the blood loss messing with his head. 

Gamora brings his attention back to her pretty quick, running her hand through his hair again.

“Hey,” she says, gently, as she tilts her head and narrows her eyes at him. “Did you see something?”

“I don’t… think so,” Peter says. Because really, he doesn’t.

Gamora gives him a look that says she’s willing to let the evasion slide, but one that he’s pretty sure also means that the courtesy ain’t gonna last too long. Still, she humors him for now, and instead of pushing it she asks, “How are you feeling?”

Peter raises his eyebrows and blows a raspberry, puffing out his cheeks.

“Like I wanna go the hell back to sleep,” he answers, honestly, and he glances down at his leg to find that someone — Gamora, he’s assuming, or at least he’s gotta hope so — at some point pulled off his ripped and bloodied jeans, wrapped a bandage around his whole thigh, and pulled the jeans right back on up over it. Judging by the state of the denim, he’s actually kind of shocked that his leg made it through to see another day. “How long was I out, anyway?”

Rocket speaks up. “You been out for two weeks, Quill.”

“What?” Peter shouts through the sudden feeling that he’s been punched in the chest — which is a feat in itself, given the state he’s already in. 

There’s a breathy sound, then, from the direction of the sleeping trio of Groot and Loki and Drax, and when Peter looks toward them he finds Loki having turned over onto his back and thrown an arm over his face, laughing quietly into the crook of his elbow.

Gamora rolls her eyes. “It’s been three hours, Peter.”

“Oh,” Peter says, shoulders slumping, and then he shoots a glare at Rocket. “Dick move, man.”

Rocket snorts a laugh, eyes back down on Mantis’ game.

“Have some decency, I mean, I’m invalid over here,” Peter says, shaking his head and looking back down at his leg. Then he raises an eyebrow up at Loki and adds, “And nice job giving it away in like two seconds, dude. Thought you were supposed to be the God of Lying or something.”

Loki’s arm is still draped over his eyes. “Yes, well, God of Lies I may be, but I’m also a bit spent from the exhausting endeavor of stitching your leg back together.” He shrugs on shoulder. “So I suppose I’m not at my best.”

“Oh. Uh… yeah,” Peter remembers. “Thanks for that, by the way.”

“Mm.”

Loki turning over seems to have disturbed Groot’s nap, and the kid rolls onto his side to blink the sleep from his eyes and shoot an affronted look at Loki for moving, which he of course doesn’t notice.

On Loki’s other side, Drax lets out an odd choking sound that cuts off one of his snores halfway through, and then the whole gang’s awake, more or less. Drax sits up with a grunt, propping himself up on his elbows.

“Ah,” he says when he spots Peter. “You are awake.”

“Yep, alive and kicking,” Peter says with a half smile. “Er— well.” He glances down at his leg, which is still throbbing like crazy, and he shrugs. “Eventually, anyway.”

“That would be an unnecessary use of an injured limb,” Drax observes, sitting fully up. “If something needs to be kicked, you should leave the kicking to one of us.”

“That’s… yeah, no, don’t worry about it, man,” Peter relents. “Not actually gonna kick anything. This team’s only got enough room on it for one badass with a prosthetic leg, am I right?”

Drax nods. “Indeed.”

“Exactly,” Peter says, and then he tips his head back and squints up at the forest canopy. What he’d thought before was a deep dark starless sky wasn’t, in fact, a sky at all. It was just an endless stretch of navy and purple leaves, blocking all sight of anything beyond the trees. He can’t even tell the time of day, but given it’s been three hours since the monster ambush, maybe four or five hours altogether since they entered the forest in the first place, it’s probably around—

Ah, shit.

Nebula’s gonna kill them.

“So, uh…” Peter says, wincing. “Don’t suppose Nebula’s already on her way to come scoop us up in the Benatar, huh?”

“No,” Gamora tells him. “We’ve been trying to contact her since—” she nods at his leg— “that happened, and we haven’t been able to get an answer from her.”

“What?” Peter asks, looking to the rest of them for confirmation that they’ve been trying to reach her, too. Holy hell, Nebula is definitely gonna kill them. Or him, more specifically. “Seriously?”

Mantis nods, standing and stretching out her shoulders, and she hands Groot’s video game back to him.

Rocket shrugs. “Yeah. Not like it’d really matter if we could reach her, though.”

“I mean… yeah, I guess, technically,” Peter admits, frowning up at the canopy again. “Don’t think the Benatar’d make it through all that. Still, though.” He taps his own earpiece, waits for a little hum of static and asks, “Nebula? You there?”

He waits a little bit, then waits a little bit more, and a little bit more.

“Yoo-hoo. Nebs?”

Still nothing but static comes through, and he sighs, dropping his hand.

“Well, that’s a pain in the ass.”

“It is,” Loki speaks up, pushing himself up to sitting and cracking his neck from side to side. “But not quite as much of a pain as walking out of this forest is going to be.”

Peter raises an eyebrow. “Yeah? Why’s that?”

“Loki’s healing magic transferred some of your injury over to him,” Gamora answers. “So walking won’t be easy for him, either.”

“What?”

Loki rolls his eyes. “I’m fine. Honestly, do you think I recover from injury as slowly as a human does?” He shoots a look at Gamora, then returns his attention to Peter. “I was referring to the creatures still infesting this place—”

“Living in this place,” Mantis murmurs.

“— which means I’ll have to divert at least some of my energy to cloaking our movements to avoid another ambush,” Loki continues, scrubbing both hands over his face to wake himself up. He doesn’t even acknowledge the interruption, so the two of them have definitely had this argument already, Peter figures, probably a couple times by now.

Behind Loki, Drax stands and stretches out his arms and lets out a jaw cracking yawn, saying to no one in particular, “I am certain I could fend off another hoard of monsters.”

“And then, of course,” Loki adds without acknowledging that either, “there’s the fact that one of us is going to have to carry you. Unless you think you’ll be able to walk the four or five miles standing between us and the forest entrance.”

Peter opens his mouth to automatically say, yeah, I’m sure I could hack it, and then snaps his mouth shut. He’s not even totally sure he could stand on his own at the moment, let alone make the whole trek back to the fishing villages. Not without slowing the rest of them down a whole hell of a lot.

Loki gives him a knowing look. “That’s what I thought.”

“You volunteering, then, Mr. Grumpy Pants?” Peter asks him. “If so, I’m gonna formally request you carry me like we just got marri—yAH! ”

While he’d been talking, Drax had circled their group to come up behind Peter and then, without warning, grabbed him by the back of his shirt and hoisted him up into the air so quick that Peter felt his stomach flip. Drax reorients him easy enough, settling all six-something-feet of Peter in his arms bridal style with hardly any effort on his part.

“I will carry him for the remainder of our journey.”

“Oh, man,” Peter groans. He almost just blacked out from that much movement alone, his equilibrium thrown halfway to hell, his heart suddenly pounding through the back of his shoulders. He’s way too tall to sink into Drax’s arms like a little kid, but he does his best, closing his eyes and dropping his forehead against the side of Drax’s neck and waiting for his brain to stop swimming around in his skull.

“You’re alright,” Gamora murmurs, and he feels her reaching up to run her fingers through his hair again.

“Ugh, God. How the hell much blood did I lose, huh?”

“At least thirty percent,” Loki answers. “Maybe more.”

“That, uh… Is that a lot of it?”

“I am Groot.”

Rocket scoffs. “Yeah, no shit it’s a lot.”

“For a human,” Drax amends, and there’s something about his voice reverberating through his collarbone and through the side of Peter’s skull that’s almost soothing — well, that, and the slow and steady thump that’s gotta be his pulse, a low bass drum beat on Peter’s temple. “I would be able to lose up to sixty percent of my bodily fluids without experiencing any negative effects, but my body is built to withstand far more trauma than yours.”

“Mm. Good to know,” Peter murmurs, refusing to open his eyes and choosing instead to tuck his head down against Drax’s shoulder and get comfy, especially if this is gonna be his ride for the next hour or so. “Jesus, do I even weigh anything to you, dude?”

“No, you do not,” says the thunder rumbling under Peter’s ear. “It is as if I am carrying a yaro root.”

“Was that—?” Peter blinks his eyes open, his brow creasing. “Holy shit, am I still loopy from the blood loss or was that a metaphor?”

“Both of those things are true, yes.”

“Technically speaking, it was a simile,” he hears Loki say.

“Aw, I’m proud of you, buddy,” Peter says anyway, closing his eyes again. “And F.Y.I., I’m not that loopy. I’m just… you know, tired. And maybe a tiny bit out of it.”

“Of course,” Gamora indulges him, reaching up to pet his hair one more time.

“Alright, alright,” Rocket complains, “so can we finally get the hell outta here now that he’s back in the land of the livin’ or what?”

“I am Groot.”

“Yes, we should try to leave as soon as possible,” Mantis agrees.

“Yes, yes,” Loki sighs. “We can go. And let’s try to avoid any impromptu concert performances this time, shall we? I would rather not wake every beast in this forest if we can help it.”

“I thought you said you were gonna be cloakin’ us or something.”

“I said I would devote some of my energy to it, Rocket, pay attention. And some of my energy at the moment is not all that much.”

“Ya just took a nap. You were snoring and everything.”

“I’m certain I was not.”

“Yeah, you were.”

“Ah, yes, of course, and I suppose you’re now an expert on how much effort it takes to magically cloak a crowd of seven people, then?”

As Loki and Rocket continue their lazy bickering-slash-debate that they’ve made it a habit of getting into, everybody starts making their way back through the forest the way they came — or Drax does, anyway, since that much is all Peter can tell with his eyes shut. The movement is even more relaxing than Drax’s voice had been, a gentle sort of swaying that feels at odds with his loudly clunking footsteps, threatening to lull Peter into a half sleep.

“Just sayin’, ya coulda taken it easier—”

“Oh, I would have just loved to have spared some effort,” he hears Loki cutting Rocket off, “but do keep in mind that you’d all be short a captain if I had.”

“Well, yeah, but—”

Peter frowns. “Was it really that bad?”

“It did seem so,” Mantis says, sounding like she’s real close, somewhere behind Peter’s head.

“Yeah?” Peter asks, cracking his eyes open to find Gamora walking alongside Drax so she’s right in his eye line.

She glances in his direction and nods. “It did.”

Peter’s frown deepens, and he chews on his cheek. “My bad, guys. Didn’t mean to… you know, get myself maimed and almost die today.”

Gamora nods again. “We know, Peter, it’s alright.”

“And it was not your fault,” Mantis adds.

Peter tilts his head back as far as he can get it without getting dizzy, until he can almost see the top of Mantis’ antennae, albeit upside-down. “Nah?”

“No,” she says. “We are all to blame for frightening and provoking the forest’s inhabitants.”

“All we did was exist near them,” Loki argues, before Peter can even get a word in. “That’s not exactly a crime.”

“But it scared them,” Mantis says.

“I am Groot.”

“Yes,” Mantis agrees, “exactly!”

Loki huffs. “If our mere existence was that much of a disturbance, then we’re hardly to—”

“You threw one of them through a tree—!”

“The point is,” Gamora interrupts, just loud and firm enough to quiet both of them down, though Peter definitely hears Mantis give a testy little hmph. “You are alive and well, now.”

“Mostly well,” Drax amends.

“Mostly well,” she concedes with a nod.

“Yeah, minus about a gallon of blood and a workin’ right leg,” Rocket mutters.

Peter sighs, settling in more comfortably again. “Yeah, well, that’s fine. Mostly’s still plenty good enough for me.”

From somewhere outside his line of sight, apparently amused, Loki says, “Is it.”

“Mm-hmm. Wasn’t too sure I was making it out of that at all, really, so y’know. I’ll take it.”

Gamora frowns, turning to raise an eyebrow at him. “You weren’t?”

“I am Groot.”

“Hey, come on, I wasn’t lying,” Peter says. “I was telling the truth. I knew Loki had it handled.”

“But there was a moment when you did not,” Mantis says.

Peter’s brow furrows as he stares straight ahead at the slowly passing trees.

That… wasn’t a question, not the way she said it. She said it like it was a statement of fact, like it was a memory.

Oh, crap.

Crap, how had he forgotten that Mantis was touching him that whole time? Damn it. He knows she can’t read thoughts, but sometimes the emotions she picks up are so specific that she gets pretty damn close to reading thoughts anyway.

Does she know? Could she sense what he was seeing— what he thought he was seeing? Does she know he saw anything at all? Would she have chalked it up to the blood loss like he did?

“Peter?”

He blinks as Gamora’s voice shakes him from his reverie. “Uh. Yeah. Yeah, no, there was, uh… a teensy little minute there, yeah. Just a second, where I wasn’t sure I was gonna make it.”

Gamora doesn’t ask why, none of them do, and Peter knows it’s because they’re expecting him to elaborate on his own. Somewhere up ahead he hears one of them indiscriminately kicking aside weeds and shrubs to clear their path. Probably Loki. The rest of them aren’t making any noise whatsoever; Groot’s even stopped playing his game, judging by the lack of any beeping or clicking.

“I think…” Peter starts to say, then stops. He really hadn’t wanted to get into this, but maybe keeping it from them wouldn’t have been the best idea, anyway.

Miscommunications, even the tiniest of them, always have a habit of coming back to bite them all in the ass. Best to cut that off now, he guesses, even if he’s sure it’s nothing. Even if it’s gonna make him sound like a crazy person. Even if it hurts like hell to think about, let alone talk about.

Finally he admits, “I think the blood loss had me hallucinating a bit.”

“Hallucinating what?” Drax asks.

“I mean, it was probably all that talk about ghosts, you know?” Peter says, pulling his arm from where it’d been wrapped around his own waist and reaching up to scrub at his face. “That and like, the forest being all dark and creepy, and, you know, the fact that I thought I might’ve been getting kinda close to kicking the bucket myself, and—”

“Peter,” Gamora gently cuts in. “What was it?”

He clenches his jaw for a second, closes his eyes, wraps both arms around his waist again. Drax adjusts his grip, shifting Peter an inch or two higher.

“I thought… I thought I saw my mom?”

With his eyes squeezed shut he doesn’t see any of their reactions, but he sure as hell hears it. Every one of them goes even quieter, except for the tiniest little oh from Mantis — so, as it turns out, she hadn’t known what he’d seen after all — and an intake of breath from Groot. Drax goes tense, a hitch in his step like he’d almost stopped in his tracks before thinking better of it. The thunking footsteps keep on thunking.

After a second, he hears Gamora’s light footfalls circling around Drax until she’s right by Peter’s head, and he opens his eyes just as she reaches out to pet his hair again. “Oh, Peter.”

“Wasn’t actually her, though,” Peter hastens to add through the lump in his throat. “Obviously. Couldn’t have been, because this place isn’t— I mean there aren’t actually ghosts here, and even if there were, there’s no reason she’d’ve been… y’know, here. On some random planet in the middle of nowhere, walking around the woods. I mean, obviously not. She died on Earth, not Uӓdar. Was just my brain playing tricks on me. Not a big deal.”

Gamora keeps running her fingers through his hair, dragging her nails over his scalp.

“Plus, we know it’s not ghosts anyway,” he continues, forcing some nonchalance into his voice. “We already figured out what’s up with this place, right? Loki’s predator theory panned out after all. Those suckers could’ve swallowed up thirty-some-odd people easy.”

“That is true,” Drax agrees. “And there are likely many more of them, in addition to the ones we killed.”

“See?” Peter says, pointing up at Drax’s face before winding his arms around his own waist again. “Large predators. Guess I’m glad we didn’t end up betting anything on that, but hey, at least the mystery’s over.”

“We’re still gonna get paid, though, ain’t we?”

“I am Groot.”

“Yeah, yeah, course we are.” Peter assures them. “Just gotta tell Braz to keep his guys the hell away from the forest so they don’t get eaten, maybe post a few signs so the civilians don’t wander in either. Boom. Problem solved.”

“I am Groot.”

“Yeah, exactly,” Peter agrees with a lazy nod. “Nothing magic or supernatural or whatever about this place.” He stifles a yawn with the back of his hand and adds, “Bunch of superstitious wackjobs, right?”

“Quill.”

“Hmm?” Peter asks, cracking his eyes open again and turning his head to raise an eyebrow at Loki. “What’s up?”

Until now Loki’s been mostly quiet — hell, he hasn’t said anything at all for the last ten minutes or so — because he’s been a little too busy clearing their path and working whatever magicky mumbo jumbo he needs to do to keep them hidden from any of the rest of those giant crocodile things. Or so Peter had assumed.

But when Peter looks at him, Loki’s got his eyes fixed on something off to the left, way off in the distance.

“Loki?” Mantis asks, tilting her head and then, along with the rest of them, following his gaze into the trees.

Nothing there. Peter thinks, maybe, just for a second, he catches sight of something moving, something far away, something faint and whitish against the deep blue. But he blinks and it’s gone. Nothing but a whole hell of a lot of trees.

Peter glances at Loki and asks, “You good, man?”

“Hey, dingus,” Rocket says, jabbing Loki the waist. “There ain’t nothing there.”

“Yes, I realize there’s nothing there,” Loki all but growls down at him, and then he nods in the general direction of… well. The forest, just like every single other direction. Trees and trees and trees and more trees. “That’s my concern.”

“You’re concerned there ain’t nothin’ there?” Rocket asks. “What the hell were you hopin’ was gonna be there, huh?”

“The path,” Gamora answers first. “The path should be here.”

Peter feels his heart sink; he knows that tone. Hesitant, the I-don’t-want-to-admit-it-but-this-ain’t-good tone. Rocket had his mouth open to bite back some smartass comment, but he blinks and closes it. “Oh.”

“Well,” Peter breathes, eyes scanning over their surroundings and finding just an endless stretch of forest. “Shit.”

Chapter Text

The police precinct is… unpleasant.

Not that Nebula was expecting much in the way of pleasantness, and not that she hasn’t been in places far more technically unpleasant than this. Sanctuary, for one, obviously. But all kinds of seedy, disgusting bars, too. Putrid back alleys in the slummier areas of the slummiest planets. Blood-soaked battlefields. Black market hubs. Gambling dens. The restroom on the Benatar.

No, the police precinct is a different kind of unpleasant. There’s no blood spattered on the walls or other strange alien bodily fluids crusted into the floor tiles or any damp or bitter smells or any of Quill’s dirty laundry in the corner.

It’s the sterile, caustic kind of unpleasantness. The kind that’s trying not to be, the kind that’s wrapped in smiles and pleasantries.

Mantis would probably call it quaint.

Actually, Nebula thinks to herself as she marches up the front steps, the Asgardian would likely call it the very same thing. Just with a much different tone, a tone that Nebula finds herself — though begrudgingly, even if it’s hypothetical — agreeing with.

The loudmouthed bottom feeder she’s dragging behind her cuts through her thoughts, launching into his seventh or eighth stream of curses in the last ten minutes. As she lugs him up over the top step, he tries once again, and fails once again, to dislodge her iron grip on the back of his shirt by flailing his arms over his shoulders and trying to beat her forearm with his fists. But his arms are too short, padded with far too much muscle to have any sort of flexibility whatsoever, and even if he could reach he’s already well established that she lacks any nerve endings in that arm.

Idiot keeps trying regardless.

He digs his heels into the ground, howls every foul term under the sun, resorts to clawing at her shoulder since it’s the only bit of her that he can feasibly reach.

She doesn’t feel that, either. She just rolls her eyes as she kicks open the precinct’s front door and hauls him through it.

The fluorescent white light of the precinct, too dim and too uniform all throughout the building, has her blinking sunspots from her vision as the door swings shut behind her. The low bustling of activity in the precinct — voices chatting, voices whispering, voices shouting, the rolling of chairs across linoleum tile, the opening and closing of metal filing cabinet drawers — all comes to an abrupt halt as soon as she enters. Somewhere in a distant part of this floor, a phone rings and rings and rings through the silence, and it goes unanswered.

“Got one more,” Nebula says, though that’s… obvious, given the screaming banshee at the end of her arm. She directs her words to the woman sitting at the front desk, the wide-eyed Uӓdarian woman who looks like she’s lost a few shades as she stares at Nebula.

Hm. The other receptionist must have ended her shift. She’s already seen Nebula haul in six people in the last hour, so she wouldn’t be staring open-mouthed at Nebula like some kind of gaping fish right now, not like this woman is.

“I… um, yes, okay,” the woman says. Finally she shakes herself out of her stupor and asks, “Um, Miss… Nebula, is it?”

Nebula grunts in the affirmative.

“Great,” the woman says, though the smile she’s got plastered on her face is very forced. “How about you just, uh—”

She winces as the idiot on Nebula’s arm goes off on another of his vulgar tirades. Nebula rolls her eyes and heaves him into the air by the front of his shirt, releasing her grip just long enough to switch it to the back of his neck mid-toss, and then she slams him stomach-first into the floor, to the startled shrieks and pointed stares of everyone on this floor of the precinct. The impact of his body forms a few cracks in the linoleum, but, well, Braz has mentioned that she’s saving the department quite a lot of money with her services. They can afford a little property damage.

Nebula drives her knee into the small of his back to keep him pinned, hissing at him to be quiet — which is no longer strictly necessary, given that he has fallen mostly silent except for some pained groaning.

Then she looks up at the receptionist and asks, “You were saying?”

“Um, yes,” the receptionist continues, shooting a wary look down at the man. “You can… go ahead and bring him up to the holding cell on Floor Seven? Uh, Sergeant Braz will meet you, and he—”

“Expresses his gratitude, I am aware,” Nebula finishes for her, hoisting the man up over her shoulder. She is very aware; Braz has only said as much about ten times or so in the last hour.

Apparently he is unused to actual competence.

“Oh, um, that wasn’t—”

But Nebula has already begun marching off in the direction of the elevator. Moron — and that’s what she’s started calling him in her mind, because she has honestly forgotten his name at this point — finally allows himself to be hefted along, hanging despondently over her shoulder with hardly another sound except for an occasional groan.

His subdued silence certainly makes the elevator ride far more enjoyable. That, and the fact that the other occupants of the elevator give her as much space as they’re physically capable of giving; they all but press their backs to the back wall of the elevator car until they reach her floor.

The elevator dings as the doors slide open, and she marches her way out onto Floor Seven.

The first officer she sees is of a species Nebula doesn’t know the name of, a woman with high cheekbones and faintly glimmering onyx skin, leaning back against a desk and watching Nebula over the rim of a coffee cup.

“Braz?” Nebula asks her.

“No, Zrexa,” the officer answers, pointing at herself.

Nebula blinks, for an instant letting her confusion show on her face, and the woman grins at her.

“I’m kidding,” she says, then gestures with her coffee cup in the direction of a hall that branches off from this area full of desks and cubicles. “Sergeant’s in interrogations. Third door on the left. You want me to, uh…” She leans to the side, sizing up Moron with her eyes for a moment. “You want me to take this guy to a holding cell for you?”

For a moment, Nebula considers acquiescing.

But then she remembers that she has no idea of the comparative strength and durability of this woman’s species, and Moron packs a surprisingly powerful punch when he’s determined. Plus, he hardly weighs anything to Nebula.

“I will keep a hold of him for now,” she answers. “Thank you.”

Then she turns purposefully off in the direction of the hallway before the officer can get another word in.

The other officers in the hallway also give her a wide berth, some glancing sidelong at her as they are wont to do when the infamous daughter of Thanos makes her way through, while others do everything in their power to make it seem like they’re not watching her, preoccupying themselves with other things — papers, computers, telephones, whatever they can use as an excuse.

The interrogation room door is exactly the same as all the other doors in this hall, but it is labeled, so at least Nebula knows the officer hasn’t led her astray. On a bench outside the door is an Aakon man, his back slumped against the wall and his arms crossed over his chest as his knee jumps and his foot taps impatiently on the floor. He hardly spares Nebula and her bounty a passing glance, but the teenage Aakon girl beside him openly stares like she’s never seen someone with blue skin before.

Nebula doesn’t pay them much mind, anyway. She kicks the door open, satisfied by the pop it makes as it dislodges from the doorframe and the smack it makes against the wall on its opening swing.

And, also, by the particularly terrified squeak from one of the interrogation room’s occupants.

“What in the world!”

“S’alright, s’alright,” Braz sighs, dragging one meaty hand over his whole face.

Braz is seated at the interrogation table, looking for all the world like he’d rather be just about anywhere other than here, opposite a hefty young woman who was Nebula’s third or fourth capture in the past hour and who hardly looks surprised to see Nebula back again so soon.

The man standing in the back corner of the room, however, is staring aghast at her like she’s just threatened to attack him personally. It’s yet another Aakon, this one is far older than the one seated outside, and he’s dressed in an iridescent Uӓdarian formal robe and protectively holding an Aakon toddler in his arms.

“Who—?”

“Just one of the Guardians,” Braz answers before the Aakon can finish the question, and Nebula elbows the door shut behind her. “The one that’s been bounty huntin’ for us. Nebula, this is Axzhaat. He’s the fella that’s funding the whole reward thing for all of you when you finish figuring this mess out. Axzhaat, Nebula.”

“Oh,” Axzhaat says. His demeanor subtly shifted at the mention of the Guardians, the trepidation dissipating except for a wary glance at Moron still slung over her shoulder, and he squares his own shoulders a bit and hefts the child up higher in his arms, his hands now linked beneath the child’s thighs rather than protectively shielding its back. “Well, it’s… a pleasure to meet you, then.”

Nebula flicks her eyes up from the back of the toddler’s head to regard Axzhaat with a raised eyebrow.

“I take it it’s customary on this planet to bring along small children to slave trader interrogations.”

“Hmm?” Axzhaat asks, like he genuinely misunderstood her meaning, but it seems to belatedly click. He grins in lieu of laughing and shakes his head. “Right! Sorry, sorry, no, of course, it’s certainly not. This is my granddaughter. Just, you know, with everything that’s happening it doesn’t feel right to leave any of the family at home with anyone else, and — well, duty calls. So here I am, and here she is.”

He lifts her up higher again as if to gesture to her, like Nebula’s forgotten that quickly what they were talking about.

Nebula frowns. For the life of her she can’t imagine why anyone, slave trader or random kidnapper or whatever’s causing all this, would bother sparing that little pathetic gurgling thing more than half a glance, let alone try to take it.

“None of the missing people have been that…” Nebula curls her upper lip, glancing down at the toddler, “… small.”

“Oh, yes, yes, believe me, I know,” Axzhaat says, overly friendly in that cloying way that Nebula intensely dislikes, commiserating as though they have anything at all in common. “But you just try telling her father that. He — my oldest, also Axzhaat, but we call him Axzhee — he’s right outside with my youngest, you might have seen them. But he’s always been a bit of a worrier, and he seems utterly convinced that one of us is bound to be the next to disappear, no matter how much I tell him—”

“Right,” Nebula cuts him off, because she did not ask for his entire family tree and very much does not care, and she turns her attention to Braz. “What do you want me to do with this one?”

Braz has been looking over a file on the table, a quick glance at which tells Nebula it’s all the notes he’s taken on the woman he’s been interrogating, and now he brings his disheveled, distracted gaze up to Nebula. Then he scans a look over Moron, who has yet to make a move, evidently finally resigned to his fate.

Braz heaves a tired sigh. “Just tell me you didn’t knock him out, huh? There’s gonna be a whole lotta paperwork if you knocked him out.”

Nebula gives him a shake, to which Moron only groans and grumbles a bit. “He is conscious.”

“And you got evidence this time?”

Nebula gestures toward her temple with her free hand, indicating the memory banks she’s got stored exactly for this purpose. “Audio and video recording of him attempting to lure several people into his M-class ship and very nearly succeeding, until I intervened.”

“Oh, that’s good!” Axzhaat says, grinning wide. “That’s good, right?”

“Yeah,” Braz sighs again, leaning back in his seat. “Good. Getting too old to be filling out this much paperwork, I tell ya. Sheesh.”

“But this, er… person,” Axzhaat says, lilting to the side to get a better look at Moron, “could be responsible for some of the disappearances, right?”

“Unlikely,” Nebula says before Braz can.

“What? Why?”

Nebula rolls her eyes, double taps a sensor on the upper left side of her skull, and projects a holographic recording of herself from, literally, fifteen seconds ago. “— attempting to lure several people into his M-class ship and very nearly succeeding,” the recording says, before Nebula double taps the sensor again and allows the hologram to fade.

“Very nearly succeeding,” she repeats, “means he did not succeed.”

“Oh,” Axzhaat says, wilting. “Well, that’s a shame, I suppose, but—”

“It’s a shame he did not successfully recruit any innocent people into his slave running operation?”

“Wha—? Oh! Oh, goodness, no, sorry.” He shakes his head. “I just… You know, I just want this person caught. You understand.”

“Mm,” is all Nebula says, turning her attention back to Braz.

At that moment, though, the communicator built into her temple crackles to life, and Gamora’s crystal clear voice cuts straight through the static. “Nebula? Nebula, are you there?”

“I’m busy,” she says to Gamora. Then she gives Moron another impatient shake and asks Braz, “Well? Where am I taking this one?”

Braz reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out a pair of cuffs identical to the pair holding his current interrogatee to the table, and he finally stands from his seat and gestures for Nebula to set Moron down so he can get the cuffs on him. “Same holding cell as the rest of ‘em should do,” he answers. “Good news is, Miss Krandu here’s confessed to snatchin’ up three of our missing people. Got officers on the way to rescue ‘em as we speak. Ain’t that right?”

The woman, Krandu, glances up at Nebula and offers what can only be described as a scowl.

“Only three, though,” Axzhaat speaks up, sounding too distraught to be tactful, “which leaves over thirty still missing—”

“Nebula,” Gamora asks through the communicator again.

“I said I am busy,” Nebula repeats. “Give me a moment.”

“Like I been saying, Axzhaat,” Braz grunts, holding Moron by the upper arm to keep him upright. Moron stands about a head taller than the Sergeant does, even with the slouching. “The slavers ain’t the real cause of all this, they’re just addin’ to it. Nebula here’s just makin’ sure that when the Guardians do find the real deal and stop ‘em, none of the disappearances are gonna get swept under the rug and forgotten about.” He gestures for Nebula to take Moron’s other arm so that she can lead him off to the holding cell, and he adds, “She’s doing good work.”

“Oh, well, of course, I’m sure she—”

Another voice comes through the communicator, cutting Axzhaat’s niceties off, and this time the voice is Rocket’s.

“Nebula? Hey, Nebs, come on. Where ya at?”

She groans, rolling her eyes. “For the third time, I am busy. Can this not wait five minutes?”

Only silence follows her question, and Nebula frowns, tapping the spot on her skull where the communicator resides. Nothing but static until—

“Nebula? Can you hear us?” Mantis asks. “If you can, please answer.”

“I am answering,” Nebula responds, brow creasing. For the first time, a niggling worry pokes at the back of her mind. “Can you not hear me?”

Still nothing.

She shoots a look at Braz. “Is this room designed to interfere with communication signals in any way?”

Braz shakes his head. “Nah, why?”

“The others are not responding to anything I say to them.”

“What, communicator actin’ up, I take it?”

“It is not acting up,” Nebula insists, scowling.

“You’re having trouble reaching them?” Axzhaat speaks up again, hiking the toddler a little higher on his hip. “Is there anything I can do? I just know I must have some state-of-the-art equipment in—”

“My communication systems are state-of-the-art. They have never once malfunctioned. The machinery is designed to carry a signal over a distance spanning the width of entire planets, and the others are a few dozen miles away at most,” Nebula says, tightening her grip on Moron’s arm and guiding him toward the door. “Something is wrong.”

She kicks open the door, dragging Moron along with her and out into the hallway, where the two Aakon sitting on the bench startle and look to her with wide eyes again. Axzhaat and Braz come hurrying along behind her, though Braz keeps one foot in the interrogation room rather than leaving Krandu to her own devices.

“You think they’re in danger?” Axzhaat asks.

“They are always in danger,” Nebula says without looking back as she drags Moron toward the holding cell. Then, to Braz, she says, “I will leave this one with you to interrogate along with the others, and in the meantime I will go ensure that my sister and her idiotic friends have not gotten themselves killed or maimed or otherwise indisposed.”

Braz has a clear line of sight from the interrogation room door to the holding cell entrance, and he watches as Nebula presses her palm to the holding cell security system lock — the database to which they’ve long since added her palm print to in the interest of efficiency — and the cell bars automatically retract up and into the ceiling.

“Alright,” Braz says, frowning as he watches her. “Don’t suppose you’ll let me send a coupla officers with you, huh?”

“No, I will not.”

Nebula shoves Moron inside the cell, allows the cell cars to descend once more to close it up, and turns away from them all, heading straight for the exit and for the Benatar that she’s left haphazardly parked on the sidewalk and half of the street. She hears Braz behind her shutting and locking the interrogation room door, then his heavy footfalls as he makes to follow her at least part of the way to the elevator, while behind him Axzhaat and his spawn seem engrossed in some low hissing argument that Nebula doesn’t bother listening to.

“You, uh, you sure?” Braz asks, as Nebula presses the button for the elevator.

“I am sure.”

“You don’t need no back up at all?”

Nebula rolls her eyes as she steps into the elevator, and she levels Braz with a cool look as the doors begin to slide shut between them.

“I am the back up.”

“I am Groot?”

“Sure, yeah,” Rocket nods, frowning as he pivots, narrowed eyes sweeping over the trees all around them. “Path’s gotta be around here somewhere, right? It’s, uh… prolly just a little further, y’know, like…”

Drax comes to his rescue and gestures at the trees directly in front of them with a nod, since his arms are a little too preoccupied with about two hundred pounds of Peter. “That way.”

“Yeah!” Rocket shouts, pointing in the direction Drax indicated. “That way!”

Peter sighs. “You just chose a random direction, man.”

Drax huffs. “I did not.”

Gamora runs a hand over her face.

Mantis adds, “We did go very far off of our intended route, so it could just be a little bit further.”

Rocket nods vigorously, waving back at her. “Yeah! Ain’t like we was too concerned with staying on track while those monster things were all over the place.”

Loki, who hasn’t said much of anything for the duration of the argument, slowly shakes his head with his eyes still searching the trees. “It should be right here,” he insists, though he’s quieter now than he was before, less adamant. His frown deepens as he reaches up to pull a hand through his hair, brushing it away from his face. “We’ve walked exactly the same distance that we traversed while running from those beasts. I’m certain of it. I’m absolutely certain of it.”

“But was it the same distance in the right direction?” Mantis asks.

“I…” Loki cuts himself off with a hitch like his breath caught in his throat, and that alone is enough to poke at the little knot of worry in Peter’s gut. In the months they’ve known him, Loki’s hardly ever tripped up on his words. Not unless something’s seriously up. A muscle in his jaw twitches as he grits his teeth for half a second, and then he continues, “I thought so.”

“As did I,” Drax agrees. “And I have an excellent sense of direction.”

“Honestly, I thought we were headed in the right direction, too,” Gamora says. She plants her hands on her hips, eyeing Loki with hesitant concern. “It is possible we’ve all just misjudged the distance. We might reach the path soon if we keep going straight.”

At first, Loki doesn’t answer. He’s still staring off into the trees, working his tongue between his teeth as he thinks. Then, quietly, he concedes, “Possibly.”

Gamora glances in Peter’s direction, and Peter lifts his hands. “Woah, hey, don’t look at me, I’ve basically been sleeping this whole time. You guys could’ve walked me straight through the Markets District and I probably wouldn’t have even noticed.”

“I am Groot.”

“It’s hyperbole, Groot,” Loki says, distracted, his eyes still elsewhere.

“Well, I have no clue what the hell that means,” Peter tells him, “but guys. Come on. It’s not, uh… Actually, wait, Drax, you mind setting me down a second?”

“Are you certain?”

“Yeah, I mean, it’s not like we’re going anywhere,” Peter says with a shrug, and Drax mirrors his shrug and tips him down feet-first toward the ground. Peter takes a whole lot of care to land heavily on his left foot, not daring to put any pressure whatsoever on his right, and since Gamora’s standing just beside him, he latches onto her arm with one hand. Just in case. Just for a little extra support. “See? Good as new.”

“You are not.”

“Anyway,” Peter says, before Mantis and Gamora and Groot can all jump in to take Drax’s side, as he can clearly see them gearing up to do. “We can’t find the path, but that ain’t the end of the world. We just gotta go south, remember? We might not end up coming out the same place we came in, but if we head due south the forest’s gonna spit us out somewhere in the city.”

Drax chuckles. “Spit us out,” he repeats. “As if the forest is a mouth. I like that one.”

“Thanks, Drax,” Peter says, patting his arm with his free hand. Then he tips his head back and squints up at the forest canopy, where there hasn’t been so much as a single speck of the sky visible the entire time they’ve been here.

No telling their direction from the stars or the sun, then. Oh, well. Not like he needs them.

He taps the earpiece that brings out his helmet, squinting through the red film as it comes down. A few specs pop up on the screen, as always. There’s the temperature of the forest, just a little bit cooler than comfortable — though it dips down a few more degrees whenever his gaze passes over where Loki’s standing, which is neat — and there’s the humidity, the time of day on this planet, everybody’s vital signs when he lets the mask’s sensors focus on them for more than a second. And then…

“Huh,” Peter says before he can think to hold it in.

Well, that’s… not great.

“What’s huh?” Rocket demands.

Mantis asks, “Is something wrong?”

“Uh…” Peter trails off. “Say, Rocket, you feel like climbing up to the top and seeing if you can’t see what direction the city’s in?”

“The city is south, Peter,” Gamora reminds him, frowning. He can’t see it, but he can hear it in her voice. “You just said that.”

“Yeah. Yep. That I did, but uh, here’s the thing,” Peter says, retracting the helmet and fiddling with it until the whole thing comes off his ear and sits in the palm of his hand. “I don’t know what’s going on, but the directional feature’s glitching out.”

Gamora’s blinks. “What?”

“I dunno, it just keeps changing its mind on which way is south.”

Rocket throws his hands up. “What, it’s glitchin’ again?”

Mantis frowns. “Wasn’t it recently upgraded?”

“Yeah,” Peter says, frowning down at the earpiece in his hand, “like two months ago, by literally the smartest person on Earth.”

Rocket scoffs. “Yeah, on Earth.”

“Dude, she was pretty friggin’ smart.”

“Eh, whatever,” Rocket says. “Gotta do everything myself around here, don’t I? Rocket, climb up top and see if you can see the city—”

“That is so not what I sound like—”

“Ooh, Rocket, fix the bug in my stupid helmet—”

“Hey!”

“Calm down, calm down, I’m doing it, yeesh,” Rocket says, waving him off the way that Peter’s come to take as meaning I’m not actually upset, I’m just like this and you know it. Then he hops up onto the nearest tree trunk and scurries his way up toward the first few branches. “Gonna figure out where we’re going, since none of you’s seem to know which way is up,” he calls over his shoulder, “and then I’ll take a look at your helmet, alright? Quit whining.”

He starts muttering to himself about what might be causing the glitch, something about the planet’s magnetic field messing with… something about circuits. Peter doesn’t catch all of it, and hell if he knows what’s causing it.

“My helmet’s never glitched like that before,” he murmurs. He’s still holding onto Gamora’s arm for support, and as she reaches out for the earpiece, he drops it into her palm so she can look it over. “It said south was straight ahead, then it just started… spinning. Like, it went full circle. Any given second it thought south was in a different direction.”

“That is… odd,” Gamora says, peering down at the little device.

“Yeah, you’re not kidding,” Peter agrees.

Then he looks up at the rest of them. Drax is eyeing him warily, clearly poised to catch him if he keels over from the effort of standing and doing a terrible job of acting like that’s not what he’s doing. Mantis is just a few steps away, trying her best to comfort a very frustrated looking Groot without touching him — not without his permission, at least, which he doesn’t look too inclined to give. And Loki…

Loki isn’t really paying attention to any of them. He keeps fidgeting with his hands, his forehead creased, his eyes scanning over their surroundings like there’s a particularly difficult math problem etched into the bark of the trees and he can’t quite figure it out.

“Loki?” Peter asks. “You sure you’re good, man?”

“I’m fine,” comes the automatic answer, no thought whatsoever behind it. Then Loki lets out an annoyed sigh and adds, “I could swear the path should have been right here.”

“Hey, it’s a big forest,” Peter reminds him. “Easy to get a little turned around, especially when you’re being attacked by giant… crocodile… things.”

“No, that’s—” Loki cuts himself off again, fidgets a little more, presses the thumb of his right hand into the palm of his left with enough force that it actually starts to look painful, but he doesn’t look like he even notices. He still isn’t looking at any of them, choosing instead to keep searching the trees. “That’s not it. I was certain. I don’t… I don’t like when what I see doesn’t match up with what I know.”

Peter shrugs. “So you misjudged it.”

“I don’t think I did.”

“Dude, for real, it’s cool. You’re only human— that,” Peter says, rolling his eyes, because he regretted it the second it was out of his mouth, “was a bad choice of words, yeah, but you get what I mean.”

“No, I’m not sure I do. And regardless, that’s not exactly the point.”

Peter opens his mouth to ask what, exactly, the point is, but he’s interrupted by a rustle of leaves from above. A second later Rocket comes leaping down from the tree branches, landing first on all fours and then standing up and stretching out his shoulders.

“Alright, so,” Rocket says, “I got good news and bad news.”

“What’s the bad news?” Gamora asks.

“Bad news is we went the opposite way we was supposed to.”

Peter shouts, “What?” And he’s not the only one — it’s hard to tell with them shouting all at once, but he distinctly hears Gamora and Groot and Mantis somewhere in the resulting cacophony.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Rocket says, waving them all down. “City’s thataway.” He jabs a thumb over his shoulder, back the way they came. “We been walking further away from it this whole damn time.”

“Fine, whatever, sure,” Peter relents. “What about the good news, huh?”

“Good news is we got so slowed down by you and your explodin’ humie leg—”

“It didn’t explode—”

“— that we didn’t get a chance to go too far off track,” Rocket continues, ignoring Peter’s correction. “Maybe ‘bout another mile? If we head back the other way we’ll be outta here in a few hours, tops.”

That earns him, all at once, a muttered complaint from Loki and a shouted complaint from Groot and a pissed off groan from everyone else. Peter sighs and lets go of Gamora’s arm in favor of rubbing both hands over his face, still careful to keep his weight on his left leg — not that it matters, though, since Drax takes his letting go of Gamora as a signal to pick him up again, hoisting him up into the air so quick that it’s almost as dizzying as it was the first time.

“Dude, a little warning. Jesus.”

“Warning for what?” Drax asks, oblivious as always. Or pretending to be, Peter can never tell.

“Yeah, yeah, keep up the whining, why don’t ya,” Rocket says at the rest of them — since none of them has stopped complaining — as they all start making their way right back the way they came. “If it wasn’t for me we’d still be going deeper into the forest and not knowin’ any better, so you’s are all frickin’ welcome.”

“Thank you, Rocket,” Gamora sighs.

“Uh-huh.”

“At least now we know for certain we’re going in the right direction,” Mantis says.

None of them says anything to that, all of them knowing Mantis is right, and Rocket’s right, but no one feeling all too much better for it. For a few seconds there’s no sound except for their own footsteps trampling over plants, until—

“I am Groot.”

“Yeah, bud,” Peter admits, heart sinking a bit. Damn, he feels like a dick. Four hours tops, he’d said, and now here they are, at least that far in with another four or five to go. “That’s my bad, kiddo, I’m sorry.”

“I am Groot.”

“Yeah, I know it’s not my fault I almost got eaten,” Peter says, grinning in spite of himself. The kid acts all annoyed and pissy and uncaring about ninety percent of the time, so it’s always nice when that last ten percent peeks out a little bit. “Still, though, I’ll tell you what. I’ll buy you all the extra batteries in the world when we get back, alright? Promise.”

“I am Groot.”

“Wanna bet I can’t? I’ll buy out the whole Uӓdar battery market, just you wait.”

“I am Groot.”

“Yeah, I thought you might like that,” Peter says with a smile, not bothering to stifle his next yawn.

Maybe he’ll try to get an actual nap in while they make their way back. That should help with the whole recovery thing, right? Sleep’s supposed to do all kinds of good things for — well, anybody’s body, not just Terrans. It’s one of those health tips that’s universal across every species he’s ever met.

“Few more hours,” he mutters, echoing Rocket’s estimate as his eyes drift shut. “Few more hours, tops.”

Chapter Text

This place gives Peter the friggin’ creeps.

It’s not so much anything particularly creepy about it, per se, no more than any other forest, really. They’re surrounded by trees and shrubs and ferns and big leafy who-knows-what-kind-of-plants that come up past his waist when he walks. There’s a few lightning bugs here and there, a spider web or two up above their heads, bluish bioluminescent flowers way higher up than that to make up for the total lack of sunlight finding its way down here on the forest floor.

This place is just… a forest. A forest that’s home to a bunch of ginormous predators that nearly killed him by taking a chunk out of his thigh, sure, but still. He’s dealt with a hell of a lot worse than that.

And yet.

There’s this unsettling sort of twingey feeling that’s glued right smack into the space between his shoulder blades and it won’t budge, and Peter doesn’t know what it is that’s causing it.

He guesses it could just be how quiet the place is, now that they’re trying to keep their voices down to avoid waking up any more of those things. Maybe it’s only because of the nauseousness that’s still lingering after all that blood loss, the slight headache at the back of his skull. Or maybe it’s the memory of seeing his mom — hallucinating his mom, hallucinating her, because obviously she was never actually there, c’mon Pete — that’s burned into his brain and shows back up again every time he friggin’ blinks.

But it also, maybe, could be the fact that he keeps seeing movement out of the corner of his eye.

Not from any of the others. It’s always somewhere in his peripheral where he knows none of them are, and it’s always too quick, too blurry, for him to make out what it is. It always takes a second glance for him to determine what the hell it could be, and it’s always gone the moment he turns his head to get a look. Like it was never there in the first place.

It’s gotta be his head playing tricks on him.

It’s gotta be.

Still, he feels a whole hell of a lot better when he’s talking, as opposed to sitting around in silence and letting that creepy feeling wriggle its way deeper into his stomach.

So he talks.

“Nebula’s really gonna friggin’ kill us,” he says, tearing open the packet of jerky from Drax’s massive stash of food. They all decided, about two hours into the trek back, that it would be better to kick back for a minute and get some food into their systems before they kept going.

Good thing Drax packed enough snacks to feed an army, at least.

Gamora casts a sideways glance at Peter, though she’s grinning a bit as she reaches into his bag.

“What? It’s true,” Peter says with a shrug. He’s just voicing the thought he’s had, oh, only about a hundred thousand times since he woke up missing a third of his blood supply. He shifts around; the log he and Gamora are sharing as a seat isn’t exactly the most comfortable of couches, but it beats sitting in the dirt. “She’s gonna friggin’ kill us.”

Gamora smirks. “I doubt she would do that.”

“Okay,” Peter corrects, “she’s gonna friggin’ kill me.”

“You know, that she might actually do,” Gamora admits.

Peter snorts. “Thanks, babe.”

“I am Groot.”

“Yep,” Peter agrees, pointing at him. “Or she’ll finally sew my face to my genitals. Either way.”

Mantis, pausing in her effort to systematically dig the biggest cheese puffs out of the bag in her hands, looks up with her nose scrunched up and asks, “But why would she do that?”

Peter shrugs, then leans his shoulder into Gamora’s so he can pick through the other snacks she’s piled up in her lap. “She’s always been looking for an excuse,” he says through half a mouthful of jerky. “Keeping everybody in this forest for so long, not getting in contact with her to let her know what’s going on, that’d be a half-decent one.”

Drax frowns. “But we are all still in the forest, not only you.”

“Eh. That’s just what I get for being Captain, I guess,” Peter admits. “And hell, I mean, even if I wasn’t, she’d probably blame me for getting her all worried, anyway.”

“Dunno ‘bout that, Quill, Nebula ain’t what you’d call the worryin’ type,” Rocket mutters, barely looking up from Peter’s helmet earpiece, which he’s been tinkering with for the last straight hour and has finally gotten the chance to really focus on it as soon as they sat down.

Loki gives a vague hum in agreement, leaning back against a tree trunk with his hands laced over his stomach and his eyes elsewhere. He’d been the only voice of dissent against taking a break and having a bite to eat, even though he’s clearly benefiting a lot from the chance to sit down and relax right now, more so than any of them — and Peter squashes down that little surge of guilt, again, at the reminder of how much the bout of healing magic took out of him.

“Nah, she is,” Peter says.

Rocket snorts. “Uh-huh. Sure.”

“Nah, seriously,” Peter says, remembering Mantis scaring them all with her nightmare two nights ago and Nebula damn near bowling over everyone to get to her room, ready to gut whoever might’ve caused it. “You just don’t think so ‘cause she doesn’t want you to think so, man. But I’m telling you, she worries more than the rest of us combined.”

“We talkin’ about the same Nebula, here?”

“Yep.”

“Worryin’ more than the rest of you neurotic a-holes,” Rocket says, shaking his head without looking up from the helmet. “Nah, you’re outta your mind, Quill.”

“Perhaps not more than the rest of us combined,” Mantis points out, the corners of her lips stained with cheese dust. “I am not sure worry can be quantified in such a way, but she does worry, sometimes very much.”

“You know that?” Gamora asks, to which Mantis nods and pops another cheese puff in her mouth.

“Ah-ha! See?” Peter says, waving at Mantis. “C’mon, I know my team. And I know we’ve been gone long enough that Nebula’s gonna blow a friggin’ gasket soon, if she hasn’t already.”

“And when we return, she will sew your face to your genitals,” Drax reminds him, sounding entirely too comfortable with that prospect.

Peter gives a solemn nod. “And when we return, she’ll sew my face to my genitals.”

They descend from there into an almost comfortable quiet, or a quiet that’s probably at least semi-comfortable to the rest of them. They’re each either preoccupied with their snacks or just taking the opportunity to sit back and relax after several hours of nonstop walking through a forest that seems to be lacking in any actual path whatsoever.

And maybe that’s the issue, Peter thinks, that the rest of them are all too exhausted to get creeped out, meanwhile he’s been hitching a ride with Drax this whole time.

Loki tips his head back against the tree behind him and closes his eyes. Groot keeps on playing his game, no doubt trying to eke out a new high score before the battery finally gives out. Rocket mutters the occasional curse under his breath, prying the smaller components away from Peter’s earpiece and all but pressing his eyeball to the inner mechanisms every couple seconds to see what’s wrong with it. By the sound of his grumbling, he’s not all that much closer to finding out.

Peter bites back a yawn before it can escape. He may not be as tired as the rest of them but he damn well is tired; time kind of loses its meaning in this place without the sun or the stars visible, but his three hour blood-loss-induced nap had been sometime around midday and it is creeping toward nighttime now, stars or no stars.

He sighs, shifts a little closer to Gamora, and shoots a furtive glance around at the forest.

Still nothing but a whole hell of a lot of trees. Somewhere in the distance he hears an animal give off a weird sort of croak, and then—

There.

Peter turns his head, trying to catch whatever the hell it was he just saw in full view — white, he definitely saw something white — but it’s gone again.

Goddammit, there was definitely something there that time.

“Peter?” Gamora asks, but before he can say anything, Rocket lets out a frustrated groan that’s loud enough to jar him from his thoughts.

He’s actually wearing Peter’s helmet and looking through the view screen now, which looks a little hilarious with his fur and whiskers sticking out the sides, not that Peter would ever tell him so out loud. Especially not with the mood he’s in; judging by the way he retracts the mask right back into its earpiece and honest-to-God growls, it seems he still hasn’t gotten the problem fixed. And Rocket’s not real used to tech problems he can’t fix.

“This krutackin’ piece of junk—”

“Hey,” Peter automatically bristles. “That thing’s state of the art, you know!”

“I know, and that’s the frickin’ problem,” Rocket says, shaking the earpiece next to his ear, listening to see if any of the bits inside are gonna rattle around. “There ain’t a damn thing wrong with it. I checked over the specs a hundred frickin’ times, and there ain’t a single hair outta place. Princess even worked some kinda Vibernia filaments—”

“Vibranium,” Gamora corrects, even though she knows he doesn’t care.

“— into the wiring and the circuits to make any kinda malfunction even less likely to happen. It looks like it’s brand spankin’ new, and then I open up the damn thing and the directional unit in the map system’s still goin’ haywire.”

“Still looks like south keeps moving around?” Peter asks, and Rocket mumbles an agreement and tosses the earpiece in his direction. Peter’s got one arm around Gamora’s shoulders but catches it easy enough with his free hand, hooking it to his ear and tapping it so that the helmet deploys.

And… yup. First it thinks south is straight ahead, then somewhere off to the left, then directly behind him. He sighs and taps the earpiece again to let it retract.

“What if south is moving?”

Peter blinks, shooting a confused look at Loki. “Uh. What?”

Loki’s still leaning back against the tree trunk, fingers laced together, and he twiddles his thumbs as he stares thoughtfully up at the forest canopy. He’s been quiet as hell ever since they got turned around two hours ago, clammed right up and barely spoke at all unless someone bugged the shit out of him (Rocket), or asked him too many questions without noticing he was in no mood to talk (Drax), and even when he did speak it was in one- or two-word answers that left no room whatsoever for further discussion.

“What if your helmet isn’t malfunctioning at all?” Loki asks now, turning his head a bit to look at all of them. “What if south’s direction is actually changing, and your helmet is simply picking up on that and telling you about it?”

“You think that’s possible?” Gamora asks.

“It would hardly be the strangest thing any of us has seen, would it?”

“I mean… No, I guess it wouldn’t, but that’s—” Peter stammers, shakes his head. “There’s no way, right? How in the the hell would south be moving?”

“Perhaps we are moving without realizing it,” Drax offers, and Peter has no idea whether he really thinks that’s a possibility or he’s just eagerly jumping on the guessing-ridiculous-reasons-the-helmet-could-be-malfunctioning train, but either way, Loki gestures at him with a look at Peter as if to say, See? Drax agrees with me.

“How would we be moving without realizing it?” Mantis asks.

“Yeah,” Peter says, gesturing at her in an intentional mimic of Loki pointing at Drax, to which Loki rolls his eyes. “Exactly. Pretty sure we’d be able to tell that, dude.”

“I’m only hazarding a guess as to why the directionality feature in your helmet appears to be malfunctioning when Rocket believes it to be in perfect working order,” Loki tells him with a shrug, turning his hands up for a second with his fingers still laced together.

“I dunno, man,” Peter says, “you sure you’re not hazarding a guess as to why you ended up being wrong about where the path was?”

“I am Groot.”

Loki glares at both of them. “I was not the only one who was certain we were headed in the right direction—”

“It does seem prudent,” Gamora quietly interjects before they can escalate it into an actual argument, “to consider every possibility.”

Peter hesitates. “Well… sure, I guess, yeah. But wouldn’t that take some kind of magic, though?”

“Not necessarily.”

“And your whole magic radar thing still isn’t pinging here?”

“Again, it is not radar. It does not ping. And no, I still haven’t noticed any significant traces of magic in this place.”

“Significant traces?” Gamora echoes him, raising an eyebrow. “So there have been in-significant ones?”

Loki opens his mouth, then closes it and tilts his head. “Sort of. But what I am picking up is hardly noticeable, to the point that it may not even really be there at all. It’s not much, it’s just… It’s difficult to explain.”

“Yeah?” Rocket interrupts. “Try us.”

At first, it doesn’t seem like Loki’s going to bother. He stares into space some more, biding his time, and then eventually he says, “It’s as if a barrier is… thinner, here.”

Peter shoots him a wide-eyed look. “Oh, yeah, sure, ‘cause that doesn’t sound spooky as all hell. You didn’t think to bring that up earlier?”

Loki rolls his eyes again. “It is not spooky. It’s actually fairly common.”

“A barrier between what?” Gamora asks.

Loki thinks that over for a second, sighs in that okay-fine-I-guess-I’ll-explain way that he does sometimes, and then says, “What you have to understand first and foremost is that magic, or at least the magic that I use, is not some metaphysical concept like—”

“I am Groot?”

“Abstract,” Loki automatically corrects. “It’s not an abstract concept. It has substance.” He lifts one hand and holds it, palm down and flat, in front of him. “This is a rather crude way of putting it, but if this is us, here, in the physical reality with which you’re all familiar, then this—” and a faint greenish light appears to coalesce into a sheet above his hand, lying parallel to it, hovering over the back of his hand like a blanket without quite making contact— “is where the majority of seiðr lies. It’s… oh, how do I put this in a way you’ll all—”

“It is in a parallel world?” Drax asks.

And that prompts what is easily the most stunned look Peter’s ever seen on Loki’s face, ever, which is saying a whole lot. He blinks comically slow, eyebrows up, and then turns his wide eyes on Drax before narrowing them in outright disbelief, jaw hanging open. “Yes. How…?”

Drax frowns, looking uncertainly from Loki to the rest of them, like he’s only just realizing he said something that none of them were expecting from him. And like he has no idea why they weren’t expecting it.

“That is… what you are describing,” Drax says, half a question. “Parallel worlds.”

Peter asks, “What, like dimensions?”

Loki answers, “Yes,” at the very same instant that Drax answers, with equal confidence, “No,” so that’s comforting at least. Those two disagreeing again makes it feel as if the world’s tipped back onto its proper axis.

“There are infinite universes in parallel to one another,” Loki goes on explaining. “Some civilizations, which… evidently include yours,” he adds with a bewildered nod at Drax, “know this. Some know of it through scientific observation, others incorporate it into their religious beliefs, but whatever the case, seiðr exists in one of these. Some small amounts of seiðr exist here in our own world, too, which is usually what I’m able to sense. Aesir and some select few of other species can be born with this seiðr within themselves, and through a lifetime of careful study they can learn to harness it. Others, through even more careful study, can eventually learn to reach across the barrier—” and here he flicks his hand up, hooking a finger through the glowing green sheet and tugging part of it down like it really is a solid blanket— “and pull some of that seiðr into our world for their own use.”

“And you’re…” Peter says, squinting uncertainly, “the… first one of those two?” 

“I can do both,” Loki answers, and even though Peter thinks it should come across as a brag, it somehow doesn’t. He waves his hand, scattering the glowing green film into infinitesimal specks before they disappear entirely. “What I’m getting at, is that there’s no living being with innate seiðr anywhere in this forest other than me. I would know if there was, and there’s not.”

Gamora says, “But the barrier between those two worlds feels thinner here.”

“It’s not… quite that simple, but… yes, more or less,” Loki says, then shrugs. “It happens. The lining up of parallel universes is never quite exact, and sometimes there’s a bit more overlap in certain places than in others. Believe me when I say that it’s nothing at all out of the ordinary, but you asked, and that’s… That’s what I’m sensing.”

“So someone could reach through the barrier here,” Mantis says, nodding as she follows along, “and use that magic to make the cardinal directions move?”

“That’s not what I’m— no, almost definitely not,” Loki says, shaking his head. “For one thing, not just anyone could reach across even the thinnest of barriers between worlds, and this is by no means the thinnest. It would take someone remarkably skilled and remarkably determined. And for another, do you remember what I said? About the amount of magic it would take to make thirty or so people disappear without a trace?”

“A lot?” Peter asks.

Gamora says, “Enough that you’d have known it before we landed.”

Loki nods in her direction. “And that applies double if someone were attempting to use magic to alter the magnetic field of an entire planet. It would be an absolutely absurd amount of power, more so than even I have at my disposal.”

“So you don’t think there’s anything magicky going on to make south move around,” Peter says.

“No, I don’t,” Loki confirms. “But, again, magic would not be required to make the directional feature on your helmet behave the way it’s behaving.”

“No?”

“Not necessarily.” Loki leans his head back and looks up at the leaves again. “Once, a few centuries back, Thor and I and— and a few of Thor’s friends,” he says, faltering on that for a second, but he moves on quick enough, “we were attempting to find the lair of a giantess on a far-off planet that… I’m fairly certain no longer exists anymore, but the point is, it turned out that the terrain we were traversing was actually on the back of a massive tortoise. Damn thing kept moving, which was hell on our ability to navigate. But that was not magic, and this may not be, either.”

Peter makes a face again, wrinkling his nose. All he can picture is the forest spinning around and around like the whole damn place is sitting on his old kitchen table back home from when he was a kid, the one with the lazy susan on it, churning in a slow circle.

Even the thought of that sets his stomach to tumbling all over again.

Eugh. Nope. No friggin’ thanks.

And there’s no way that could be what’s happening anyway. There’s no way in hell. They would’ve noticed something like that when they were flying overhead, at the very least, right?

“Okay,” Peter says anyway, throwing a hand up, defeated. “Yeah. Might as well make sure, right? Rocket, you wanna climb on up and take a look?”

“Already on it,” Rocket mutters, and when Peter turns to look at him, sure enough, he’s already about halfway up the nearest tree trunk, climbing up and up until the branches and leaves block their view of him. His voice carries down, though, even after he disappears. “Gonna be pretty frickin’ pissed if south’s actually moving and I gotta keep doing this every ten minutes, like I ain’t got anythin’ better to—”

The rest of his sentence is lost with the distance, the sound swallowed up by the trees, and Peter groans. “This is gonna suck.”

“More than likely, yes,” Loki says.

“At least we’re finally getting to the root of the problem,” Gamora reminds them. “We’ll make our way out of here eventually.”

“Yeah,” Peter admits. “Just gonna take a hell of a lot longer to—”

“I am Groot?”

Peter twists at the waist to look at Groot, automatically repeating, “Are we—?” as he does, but then he follows Groot’s eyes across the clearing and into the far woods off to Peter’s right, and the rest of the question are we seeing what, kiddo, dies halfway up his throat like his voice got snagged on a thorn.

Oh.

“Uh. Yeah, I’m seeing it, too,” Peter makes himself say, though his voice comes out smaller than he’d meant it to.

Because there, some hundred yards or so through the trees and against the dim blue backdrop of the forest, a whitish shape is looming in the dark. It’s like what Peter kept seeing out of the corner of his eye, the hazy whitish something that would disappear the instant he so much as blinked or turned his head.

Except this time it doesn’t disappear.

Peter blinks, hard, then shakes his head, hoping that might make the image dissipate like one of Loki’s magic illusions, but no such luck.

“You guys seeing—?”

“Yes,” Drax answers before Peter can finish the question.

Loki nods, silently watching it with his brow furrowed.

Mantis nods, too. “What is it?”

“I don’t know,” Gamora says, quiet and careful, eyes intent on whatever it is.

The shape is only vaguely person-shaped, too far away and too indistinct at the moment to be totally sure it’s person-shaped, morphing and shifting a bit as it moves, wisps of white curling off its edges like a poorly contained mass of smoke. But it’s still person-shaped enough that it might more accurately be called a figure than just a shape, lurking over there in the dark distance of the forest, white on deep dark blue.

Mom looked like that, his dickhead of a brain reminds him. When I saw her— hallucinated her— she looked like that. White on blue.

“Oh, man.”

It takes him a second to realize that came from him, and he doesn’t much care.

She started off like this, too. Hazy and shifting, as if Peter’s brain wasn’t totally up to speed when she first appeared and he couldn’t quite get her into focus, but when he finally did, when he could see who it was standing there in the trees looking down at him while he steadily bled out in Gamora’s lap, it was— it was her. There was no doubt about it. There was a fair bit of doubt as to whether she was real or just a figment of his blood-loss addled imagination, but not whether it was her or not. Because it was. It was. She looked just as she did the way Peter remembers her best; hair tossed over her shoulder in flowing waves, eyes sparkling, cheeks appled up in a wide smile, mid-laugh.

A sort of rift, Peter thinks, remembering what Loki said when they first started their trek into the forest. That’s what a ghost would need to show up here. A rift between worlds.

“Loki,” Peter finds himself saying, not taking his eyes away from the shape in the distance. “That, uh… that barrier you were talking about?”

Loki doesn’t look away from the shape either, but he answers, “What about it?”

“Don’t suppose that’d be a good spot for one of those rifts to show up, would it?”

“A good—?” Loki starts to ask, glancing at Peter, then belatedly recognizes what he’s getting at, and he shakes his head. Peter doesn’t know whether to be heartened or relieved or, on some weird level, disappointed by that. “No, it wouldn’t— It’s not that thin. It’s not as if parallel worlds are crashing into one another here. It’s nothing nearly so dramatic.”

The figure gains a bit of substance as it moves, slowly, flickering and flowing its way through the forest—

And it’s coming toward them.

Peter is not the only one to notice. Gamora stays seated, her eyes unwavering on the slowly approaching shape, but she’s already got one hand on Godslayer and looks poised to draw it in half a second if she needs to. Drax is already standing, hands on his daggers. Loki plants one hand on the tree trunk behind him and uses it to slowly get to his feet as well, his eyes ahead.

“So in that case,” Peter says, even though his heart’s starting to beat in his throat, “we’re still saying the whole ghosts thing is ‘remarkably unlikely,’ yeah? Still sticking with eighty-seven percent?”

Loki looks at him out of the corner of his eye, and he frowns. “Why?”

That wasn’t a yes, Peter thinks, the queasy feeling in his stomach getting stronger and stronger by the second. “Because that,” he says, gesturing with a nod at the slowly approaching figure, “is pretty damn close to what my mom looked like when I saw her, man.”

All of them, every single one of them, shoots a look in his direction before turning back toward the figure. It solidifies more and more as it approaches, its edges sharpening into something that is definitely person-shaped, definitely something around a normal human’s height.

Shit, if this thing really ends up looking like his mom again— if it ends up being his mom again— Peter really has no idea what the hell he’s gonna do.

“I am Groot.”

“Of course,” Drax agrees, quiet, though he hasn’t let go of his daggers. “It could have been a trick.”

“But that would mean that what we are seeing now would have to be a trick as well,” Mantis says, chancing a quick worried glance in Loki’s direction for confirmation.

Gamora asks, “Could it be a trick, Loki?”

Loki nods once. “It’s possible, yes.”

“Even without magic?” she asks.

“There are a wealth of ways to make someone see things that are not actually there,” Loki says, carefully and evenly, eyes still ahead. “Ways that don’t involve magic, ways that do involve magic that even I am not privy to. So, yes. It’s possible.”

He still hasn’t answered Peter’s question about whether the ghosts possibility is still, quote, ‘remarkably unlikely’ or not, and Peter has absolutely picked up on that, friggin’ thanks. He is really wishing he’d asked Loki more questions about it before now — he’d seemed to know a thing or two about things like this, and all Peter’s got under his belt is a few scary movies from the 80’s on Terra.

And that was goddamn make believe. What the hell actually happens when someone who’s dead ends up walking and talking and interacting with the living world?

Would it actually be his mom? Or would it just be some kind of scary-movie-version of her, or just something less than her, like some kind of echo—

“I am Groot.”

“Hallucination?” Peter asks, raising an eyebrow at him. “What, you think there was something funky in Drax’s food?”

“There was nothing funky in my food.”

Groot shrugs. “I am Groot.”

“Swamp gas?” Mantis repeats, a brief disgusted look crossing her face.

“I can’t believe I’m saying this,” Peter says, “but I think I’d be happier if it was a mass hallucination thanks to a bunch of swamp gas. I’d take that.”

“Either it is a hallucination, or it’s a trick,” Loki says, “or it’s some sort of creature that can shapeshift. Those exist, too, although that would require that the shapeshifter somehow had a passing knowledge of what your mother looked like, so I suppose that’s rather unlikely.”

“So hallucination,” Peter says, “or a trick.”

Loki nods. “That, or—”

“Or it’s actually a ghost and this place is legit haunted,” Peter finishes for him, and Loki nods again, though a little reluctantly.

The figure’s about fifty or so yards away now, sliding in and out through the trees. It’s still too dim to really make out, but it’s definitely a person. Or something meant to look like a person. No doubt about it.

“If it is a trick,” Gamora says, “then what if that’s how so many people have ended up wandering into this forest to disappear?”

“What?” Drax asks. “How?”

She casts a quick, sideways glance at Peter, and he sighs. He knows what she’s getting at, and he doesn’t like the implications one bit. “Because if people are seeing what I saw, if they’re seeing—” he waves a hand at the figure, which has slowed up its approach a bit but hasn’t stopped coming in their direction— “you know, like, dead loved ones or whatever, then it’d be a pretty damn good way to trick ‘em into going just about anywhere.”

And it’s true. Peter likes to think he’d be able to be smart about it, but the fact is, if he saw his mom when he was upright and capable of walking, he’d have followed her wherever the hell she led him. Wouldn’t have mattered how deep into the forest she went, Peter would’ve been right behind her, trying to talk to her, trying to figure out if it was really her.

He wouldn’t have thought twice about it.

Finally, the thing’s starting to get close enough that Peter can make out a few details. Forty yards, then thirty. It’s still too unnaturally white to be a real solid bonafide person, still trailing wisps of whitish greyish fog behind it as it moves, but it’s around Peter’s height, maybe a little shorter, walking with langid but purposeful strides rather than just coasting along like a cloud.

Peter cocks his head to the side, squinting. He thinks it might be wearing a jacket, and… maybe a scarf? It ain’t cold enough for a scarf here, but then again, maybe ghosts don’t really give a crap about that.

He is, at the very least, pretty sure it’s not his mom. Not this time. The shape’s all wrong for that.

Out of nowhere Gamora goes tense, standing up in one fluid movement, her grip tightening on the hilt of Godslayer but not quite drawing it yet. Her eyes are wide on the figure, and — shit, yeah, that’s right, her eyesight’s a hell of a lot better than Peter’s, a hell of a lot better than any of theirs.

“Gamora?”

She glances back at him, but only for half a second, and then she shifts so that she’s effectively standing between him and the slowly approaching figure.

“Hey,” Peter says, reaching out and grabbing a hold of her arm to give himself a little leverage to get up. She’s as firm and unyielding as a statue, which makes it a little easier to use her to stand but is also super concerning. She feels ready to slice someone in half. “Babe?”

The figure’s closing in on their little clearing now, stepping across the dimly lit forest floor and throwing that soft white glow against the surrounding trees, casting long dark shadows as it moves.

Its footsteps don’t make a sound.

Peter glances around at the rest of them. Loki’s tilting his head, watching it, a faint confusion and an utter lack of recognition clear on his face. Drax is wordlessly and cautiously putting himself between the figure and Groot, squinting and looking uncertain. Mantis, when Peter looks in her direction, looks all at once too pale and a little green around the gills.

And when Peter looks back up toward the figure, he instantly understands why.

“Oh,” Drax says.

Peter’s heart is actually thumping in his throat now, genuine icy fear taking hold of his entire chest cavity, stalling his lungs.

“I am Groot.”

“Language,” Gamora murmurs under her breath, though she doesn’t even seem to realize she spoke at all. Godslayer’s half out of her holster.

Drax already has his daggers out. “I do not think,” he says, carefully and evenly, “that your theory was correct, Quill.”

Gamora, still poised half in front of Peter, slowly nods and says, “It’s not dead loved ones.”

Mantis takes a step back so that she’s nearly flush against Gamora’s other side, looking about ready to shake out of her damn skin. Groot’s staring wide-eyed like the rest of them, though he looks more pissed off than scared. Loki, on the other hand, frowns and directs a mildly confused look around at the rest of them before bringing his eyes back to the figure.

And when Peter finally finds his voice, there’s barely enough air in his lungs to give the words any kind of weight, so he ends up sounding like someone’s just punched him square in the gut.

Which makes sense, at least, because he kind of feels like someone has.

“Oh, fuuuck me.”

Whites and greys and blues dominate where brown and tan and black should be, but there’s no mistaking it. Color washed away or not, real or not, hallucination or not — and please, Peter thinks, please let this be a hallucination, let it be swamp gas — there is absolutely no goddamn mistaking who’s just stepped into their little clearing. The dead leaves and plants and squelching mud on the ground should mean his boots make a sound as he walks, but they don’t. The total lack of a breeze around here should mean that his stupid rumpled cape thing doesn’t billow around him, but it does.

The whitish shape that might be a hallucination but also might be the actual ghost of Peter’s long dead father looks up at the lot of them, his gaze sweeping over Loki and Drax and Groot and Gamora until he lands on Mantis, and then, finally, he turns just slightly and looks Peter dead in the eyes.

He smiles, crows feet crinkling.

“Well, how ‘bout this,” Ego says, his voice floating on that nonexistent wind. “I must say, Peter, this was not exactly the reunion I was expecting.”

Chapter Text

The tip of Godslayer is poised beneath Ego’s faintly glowing beard before Peter can so much as blink.

And Ego, like there’s not a solid two feet of steel ready to slice his head off his shoulders, just stands there as calm as anything, his chin tipped up as he gazes down the sword’s length and into Gamora’s eyes with that same cool indifference that he always afforded her in life — or in the few short days he knew her in life, anyway, before they blew the son of a bitch into an explosion of useless rocks and space dust.

Ego maintains her gaze for about three seconds before his eyes find Peter’s again.

Then he frowns and tilts his head. His expression is a messed up parody of gentle understanding that sends Peter’s blood to boiling.

“What?” Ego asks. “Nothing to say to your old man, Peter?”

Oh, I got a lot of things I could say, asshole.

Peter swallows. His throat is nothing but sandpaper. And instead of answering to that, instead of addressing Ego at all, instead of losing his shit, instead of opening his mouth and saying anything that would no doubt snowball into him going on an actual friggin’ warpath in front of Groot — because he can feel he’s just about teetering over the precipice of that already — Peter takes a breath, clenches his fists, swallows again.

Then he says, cool and calm and collected as can be, “Loki?”

Loki doesn’t say anything, but he makes eye contact across the clearing. He’s listening.

“What are the chances,” Peter says, “that this place is actually haunted, huh?”

Loki frowns. The crease of his brow deepens. “I can’t—”

“Don’t bullshit me, man,” Peter snaps, jaw tight, eyes glued again on what may or may not be the ghost of his actual father standing less then ten goddamn feet away. “Seriously, I need a straight answer. I need— I need to know if that’s actually—”

“If I’m actually… what, son?” Ego asks, grinning faintly, bemused. His voice is exactly the same as it was when he was alive, the easy cadence of it, the soft huskiness that says, I don’t need to speak up, you’re all hanging on my every word anyway. “If I’m actually what? Real? Me?”

Peter grits his teeth.

Don’t go off on him, it’s not worth it, you already killed the son of a bitch, and he’s probably not even the real deal anyway.

But the thing is, he looks like the real deal. Outside of the whitish greyish look about him, the fog hanging around his edges, it sure as hell looks like Ego. He’s standing there with his thumbs hooked over his belt, still casual as all hell, in open defiance of the bare inch or so separating the tip of Gamora’s sword from piercing his throat.

That’s ‘cause he’s already dead, Peter thinks. Of course he doesn’t give a shit about threats. Would you? What the hell can any of us do to him now?

“Loki,” Peter says again.

“I assure you, Peter,” Ego says before Loki can get a word in, “I’m as real as can be—”

“No, you don’t get an opinion, screw off,” Peter finally shouts, pointing at him. “Last time I listened to you the whole damn universe almost imploded—”

“Well.” Ego makes a face, a half-smile that’s all chiding disbelief. “I’m not sure ‘imploded’ is quite the right term, son—”

“The whole damn universe almost imploded,” Peter plows right on, raising his voice over Ego’s, “and you used me as a goddamn battery for your shitty taking-over-everything crap, and everybody I cared about almost died—” and Yondu did die, goddamn suffocated, empty space sucking the air right out of him, ice creeping over his skin, all of that right in front of my face— “so you can shut right the hell up and stand there and let the grown ups talk, alright? You know, the ones who didn’t call themselves a friggin’ God and then went ahead and got merced by a bunch of assholes and a baby tree with a homemade bomb!”

Okay, yeah, see? There’s the warpath.

Roll it back, Pete.

Peter forces air into his lungs and it’s all heat, a bellows on a fire. He squeezes his eyes shut, forces the breath out through pursed lips, opens his eyes again and Ego’s still goddamn there, looking at him all calm and quiet and unaffected and knowing.

“You’re certainly speaking like you believe I’m real, Peter.”

And it’s only now, in the face of that infuriatingly calm quiet, that Peter notices the cold sting of tears on his cheeks.

Shit.

When the hell did he let that happen?

“So much bravado, Peter,” Ego says. Then he sighs, shrugging one shoulder. “Though, I suppose I shouldn’t be so surprised. After all, you did get that from me, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t get anything from you, you miserable sack of—”

“No?” Ego asks, looking genuinely confused for a moment. “Certain of that, are you?”

“Pretty goddamn certain of it, yeah.”

Ego smirks. Fog gathers in wisps around his hair, his clothes, his skin, wafting into the air around him, and for the first time since he appeared Peter notices how… emaciated he looks. He looks exactly as he’d looked in his final moments, weathered skin and hollowed cheeks and sunken eyes, and for a moment all Peter can think of is white bones and a pulsing circulatory system, musculature reforming, the holes left behind by Peter’s phase blasters just— filling up, bit by bit, skin funneling into place like sand.

It is not totally out of the realm of possibility that Peter might puke.

But really, Ego looks like he should look, what with him being dead and all. He carries it like he hasn’t got a care in the world, though, and maybe he doesn’t. Maybe you don’t have a care in the world after you die.

“You didn’t get anything from me, did you?” Ego goes on, apparently undeterred by his own death or by Peter’s tirade or by the sword still poised at his throat. “Nothing at all? Well, then, where do you suppose all that came from, son? All that bravado, the conviction?”

Peter glares with everything he’s got, clenching his jaw to stop it shaking.

Ego regards him with a disappointed little pout, almost pitying. “Where do you think you got that self-assured certainty that you’re right, huh Peter? That certainty that what you’re doing is right?”

“From his mother.”

Gamora’s voice is cold and firm and unyielding and everything that Peter couldn’t possibly have trusted from his own voice right now. When Peter looks at her he sees that she hasn’t moved a muscle, hasn’t so much as shifted her stance, and honestly, for a second Peter wonders if she even spoke at all or if he hadn’t just imagined that up.

But she speaks again, and Ego turns his gaze on her.

“He gets all of those things from his mother, or from the Ravagers, or from us,” Gamora continues, matching Ego’s calm. “The people who raised him. The people who love him. His family.” She slowly shakes her head. “Not from you.”

For a moment, Ego only maintains Gamora’s stare in perfect silence, his face an unreadable mask of indifference.

Then the smirk comes back, and this time it grows into a full-blown smile, eyes crinkling again as he leers at Gamora and says, “Oh, now, that is rich, isn’t it? Coming from you.”

Gamora says nothing to that, but from behind her Peter can see as the tense line of her shoulders tightens even further, the barest twitch.

“Speaking so highly of the people that raised him, when— and please, by all means, correct me if I’m wrong, but I could swear that you helped kill every single person that ever even made an attempt at raising you,” Ego says, something cold and dangerous in his eyes, his smile unmistakably vindictive. “Bringing everyone who’s ever loved you to eventual ruin is almost an art for you, isn’t it? So forgive me if I don’t consider you to be an authority on the subject, especially given what you allowed to happen to your own mother—”

“Hey, asshole,” Peter cuts in, “you can shut your goddamn—”

“Ooh, and that, too,” Ego says, pointing at Peter like he’s just remembered. “The temper! Hate to admit it, but I’m afraid you got that from your old man, too.” He sighs again, turns his hands up before bringing them back to his belt. “You may not like it, Peter, but you are a product of me. So much of what you are is a direct result of what I am, and… well, you know that, don’t you? You’re doing your damn best to deny it, but somewhere deep down, you know that.”

“I said shut your—”

“And here you are,” Ego raises his voice, drowning out the end of Peter’s sentence, “squandering all of it.”

Ego shakes his head, a mournful frown on his face, eyes sad. The asshole even tuts, and Peter has to clench his jaw again so hard he feels a shock of pain through the roots of his teeth.

“It breaks my heart, Peter, it really does. Seeing you here like this, wasting all that you have, wasting all that I gave you, wandering around the galaxies like you’re not a God, pretending you’re just like everyone else, pretending you belong with these—”

“No!”

Peter jumps, startled.

Everyone else in the clearing, save for the apparition that may or may not really be Ego, looks every bit as startled as Peter is, and they all turn their wide eyes on Mantis.

Her fists are tight at her sides. She’s shaking from the tips of her antennae down to her toes. There are tear tracks clear as day on her cheeks, reflected in the soft blue glow of the forest, the soft white glow of Ego’s maybe-real maybe-not ghost — and, well, shit, if Peter didn’t already feel bad enough, now he’s also the world’s biggest asshole, isn’t he?

How did he forget about Mantis? How the hell did he forget that however bad Ego might have messed Peter up, he messed Mantis up a thousand times worse and then some?

Ego eyes her down. “Now, Mantis—”

“No!” she shouts again, her voice hysterical and shaking almost as bad as the rest of her, but loud, loud enough to pin them all where they’re standing.

“Oh, come now—”

“No!” she cuts him off yet again, and the tears start anew but she doesn’t acknowledge it. “You— You are wrong! Peter is not like you! He— he is not wasting what he has, he is— he is doing good. He is— We are being better than you ever were. What you wanted was wrong!”

Her antennae glow impossibly bright white, near blinding in the darkness of the forest.

She’s not touching a single one of them.

Ego still seems entirely unaffected. He smiles at her, soft and cloying. “Oh, now, you don’t know that that’s true, do you, Mantis? You naive little thing, you never knew—”

“I knew everything!” Mantis shouts, practically screams. Her antennae are two surging bulbs on the edge of burning out, leaving white-red impressions on Peter’s retinas when he blinks. “I knew every single emotion! Everything you ever felt, it was all— was in my head, all of it, every terrible emotion you ever had, all that— hatred and anger and— and— and arrogance! And you were so big and awful and powerful that you swallowed up everything else and— and—”

She squeezes her eyes shut tight, takes a gasping breath, tears dripping from her chin. When she opens her eyes, they’re steely and shining and angry and set directly on Ego; the rest of them might as well not even be there.

“You think you are the only— the only terrible person who thought that they were right? You are the one who does not know what is true! I know!” she shouts, jabbing with two fingers at her own chest. “I know what is true and what is not! You think you are right, you always thought you were right! And you made me think you were right, that all that terribleness was right, but— but you were wrong! You were WRONG!”

Something happens.

Peter’s not sure what it is, but whatever it is, it’s sure as hell coming from Mantis.

The glow of her antennae surges again, white light traveling in thin rivulets down the entire length of them, and Peter swears, he swears, even for just a second, that a little bit of that white light shows through in the scant whites of her eyes, shining starbursts in the deep dark black of her pupils.

And, for just a moment, the entire forest feels different. Peter feels different. There’s nothing physical, no buffet of wind, no staticky thrumming feeling that hangs in the air like when Loki does his magic. It’s just a sick feeling that sinks into the pit of his stomach, a hard knot rising in his throat, a fierce anger — which may or may not have already been there — and a bone-deep fear clutching at his lungs and his heart and turning his whole spine to ice—

Peter stumbles back a step. A spike of pain climbs up his bad leg and he flinches, switches his weight back over onto his good one.

The feeling passes.

Ego’s upper lip curls in a snarl, his hard glare unwavering on Mantis. He opens his mouth to respond to her tirade, makes to take one single step forward—

— and he disappears. Gamora had tipped her sword up just a hair, in a movement Peter well recognized as a warning, a warning not to come any closer lest she slice his damn head right off his shoulders, and the moment the point of the blade made contact with him, he just vanished.

Into nothing, into thin goddamn thin air. A bit of that whitish fog hangs back, drifting on that nonexistent wind, but then Peter blinks, and even that much is gone between one blink and the next.

They’re all silent for a long, tense moment.

Gamora stays frozen, staring at the end of her own sword, staring at the newly empty space in front of it. Then she mutters, “Damn it,” under her breath and lets Godslayer retract back into its hilt, sheathing it and turning on her heel in the same movement. “Peter, Mantis, are you—?”

She doesn’t need to finish the question, because she spares one passing glance at Peter before she sees — before they all see — that Mantis is very much not okay. Her angry tears have dissolved into broken little sobs, both hands covering her mouth as she sinks down to her knees in the dirt, her antennae no longer glowing.

“Oh,” Gamora says, and the next second she’s already kneeled down to wrap Mantis in a hug.

With Mantis’ face tucked into her neck Gamora looks up at Peter again, eyebrows pinched in an unspoken question, but he just shakes his head. Let her worry about Mantis for now. He’s fine. Relatively.

Peter looks away from them, tugs both hands through his hair, and tries to pull an even breath into his lungs. It almost works.

God, what the hell was that?

What the hell just happened?

Groot, with a heartbroken look in his eyes and a soft rumble in his wooden vocal chords that doesn’t quite sharpen into a whole I am Groot, steps around to Mantis’ side and drops down to wrap his long spindly arms around both her and Gamora. Gamora keeps holding Mantis tight, petting her hair, pressing a kiss to the space between her antennae, and then she turns and kisses the top of Groot’s head, too, because they’re all a little shaken up, even if Mantis has got it the worst.

Drax circles around them and, in a move that seems way out of place with the downright murderous look in his eyes directed at the empty space where Ego used to be, he wordlessly falls back and lets his butt hit the dirt, and he plants one big meaty hand on Mantis’ back, gently rubbing up and down.

“It’s alright,” Gamora murmurs as Mantis gasps and sobs into her neck. “It’s alright, he’s gone.”

Peter wants to help.

God, he wants to help so bad, he wants to get in there and scoop Mantis up in a hug and never let go, but—

But he’s not sure that would help. He’s not sure if touching Mantis is a good idea, not sure if it’s anything other than a totally batshit insane idea, really, what with the way he’s feeling right now. His hands are trembling as he drops them from where they were tangled in his hair, hastily scrubbing the tears from his cheeks, and when he sniffs and clears his throat it is not subtle, but at least it shakes some semblance of sturdiness into his throat, into his breathing, so he thinks maybe he’ll be able to trust his voice when he speaks. Maybe.

Loki’s still staring at the place where Ego had been, one hand up as if he’s thinking of reaching out, fingertips faintly green. Confusion is written clear on his face, but Peter doesn’t think it’s because he doesn’t know who Ego was. He’s a smart guy; he easily could have put two and two together, given everything that was said, everything that was screamed.

Peter swallows, clears his throat again, sniffs again.

“Loki?”

“I don’t know,” Loki answers, quietly, before Peter can even really ask the question. His fingers twitch, and then his hand tightens into a fist and drops to his side. The green light’s gone as quick as it came, an experimental prod that seems to have come up empty. “I don’t— I don’t know if that was a true spirit or not. It might have been a trick, but…”

He trails off, leaves the sentence hanging.

Peter pushes. “But what?”

Loki glances at Peter, then down at the hug pile. His eyes linger on them for a second or two, and then his gaze is resolutely fixed again on the empty air where Ego’d been standing. “But I’ll admit that it certainly looked real,” he admits, still keeping his voice down. Is he doing that for Mantis’ sake, Peter wonders? Or because he’s worried that something — or someone — in the forest is gonna overhear him? He continues, “It seemed real. It felt real. If it was a trick, then it was a remarkably thorough and a remarkably detailed one.”

“You’re saying that might have actually been—?”

“I’m saying it’s a possibility,” Loki interrupts. “Not a very likely possibility, but… a possibility nonetheless.”

“How likely, man?”

Loki crosses his arms, eyes searching through the trees again like he’s expecting more ghosts to come popping up out of the ether. “Well, for one thing, if this place were even a suitable location for the spirits of the dead to simply wander about rather than staying in whatever afterlife to which they belong, which in itself is—”

“Dude. Work with me here, okay? I do not have the spoons for a magic lesson right now.”

Loki huffs, then shrugs. “Perhaps… thirty percent?”

“Thirty—?” Peter’s eyes go wide, his jaw dropping. “Friggin’ one outta three? What the hell happened to you being ‘pretty damn sure’ it wasn’t ghosts, man?”

“Well, that was before we all saw one, wasn’t it?” Loki snaps, shooting a mild glare in Peter’s direction, but then he glances down at the others again and softens, however reluctantly it seems to be, his shoulders going a little slack. Mantis has calmed down some, her sobs reduced to sniffles, one arm tight on Gamora’s waist and the other slung around Groot’s back. Loki amends, his voice gentler, “Or saw what might have been one, at any rate.”

“Jesus,” Peter breathes, crossing his own arms to stop his hands shaking. It doesn’t really work, but he stays that way anyway, his thumb and fingers squeezing around his opposite bicep hard enough to hurt.

It brings him back to reality a bit. The little bruising ache as his thumb presses into skin, that’s real, that’s something Ego couldn’t have done, because he was either a worthless ghost or a trick or a swamp-gas-induced hallucination. He wasn’t actually here, because he’s dead, they killed that son of a bitch as thoroughly as anybody can kill anybody, he’s dead and gone and he’s never coming back to hurt any of them—

But then again, that’s not exactly true, is it? Even if it wasn’t really him, it turns out he sure as hell can still hurt them, even years after he’s kicked the bucket. Just look at Mantis.

Peter shakes the thought away, shifting a little closer to the others so that he’s within arm’s reach, gritting his teeth through the pain in his leg as he moves. Still not a great idea to touch Mantis yet, not feeling like he is, not when she’s so close to calming down, but he’s gotta at least be near them. Be the captain, be the silent support, be whatever he’s gotta be.

And it’s then, with that familiar mantra of gotta be the captain running through his head, that it finally occurs to him.

The realization is a hundred-pound lead weight in his stomach.

Oh, no.

Oh, no no no.

“Shit,” he mutters, quiet enough that none of them hear him, except maybe Gamora.

How the hell had he not noticed until now? How long’s it been, five minutes? Ten? Enough that—

“Quill?” Loki asks, watching him warily.

Peter gulps again, shoots a look down at the others, and decides pretty much right away that nothing good’s gonna come of putting this off. There’s no way one of them isn’t gonna notice in the next few seconds anyway. He bites his lip and then asks, his voice hoarse, “Why isn’t Rocket back yet?”

Loki’s face falls, and then he turns and looks straight up, up through the forest canopy. All he says is, “Oh.”

The others are slowly detangling from their four-person hug, all of them looking worriedly in Peter’s direction and then, in unison, following Loki’s gaze up to the canopy.

Peter tries the comms. “Rocket?”

After the shitstorm they’ve been through in the last few hours, he’s almost expecting the static that comes back, the total lack of an answer, just like every single time they’ve tried to contact Nebula.

Doesn’t make him any less worried sick over it, though.

“Perhaps he has gotten lost,” Drax offers.

“Going straight up and back down?” Peter asks, and he tries the comms again. “Rocket, come on, where the hell are you, man?”

“Rocket?” Gamora tries on her own comms, and her voice bounces through the airwaves and comes through, perfectly crystal clear, in Peter’s ear. But apparently not in Rocket’s. She slowly stands and helps Mantis to her feet, one finger still on her earpiece. “Rocket.”

“I am Groot?”

“I don’t know why he’s not answering, bud,” Peter tells him, “but we’re gonna figure it out, okay?”

Groot looks unconvinced. Drax, the only one of them still sitting on the ground, cups his hands around his mouth and shouts up at the forest canopy, “ROCKET,” loud and booming and sudden enough that every last one of them flinches. There’s a rustling of leaves somewhere up above, the flapping of wings as birds scatter, but nothing else.

“Oh, yes, please,” Loki says with an incredulous glare at Drax, “go on and wake some more of those reptilian beasts, why don’t you? Let’s make it a party.”

Drax blinks. He very clearly hadn’t been considering the crocodile things — that, or he’s thrown by Loki’s use of the word party. Then he shrugs and stands up, evidently deciding not to acknowledge it. “Someone will have to go looking for him,” he says, dusting off his pants. “He could be hurt.”

“I am Groot.”

“I do not require assist—”

“No, dude, he’s right,” Peter cuts him off, hands on his hips now. “Splitting up is literally always a bad idea, and it's an extra bad idea now, what with…” he trails off, gesturing vaguely at where maybe-Ego had been standing rather than say it aloud. “No one’s wandering off alone, alright? Not if we can help it.”

Drax hums in thought, looking around at their little group of six that’s supposed to be seven. “I would suggest that Gamora and I search for him together, as we are the strongest and least likely to be in danger while we search,” he says, “but that would leave the rest of you with far less protection.”

Loki throws a hand up, giving Drax a look that Peter can only think to describe as, What the hell am I, chopped liver?

“We could all pair off,” Gamora suggests before Loki can voice his objections aloud. “Cover more ground more quickly.”

“We cannot all go looking for him,” Mantis speaks up, nothing left of her breakdown but a raw quality to her voice, a leftover shine in her eyes. Rocket being missing has, evidently, taken precedent over the tumult of emotion she’s going through. Peter can relate. “What if he comes back here and we have all walked away to look for him elsewhere?”

“Yeah, and I’m not exactly fit to be part of a search party right now,” Peter admits. In all honesty, he’s not even sure he could make it more than a few hundred yards without his leg giving out. “I’ll stay back here while you guys—”

“You’re not staying here alone, either,” Gamora says, eyes hard on his. “No one wanders off alone, and no one stays here alone.”

Peter goes still, caught off guard. He hadn’t even thought of that, to tell the truth. “Okay, yeah,” he admits, nodding. “That’s— yeah.”

“The two of us will stay here,” Loki volunteers. “I’m the only one of us that can search for him without physically leaving this spot, and the four of you can extend the search on foot.”

“How can you search for Rocket without moving?” Drax asks, disbelief plain in his voice.

“Must you be reminded once per day that I’m capable of magic, Drax?” Loki asks, dry as a desert. “When I cast duplicate images of myself, how do you suppose those images react to their surroundings as if they’re actually there, hmm? It’s because I see through them.”

“Your duplicate images are not transparent.”

“Okay, so Loki can use magic to look around while me and him stay put,” Peter cuts in before that can escalate into an argument. “So that’s what we’ll do. Mantis and Drax, you guys go together and head that way.” He points directly ahead. “Gamora, Groot, you guys head the opposite way. Walk straight ahead for like, five minutes tops, and then turn around.”

“Five minutes?” Drax asks.

“Yeah, man. Five minutes. You wanna go longer and risk this place getting us all turned around again?” Peter asks, then shakes his head. “Nah, we’re not getting any more separated than this, and it’s not like Rocket could’ve gotten that far, anyway. Walk for five minutes, keep yelling for him, try the comms every once in a while in case he finally answers, and then we’ll all meet back here. You guys can go off in another direction after that if you don’t find him, but no more than five minutes at a time before you head back. Got it?”

There’s a general murmur of agreement. Groot says nothing at all, and Mantis nods.

“Alright,” Peter says, “let’s get this search party on the road, then.”

Drax and Mantis start heading through the trees directly ahead, Groot worriedly eyes the forest in the opposite direction, and Gamora swiftly crosses the space between her and Peter to place a kiss on his cheek. With one hand still on his face, she asks, in a low whisper meant only for him to hear, “You’re alright?”

Peter gulps, nods. He’s still shaken the hell up, but—

“Yeah. Just worried about Rocket.”

She accepts that answer with a nod of her own, steps back, and takes Groot’s hand to lead him out into the forest. Peter can already hear Drax’s booming voice up ahead, shouting Rocket’s name, which… Shit, if Rocket can’t hear that…

No. Rocket’s fine. He’s fine. He’s gotta be. Peter shoves any thoughts to the contrary way, way, way the hell down, keeping his eyes on Gamora and Groot until they disappear completely behind the trees. Peter waits until he can no longer hear Gamora’s voice echoing through the trees anymore, and waits about another thirty seconds after that, still staring at where he’d last seen her retreating back.

Then he sighs, “And then there were two.”

“You should probably sit,” Loki tells him.

Peter opens his mouth, considers toughing it out, and then thinks screw it and lowers himself carefully back down onto the log he’d been sitting on before. Relief trickles through the still pulsing wound in his leg, pins and needles alighting in his opposite foot where he’d been bearing all his weight the whole time he’d been standing.

Adrenaline’s also still pounding through him, turning his veins to fizz and his limbs to jelly. And how the hell is that even possible? He wasn’t even doing anything. He was just friggin’ standing there the whole time.

Eventually, Loki sits down beside him.

The silence of the forest is almost suffocating. Very faintly, Peter can hear Drax shouting in the far distance. Gamora’s voice comes through the comms again, Rocket? Rocket, are you there?

There’s still no answer. Peter looks up, eyes scanning over every bit of the forest above him, but there’s nothing. No smartass raccoon jumping down from the branches, laughing his ass off at them for getting worried in the first place, saying, You shoulda seen your stupid faces, and hey, was that Ego hologram realistic as shit or what? Totally fooled you morons, huh?

“So,” Loki says at length.

“So?”

Loki hesitates. A long moment passes before he ventures, “That… person, was—”

“— was my father, yeah,” Peter finishes, ducking down to put his head between his knees, then giving up and sitting back again when that puts too much pressure on his bad leg. “He was a Celestial, and he was a Grade A Dickhead, and I would really, really like it if we could not talk about it, man.”

He can still see Loki in his peripheral; his mouth is a thin line, but he nods.

Desperate for just about anything else to talk about, Peter asks, “So you’re looking through this place, too, huh? With magic?”

“As we speak, yes.”

Peter takes a breath, drums his fingers against his knee, lets his eyes roam, searching again for a flash of brown fur. “Any sign of him?”

“If there was, I assure you I would have told you already.”

Peter nods. “Yeah. Guess so. He’s, uh, he’s real good at climbing, though, he’s probably way up—”

“Which is why I am looking both near the forest canopy and along the forest floor.”

“Really? How many of those fake Lokis you got running around here, man?”

“Just the two,” Loki answers. “If I spread them too thin I run the risk of devoting too little attention to one or the other, and hence run the risk of finding him after all and letting it slip my notice entirely.”

“Ah. Okay. Gotcha.”

He keeps drumming his fingers on his knee, fidgeting, trying to think of how they’re ever gonna find Rocket in this gigantic messed up friggin’ forest, how any of them are ever gonna get out of here at all, what their next step’s gotta be, but mostly trying to think of literally anything other than Ego and his smug piece-of-shit face.

It’s a lot harder than it should be.

They sit in silence for a while. Eventually, Drax comes stomping back through the trees with Mantis in tow, and Peter sits up straight, heart thudding in his chest, but the anticipation is short lived. He can already tell by their faces that they saw no sign of him, that both of them are coming back empty-handed, and with barely a word the two of them turn off and head to the right.

Gamora and Groot pop back into the clearing about thirty seconds later, just as empty-handed as Drax and Mantis had been, and with his heart sinking, Peter sends them off to the left.

Again, silence dominates.

Peter friggin’ hates it.

“Hey,” he says when a new thought occurs to him, turning to Loki. “Would you be able to send one of those fake Lokis out of this place? Maybe get a message to Nebula or something?”

Loki sends him a look out of the corner of his eye, one that reads pretty clearly as guilt. “Assuming I knew which direction to project an image of myself in the first place, which I don’t, I’m afraid I’m not… exactly capable of sending anything quite that far, no.”

“What about when we were fighting Thanos?”

“That,” Loki says, “very nearly killed me. It was also under extremely extraordinary circumstances.”

“Oh?”

Loki nods. “Those cuffs that had been suppressing my magic, I managed to… release, so to speak, a large portion of what it had held back, for one-time use. It was a lot of power, Quill. And for all I know half of it belonged to Maw after the stunt I pulled when I killed him.”

“Seriously? And all that did was let you project a fake you?”

“Across roughly eight thousand miles, yes,” Loki says, shooting him a look with a raised eyebrow. “And let’s not forget the false image over Mantis, and Gamora, and that…” He waves a hand, flippant. “… that Scarlet Witch woman, as well.”

“Huh. Yeah, I guess that is a lot.”

“And I am not nearly at the same level now as I was then,” Loki says, quietly and patiently. “In fact I'm rather far below what I would normally consider to be a baseline. I’m—” he hesitates, then sighs— “tired, for want of a better term. Ergo, two false images searching for Rocket, and none extending quite far enough to leave the forest.”

Peter stares ahead at the trees. Then he lets off a low whistle, going for casual and probably missing the mark.

“Guess keeping me from dying really took a lot outta you, huh?”

Loki scoffs. “Oh, don’t be dramatic. I don’t regret stopping you from dying. You're quite a bit young for that, even by Midgardian standards.”

“Aw, buddy—”

“Shut up,” Loki cuts him off, rolling his eyes. “And in any case, it’s hardly of import. I can muddle through with just about any amount of magic at my disposal. Even none. You’ve seen as much for yourself.”

Peter almost laughs. Almost. “Yeah, you’re damn right I saw it. Friggin’ experienced it. Had a bruise on my back for like a week after you threw me into the ceiling, man.”

“Oh, dear, how will I ever live with myself.”

And at that Peter actually manages a quick huff of a laugh, half a smile on his face in spite of the circumstances. “Dick.”

Even that moment of levity is over pretty quick, though, because again, Mantis and Drax return, and again, they both have that crestfallen and increasingly worried look on each of their faces that tells Peter beyond a doubt they still haven’t had any luck whatsoever.

They head off straight ahead again this time, but slightly to the right, as Mantis nervously wrings her hands together and Drax shoves aside plants to clear their path.

Groot and Gamora come through a minute or two later, Gamora sparing one quick look at the clearing that’s still empty save for Loki and Peter, and then she ferries Groot back into the forest to search some more.

Once it’s just them again, Peter asks, “Still nothing, huh?”

“As I’ve said, I would have told you already if that were no longer the case, Quill.”

“Yeah, I know.” Peter sighs, propping his elbow on the one of his knees that isn’t about two inches from the raw still-healing edges of his mauling wound, and he drops his forehead onto his hand. “We really gotta find him, man.”

“We will.”

“Yeah?”

At first there’s no answer but the stifling silence of the forest, but when Peter tilts his head to look at Loki out of the corner of his eye, he sees him nodding.

“Tell me you got a good reason to believe that.”

“Well,” Loki shrugs, “because I quite doubt any of you will be willing to leave this place without him, and I’m not leaving all of you here to fend for yourselves, and I most certainly am leaving. Sooner rather than later.”

“So the stubbornness of a fifteen-hundred-year-old Norse God, that’s what you got for me, huh?”

Loki turns up his hands as if to say, It’s what I got, dude, take it or leave it.

And even though that is so not how Loki would have worded it, Peter shrugs and says anyway, “Guess I’ll take it, then. We’re finding Rocket and then we’re getting the hell out of Dodge.”

“Out of—?”

“It’s an expression. Human one. Don’t ask what it means, I got no clue,” Peter tells him, his forehead still in his hand. He takes a slow breath, trying to banish the image of Ego from the inside of his eyelids. And then, in his best impression of Paul McCartney — which is to say, probably not a very good one — he sings, “If we ever get out of here…”

“Oh, good. Fantastic. He’s started singing again.”

“Shut up, man, you love my singing.”

Loki gives a noncommittal hum, half annoyed, half oh, whatever, go ahead and keep on singing if it makes you feel better. Or at least that’s how Peter chooses to interpret it.

“If I ever get out of here…” Peter goes on, because unfortunately that one line has been stuck in his head for something like the last hour and a half, “… thought of giving it all away… to a registered char-uh-teeee…”

Loki makes a sound that might be a laugh. “Rocket would be very cross with you if he heard that.”

Peter smirks, lifting his head from his hand. “Yeah, you know, he really would.” Then he leans back and cups his hands around his mouth and shouts, “Ya hear that, Rocket?! I’m givin’ away all your Units! Your part of the pay’s going to some random ass charity on Uӓdar! Better come down here and stop me ‘fore that happens!”

A twig snaps in the distance.

Peter goes tense, wide eyes on the trees straight ahead. “Holy hell, if that actually worked—”

“I don’t think you should get your hopes—”

“— that or another Godzilla monster—”

“Another what?”

It’s not another giant lizard creature.

It’s also not Rocket.

It’s Mantis.

With no warning at all she comes crashing through the grass and the weird leafy fern things, disheveled and panting, her hair blown all around her, her wide eyes searching the clearing before they land on Peter and Loki.

“Mantis,” Peter says, “woah, hey, it’s alright, what—?”

“Drax,” she says. “He— he was—”

“Where is he now?” Loki asks, right to the point, already standing. “Is he hurt?”

Mantis shakes her head, trying to catch her breath, crossing the clearing until she’s right in front of them, and Peter uses Loki’s arm to get himself up to standing, too. He gets a hand on Mantis’ shoulder, gently squeezing, and says, “Hey, Mantis, breathe. Where’s he at?”

“I don’t know,” she wails, and it isn’t until then that Peter realizes she’s crying again.

Shit. He pulls her in for a hug. “Hey, hey, it’s okay. What happened?”

“He—  He was right next to me,” Mantis says, pulling away from Peter to swipe stubbornly at the tears on her cheeks, apparently more frustrated than she is scared, more angry than distraught. “He was right next to me, and I thought I heard something, so I looked away, and— and it was only for a second, and—”

“And what, he wasn’t there when you turned around?” Peter asks, more than a little stunned. Drax is not the kind of guy that’s easy to miss.

But Mantis nods, and Peter can’t help cursing under his breath.

It’s then that Gamora and Groot return to their little clearing, stepping out through the trees on their left. There’s a brief moment in which the clearing’s entirely silent, and Peter knows it’s coming when Gamora asks with creeping dread in her voice, “Where’s Drax?”

“I— I don’t know,” Mantis cries again. “I lost him!”

Peter gives her shoulder another squeeze. “Hey, come on, it’s not your fault.”

“I am Groot?”

“No,” Peter says, shaking his head and dropping his hand from Mantis’ shoulder to run it over his face.

This is… well, it’s real bad, but he can’t let on to that out loud.

“No, we’re staying right here.”

“I am Groot!”

“I know, kiddo,” Peter relents. “I know. We’re not just leaving ‘em, okay? I promise. But we can’t keep wandering off and risk even more of us getting lost. Drax is a big boy, he can handle himself, and chances are he’s gonna come right back to this spot looking for us.”

“I am Groot!”

“Yeah, Rocket’s not that big, but he’s got more weapons on him than the whole damn Nova Corps put together, alright?” Peter reminds him, hopefully sounding more self-assured than he feels. “The fact is, if we keep running around like chickens with our heads cut off we’re just gonna make it harder for either of them to find us.”

“Peter’s right,” Gamora says, reaching out to lay a hand on Groot’s shoulder— but he jerks out of the way before she can. She lets her hand fall to her side and makes a decent show of not looking hurt by it. “Wandering off searching for them risks more than it helps right now. The best thing we can do for them is wait here, right where they last saw us, at least for a bit while we get our bearings. We’ll make camp right here and get some rest, and after some sleep, we’ll all have clearer heads to make a plan and find them both, alright?”

Groot crosses his arms, petulantly glaring off at some vague point in the distance, and he doesn’t say anything.

Peter glances up at the canopy again before sweeping his gaze over their surroundings. In his head Paul McCartney’s still singing, low and ominous, if we ever get out of here, on an endless loop. He shakes the thought away.

“Yeah,” he says, taking a breath to steady his nerves. It doesn’t work. “Yeah, okay. Guess we’re camping.”

Chapter Text

Loki takes the first watch.

It only makes sense; the others are all travel weary and frightened and in various states of duress, and Loki’s not feeling much in the mood for sleep anyway.

To be honest, he’s fairly certain that sleep would elude him if he even made the attempt. He thinks he would lie back and get as comfortable as he can, lie back on the softest stretch of ground he can find and link his hands behind his head, and he would stare up at the endless expanse of forest above him and never so much as close his eyes.

He would only keep on thinking, he knows he would, because he cannot stop thinking now and there is no reason to imagine that might change if he were lying down. He can’t stop fact checking, running his mind over every single event that’s passed today, every single event that’s passed for—

He shakes his head, banishing that thought as quickly as it comes.

Do not go down that path or you’ll drive yourself mad.

Focus on the situation at hand.

Rocket and Drax. That’s the situation at hand. The idiots went and got themselves separated from the group and then got lost in this godforsaken place, and Loki is the only one of the rest of them capable of continuing the search without leaving this spot, and so it only makes sense for him to stay awake and keep looking. Just in case. He takes a slow, even breath, closing his eyes and casting another illusion up into the treetops, a perfect mimic of himself lounging on a high-up tree branch that would likely never bear his real weight, and he casts a look around.

The forest canopy is honestly another world all on its own. It’s far brighter, for one thing. The bluish glow of the flowers up here casts an eerie light and throws distorted twisting shadows over the criss-crossing leaves and spindly branches and spiderwebs. It’s also much quieter up here, so much more still, to the point that it seems almost entirely devoid of life.

But no sign of Rocket.

And are you certain he was ever here in the first place?

Loki flinches, losing his hold on the double, and he presses the heels of his palms into his eyes.

Can you really trust your perception after all, Loki? So prone to playing tricks, even on yourself—

Damn it.

Damn it.

He drops his hands, opens his eyes, and waits for the black dots he’s just manually jammed into his vision to clear. The little space of ground they’ve claimed for a camp is still there. Quill and Gamora and Mantis and Groot are all still there. That ridiculous song Quill was singing earlier, one of his million and a half ridiculous Midgardian songs, is still there, resolutely playing at the back of Loki’s mind like Quill’s songs always tend to do.

Well, the rain exploded with a mighty crash, as we fell into the sun…

Loki takes a breath. Everything is as it is supposed to be. Perception and reality are meshing seamlessly.

He’s fine.

Another breath. In and out. His heart slowly ambles back down to its normal pace, and he returns his attention to the others.

Groot lies curled up on his side, his back to all of them, but Loki can tell by the slow dip and swell of his shoulders that he’s managed to slip into what hopefully amounts to a bit of peaceful sleep, in spite of the circumstances. Quill may or may not be asleep as well, lying sprawled as he is on his back with one hand reaching into the space separating himself and Groot, lying palm up on the ground. His other hand is tangled in Gamora’s hair where she’s using his stomach as a pillow. His eyes are closed, at any rate, and so are hers. If Gamora is asleep, though, Loki notices that she’s fallen asleep with her hand resting comfortably on the hilt of her sword, and he has no doubt that so much as a peep from the forest will have her up and armed and ready to kill in half a heartbeat.

And Mantis—

Mantis is every bit as awake as he is. Unsurprising, of course, though not exactly ideal. She’s lying on her side, her back to Gamora and her head pillowed on Quill’s uninjured left leg, but her large eyes are as large and as wide-open as ever, and they meet Loki’s across the clearing the very moment he looks in her direction.

They watch each other for a moment, and then Loki mouths, Go to sleep.

Mantis frowns, then mouths back, I cannot.

Loki raises an eyebrow, unimpressed, and Mantis just shrugs one shoulder and gives him a stubborn look.

I cannot, she mouths again.

He sighs through his nose and manages not to roll his eyes, though it’s a very near thing. Instead he looks at her again and, albeit reluctantly, gestures with a nod for her to come over to where he’s sitting.

She takes the invitation immediately.

With one hand on the ground, she lifts herself away from Quill’s leg, carefully watching his face and then Gamora’s to be sure she hasn’t disturbed them. Gamora doesn’t stir at all. There’s the barest hitch in Quill’s breath that makes Mantis go tense, watching him, her own breath held in anticipation, but within a moment his chest once again begins to rise and fall with the slow meandering rhythm of sleep.

Their clearing is not a large one at all, barely a dozen yards or so across, but it is situated on something of a slope, the ground curving down from where Loki’s chosen to keep watch and down to a comfortable sort of dip at the bottom. Mantis slowly gets to her feet and, tip-toeing across the soggy leaf-strewn ground, makes her way up that short slope now.

She sits down at his left side without a word, back ramrod straight, legs crossed and hands on her ankles as she looks over the sleeping trio of Gamora and Quill and Groot. Loki hasn’t moved at all for the better part of an hour; he’s still got his left leg stretched out in front of him, the other bent at the knee so he can drape one arm across it.

For a moment, neither of them says anything.

Then Loki says, low and only slightly dismissive, “You should be sleeping.”

“Yes,” Mantis whispers back, eyes still ahead. “But I cannot sleep.”

Silence falls over them again, punctuated by the croak of some sort of forest animal far off in the distance, then the rustling of leaves from something small that must be traveling through the branches above.

Something far smaller than Rocket, judging by the sound. Loki doesn’t bother looking.

He casts a sideways glance at Mantis, who’s still staring straight ahead, her eyes as wide as ever. And of course Loki’s mind goes immediately to what had happened earlier, to the man who — in spite of the unsettling ethereal look about him, in spite of what his appearing had meant, in spite of the niggling worry that Loki’s been wrong this entire time and that there really is something magic afoot here and it’s magic that he can’t sense — in spite of all of that, the man had looked like… well, like nothing all that impressive. Not to Loki, anyway.

But he’d struck such a horrified look onto Mantis’ face, and onto Quill’s, that Loki had realized rather quickly that that wasn’t the case. (Even before he realized who the man was — Quill’s father, and therefore a Celestial, since Loki still hasn’t forgotten when Drax let that little nugget of information slip.) In an instant the apparition had driven both Quill and Mantis to tears, and within minutes had driven Mantis to screaming at him with a righteous fury that Loki has hardly ever seen from any of them.

Least of all from her.

Even fighting off hordes of Outriders that would violently tear her apart in an instant and feel none the worse for it, even facing off against Thanos himself, Loki has yet to see Mantis as upset as she was just a few short hours ago.

He does not, strictly speaking, want to ask about it. He doesn’t want to say anything at all, really, and more than that he probably shouldn’t.

Reaching out to any of them in even the most miniscule of ways always feels dangerous, always sets not only his teeth but his very bones on edge, always feels akin to reaching through the space between dimensions and submerging his entire arm up to the shoulder without checking to see what’s on the other side first. And it feels especially so now, given the circumstances.

But… well.

Loki always did have difficulty making the right decisions, didn’t he?

He waits a moment, then asks, “Are you alright?”

Mantis sends a furtive glance in his direction and looks straight ahead again. “I am… worried. About Rocket. And about Drax.”

“Well, yes. That much was a given,” Loki says, since it was.

They’re all worried about them; even Loki has to admit as much. Drax is certainly capable of fighting off any number of dangers this forest can throw at him, Loki’s sure, but Rocket? He’s armed to the teeth, yes, but he’s also… what, two feet tall? Perhaps forty pounds, if that?

“Other than Rocket and Drax,” Loki says, because there’s not much he can do about that at the moment, no more than he’s already doing. Another false image of himself strides lazily through the trees some hundred or so yards away, scanning over its surroundings and once again seeing absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. “Are you alright?”

“I…” Mantis whispers back at first, tilting her head in thought as she hesitates. “I am not certain.”

Loki nods. That much was to be expected as well, he supposes. “You’re uncertain of whether you’re alright? Or uncertain in a more general sense?”

“I’m, um… both? I think.”

At first, Loki only answers with a vague hum.

He remembers, once, marking Mantis as someone who would be easy to reassure, someone for whom empty placations would more than suffice in times of uncertainty, someone guileless and gullible and manipulable. Now, having spent roughly two months living onboard the Quadrant — and again he squashes down the voice that rises up like bile and asks, but are you sure about that, Loki, after all how certain can you really be — there has been plenty of time for Loki to start to really understand the lot of them, and he thinks that many of his first impressions were… well, perhaps not so much entirely wrong, but off.

He may have slightly missed the mark. Slightly.

Mantis, for one thing, is hardly easy to reassure. Loki honestly has no idea how to even begin to go about it now, knowing so little of what it is that’s bothering her.

And it also occurs to him, of course, that two months ago he likely wouldn’t have thought it worth the effort in the first place. Not that it much matters what he’d have wanted two months ago, anyway.

Still, he thinks. It’s not as if he’s got much better to do, does he?

“What you said earlier. To the… to Quill’s father,” Loki starts, and again he can’t help but think of it, can’t help but see it, Mantis wild-eyed and screaming with tears forming clean tracks down her cheeks. It was all in my head, all of it, every terrible emotion you ever had, the hatred and anger and arrogance, and do you think you’re the only terrible person who thought they were right? And then, glowing from the tips of her antennae down to the roots, her power rippling and building into a wave powerful and visceral enough that something in Loki’s core had instinctively flinched away from it— You were WRONG!

Before he can change his mind, Loki asks, “You weren’t referring solely to Quill’s father, were you?”

“No,” she admits, right away. Quieter than before, quieter even than they’ve been this whole time to avoid waking the others.

“You were referring to Thanos as well.”

Mantis’ breath stops for half a second before picking back up. She gives one single nod.

It only confirms exactly what he’d suspected, of course, but a weight sinks from his chest into his stomach all the same. He nods as well, though she can’t see it, staring as she is resolutely ahead into the distance.

And then, at length, she continues.

“Everyone always believes that they are right.” Her voice is a tremulous little thing, even in the quiet of the forest in the middle of the night. She does not move an inch from her rigid posture, nor does her gaze waver from the trees straight ahead. “Everyone. No matter how terrible. And that makes it… difficult, sometimes. I know that defeating him was the right thing to do, defeating Ego and— and him, too. I know that it was right. But… having felt what he was feeling, just before he died… Sometimes I remember it, and it makes me— um, forget, just a little, that killing him was for the best.”

“Does it?”

Mantis opens her mouth, then shuts it, then opens it again. Her brow creases a bit. One hand starts moving, fingers plucking at a strap on her left boot. “I do not know. Maybe forget is not the right word. I still know, but— I do not. It is very hard to explain.”

“It sounds…” Loki trails off as he mulls over how to put it, and eventually he settles with the woefully inadequate but, he suspects, nonetheless accurate, “… frightening.”

She nods, and there’s a quiet sniff that she tries to hide, reaching one hand up to swipe at her eyes before returning to the same position she’d been in before.

For a moment, Loki considers leaving it there.

Definitely the safest course, the easiest. It’s certainly the course his every instinct is pulling him toward.

Then he asks anyway, “Is there anything that helps? Anything that… makes it less frightening?”

“I— um, yes,” Mantis stammers. Again she nods once, a quick up-and-down. “Nebula often helps.”

Loki blinks, unable to keep the surprise from his face. “Nebula? Truly?”

“Oh. Um, yes. Her emotions… help me?” She tilts her head again like she’s not sure that that was the correct way to put it. “She is… angry, and hurting, because of what— because of what he did to her. She cannot be completely happy, not yet, but she is… more at peace, now that he is gone. She is improving. When I feel her emotions, everything is much simpler. It helps. She makes it easier, to… um…”

“To cope.”

“Yes,” Mantis says, nodding once more. “To cope.”

Loki nods, following along easily. Nebula is perhaps the one member of the crew that he’s spoken to the very least, though of course he knew of her well before ever setting foot on the Quadrant, and she him. The two of them have fallen into a sort of rhythm, though, both having come to an instant and unspoken understanding that not everything needs to be talked about, not like Gamora and Quill and Mantis and all the others tend to insist upon day in and day out.

In fact, Loki has been alone with Nebula a grand total of six times since moving onto the ship, and all six times it’s been for their weekly sparring session, and all six times they probably spoke less than ten words apiece to one another.

It’s quickly become one of the things he most looks forward to each week.

And he supposes he should have expected that Nebula’s emotions would be straightforward enough to help with the… unique issue that’s plaguing Mantis now. Nebula certainly has quite enough anger to prevail over just about any other emotion on the spectrum, he thinks.

Guilt and grief and confusion wouldn’t stand a chance, facing against that.

Again, something ingrained within him tells him to leave the conversation there. Nebula often helps Mantis in times like this, but Nebula is not here, and were any of the others sitting here in Loki’s place he has no doubt they’d have found a way to comfort Mantis in their own ways. Quill likely would not have made it thirty seconds into this conversation without slinging an arm around her shoulders and humming some ridiculous song to her. Gamora would probably have a bit of surprisingly insightful advice to offer. Groot would lean against her, sharing his video game, perhaps sprouting a flower or two and handing it off to Mantis to tuck behind her ears.

Loki is none of them, and every single instinct he has is all but screaming at him to not do what he’s about to do.

He heaves a sigh. Squashes down the nerves.

And then, without looking at Mantis, he lifts the hand that’s closest to her and holds it, palm up, between the two of them.

At last she moves. Loki sees it in his peripheral — because it seems now it’s his turn to direct his gaze straight ahead, to avoid something as intimate as eye contact despite the fact that what he’s offering now makes that more or less entirely redundant. She turns to look at him with her brows pinched together, a hesitant concern on her face. Her eyes move from his face to his hand and back again.

Loki takes a breath and quietly explains.

“Nebula is not here. Gamora is asleep. I do not pretend that my experience with the Mad Titan runs nearly as deep as either of theirs does, but…” He turns to look her in the eye for the briefest moment before turning away again, and then he shrugs one shoulder. “Perhaps it will help nonetheless.”

And that, as it turns out, is more than enough to convince Mantis to take the offer. The hesitant concern is gone, a soft smile having taken its place — a soft smile which Loki does his damnedest to ignore — as she reaches up and takes his hand. Before he knows it the glow of her antennae is stark and bright against the darkness of the forest, her fingers warm where they grip the side of his palm. Her eyes drift shut as his emotions flow over into her.

The empathy is as undetectable as it always is. Or as undetectable as it usually is, Loki amends, given the strange outward surge of it she displayed earlier today. But it also seems to be helping. Somewhat. Probably.

Honestly, hell if he knows.

Mantis doesn’t open her eyes for a long time. Loki lets her hang onto him, his own eyes searching their surroundings for the hundredth or so time. He’s got the energy for it, so he casts another illusion, sending it off in a random direction and looking through its eyes to see nothing but trees and trees and trees and more trees.

Norns, if they ever leave this place, he swears he will never set foot in another forest as long as he lives.

He shakes his head and dissipates the illusion, bringing himself back. Groot has begun to quietly snore. Quill is exactly as he was the last time Loki bothered to look, but Gamora has turned over onto her side, curled into herself a bit and with one hand still dutifully poised over the hilt of her sword, the other loosely hanging onto Quill’s jacket sleeve.

Mantis hasn’t moved. Their linked hands rest on the ground between them now. And finally it occurs to Loki that perhaps he should attempt to wrest some control over his own emotions, for her sake, even if he still hasn’t got the slightest clue whether it makes a difference or not.

Still. Might as well try.

He shoos away any thoughts of the forest, any thoughts of wherever Rocket and Drax might be, any thoughts of the strange apparition of Quill’s father, any thoughts of the niggling creeping doubt that’s been ceaselessly prodding at the back of his mind ever since the path wasn’t where it was supposed to be.

He’s no longer in a strange forest on a strange planet in some far off corner of the galaxy.

Instead he’s sitting on a bed in a Midgardian hospital, hearing Rocket say we won, they’re sayin’ the Avengers beat the bad guy, news broke about an hour ago. He’s watching the room grow more and more crowded, more people pouring in through the door with each passing minute, a steady growing checklist in his mind, Rocket and Groot and Drax are alive and Quill and Kraglin are alive and Mantis and Gamora are alive, alive, alive. And against all odds Thor is alive, too, and Loki’s got both arms around his brother tight enough that he would be bruising anyone else, fingers aching where they’re clutching at the back of Thor’s leathers, relief filling him all the way up until the pressure builds in his throat and behind his eyes but it’s okay because they’ve both somehow come out of this alive—

Loki takes a breath, moving his thoughts to the part that matters. To Thanos. He’d seen the aftermath via Midgardian news footage, the great all-powerful and nigh unkillable Mad Titan lying dead in the dirt, killed on the very same planet he’d once sent Loki to conquer, killed in the most exquisitely mundane of ways.

A dagger through the eye socket, quick and clean and efficient. Definitely Nebula’s handiwork.

In a way it was also Loki’s handiwork, too, he supposes. It was his illusion allowing Mantis to break through the Mad Titan’s defenses, her and Gamora and the Scarlet Witch, it was his illusion that allowed them to get so close in the first place, close enough that Thanos was able to reach out and haul Mantis in the air by her throat, her antennae glowing bright and her feet futilely kicking at nothing but air as the illusion falls away and Loki is wrenched back to the suffocating darkness of a crumbling subway station before he can know, before he can see whether it worked or—

Mantis squeezes his hand.

Loki opens his eyes. He’s still in the forest of Uӓdar. He has no idea whether Mantis sensed him beginning to spiral or if squeezing his hand was simply a random gesture, but— well. He appreciates it all the same.

She surprises him, though, by choosing that moment to break the silence.

“You feel…” she starts, still whispering as she tilts her head in confusion, eyes blinking open, “… guilty.”

Ah. Right.

Of course she’d get to that.

Loki tightens his jaw for a moment, sighing through his nose, and then he nods.

“But why?”

He considers lying. It is by no means out of the question; she certainly won’t be able to tell, after all. Her ability has shown her his lingering guilt, but not its source, or else she wouldn’t have asked in the first place. And whatever else Loki may have become in recent months, he is also, at the basest most factual level, the highest authority on telling a convincing lie to the point that he could tell it emotionlessly, flawlessly, undetectably. She would be none the wiser.

It is quite a strange thing that he considers any alternative to lying at all, that he considers the option of simply refusing to answer. But it certainly is an option. He doesn’t have to answer. She will not force it from him.

It’s an even stranger thing, then, that he chooses to answer anyway.

“Because… well, because of what you’re going through now, all this…” Loki trails off uncomfortably, waves his free hand in a gesture that means absolutely nothing to him and likely means even less to her, “… this distress, it… None of it would be happening at all, had I not convinced you to get inside the Mad Titan’s head in the first place.”

Mantis scoffs. “You did not convince me.”

“Made it possible at all, then,” he concedes, rolling his eyes because really, they can all so mulish at times for no reason whatsoever. “And that’s not the point. The point is…”

Loki hesitates, almost shuts up entirely, and then thinks, Oh, just come out with it. What more can it hurt, really?

“The point is, I’m… sorry. Sorry that defeating Thanos required saddling you with the memory of his emotions. I truly am. However,” Loki cuts in, because he can see her in his peripheral winding up to protest, to come to his defense in that strange reflexive way that she and Quill and some of the others always tend to do, for whatever reason Loki cannot fathom. “However, I am not sorry that we did it. That way, or any other way, it’s important that you know I am also very, very glad that he was defeated. I am… very glad that he’s gone. More so than I can describe, really, but then again I suppose I don’t have to. You can feel that, too, can’t you?”

When he chances a sideways glance at her, he sees that she’s closed her eyes again, the tips of her antennae still a glowing pair of embers in the dark.

“I can,” she says. “I do.”

“Alright, so just… focus on that,” Loki tells her. And then, because it’s true, he adds, “You made that possible, and I am… enormously grateful for it. Try not to forget that.”

Her grip on his hand tightens infinitesimally, and she admits in an even lower whisper, “I will, but… sometimes I cannot help it.”

Loki stares into space for a moment, thinking, and then he heaves another sigh.

“Well, then,” he says, “I suppose we’ll all just have to keep reminding you, won’t we?”

Mantis is quiet. Her eyes slowly blink open, fixed straight ahead on the trees again, but now some of the frightened tension in her stare seems to have eased up a bit, Loki thinks. She offers one more quick, jerky nod.

Another thought occurs to Loki, then, and because he’s already said so much he doesn’t even bother thinking about it before he says, “Sorry about the creatures from earlier, too.”

Mantis turns to look at him, blinking in surprise.

“Suppose it seemed like we were in the right at the time,” Loki says, staring off into the trees, “which evidently is not as strong an indicator for being in the right as I might once have thought. Not that there was much time to consider options outside of outright violence in the heat of the moment, but— honestly, it’s not as if I made the attempt in the first place. So.” He shrugs. “Sorry.”

The look on Mantis’ face, in his peripheral, slowly shifts from one of surprised confusion to another one of those soft smiles. After a moment she shifts around where she’s sitting in the dirt, shifting closer to him until her bony shoulder jabs into his upper arm and her knee presses into his thigh, and she gently tips her head onto his shoulder.

He rolls his eyes again — they’re all so damn affectionate, it’s absolutely ridiculous — but he allows it nonetheless.

“Thank you,” Mantis whispers.

“Mm-hmm.”

Well. That was wildly uncomfortable, and not because of Mantis’ antennae brushing up against the side of his head with each breath she takes. Though that’s fairly uncomfortable, too.

Loki sighs, setting that aside and returning his focus to casting illusions through the forest.

Norns, this place really is ceaseless, isn’t it? Miles upon miles of trees in every direction he looks, so it seems to him now, stretching on forever and ever and ever. His double passes unburdened through waist-high shrubs and ferns, crunchy leaves beneath his semi-transparent boots left entirely untouched and silent as a mouse, and he searches for anything— even the slightest deviation from the uniform tree trunks surrounding him on all sides, even the most minute hint of movement or noise.

Up ahead he thinks there’s a bit of a… mound? There’s a pile of leaves or a fallen tree, maybe, or a remarkably tiny hill, and Loki strolls up toward it until—

He jolts, very nearly tripping over his own feet before he remembers that he can’t trip over his own feet, and he shakes his head at his own idiocy and stops, hands in his pockets, peering down at one of the giant reptilian beasts slumbering away in the dirt. It’s lying on its back. Its hind legs are kicked out and its great scaled head is tipped all the way back so that its soft underbelly and throat are exposed. Hardly the safest position to sleep in, but then again, these creatures likely have no natural predators in this place, so who’s Loki to judge?

Another of the creatures is sleeping not twenty feet away. Loki strides directly through the first beast, scanning his eyes over the second, and a third, and a fourth.

Part of him would be genuinely unsurprised to find Drax snoring amongst these creatures like it’s nothing out of the ordinary at all, and that part is disappointed when Drax does not, in fact, appear amongst them. Nor does Rocket. Still, it’s good to know these creatures are here, at least. They’ll have to avoid walking in this direction later.

Then, just beyond the semi-clearing in which these creatures have fallen for the night, Loki spots a cave.

“Now, that’s new.”

Loki glances down at the beasts; they didn’t hear him speak, but that’s not exactly a surprise. This illusion now is hardly more than an echo, just enough for Loki to see through it. He imagines if any one of the creatures were to wake and look directly at him, they’d see only an odd distortion in the air, perhaps feel a vague sense that something’s out of place, and nothing more.

He steps through them, toward the shadowy rock formation set into the side of what Loki refuses to call a mountain and what can only generously be called a hill. Trees and shrubs and dirt give way to rock where the cave opens up in the hillside, ringed with more of those bioluminescent flowers and just about impossible to miss, a huge yawning cavern that seems to descend more than it extends directly through the hill.

Loki hops down into it. The cave opening is plenty large enough that any of those creatures could fit inside, and sure enough, he catches sight of two or three of them sleeping in here, too, illuminated in barely-there blues from the scant few flowers littering the cave roof.

The cave continues down at a slope, tunneling down into the earth, and Loki — lacking in any better ideas for the moment — follows it.

The walls press in a bit closer the further in he walks, the tunnel shrinking down from a gaping cavern into a true tunnel, no bigger than the labyrinthine halls of the Quadrant. And then, from there, it shrinks further. The top of the cave is ten feet above his head, then five, and then before he knows it there are rocky little stalactites passing directly through his head.

By the time he has to stoop to see, Loki has traversed something like two or three hundred yards of cave tunnel. There’s been other tunnels branching off from this one, dozens and dozens of them, but only one tunnel that continues to be lit by those flowers along the walls and set into the rock face above, like—

Like the path is being purposely lit for him.

“Not for me, obviously,” Loki corrects himself, under his breath. The path is obviously not lit for his sake, given that he’s more or less a trespasser here, but it’s certainly been meticulously lit for someone, and Loki is more than willing to take advantage of that fact.

He walks five hundred, six hundred, seven hundred yards. The tunnel curves down deeper, occasionally climbing down at a steep slope that would be somewhat difficult to maneuver through if his double had any substance whatsoever. As it is, he simply lets the double float along, exploring, making its way further and further into the bowels of Uӓdar…

… And then, finally, he comes upon something that stops him in his tracks.

Loki shakes his head, blinking away the afterimage from his retinas as the forest clearing swims back into view.

What in the world…?

“Loki?”

Mantis is staring at him like he’s lost his mind, which is fair, as he imagines he must look completely thrown, his brow creased, his own eyes wide. In his mind he can still see it — a genuine manmade door spanning the width of the cave, perhaps five feet tall and just as wide, of thick carved wood perfectly flush to the irregular shape of the tunnel. There was no doorknob or latch that he could see; it must only open from the inside, but an ornate iron door knocker was bolted to its center.

“Loki,” Mantis tries again, tilting her head and frowning at him. She’s no longer holding his hand, but now that hand is hesitantly reaching for his shoulder. “Are you alright? Did you see something? Was it…? Was it Drax or Rocket?”

He shakes his head, and then, unable to keep the incredulity from his voice, he tells her what he’s found— or, at least, what it means, the thought that’s stuck in his mind now, the thought that sounds more than a bit absurd after everything they’ve been through in this godforsaken place.

Loki blinks, takes a breath, and says:

“Someone lives here.”

Chapter Text

“What do you mean, someone lives here?”

“Honestly, how many things could I possibly mean by that? Please, enlighten me.”

Peter frowns and squints up at Loki, sitting on the ground exactly where he’d been right up until Loki and Mantis shook them all awake. Sleep stubbornly clings to the edges of his brain, but he’s making a solid effort at shaking it off. “As in, like, here here? In the forest? Or like, specifically this—” he waves with both hands at where he’s sitting— “hundred square feet of dirt, man?”

“In the forest,” Loki answers, rolling his eyes, his arms crossed over his chest. “Someone lives here, in the forest. Someone who’s not a brainless several-ton reptilian beast, given that they live in a home with a manmade door.”

Gamora, who’s already standing and dusting off her legs, asks, “A home with a door? You saw it?”

“While I was searching the forest, yes.”

“I am Groot?”

“I— no, I didn’t see either of them,” Loki admits, and Peter can’t help noticing that he spares Groot the I’d have told you by now if I saw them comment. “I was looking for them when I saw the door. It’s at the end of an underground tunnel, in…” he trails off, scans their surroundings, and then nods at the trees to his right, “… that direction. Couldn’t have been more than a mile away.”

Peter echoes, “A door at the end of a tunnel?”

“Yes.”

“What did it look like?” Gamora asks.

Loki shrugs one shoulder. “Like a door. Not quite door shaped, as it looked like it was made to fit the exact width of that tunnel, but otherwise it seemed… fairly standard? Wooden, with shapes carved into it and a door knocker bolted on the front.”

“What kinda shapes?” Peter asks.

“Does it matter?”

Peter shrugs. “I dunno, it might.”

Mantis asks, “Could you tell if anyone was on the other side of the door?”

Finally, Loki unfurls his arms from that hunched-in posture, reaching up to push some of his hair from his face. And Peter can’t help noticing he looks friggin’ exhausted, dark smudges ringing the burnt out haziness in his eyes, a sort of bogged down look to his shoulders. Did he get even a wink of sleep while everyone else was passed out? Mantis was clearly up for a while before the rest of them, he could have let her tag in and keep watch.

Before he can decide whether to comment on it, though, Loki plants both hands on his hips and says, “I didn’t get a very long look at it. I’ll take another look once we’ve gotten a bit closer, but—”

Mantis asks, “We are going closer to it?”

“I am Groot?”

“Well… yes, I should think so,” Loki says, frowning at both of them like he’s asking, why the hell not?

“I am Groot?”

“Because it’s not as if we’ve seen anything else even remotely useful in this place, have we?” Loki argues. “Nor have we seen any sign of where Rocket and Drax have gotten off to. We’ve no reason to believe either of them are in this particular area anymore, and given that all my meticulous searching of the forest has yielded, in order, trees and more trees and more trees and one single door that seems to lead into someone’s home, I’m rather inclined to investigate the latter.”

Peter sighs. “That’s… a good point.”

Gamora extends a hand to pull him to his feet, and he takes it, swaying a bit as he tests out his weight on his right leg. It’s a nice surprise when the spike of pain doesn’t quite shoot all the way through him; instead it just fizzles out to a dull throb in time with his pulse from the bottom of his ribs down to his knee.

If he watches his step, he might even be able to walk on it for a while.

Peter says to all four of them, “Gotta admit, someone that actually lives in this weird-ass forest might have some clue what the hell’s wrong with it. Could be worth a shot.”

Loki nods, hands still on his hips. “At the very least, they should be able to tell us how we could get back to the city without getting turned around for the thousandth time.”

Gamora adds, “That, or they’ll take one look at us trespassing on their territory and try to kill us.”

And it’s funny, Peter thinks, how if anyone else said that it would’ve meant, hey, guys, maybe we should watch out and not go marching up to this random mystery door. When Gamora says it, though, it’s barely an afterthought, a warning that they’ll have to approach with caution, not that they should rethink approaching at all.

Peter tilts his head, shrugs. “Guess we’re gonna have to stay on our toes, then.”

He hesitates for a beat, and then realizes with a pang that they were all instinctively waiting on a confused response from Drax.

Oh, and that’s not a good feeling at all. Like poking at a missing tooth.

“Should we—?” Peter starts to ask, casting a look around. “I mean, how are we gonna make sure they know where we went? Rocket and Drax. What if they come back here after we wander off?”

Mantis’ eyes widen with renewed anxiety and then flit nervously over their little clearing. Loki visibly thinks that over, frowning with a little crease between his brows. Groot’s clutching his video game in an almost dangerous looking grip, watching Peter and then Gamora and then Peter again, clearly expecting that one of them must have the answer.

It’s Gamora that steps up.

She points and asks Loki, “Which direction? That way?”

When he nods, she pulls a spare dagger from the holster opposite her sword and marches right up to the nearest tree. The bark gives way like butter in the face of her strength and her ultra-sharpened blade, and she carves a quick, deep, horizontal fissure into the tree trunk before carving an arrowhead into the side so that it’s pointing in the direction they’ll be headed.

“There,” she says. “We’ll just have to mark our path as we go.”

Mantis asks, “Do you think they will notice that?”

There’s a low rumble from Groot, who steps up beside Gamora until they’re shoulder-to-shoulder, and without a word he sprouts a soft yellow-white flower from the palm of his hand. The pedals fan out in a spiral, the stem growing and growing until, when he finally plucks it, the flower is hanging from the end of a vine plenty long enough to loop around the lowest branch of the tree. And that’s exactly what he does, standing up and stretching since he’s just shy of being tall enough to reach it without that extra bit of effort.

When he’s done, the flower is bright and gleaming against the dark wood of the tree trunk, hanging just above the arrow like a flashing neon sign. Or… something softer than neon, Peter guesses, but it’s the same idea.

“I am Groot.”

Gamora smiles down at him, her first real smile since Drax and Rocket were still here. “That will make it easier for them to spot it, Groot.”

She slinks an arm around his shoulders and pulls him close in a one-armed hug. Unlike last night, this time he accepts the gesture without flinching away, and with the way he wraps himself snug around her middle and hides his face in her shoulder for half a second, it feels — to Peter, anyway — like a wordless apology for shrugging her off the last time. Gamora hugs him back, an equally wordless don’t worry about it, kiddo, and she adds, “Good thinking. How many of those do you think you can make?”

Groot shrugs as they break off the hug. “I am Groot.”

“Just play it by ear, kiddo,” Peter tells him. “Once they see the first few arrows, they’ll be on the lookout for more of ‘em, so you don’t gotta mark every single one, you know?”

“I am Groot.”

“Not to mention,” Loki adds, “I’m fairly certain a blind and deaf Bilgesnipe could track us through this place if they really put their mind to it. Not as if we’ve really been making an effort to cover our tracks.”

Mantis blanches at that, and Peter finds himself thinking once again of the apparition that may or may not have been Ego and how he just— showed up, out of nowhere, right where they were at.

He asks, “Should we have been?”

Loki shrugs. “I don’t see why. If anything I wish we’d left more obvious tracks, the better to actually find our way out of here. And especially now, with Drax and Rocket being… wherever they are. Now, are we quite finished here? I would very much like to get out of this place sooner rather than later, and at the moment this feels like our best chance at getting that done.”

“Yeah, yeah, okay,” Peter relents, waving him along. “Lead the way, man.”

Loki doesn’t waste another minute. He turns away and begins making his way out of their little clearing, and Mantis and Groot are quick to follow at his heels. Gamora, meanwhile, hangs back to sweep an appraising look over Peter from head to toe.

“How’s your leg?”

Peter shifts his weight, winces.

“Peter.”

“Eh…?”

The look he gets in response to that could probably freeze hell over, so he keeps up that theatrical wince and the drawn out high-pitched ehhh for as long as he can, at least until it successfully draws the tiniest smirk and an eye roll from her. He starts up a slow walk mostly to show her that he can, only favoring his right side as much as he strictly needs to, and she easily falls into step beside him so that the two of them trail a little behind the group.

Despite his best efforts, though, she still notices he’s limping.

“Really, Peter, should I carry you?”

Peter places one hand on his chest and lets his jaw drop, lowering his voice so the others don’t hear. “Hey, now. Save that kinda talk for the bedroom, jeez.”

Bingo. She purses her lips against the urge to laugh, looking away even as her cheeks flush.

“You are utterly insufferable,” she mutters, shaking her head.

“You know you love it.”

“I know the moment I see you’re overexerting yourself I will throw you over my shoulder,” she tells him, “and you know there will be nothing you can do to stop me.”

“Okay, for real, it ain’t fair turning me on like this with everybody else around.”

That draws a quiet but genuine laugh from her, and she covers her face with one hand to collect herself. Inwardly, Peter’s running a victory lap around the whole group, pumping his fist and saying yeah, that’s right, I know how to cheer my girl up, suck it, weird creepy forest! Outwardly, he just wraps an arm around her shoulders and presses a kiss to the side of her head.

“Really, though,” he whispers. “I’m good for now. I’ll let you know the second that changes, okay?”

“Mm. Promise?”

“Promise.”

She slides a hand under his jacket and gives his back a quick scratch, then carefully unwinds from the half hug and lets him walk under his own power. “You know I’ll hold you to that.”

“Yeah,” Peter smiles, because he does, and he’d expect nothing less. “I know.”

The forest stretches around them, silent and eerie as always, but the leaves and twigs crunch under their boots and Gamora’s staying close to his side now and, up ahead, Groot’s keeping up long strides to stay side by side with Loki and pester him with questions about this mystery door they’re headed after. With all that, the quiet of the forest is a little less oppressive, though that twingey creeped-out feeling hasn’t dislodged from Peter’s spine just yet.

It doesn’t help matters much that he’s still seeing hazy whitish shapes out of the corner of his eye. Could just be the fog that’s clinging to the ground everywhere they look, but… well, he doesn’t think it is.

Whatever the things he’s seeing are, though, they’re keeping way too far away to make out any details — or to make out if they’re even there at all and not just a figment of his imagination, the fog and the creepiness of this place playing tricks on his brain. But, really, the fact that they’re keeping their distance isn’t quite enough to soothe Peter’s nerves. Not yet.

Seriously, the sooner they’re out of this place, the friggin’ better.

After they’ve walked about three or four minutes, Gamora pulls out her dagger again and finds a nice visible tree to carve her second arrow, and Groot distractedly grows another flower, half his attention focused on keeping up a stream of questions for Loki to answer.

“I am Groot?”

“As I’ve said, I did not get a very good look,” Loki repeats, and although irritation is laced heavily into his voice, he still holds up a low-hanging tree branch to allow Groot and Mantis to pass under it. Gamora puts her dagger away and takes the branch from him so he can return to the front of the group as she and Peter pass under it, too.

“I am Groot?”

“If I had to guess, I would say it’s another fifteen minutes’ walk to the cave itself, and then another walk down the main tunnel—”

“I am Groot.”

“It’s well lit,” Loki assures him. “Just the same as the forest is. Believe me, our biggest concern will not be traversing the tunnels once we’ve gotten inside. Our concern is getting to cave entrance in the first place, since there’s rather a large number of those reptilian beasts standing between here and there.”

Peter’s eyes widen. “Wait— what? Dude, you’re just telling us that now?”

“Now, as in, well before we’ve reached them?” Loki asks, shooting him a look over his shoulder. “Then, yes, I am telling you that now.”

“Gee, thanks, smartass,” Peter says without any actual heat. “So what’s rather a large number?”

“Perhaps… fifteen or twenty?”

“Dude!”

“They’re sleeping, Quill, relax. So long as you keep your voice down, I’m sure they won’t bother us until we’re much closer.”

“I am Groot?”

“Yeah,” Peter agrees. “What about when we are much closer?”

“At that point, we’ll simply have to…” Loki trails off, apparently thinking for a second, and then settles with, “… find some way to divert their attention elsewhere.”

“I am Groot?”

“I… might be able to distract them with magic,” Loki says. “Yes.”

Peter frowns. “Really not loving that emphasis on might.”

“Then I suppose we’ll have to cross that bridge when we come to it, won’t we?”

Peter opens his mouth to say, uh, no, I don’t friggin’ think so, we need to figure this out right now before we go rushing in half-cocked like we always do, but then— for maybe the tenth time in as many minutes, he catches a flash of white in his peripheral through the trees, and this time it feels a hell of a lot closer than any of the others have been since he woke up.

Close enough to make him jump, but not close enough that it’s still there when he turns to look. Nothing but fog, everywhere he looks.

Gamora’s got a hand on his arm, butterfly light, but when he turns to look at her she’s not eyeing him down with concern. She’s staring off into the trees and the fog, too, same as he was, her eyes hard with suspicion.

“So, uh… Loki?” Peter says, huffing a little bit through the effort to keep walking. “Real quick. We’re still sitting at thirty percent, right? Still thinking this place isn’t actually haunted?”

If Loki’s surprised by the change in subject, he doesn’t show it. “In all likelihood, it’s not, no.”

“And what makes you think that, huh?”

Convince me, please, probably goes without saying. Or at least he hopes it does.

“Well, for one thing,” Loki says, and although Peter can’t actually see him roll his eyes, somehow he knows he did anyway, “there’s something to be said for the fact that we’ve only seen two apparitions thus far, the first of which only you saw, and you saw it while you were in the process of losing about a third of your blood supply. The second is… rather more difficult to explain away, given we all clearly saw it, but— well, put it this way. If this place really were haunted, don’t you think we’d have seen more than just that? Where are any other spirits? Dead Uӓdarian citizens? Dead animals? Why have we only seen spirits of one or two people, both of whom I’m assuming died light years away from this planet, and both of whom you personally know? Seems a remarkable coincidence, doesn’t it?”

“Perhaps that is why Ego came so far from where he died,” Mantis quietly offers, wringing her hands together. “Because he knows us.”

“Could he have been drawn here?” Gamora asks. “Is that possible?”

“It— alright, technically, yes, it’s possible,” Loki admits, turning to walk backwards for a bit and somehow not tripping on anything, “but it’s still unlikely. How far away from this planet did he die?”

“About…” Peter thinks aloud, tipping his head from side to side, “… I dunno, maybe about three galaxies over? Wasn’t in the Nova Corps’ territory, anyway.”

“Exactly,” Loki says, pointing at him before spinning back around. “That’s thousands upon thousands of light years at the least. That would be an absurd distance for anyone to travel simply to carry out something as pointless as a haunting.”

In the far distance, bluish light plays off the twisting tree branches and casts weird shadows through the drifting fog. Their own footsteps seem to be the only source of sound at all; their footsteps, and the whisper of wind through the leaves that — for just a second — sounds to Peter’s already creeped out mind like the murmur of distant voices.

He sidesteps a little closer to Gamora.

“You seem pretty damn positive for it still being thirty percent, man.”

Loki sighs, shortening his strides a bit so that he doesn’t quite have his back to everyone, so he doesn’t have to crane his neck or walk backwards to look at them.

“Because again, it’s possible,” he says, gentler than before. “But, personally, I’m inclined to wait until I’ve seen more than just one apparition before I jump straight to the conclusion of this place being truly haunted.”

Peter bites back the response he wants to give, which is, actually, man, we’re seeing a hell of a lot of them, just ‘cause they’re not getting too close to us doesn’t mean they don’t count.

Groot goes ahead and beats him to it anyway.

“I am Groot.”

Loki frowns, jaw tightening for half a second as he glances around at their surroundings. “I’ll admit, they do seem to be growing more… prevalent.”

“So we’re all seeing that, then,” Gamora says, half a question, and she’s met with a series of nods from all four of them.

“Okay, look, whatever they are,” Peter speaks up, just as another whitish shape flits on the outskirts of his vision and disappears again, “whether it’s ghosts or hallucinations or holograms or whatever, they don’t seem too keen on gettin’ close this time around. They’re leaving us alone.”

“For now,” Loki cautions.

“Yeah. For now. And that’s a bridge we can cross when we get to it,” Peter decides, because he’s got two separate problems bouncing around in his skull right now, the maybe-ghosts and the upcoming task of distracting a bunch of giant Godzilla monsters, and he feels way better equipped to handle one over the other. “Now, how are we gonna get to this cave, huh? You said fifteen or twenty of those crocodile things standing between here and there, right?”

“As I said, we’ll simply have to distract them,” Loki reminds him.

Mantis asks, “How will we do that?”

“Easily. I can project a false image that will draw them away—”

“Can you, dude?” Peter asks.

Loki shoots another look at him, but his hesitation alone might as well be a fifty-foot-wide red flag. He looks about ready to keel over, and the fact is, Peter knows how Loki gets when he’s too weak to pull off something truly stupid. Hell, Peter’s known that since the first week he met Loki, when he was nearly choked to death and literally impaled and yet, somehow, was totally adamant that he’d be able to teleport them all across an entire planet if they just gave him a few minutes. Oh, sure, no big deal, don’t mind the gaping hole in my side, guys, I just need to take a breather.

And that time, he’d still gone ahead and done it anyway, or at least part of it, sending an illusion cross-planet instead of the real deal.

That, Loki said to Peter not five friggin’ hours ago, very nearly killed me.

“Okay, how about,” Peter says now, “you focus on scoping out that door again when we get closer to it, alright? We’ll find some other way to deal with the lizard… things.”

“Oh?” Loki asks. “And how, exactly, do you suppose we divert the attention of some twenty of those creatures when we hardly managed to fend off half that number last time?”

Peter shrugs. “I’ll figure it out.”

“You’ll figure it out.”

“Uh, yeah.” Peter scoffs, gesturing vaguely with his hands in the pockets of his jacket. “I’ll figure it out. I can think of about a million different ways we can get it done without magic, dude.”

“Oh, then please, do tell.”

“Well,” Peter starts, sounding as sure of himself as he thinks he possibly can, even as his mouth hangs open while he wracks his brain, “uh— well, all we gotta do is get them paying attention to something that’s not us, right?”

“Ideally,” Loki deadpans.

“Okay, yeah. So, uh…”

He looks over their surroundings, letting the gears turn over in his head. To his right, a hundred or so yards away, another whitish shape shifts amongst the shadows. The murmur he was hearing earlier is still there, like the indistinguishable thrum of a whole lot of whispering voices really far away. Or the wind. Probably the wind. Definitely the wind.

To his left, Gamora pauses for a moment to pull out her dagger and drive a third arrow into a nearby tree, and Groot dutifully grows another glowing yellow-white flower to hang above it, all in the hopes that Rocket or Drax might have an easier time catching up to them.

And then, in a voice that sounds a little too much like Rocket’s, Peter thinks, when in doubt, blow some stuff up.

After that the idea comes easy enough.

“Peter?” Mantis asks.

He heaves a sigh, hanging his head. Damn it.

It’s gonna work, he’s sure, but that doesn’t mean he has to like it.

“Yeah, no, I got a plan,” Peter tells her, tells all of them. He pulls both of his blasters from his belt, looks them over, and then holds them up for Gamora to see as she returns from her arrow carving. “Pick one.”

Gamora raises an eyebrow at him, but she obliges, pointing at the blaster in his left hand.

“Okay,” Peter says, holstering the left blaster and looking mournfully at the one in his right. “I’m gonna miss you, buddy,” he says, lifting the blaster up to kiss the side of it, then hands it to Gamora and mimes cracking open the metal casing. “Can you—?”

Both her eyebrows are up now. “You’re sure?”

“Yeah,” Peter sighs. “As I’ll ever be.”

They all watch as Gamora snaps the blaster’s outer shell clean along its welded seam to reveal the mesh of wires and blinking lights and circuits underneath, and she hands it all delicately back into Peter’s waiting hands. He tosses the two halves of the now-useless metal casing over his shoulder and only takes the blaster itself — it looks a little foreign like this, he thinks, like the Terminator with its skin blown off, so at least that takes some of the sting out of destroying it.

It doesn’t take more than a minute. He doesn’t even need any tools; the mechanics of this particular brand of blaster are deliberately straightforward, which is half the reason Peter’s always carrying them around. Nothing fancy, no bells and whistles, just enough to get the job done. There’s a fuel line coiled down at the butt of the pistol, as far from the blaster’s spark plug as it can possibly get, a safety feature so that pulling the trigger doesn’t set off a chain reaction and take the shooter’s hands clean off at the wrist. Peter unwinds that fuel line now, pulling it taut and laying it back down so that it’s right flush against the spark plug— even loops it once around the spark plug, just to be doubly sure he didn’t break his second favorite blaster beyond repair for no pay off.

“Be gentle with it for now,” he says, handing it back to Gamora. “You don’t want it going off too soon.”

Really, it shouldn’t go off at all without a nice heavy impact to break the fuel line open, and even if it did, with Gamora’s enhancements it probably wouldn’t do more than give her a nasty bruise. But still. Just in case.

She asks, “Did you just turn your blaster into a bomb?”

“Yep. More for noise than actual damage, though,” Peter’s quick to clarify, because Mantis is starting to look worried, her eyes on the rigged blaster. To Gamora he explains, “Once we get closer to those giant lizard things, you find a good clear shot at a tree far enough away from us and throw that at it, and it’ll blow up loud enough that none of ‘em are gonna give a damn what’s going on where we’re at. Easy peasy.”

Gamora pulls an impressed face, nodding along and gently slipping the makeshift bomb into one of the empty holsters on her belt. “That would be quite an effective distraction.”

Groot nods. “I am Groot.”

“And a distraction made without using magic,” Peter says. He turns and bends at the waist to give a low sweeping bow in Loki’s direction. “Thank you, thank you! That is impressive, isn’t it, Loki?”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Please, man, there’s no need to applaud.”

Loki shakes his head, but Peter can clearly see him trying not to laugh before he turns away and says, “I was not planning to.”

“Uh-huh,” Peter says. “Whatever you say.”

Because poking fun at Loki, in Peter’s expert opinion, is always a good way to lighten any mood. It helps chip away at some of the eeriness still hanging in the air around them, helps make it a little easier to ignore that niggling feeling that’s still creeping up his back and the ever present shifting white shapes in the distance, as he falls into step beside Loki now and gently elbows him in the ribs.

“C’mon, admit it, you think I’m a little impressive sometimes.”

“I said no such thing,” Loki says as they continue carving a path toward the cave, “and I am quite certain I never will.”

“But implied—”

“I am certain I’ve never done that, either.”

“You know what? You don’t even have to, it’s all in your eyes, man.”

“The only thing in my eyes,” Loki says, sweeping an arm out to move a chest-height bush out of their way, “is complete and utter shock that you’ve survived this long without accidentally blowing yourself up.”

“Oh, yeah, no, there’s been some close calls, actually.”

“Of course there has.”

“Yeah, like, wildly close. Singed all my hair off trying to fix the old Milano when I was sixteen, and that’s not even in the top ten.”

“Why do you sound proud of that?”

Peter shrugs, as exaggerated as possible, his shoulders up to his ears. “Why not?”

“Your idiocy is mind-boggling.”

“Okay, seriously, you keep flirting with me like this and Gamora’s gonna get jealous,” Peter says, throwing an arm around Loki’s shoulders only to immediately, predictably, get shoved off again. “Ah, come on!”

“I am Groot.”

“Exactly,” Loki agrees. “Keep your voice down.”

Gamora, from where she’s bringing up the rear with one hand idly poised on Godslayer, speaks up. “Is it just me, or…?”

Mantis finishes for her, “Are there even more of those… things now?”

Peter glances around, slowing down enough that Groot walks right smack into his back with a disgruntled I am Groot, but Peter doesn’t answer. He’s a little too busy trying to catch one of those whitish shapes in something other than his peripheral, the effort of which alone quickly drives a headache pounding through his right temple, but he keeps trying anyway.

How far away are they now? The closest can’t be closer than fifty yards, but it’s real hard to tell when he can’t even really see any of them.

“They’re still not coming too close, looks like,” Peter says, his voice low, “but yeah, you’re right. Whole lot more of ‘em now than there was before.”

Gamora’s got a tense grip on Godslayer’s hilt, her eyes scanning their surroundings just like the rest of them.

“Do you think it’s because of where we are going?” Mantis asks.

Loki frowns, looking back at her, and parrots, “Where we’re—?”

“The cave,” Mantis clarifies, glancing worriedly into the distant trees. “The closer we get to it, the more of… them we can see. Do you think it has something to do with the cave?”

Loki opens his mouth, shuts it, then opens it again and turns his hands up. “I… suppose it could?”

Gamora asks, “Really?”

“Honestly, I have no idea.”

Peter nearly curses aloud as something moves way too close for comfort somewhere to his right, and then, directly in front of him and just close enough to make out a rough shape, one of them solidifies into what might be a person before poofing right back into an amorphous mess of fog.

“What were you saying earlier, man?” Peter asks. “About not believing this place is haunted until you saw more of ‘em? ‘Cause I gotta say, I’m seeing a hell of a lot more of ‘em now.”

Loki doesn’t answer.

Another shape moves out of the corner of his eye, this time on the left.

“Is that—?” Peter starts to ask, then gulps. He bites back the question he wants to ask, which is, Are they starting to surround us, because he has a feeling they’ve all caught on to that much by now. Instead he says, “I think that one kind of looked Uӓdarian.”

“I am Groot?”

“I— I don’t know what they are, bud.”

“I am Groot.”

“Yeah, I don’t like it much, either,” Peter agrees, because he— actually, hell, none of them are used to the feeling of being followed like this without being able to do anything. It makes his fingers twitch for his remaining blaster, even though he knows, on some level, that it’s kind of pointless. The hell is a blaster gonna do?

The murmur of voices gets a little stronger, but still no more distinct. The unsettled feeling between Peter’s shoulder blades steadily creeps up into the back of his neck.

By now everyone’s stopped walking, instead gathering as close together as they can. Loki and Peter are practically bumping elbows. Mantis and Groot are pressed in close behind them. Gamora’s facing the other way, her back to the rest of them, sword nearly drawn.

Mantis asks, “Do we just keep walking?”

“I am Groot!”

“I don’t think they can touch us, bud,” Peter quietly assures him. “Whatever the hell they are, I don’t think they can touch us. I mean, Gamora’s sword touched Ego— er, the thing that looked like Ego, and he disappeared right away, remember?”

Loki reminds them, “We don’t even know if they’re real in the first place.”

“Yeah,” Peter says, sounding a little too breathless to his own ears. “Yeah, exactly. Probably not even real.”

“I think it’s best we keep moving,” Loki adds. “There’s nothing to be gained from standing here waiting for these… whatever they are, to come closer or show themselves.”

Peter hurriedly pats Loki on the back. “Yup, good call, let’s get the hell out of here.”

They get moving again, shuffling along way closer to each other than before. Loki keeps sending suspicious looks over the surrounding trees, fists clenching and unclenching, and green light may or may not be gathering around his knuckles; it’s hard to tell, everything looks bluish down here anyway. Groot keeps bumping into Peter’s back until he finally gives up on acting tough and latches onto Peter’s jacket. Every time Peter turns his head he can see Mantis’ antennae out of the corner of his eye, not six inches away. Gamora ain’t too far behind them, either, and he hears the light swish of Godslayer extending, ready to defend all of them at a moment’s notice.

And he can’t blame any of them. The fog that’s swirling around in all directions seems to gather in closer and closer, growing thicker the further they walk, until Peter’s certain that if they could reach it, it’d feel less like walking through fog and more like swimming through soup. Peter gulps and lays a hand on his only remaining blaster.

Screw this, he thinks. If Ego pops out of this shit again I’m shooting first and asking questions never.

Naturally, though, it’s right around then, when he’s made the decision to shoot the very first familiar face he sees and screw the consequences, that someone does materialize out of the fog.

And it sure as hell ain’t anyone familiar.

It happens with barely any warning at all, not like Ego. Ego showed up slowly, almost agonizingly slowly, gaining substance and detail in increments the closer he walked to them, taking his sweet damn time like he was perfectly content to make them all wait for him.

This time it’s like silvery smog funneling into a mold. A shapeless nothing one second, a person’s silhouette the next. And before Peter even has time to pull the blaster from its holster, more and more of the person’s features sharpen into stark relief until he’s left staring at—

A woman.

Huh.

Okay. So it’s a woman, but it sure as hell ain’t one they’ve met before.

She’s still got an ethereal look to her, but, well, duh. That ain’t no surprise. Given she started off as a vaguely human-shaped cloud of fog, he knows she isn’t actually here — or she is, kind of, because they still aren’t a hundred percent on the whole “are these things hallucinations or tricks or actual ghosts” thing. But she’s definitely one of the three, given she just showed up in the middle of the forest without a speck of dirt on her.

She’s spotless, beautiful, practically shimmering.

Is she human, though? Maybe Uӓdarian? Aside from the glowing, she sort of looks like she could be, though she’s lacking the classic green hair that Uӓdarians all seem to have. So human’s a possibility, or Xandarian, Peter thinks, except…

Except he doesn’t think she is.

It’s something about the way she holds herself, he thinks, oddly familiar in the way it just screams more-than-human. Her hands fidget in front of her, fingers laced, the thumb of her right hand poking into the palm of her left, in a way that almost reminds Peter of—

“My son,” she says, pale eyes unwavering on Loki, a tentative smile on her face. “My sweet boy.”

— of Loki.

Oh.

Oh, shit.

That is… probably… not great.

“Uh, Loki?”

Yeah, shit, seriously, how the hell did he miss Loki all but turning to goddamn stone next to him? How’d he miss every trace of color leaving Loki’s face the second this lady showed up? How the hell is he just noticing that now?

“Loki,” Peter tries again, practically hissing, his own eyes glued on the woman in front of them now, so Loki’s only in his peripheral. There’s still a good bit of distance between them and her, maybe thirty or forty feet, and she doesn’t look like she’s planning to approach any time soon. So that’s good, at least.

“I am Groot?”

“Loki,” Gamora tries, her voice low and careful.

“Hey, come on, man,” Peter says as he reaches out, his other hand still poised on his blaster, and he grips Loki’s upper arm and gives him a firm shake.

Nothing. Doesn’t budge an inch. Might as well be literally made of stone.

Stupid Asgardian superstrength. Jesus.

The woman, at least, acknowledges that Peter and the others exist. She pulls her gaze away from Loki, just barely, and then that fond look is being aimed straight at Peter instead. She is beautiful, Peter’s first observation still stands, inhumanly composed and elegant and sharp, but there’s something soft about her, too, he thinks. In her eyes. Soft and kind.

And Peter doesn’t know if it’s the forest or her, but kindness hits all the wrong damn buttons in his head right now.

He immediately, instinctively, does not trust it.

The woman’s faintly silvery kind eyes are on Peter and then the others, each in turn, and then her gaze falls once more on Loki.

“Hey, no, stay with us, man,” Peter quietly cuts in before she can say anything, tightening his grip on Loki’s upper arm. He needs to get through to him because, shit, if this is a hallucination, it is a really damn convincing hallucination, and Loki’s staring at it like… like he can’t decide whether he wants to attack it with every weapon on the Benatar at once, or turn tail and run as fast as his legs will take him in the opposite direction.

And Peter doesn’t know, either, he realizes. He doesn’t know jack about Loki’s parents. They’ve never talked about it.

This lady could be the sweetest woman in the galaxy or worse than Ego for all he knows.

“You gotta stay with us,” Peter tries again, because that’s one thing he does know. “Come on, remember what you said? We don’t know if it’s real, right?”

Loki still does not move. He does not look away from his maybe-real-maybe-not mom.

But, after a stretch of tense silence during which it takes every ounce of self control Peter’s got not to shake him again, Loki finally takes a slow breath, trembling a bit on the exhale. Then another. He gulps, squeezes his eyes shut tight and then opens them to see his mom still standing there.

When he speaks, his voice comes out sounding like it’s crushed under something.

“… We don’t.”

“Yeah. Right,” Peter repeats, relief washing through him. “We don’t.”

“As a matter of fact,” Loki goes on, his voice gaining a bit of strength despite the fact that he’s still shaking like a leaf, something sharpening in his eyes despite the watery shine to them, “if anything, this makes it far more likely that none of these apparitions have been real at all.”

“What, seriously? Why?”

Still wary, still thumbing the blaster’s safety without quite flipping it yet, Peter halves his attention between Loki and the woman that may or may not really be Loki’s mother. The smallest hint of sadness that’s tinged the woman’s hesitant smile is still there, and she seems to catch onto Loki’s meaning before Peter does, because with Loki’s words that sadness seems to have taken over the rest of her face, her regal posture deflating just a bit as she tilts her head with a sympathetic frown.

“Oh, Loki…”

“You would not be here,” Loki cuts her off, his voice barely above a whisper as a single tear escapes and trails down his cheek. He doesn’t seem to notice. His hands are clenched fists at his sides, shaking and definitely shimmering green. “If you were really her, you would not be here.”

“My son—”

“She’s in Valhalla,” Loki cuts her off. “Not here.”

He takes one single step forward so that his arm is ripped from Peter’s grip, and then one step more, but that’s as far as he goes. His anger is a crescendo that rises along with his voice, but it is not, apparently, enough to make him actually approach her. Not quite.

“She would not be wasting her time, moving between the realms only to appear in a swamp on some backwater planet,” Loki insists, practically shouting now, or as well as he can when it still sounds like there’s something thick and viscous filling up his throat. “Wear her face all you want, torment me with her likeness all you want, but she wouldn’t— she would not be here, and you are not her.”

This time, the apparition doesn’t speak right away. Instead she waits, watching Loki with those kind and patient eyes, making sure he’s finished saying his piece.

Then she turns her hands up. “Loki, is it really so difficult to believe that I might have simply… wanted to be here?”

“It is,” Loki snaps.

That sympathetic frown is back, more pronounced now, and she asks, “You truly believe I would have no reason to be here? No reason at all?”

“Don’t—”

“Can a mother not wish to see her own son?”

Loki flinches like he’s been hit, and it’s all Peter can do not to jump forward and grab hold of him again. Because even without being able to see his face, Peter can see how that affected him, the way his jaw tightens, the way his breath leaves him in a three-beat shudder, the way he takes a few seconds to gather himself enough to form an answer.

And Peter, for one crazy moment, wants to intervene. He wants to say something, goddamn anything to take the spotlight off of Loki right now, but specifically something along the lines of hey, lady, or your highness, or whatever the hell you are, if you got nothing useful to say and all you’re gonna do is upset our friend, then do us all a favor and scram, please?

But then, with his voice a raspy tremulous thing that’s even less than a whisper, Loki says, “I will not listen to this.”

The apparition gives a tight-lipped smile, too fond to tip over into mocking. “I suppose I shouldn’t be shocked by that. You never did.”

“I won’t,” Loki insists, shaking his head. “This isn’t— you’re not her. She would not be here.”

“I know you think I’m not,” she says, gentle and placating, “but if you would just listen for a moment—”

“Leave,” Loki tells her. “I won’t— I will not hear another—”

“Loki—”

“Leave. Now."

She huffs a sigh, the kind of exasperated sound that only someone who’s endured a million and a half arguments with the God of Mischief in all his supernaturally stubborn glory could make, and she says, “My son—”

There’s a burst of magic like a flash bang grenade.

The air around them dips about twenty degrees, a concussive blast that makes Peter’s ears pop and makes all of them stagger back a step. Green light blots out everything else, sears his retinas, and by the time he’s done blinking the dots from his vision a whole five seconds later, the woman that might have been Loki’s mom has vanished into thin air. Her, and just about all of the fog in a solid fifty foot radius around them.

Or, more specifically, around Loki.

Loki’s got his back to all of them, fists clenched at his sides, perfectly statue-still except for his shoulders slowly heaving with carefully measured breaths. The fog in the distance is already creeping back into the wide swath of forest that his outburst of magic cleared; Peter can see whitish grey tendrils of it seeping over tree roots and wafting over plantlife, ambling its way back into the empty space. The murmur of the wind hasn’t gone away, and in this new stifling silence it sounds more like distant voices than ever.

Peter opens his mouth to say something and realizes he has no goddamn clue what he wants to say.

After a moment, Mantis asks, “Loki?”

“What.”

Mantis steps back, flinching and retreating into herself the way she always does when anyone snaps at her, when she thinks she’s upset someone. And— yeah, Peter knows they’ve all gotten a hell of a lot more snippy for a hell of a lot less, but he still can’t help a little surge of righteous anger that rises in him anyway.

“Hey,” Peter says to Loki, low with warning. “It ain’t her fault, man.”

He’s not even sure what, specifically, it is, what specifically he’s saying ain’t her fault. The forest messing with their heads, something taking the form of Loki’s dead mom to get under his skin, Loki’s actual dead mom showing up, whatever the hell must have happened to make Loki so upset at seeing her in the first place. It doesn’t matter.

Peter asks, softer, “You okay?”

Loki tips his head back for a moment, takes a slow breath, and then—

“Let’s go.”

“Wait— what?”

But Loki’s already marching off in the direction they’d been walking before, elbowing aside plants as he walks, and Peter and the rest of them have no choice but to jog to keep up, not unless they wanna risk losing him in this place, too.

“I am Groot!”

“Yeah, woah, come on,” Peter huffs, dodging around a tree branch that nearly clotheslines him, “slow up a little, would ya?”

He does. Barely.

“I mean, some of us are operating on about a quarter less leg than usual, you know,” Peter continues, filling up the awkward silence as best he can. Behind him, Gamora and Mantis and Groot have all decided to clam up, and when Peter glances over his shoulder at them he sees Gamora searching their surroundings again, as vigilant as ever, waiting for any more of those things to show themselves.

He brings his attention forward again, where Loki’s leading them through the forest with renewed vigor, even though — as becomes abundantly friggin’ clear after a single once-over — he looks like crap warmed over, favoring his right side almost as much as Peter is, fists clenching and unclenching at his sides, every breath coming in too ragged and too quick.

“Hey,” Peter says, tapping him on the arm. Which is a feat in itself with how quick Loki’s walking; Peter has to half-limp half-jog just to keep pace. “Seriously, you okay?”

Loki goes tense all across his shoulders and down his arms, like he’s suddenly bracing for impact, but he doesn’t answer. Just keeps trudging his way through the forest with single-minded determination.

“Hey, come on—”

“Physically, Loki,” Gamora gently cuts in. “Physically, are you alright?”

Loki gives a frustrated groan that’s almost a growl. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It does,” Gamora says. “It matters if you’ve overexerted yourself. It matters if you’re going to collapse before we’ve even made it to our destination.”

“Yeah, y’know, especially since she’s the one that’d have to carry you,” Peter points out, worriedly eyeing Loki’s profile. “That might slow us down a little.”

“I will not collapse. I’m fine.”

Peter tilts his head, conceding, “Sure, physically.”

Loki huffs. “Quill, don’t—”

“And otherwise?”

There’s a long moment in which Loki says nothing at all in response to that. He’s still cutting through the forest, carving a path, but now he seems to only care about cutting the path for himself, no longer going out of his way to hold tree branches and shrubs out of everyone else’s way for them to pass. Peter flinches back as a leafy branch comes within inches of smacking him upside the face.

Finally, Loki answers, “It doesn’t matter.”

“I am Groot.”

“Yeah, it, uh… it kinda does, man,” Peter agrees. “If you don’t wanna talk about it, that’s another thing, but—”

“I do not.”

Peter sighs, then picks up his pace a little bit so he’s almost side-by-side with Loki, quietly taking over the role of the guy who’s holding things out of the way for everyone else. “Okay,” he concedes. “Sure. That’s— yeah, that’s okay. Just… you know, we’re… here. If you do wanna talk about it, or if you don’t. Either way.”

He’s close enough that he can see the skeptical raise of Loki’s eyebrows when he says, dripping sarcasm, “Lovely.”

“Well, yeah. Like it or not, you’re kinda stuck with us, man, and all the dumb emotional bullcrap that bein’ stuck with us entails,” Peter tells him. “‘Cause face it, I mean, we’re basically family at this point—”

At that, Loki stops in his tracks and cuts Peter a look that comes close to killing all the wind in his sails, because it’s a look that pretty damn clearly says, No, we sure as hell are not. All disbelief and condescension, a tinge of resignation. Peter gulps down the reflexive hurt at that and just plows right on like he didn’t notice.

“— and that’s what family’s for, you know?”

Loki looks ahead, bats a tree branch out of his way, Peter sees him set his jaw before he speaks.

“If you all would like to stand around here and waste your time continuing this entirely asinine debate, then by all means, you are welcome to,” Loki tells them all, his voice low and as carefully measured as his breath. “But you will do so without me. I am going forward, and I am finding out who lives behind the door at the end of that tunnel, and one way or another I will get an answer as to how I can get out of this godforsaken place. Join me or don’t. I honestly couldn’t care less either way.”

Peter opens his mouth to argue, because— well, that ain’t fair. However pissed off Loki may be, however much it must’ve sucked to see what he just saw, it’s no excuse to be acting like he doesn’t care.

But within the next second Loki’s already turned away and begun marching resolutely on in the direction of the cave, and Peter finds he’s got two options: shout after him, or follow. He doesn’t have the wherewithal for both right now.

None of the others say anything, either, and after a very brief internal debate Peter lets it drop, too. Because, okay, sure, Loki’s feeling testy and he’s saying stuff he doesn’t mean (or stuff he probably doesn’t mean, a tiny insecure part of Peter’s brain pipes up) but now’s really not the time to hash it out. They can address it whenever they get out of here, but to get out of here, they gotta focus on the task in front of them: the small horde of fourteen-foot-tall lizard monsters, the crowd of maybe-ghosts still lurking on the edges of his peripheral, and the mysterious cave in the middle of this creepy-ass forest.

Peter gives a resigned sigh and runs both hands over his face.

“Okay,” he says, making up his mind. “Yeah. Sure. No way out but through, I guess.”

Chapter Text

Nebula is not pleased.

That is, of course, an understatement. But in recent years she has been making an effort to be less melodramatic, and saying she’s furious enough to plow the Benatar directly through every building in the Markets District and unload its entire stock of armor-piercing high-explosive incendiary rounds blindly into the forest just to see what the hell comes running out, while technically true, feels like a step in the opposite direction.

She settles with the three holes she’s punched into the police precinct wall and the one she’s punched through the interior wall of the Benatar, the latter of which she has since discreetly covered up by the strategic placement of one of Drax’s biggest potted plants. No harm done, in the grand scheme of things. And she’d needed some way to let her anger out lest it boil over and pop.

Because the thing is—

The thing is, Nebula is not used to problems she cannot solve with a dagger or a sword or a high-powered laser rifle. She is not used to problems she cannot solve with intimidation or force. She is not used to problems she can’t solve, and this particular problem is an annoyance of the highest possible caliber.

Not only are the idiots all missing, but she’s being taunted with their voices over the communications array, a line of communication that has suddenly decided to only work in one direction.

She even tried wiring her own communication systems into the Benatar’s mainframe and communicating with them through that, and still, nothing whatsoever. She may as well be talking to a wall, or better yet, listening to a recording of something that’s already happened, for all the good she can do from where she’s at.

Theoretically, of course, she could go searching through the forest for the morons, but she’s not an idiot. The forest is four and a half miles wide and at least nine miles deep, and as adept and capable as Nebula may be, she is one person armed with nothing but an enhanced endurance, a litany of weapons, and several body modifications that would ensure her own survival in the forest but, technically, no one else’s.

Going into the forest is a last resort.

It is a very last resort, one that she may only stoop to once she’s exhausted all other possibilities, once she’s desperate.

And Nebula does not get desperate.

“Alright,” she says aloud to the great expanse of the forest in front of her, “one more time.”

She turns away from the forest, walking in an automatic thoughtless path along the roads of the fishing villages as she has a hundred times already, and she taps a panel by her left temple as she walks. A series of letters and numbers click and roll into existence in their neat little rows, projected as a hologram a few inches from her left eye.

Records, mostly. Records she has diligently kept since she first realized something was wrong, in case anything should make more sense later.

…

…

[09:27:32] [Transmission from: Sister] “Nebula? Nebula, are you there?”

[09:28:19] [Transmission from: Sister] “Nebula.”

[09:29:12] [Transmission from: Fox] “Nebula? Hey, Nebs, come on, where ya at?”

[09:30:03] [Transmission from: Mantis] “Nebula, can you hear us? If you can, please answer.”

…

…

Benatar Air Grade: Normal. Fuel Capacity: 78%. Transmission: Normal. Atmospheric Regulator: Normal. Weapons: Online. 

Benatar Flight Path:

29 Degrees East from North, 10.3 Miles.
Due West, 4.5 Miles.
Due South, 0.6 Miles.
Due East, 4.5 Miles.
Due South, 0.6 Miles.
Due West, 4.5 Miles.
Due South, 0.6 Miles.
Due East, 4.5 Miles.
Due South, 0.6 Miles.
Due West, 4.5 Miles.
Due South, 0.6 Miles.
Due East, 4.5 Miles.
Due South, 0.6 Miles.
Due West, 4.5 Miles.
Due South, 0.6 Miles.
Due East, 4.5 Miles.
Due South, 0.6 Miles.
Due West, 4.5 Miles.
Due South, 0.6 Miles.
Due East, 4.5 Miles.
47 Degrees South from West, 3.1 Miles.

Abnormal sightings: None.

Infrared scanners indicate 217 life readings at >7000 lbs, 973 life readings at <7000lbs.

…

…

[12:36:42] [Transmission from: Captain Moron] “Nebula? You there?”

[12:36:53] [Transmission from: Captain Moron] “Yoo-hoo. Nebs?”

…

…

BENATAR CALL LOG

…

[13:07:47] [Incoming Call from: Z Axzhaat]

[13:07:49] [Call Rejected]

…

[13:09:03] [Message from: Z Axzhaat]

“Hello! Miss Nebula, is it? I wanted to check in and see how—”

[Message Deleted]

…

[13:47:13] [Incoming Call from: K Obfonteri]

[13:47:16] [Call Rejected]

…

[13:53:47] [Incoming Call from: K Obfonteri]

[13:53:49] [Call Rejected]

…

…

Benatar Air Grade: Normal. Fuel Capacity: 77%. Transmission: Normal. Atmospheric Regulator: Normal. Weapons: Online. 

Benatar Flight Path:

6 Degrees East from South, 2.3 Miles.

…

…

[Recording: Urunia Police Precinct.]

[Transcript: Conversation with Sergeant Braz of Urunia Police Department.]

[Subj. Profile: Uӓdarian Male, 5’3”, 204lbs, Age 63.7% Of Average Uӓdarian Lifespan.]

“They went in the forest? Ya sure?”

Obviously I’m sure. Tell me what you know about this forest— and do not leave anything out or I will know—

“Yeah, yeah, course I’ll tell ya everything I know about it, but it ain’t much. Just wish ya’s woulda mentioned you were all plannin’ on heading through there. Would’ve advised against it, that’s what I’d’ve done.”

Why?

“Well, ‘cause it’s dangerous in those parts, isn’t it? Used to go huntin’ in that forest back in the day, but I guess I’m getting a little old to be that active anymore, and plus, y’know, these days what with the suburban expansion over East and all that mining construction creeping in from the Southwest, the wildlife in that forest is getting more and more disturbed. Unpredictable, you know what I’m sayin’. Y’see that head there? Killed that one some two decades ago, had to go trekking some six, seven miles to track it. These days it’d take ya no more than a mile’s walk before one of those things found ya and decided to make a meal outta ya. Folks just don’t go in that forest anymore, too much trouble.”

Where can I find a map of this forest?

“A map? I mean, I’m sure I got one from way back when, don’t know how much use it’ll be to you now. Can’t be too accurate anymore.”

Find it.

“Yeah, course. I’ll take a look around for it. You don’t plan on going in there, do ya?”

If I must.

“Eugh. I’m gonna go ahead and assume you won’t be wantin’ any back-up for that neither, huh? … And… oh, you already left. Huh. A’right then.”

…

…

Benatar Air Grade: Normal. Fuel Capacity: 76%. Transmission: Normal. Atmospheric Regulator: Normal. Weapons: Online. 

Benatar Flight Path:

6 Degrees West from North, 2.3 Miles.

…

…

BENATAR CALL LOG

…

[15:10:53] [Incoming Call from: K Obfonteri]

[15:10:56] [Call Rejected]

…

[15:13:03] [Incoming Call from: K Obfonteri]

[15:13:04] [Call Rejected]

…

[15:13:14] [Incoming Call from: K Obfonteri]

[15:13:14] [Call Answered]

“What, Kraglin? What do you want?”

“Uh… Neb? That you? Look, I ain’t heard from Pete in a while, everything okay over there or—?”

“It is not. I will alert you when anything changes.”

“Huh? Whaddaya mean it’s—?”

[15:13:53] [Call Ended]

…

[15:14:01] [Incoming Call from: K Obfonteri]

[15:14:02] [Call Rejected]

…

[15:14:05] [Incoming Call from: K Obfonteri]

[15:14:06] [Call Rejected]

…

[15:14:08] [Incoming Call from: K Obfonteri]

[15:14:09] [Call Rejected]

…

[16:31:05] [Incoming Call from: K Obfonteri]

[16:31:09] [Call Rejected]

…

…

Benatar Air Grade: Normal. Fuel Capacity: 75%. Transmission: Normal. Atmospheric Regulator: Normal. Weapons: Online. 

Benatar Flight Path:

47 Degrees North from East, 3.1 Miles.
Due West, 4.5 Miles.
Due South, 0.6 Miles.
Due East, 4.5 Miles.
Due South, 0.6 Miles.
Due West, 4.5 Miles.
Due South, 0.6 Miles.
Due East, 4.5 Miles.
Due South, 0.6 Miles.
Due West, 4.5 Miles.
Due South, 0.6 Miles.
Due East, 4.5 Miles.
Due South, 0.6 Miles.
Due West, 4.5 Miles.
Due South, 0.6 Miles.
Due East, 4.5 Miles.
Due South, 0.6 Miles.
Due West, 4.5 Miles.
Due South, 0.6 Miles.
Due East, 4.5 Miles.
47 Degrees South from West, 3.1 Miles.

Abnormal sightings: None.

Infrared scanners indicate 217 life readings at >7000 lbs, 973 life readings at <7000lbs.

…

…

[17:07:31] [Transmission from: Captain Moron] “Rocket?”

[17:07:42] [Transmission from: Captain Moron] “Rocket, come on, where the hell are you, man?”

[17:08:13] [Transmission from: Sister] “Rocket?”

[17:08:37] [Transmission from: Sister] “Rocket.”

[17:13:07] [Transmission from: Sister] “Rocket? Rocket, are you there?”

[17:14:21] [Transmission from: Mantis] “Rocket?”

[17:15:03] [Transmission from: Tree] “I am Groot?” [Translation: “Where are you?”]

[17:16:07] [Transmission from: Mantis] “Rocket, are you there?”

[17:17:32] [Transmission from: Sister] “Rocket, if you can hear us, we’re looking for you. Please answer.”

[17:19:07] [Transmission from: Mantis] “Rocket, are you—? Oh! Drax? Drax!”

…

…

Benatar Air Grade: Normal. Fuel Capacity: 74%. Transmission: Normal. Atmospheric Regulator: Normal. Weapons: Online. 

Benatar Flight Path:

47 Degrees North from East, 3.1 Miles.
Due West, 4.5 Miles.
Due South, 0.6 Miles.
Due East, 4.5 Miles.
Due South, 0.6 Miles.
Due West, 4.5 Miles.
Due South, 0.6 Miles.
Due East, 4.5 Miles.
Due South, 0.6 Miles.
Due West, 4.5 Miles.
Due South, 0.6 Miles.
Due East, 4.5 Miles.
Due South, 0.6 Miles.
Due West, 4.5 Miles.
Due South, 0.6 Miles.
Due East, 4.5 Miles.
Due South, 0.6 Miles.
Due West, 4.5 Miles.
Due South, 0.6 Miles.
Due East, 4.5 Miles.
47 Degrees South from West, 3.1 Miles.

Abnormal sightings: None.

Infrared scanners indicate 217 life readings at >7000 lbs, 972 life readings at <7000lbs.

…

…

BENATAR CALL LOG

…

[22:42:15] [Incoming Call from: Sgt. Braz Urunia PD]

[22:42:16] [Call Answered]

“What.”

“Uh. Yeah, hello to you, too. Got that map ya wanted. Ya wanna come by the—?”

“I will be there shortly.”

[22:42:33] [Call Ended]

…

…

[22:59:01] [Transmission from: Fox] “Hey! Where the hell’d ya guys go, huh?”

[23:01:42] [Transmission from: Fox] “Quill? Groot?”

[23:03:16] [Transmission from: Fox] “Guys, c’mon.”

…

…

Benatar Air Grade: Normal. Fuel Capacity: 73%. Transmission: Normal. Atmospheric Regulator: Normal. Weapons: Online. 

Benatar Flight Path:

47 Degrees North from East, 3.1 Miles.
Due West, 4.5 Miles.
Due South, 0.6 Miles.
Due East, 4.5 Miles.
Due South, 0.6 Miles.
Due West, 4.5 Miles.
Due South, 0.6 Miles.
Due East, 4.5 Miles.
Due South, 0.6 Miles.
Due West, 4.5 Miles.
Due South, 0.6 Miles.
Due East, 4.5 Miles.
Due South, 0.6 Miles.
Due West, 4.5 Miles.
Due South, 0.6 Miles.
Due East, 4.5 Miles.
Due South, 0.6 Miles.
Due West, 4.5 Miles.
Due South, 0.6 Miles.
Due East, 4.5 Miles.
47 Degrees South from West, 3.1 Miles.

Abnormal sightings: None.

Infrared scanners indicate 217 life readings at >7000 lbs, 973 life readings at <7000lbs.

…

…

BENATAR CALL LOG

…

As she combs through every shred of not-quite-evidence she’s gathered in the last sixteen hours, Nebula does not pay attention to her surroundings quite as diligently as she would, were she not otherwise preoccupied. But she still notices immediately when something is off.

She’s being followed.

She is certain of it.

Someone is trailing behind her, following her winding path as she makes her way through the fishing villages in the vague direction of the Markets District. She’s walking just to walk, walking to help her think, which means no one should be trailing behind her at all, not for any extended period of time. They’re keeping a fair distance behind, and when she chances half a glance over her shoulder she barely catches the briefest glimpse of fabric and nothing more.

It is, of course, possible that this person means her no harm. Perhaps they’re merely curious about the strange Luphomoid woman strolling through the fishing villages.

But perhaps they do mean her harm. Perhaps they intend to attack or otherwise attempt to incapacitate her, to stop Nebula from finding the others by whatever means necessary. If that’s the case, that means they must know something about what’s happened to them. That, or they know someone who does.

And they think they can sneak up on Nebula, Daughter of Thanos, Most Feared Woman in the Galaxy, because— what, because she’s distracted?

Well.

Nebula keeps the log up in front of one eye, reaching up to tap her temple again and switch it over to a projection of the map Braz gifted to her. She doesn’t break from her stride, casually scanning over the map and its rudimentary scribbles that are meant to be the forest’s many twisting paths and Braz’s decades-old chicken scratch notes about where the best hunting grounds used to be, and she turns a corner toward the more close-pressed buildings of the Markets District.

She could easily take them down right here, right out in the open, except technically she did promise Braz she would stop physically assaulting Uӓdarian citizens that haven’t done anything to warrant it by Uӓdarian law, in broad daylight, for plenty of other Uӓdarian citizens to see.

As luck would have it, though, it is not broad daylight. The second of Uӓdar’s two suns set well over four hours ago. And as for being seen, there’s an alleyway just ahead that should keep everything that happens well out of sight.

Is it still a crime if there are no witnesses? Braz would likely think so.

But then again, Braz is not here, is he?

Nebula smirks and turns into the alleyway, which is really no more than a narrow space between a squat row of homes and what might have once been a business of some sort that has long since been abandoned. It’s hardly wide enough that she can fully stretch her arms to either side, hardly wide enough to accomodate the three trash cans sitting at its other end, and it is utterly devoid of life and completely shrouded in shadow.

Perfect.

Footsteps make their way toward the alleyway, hard rubber soles padding across concrete, and the very instant that Nebula catches sight of a shape in the opening between the two buildings, she lunges at it.

She grasps a fistful of her assailant’s jacket by the shoulder and yanks them roughly into the alleyway, and between one heartbeat and the next she’s already slammed them back-first into the wall with a hand braced against their chest and a blade tipped at their throat.

“Who are you?!” she shouts, blade pressed to skin. “Why are—?”

It’s then, mid-sentence, that Nebula realizes exactly whose carotid artery is pulsing beneath the sharpened metal of her dagger, exactly who gave no protest at all about being manhandled except for one startled squeak and is now standing carefully still with his eyes wide and his hands up in surrender.

She groans, rolling her eyes and sliding the weapon back into its sheath.

“What are you doing here?”

As she releases her hold on him, Kraglin lets out an oof and lands lightly on his feet, wincing and gingerly prodding at the spot where her blade touched his throat.

The drama queen, really. He’s not even bleeding.

“Kraglin. What are you doing here.”

He sputters for a moment, eyes wide. “Wha—? You were dodgin’ my calls!”

“Because I am busy,” she hisses, shoving at his arm, careful to pull back at the last second this time so she doesn’t bruise him too badly. Again. “You are not even supposed to be on this planet. Aren’t you in the middle of some…” she trails off, squinting as she thinks, “…  charity… mission? Of some kind?”

Kraglin pouts. “For real? ‘Charity mission’? Helpin’ rebuild a whole dang planet from scratch, is what I’m doin’,” he says, pulling out the lapels of his Ravager coat. “It’s important stuff, man. I told all you guys all about it ‘fore I left—”

“So why are you not still there? Did Nova Prime send you?”

At that, Kraglin has the audacity to look sheepish. He gives a nervous smile, his one metal tooth glinting, and says, “Uh… heh. Y’see, that’s the thing—”

“Nova Prime is unaware you’ve left, isn’t she?”

“I… Yeah. She is.”

Nebula snorts, shaking her head. “Important stuff, indeed.”

“Well, I ain’t heard from no one in like a whole day!” Kraglin defends, petulant and stuffing his hands into his pockets. “Pete tells me y’all are lookin’ into some weird forest to see if ya can find out about a bunch of missin’ people, and he says he’s gonna call again in a coupla hours, and you go and tell me everything ain’t alright over here and dodge all my calls for like half a dang day, so then I was gettin’ real worried and—”

“I get it.”

Nebula rolls her eyes, turning away from him. She gestures with a tilt of her head for him to follow, and he catches up at a light jog out of the alleyway.

“Everyone else is still in the forest,” she says, because now that he’s here, she may as well make sure he’s up to speed. “I have not been able to contact any of them, either.”

“Wha—? Really?” Kraglin asks, eyes bugging. “You ain’t heard a thing from ‘em?”

“Oh, I have heard plenty,” Nebula says, though that’s not entirely true. ‘Plenty’ would have included one of them happening to mention their exact location, or anything actually useful, but the point is there. “I hear them every time they use their communicators, but it doesn’t seem they can hear me.”

“How come?”

“If I knew that, I would have already fixed it,” Nebula all but snaps, but Kraglin takes her aggression in stride, as he usually tends to do. They continue on the long winding path back to where she’s parked the Benatar in the fishing villages, and she continues, “I have tried every way I know of to contact them. I have rewired my communications array into the Benatar’s, I have flown directly over the forest canopy and tried contacting them from there, I have tried upgrading my systems and found them to be in perfect functioning order, and still nothing.”

Kraglin chews on his cheek for a moment, then taps the communicator on his own ear. “Heya, Pete? You there?”

His voice bounces through the airwaves and comes through in Nebula’s communicator but, as expected, receives no answer. Nebula rolls her eyes. “If it was as simple as trying again, I would have solved this several times over by now.”

“Well,” Kraglin shrugs. “Ya ain’t tried my comm yet. Woulda felt kinda dumb not to try it once.”

She shakes her head. “It is infuriating. No matter what I do, I can hear them perfectly, and they cannot hear me.”

“What kinda stuff are they sayin’?”

Nebula sighs. She taps the panel on her left temple again, but this time she lets the records project several feet in front of her, the letters and numbers expanding wide enough that he can read it without inserting himself into her personal space.

“That last transmission was over an hour ago,” she tells him, pointing at the transcript of Rocket calling out for the rest of them. “And it has been over seven since I heard from anyone other than Rocket.”

“What happened to Rocket that they were all yellin’ for him? He sounds fine to me.”

“You think I know that?” Nebula asks, throwing a hand up and then waving at the projection again. “It doesn’t even sound like they know what happened to him.”

Kraglin tilts his head and shrugs as if to say you got me there, but his eyes remain glued to the holographic numbers. “Seven hours,” he mumbles. “Yeesh. Nothin’ else since then?”

“Nothing.”

“And, uh… You still ain’t got a clue what’s makin’ all those people disappear, huh? No clue at all?”

Nebula opens her mouth to snap at him again, to sneer and say yes, please, rub it in, but something in his tone stops her. In fact, it stops her in her tracks, so that Kraglin keeps walking a few steps before realizing he’s walking alone, and he spins around to regard her with wide eyes— wide, vaguely frightened, vaguely guilty eyes.

“Why,” she says at a low growl. “Do you?”

Kraglin gulps. He visibly gulps.

“Kraglin,” Nebula says, stalking toward him and closing the distance between them in two steps. “What do you know?”

His tongue darts out to wet his lips, and he nervously glances to his right and left before looking back at her. “I mean, I don’t know know, y’know? But uh, we— I was gonna say maybe we should talk over in the Benatar, a little more private—”

She grasps a fistful of his shirt and pulls him a couple of inches down, eliciting a peep of fright from him and forcing him to stoop so that he’s below her eye level.

“Listen very carefully to me. I have had a very long, very trying day. If you know something, you are going to tell me, right here and right now. You are going to spare no detail, you are going to tell me everything you know, and you are going to tell how you know it. Do you understand?”

Again, he gulps, wide eyes on hers.

“Okay,” Kraglin says, nodding and chewing on the inside of his cheek again. “Yeah, alright. I, uh— yeah. Okay. It ain’t a whole lot, though.”

“I’m all ears.”

“Right, uh… so, y’know how I was on Xandar?”

She regards him with a cool look that says, yes, keep talking, and he does.

“So, uh, ya can’t actually just up and leave when you’re in the middle of this rebuildin’ gig, y’know, so when y’all weren’t answerin’ I got worried, and I figured, well, hey, Nova’s the one what hired ‘em, right? She’s prolly got some idea what’s goin’ on, and even if she don’t, I’m gonna have to get her O.K. to fly off planet and go help, so I went on down to her office, and—”

“You spoke to Nova Prime,” Nebula follows. “What does she know?”

“No, see, that’s the thing, I didn’t. She ain’t got a whole lotta free time, y’know, what with the whole dang planet bein’ up in smoke, so I couldn’t get a meetin’ with her. I tried real hard, I even tried bribin’ the little fella she’s got for a secretary, y’know, but he wouldn’t take it. So then I get real upset, y’know, ‘cause I’m still real worried and Nova ain’t lettin’ me in to talk to her, so I, uh… I kinda broke in.”

Nebula raises her eyebrows.

“Wasn’t too hard,” Kraglin shrugs. “I’m pretty good at pickin’ locks, and the Nova Corps H.Q.’s got this nice fancy digital access kinda thing on their doors, but the windows still got the old fashioned kinda lock—”

“You broke in through a window.”

“… Yeah. I did. So, uh, so I’m heading up to where the big main office is, right, and I’m thinkin’ I’m gonna just ask for her O.K. to fly off planet at this point, ‘cause it was after you hung up on me, but when I get there she’s already talkin’ to somebody, like, on that big screen they take calls in on? And I wasn’t gonna listen in ‘cause that ain’t polite, but then the fella she was talkin’ to said something about the Guardians of the Galaxy, so—”

“What,” Nebula grinds out, tightening her grip on his collar, “did he say?”

“I’m gettin’ to that, ain’t I?” Kraglin asks, helplessly throwing his arms out to the side. Finally, reluctantly, Nebula releases his shirt, letting him stretch back up and shake out his shoulders. “He was mostly just complainin’ a whole bunch, said that Nova told him we was the kinda folks to shoot first and ask questions later—”

“Which is true—”

“Yeah, yeah, that’s what I was thinkin’, right? He said, uh…” Kraglin tips his head from side to side, thinking. “I ain’t got a recording or nothin’ like you’d’ve got, but he said something like, uh… He said, ‘You said they were gonna fix all this,’ and like, ‘They’re s’posed to shoot first and ask questions later but they ain’t done any shootin’ so far,’ and, uh, I mean, it sounded a whole lot like he knew who was causin’ all of the disappearin’—”

“He knew who was causing it?” Nebula repeats. “So it is a person. One person.”

“Yeah,” Kraglin nods. “Yeah, sure sounded like it. Kept talkin’ ‘bout the person responsible and whatnot.”

Nebula groans, shoving him again. “Idiot! You should have led with that!”

“Well, you were scarin’ me! Said spare no detail, got me all flustered,” Kraglin defends, then stuffs his hands in his pockets again. “So yeah, I hopped on an M ship and vamoosed on outta there. I know it ain’t much, but it’s something, ain’t it?”

“It is,” Nebula admits. “Who was the person Nova was talking to? We need to track him down.”

“I, uh— I didn’t catch a name.”

Nebula takes a breath as she massages the bridge of her nose, then slowly pulls her hand down her face. She’s supposed to be getting better at controlling her anger, at reducing her propensity for furious outbursts, and throttling Kraglin right here and now would surely ruin her good streak.

For a brief second, she honestly considers it anyway.

Deep breaths.

“What did he look like.”

“Oh,” Kraglin says, slumping. “Uh… I mean, I’d recognise him if I heard his voice, I bet, but I only saw his face for a second. Didn’t get a whole lotta detail. Bigwig kinda guy, dressed real nice—”

“His species, Kraglin.”

Kraglin pauses, thinks that over, and says, “Aakon?”

Nebula goes quiet and still for a moment, and she realizes very, very quickly that her attempts at remaining civil and level-headed are about to be rendered very, very moot.

“You are certain he was Aakon.”

“I mean, he looked it. Yella skin, no hair, that kinda thing.”

“… I am going to kill him,” Nebula says, abruptly turning on her heel and marching off in the direction of the Benatar. “I am going to track him down, and then I am going to force him to tell us where the others are, I am going to pry every answer I need from within his throat before I tear his intestines out through his colon and strangle him with them.”

Kraglin blanches, speed-walking to keep pace. “I, uh— I take it you know this unlucky guy?”

“I do.”

“And he’s…?”

“Dead is what he is,” Nebula scowls. “Or might as well be. Tells me it’s a pleasure to meet me, and ‘oh, I just want this person caught,’ when all this time he knew exactly who it was—”

“Gamora?”

She and Kraglin both stop dead in the middle of the walkway at the sound of Quill’s voice rattling through the staticky communications feed.

“Shit, Pete?” Kraglin asks, tapping his communicator. “Pete, can ya hear—?”

“He won’t be able to hear you,” Nebula tells him, voice carefully even, all thoughts of eviscerating Axzhaat nearly gone from her mind. She’s been maintaining a steady baseline of worry for the past sixteen hours, but now it truly spikes at the panicked note in Quill’s voice, the quiver at the end of Gamora’s name. Quill always has so many emotions that they leak through whenever he speaks, and now is no exception. “Why the hell is he calling for Gamora—”

“Peter?”

Nebula snaps her jaw shut. Kraglin meets her eyes, looking every bit as concerned as she is.

“Peter, please answer,” Gamora says, her voice calm as still water to the untrained ear. “Peter, Loki, one of you—”

“Gamora, Mantis, Groot, friggin’ anyone—”

“— answer right now—”

“— are you reading me?”

“They can’t hear each other neither, can they?” Kraglin asks, chewing on his bottom lip as the two of them start walking again, making their way toward the Benatar with renewed haste. They should be nearly there by now, just around the corner. “It ain’t just they can’t hear us, it’s they can’t hear nobody.”

Nebula, jaw clenched tight, only nods.

“Well, what the heck happened to ‘em? They get separated or—?”

“How the hell should I know?” Nebula snaps again. “We don’t know where they are and we don’t know what’s happened to them, and we don’t know why they can’t hear us, and we have no way of knowing until we find them, and we have no way of finding them until I track down that Aakon cretin and tear him limb from…”

She’s just turned a corner around one of the ramshackle little fishing huts and come only a few yards away from the Benatar’s entrance ramp.

And there, standing just at the top of the ramp and in the midst of frantically banging his fist on the door, is a very familiar figure.

“… limb.”

Oh, and Nebula has never been one to believe in such ridiculous things as fate or karmic balance, but maybe, just maybe, she thinks the universe might have finally decided to throw her one single scrap of good luck.

“Well,” she says, grinning as Axzhaat turns around to find her and Kraglin standing at the bottom of the ramp. “That saves time.”

“Oh! Oh, thank goodness,” Axzhaat breathes, sagging down with his hands on his knees. He’s panting like he’s just run across the entirety of Urunia to get here, his formal Uӓdarian robe blown around his legs at an odd angle that he doesn’t seem very concerned with fixing. He starts hurrying his way down the ramp toward them, already rambling, “Thank goodness, thank goodness I’ve caught you, please, you have to help, it’s my daughter, she— gahck!”

“Neb, wait—!”

But Nebula has already gotten a hold of Axzhaat by the back of his collar, twisting her hand at the wrist so that the fabric of his nice fancy Uӓdarian robe bunches and twists around her knuckles and chokes off half his airflow, and he still manages to gasp and sputter, “Wha— I was— I didn’t—” as she sweeps him off his feet and drags him, kicking and flailing, on board the Benatar.

“Neb, holy hell, ease up a little—!”

“Please— I don’t— if you— hrrghk!”

Nebula brings her free hand to the front of Axzhaat’s throat, thumb and forefinger pressed the fleshy points on either side of his trachea, just shy of enough pressure to prevent him from talking, and she releases his shirt and hikes him up against the Benatar’s interior wall right beside Drax’s giant potted plant that’s strategically hiding the hole she punched in the wall only a few hours ago.

Axzhaat wheezes and sputters, holding onto her wrist with both hands. He tries to kick at her to no avail, and when he gives up his shoes hardly brush the floor.

“Please— I—”

“Give me one good reason,” Nebula says, leaning in until they’re just about nose to nose, “that I should not carve you open right here—”

“I don’t—!”

“One. Good. Reason.”

“I don’t— know what you’re—”

“You lied to us!” Nebula shouts, shaking him. “You contacted Nova Prime, you hired us, you brought us here and did not tell us what we were walking into, and now I am asking you to give me just one single reason that you are still useful enough to maintain in one piece while I—”

“Neb!” Kraglin shouts, and it’s only because he grabs her by the upper arm that he manages to get her attention at all; she cuts a harsh glare at his wide-eyed panicked face, and he lets go right away, taking a step back. “Hey, take a breather, huh?”

“Take a—? Why? You’re defending this—”

“That ain’t him.”

Nebula freezes. “What?”

“That ain’t him,” Kraglin repeats, biting his lip like he feels guilty for being the one to tell her. “I told ya I’d know his voice, right? And I heard him talk, and that ain’t him.”

Nebula narrows her eyes and sends an uncertain glare toward Axzhaat, who’s beginning to turn an unhealthy shade of yellow-green and is hardly even trying to dislodge her grip, likely because he knows he can’t.

She releases him. He stumbles on the landing and immediately sinks to the floor, wheezing with one hand around his throat.

“I don’t— under—” he coughs, wheezing. “Please, I came here because my— my daughter, she’s— gone— missing, I can’t—”

Nebula ignores that, aside from tucking away the information for later, because really, it’s only one more victim in a list of well over forty at this point. She turns to Kraglin. “What the hell do you mean, that isn’t him?” she asks, pointing. “How is this not him?”

Kraglin turns his hands up helplessly, but Axzhaat speaks up again before he can answer.

“What do you mean, that— that isn’t him? Who—? Who isn’t me?”

“The person who hired us,” Nebula shouts, rounding on him. “The person who contacted Nova Prime and offered us all that money to find out what was causing all of these disappearances, the person who knew all along what was causing it, that wasn’t you?”

“Knew…?”

Axzhaat wheezes, eyes a bit bloodshot and watery and not directed at either her or Kraglin, but suddenly he looks entirely stricken by something that’s decidedly not his bruised windpipe. And, if Nebula’s instincts are correct, probably not his missing daughter, either.

“I…” Axzhaat shakes his head, mouth open. “I don’t… No, that doesn’t… We’re only funding the reward, or at least the majority of it. We didn’t hire you, the Nova Corps sent you. We never even knew you people were before this week, you have to believe me.”

Nebula crosses her arms. “Who’s we?”

Axzhaat’s lips press together in a thin line, his eyes wide. “I don’t—”

Nebula takes one menacing step toward him, and he cowers in on himself, his voice reduced to a squeak when he cries, “My son! It was… My son and I organized the reward, but he didn’t know who you people were, either! I swear! Why in the world would you think Axzhee has something to do with—?”

There’s a crackle of static from their communicators again. Nebula cuts him off with one raised hand, which is, evidently, all it takes to make him cease his incessant blubbering.

Kraglin doesn’t ask her why, which means he must have heard it too.

And then, not a second later:

“Hey, Gamora?”

“Aw, man, I don’t like that,” Kraglin murmurs. “He don’t sound good.”

And Nebula’s inclined to agree. Quill is essentially a hyperactive puppy on the best of days if you ask Nebula, too easily excitable and too easily cheered and too easily hurt, too, but Nebula is not quite sure she has ever heard him sound as… resigned as he does now.

“Groot? Mantis?”

Axzhaat asks, “What’s—?”

“Shh,” Nebula hisses, but surprisingly, Kraglin already beat her to it with a swift light kick to Axzhaat’s shin.

“I don’t know if you guys can hear me, but… look, we’re really in a bind here.”

There’s a pause, silent but for the static. Nebula holds her breath.

“Loki’s hurt,” Quill says, and Nebula hears Kraglin suck in a breath through his teeth. “He’s— guys, he’s hurt, and I can’t— I don’t know what to do to help him. I need help, okay, if any of you guys can hear me, if anybody can hear me, I don’t know if you can get to us somehow, but I could… I could really use some help here.”

Chapter Text

One thing’s for sure: Loki was not kidding about the “rather large number” of sleeping Godzilla monsters lying between them and this mystery cave they’re trying to get to.

Peter comes about this close to tripping over one of them, would have gone tumbling ass-over-teakettle after jabbing one of them awake with a toe to its ribs if not for Mantis. She must notice it at the last second, because she lets out the tiniest little peep of fright before snagging a fistful of Peter’s jacket and yanking him back.

“Woah,” is all he can say at first, dropping his voice to a whisper. The thing’s on the smaller side — that is to say, still friggin’ enormous — and it’s sleeping flat on its back, most of its long beefy scaly body hidden amongst the bushes and weeds. The next one, though, the one that’s sleeping about ten feet away, is not on the smaller side; it’s curled up like a housecat and puffing out great big growling snores so it looks to Peter like a dragon lounging on its hoard of gold.

If a bunch of dirt and leaves were gold, anyway.

“Thanks,” Peter whispers, taking a step back as Mantis releases his jacket. “Would’ve been lizard food.”

Groot murmurs, “I am Groot.”

“Yeah. Yeah, again,” Peter agrees, backing away on his tip-toes, carefully avoiding as many of the fallen twigs and leaves as he can. The rest of them, mostly already well behind him, follow suit until they’ve gotten a good fifteen or twenty yards of distance. Enough to feel safe-ish, so long as they keep their voices down.

Mantis asks in a hushed whisper, “Does this mean we are close?”

“It should,” Gamora answers, also at a whisper. She’s eyeing up the faintly snoring animal that Peter almost kicked awake, but then for confirmation she looks toward Loki, who up until now has been just about deadly quiet as they’ve trekked through the forest in search of this cave. “Are we?”

Loki directs a look straight ahead and says, by Peter’s count, the longest sentence he’s put together in the last twenty minutes.

“You tell me.”

Peter follows his gaze over the gently snoring creature in front of them, over the not-so-gently snoring creature further away, across a wide swath of forest that’s not so much a clearing as it is just a little less densely packed with trees then everywhere else has been, and, well, it’s not too hard to tell what he’s talking about.

There, on the other side of… eh, ballpark, twenty-some-odd more of those snoozing beasts, there’s a spot where the forest ground slopes up into a hillside, and the dirt and leaves and shrubs give way to jet black rock. It’s a spot that would be pretty tough to point out from this far away—

If it wasn’t for the flowers. It’s a bunch of the same bioluminescent flowers that are scattered here and there all over the forest, all different shapes and sizes sprouting from tree branches and casting their hazy bluish glow over everything around them, but there, ringing the cave like a beacon in the distance, it’s almost like…

“Did someone plant those?” Peter asks under his breath, tilting his head and squinting.

No one answers, probably because they’re a little too busy keeping an eye on the several hundred combined tons of predator in front of them, but either way, Peter figures the whole “someone lives here” theory just got a hell of a lot more plausible.

“Hey,” Peter says, just below a stage whisper. He half-turns and raises an eyebrow at Loki. “You check out that door again yet?”

Loki nods.

“And?”

“Still there,” Loki says, warily scanning over the crocodile things. “Still a door. Still much the same as the last time I saw it.”

“You didn’t poke your head inside or anything?”

And that, at least, finally gets Loki to address him with something other than half a glance or a distracted fragmented answer, and he goes with good old-fashioned bafflement instead. Getting that look from him is a specialty of Peter’s, really, no matter what kind of mood he’s in.

“Did I poke my head inside?”

“Yeah,” Peter shrugs. “We should probably know what we’re walking into here, man.”

“I am Groot.”

Peter nods, pointing his thumb at Groot. “Yeah, or you could just walk all the way through the door.”

“Oh, you’re absolutely right, I should give whomever we’re looking for a heart attack before we’ve even arrived on their doorstep. Wonderful idea, Quill, I’m certain they’ll be more inclined to let us in after I’ve frightened the living daylights out of them—”

“Uh, okay, if whomever—”

“Whoever—”

“—whoever or whomever, whatever, if they have a literal heart attack then they won’t exactly be able to stop us from coming in, so—”

“Yes, brilliant, and how do you propose we open the door if—”

“Perhaps,” Gamora cuts in, toneless and mid-eye-roll, “we should focus our efforts on getting to the door in the first place.”

Loki, with a pointed look at Peter, gestures at her like that’s what he was trying to say all along. Which it totally wasn’t, but whatever. Peter rolls his eyes and decides to drop it, instead leaning back and surveying the area.

“Yeah, alright, let’s circle around, uh… that way. C’mon.”

He leads them all in a careful wide arc to the right, keeping a solid distance between them and the sort-of-clearing where all those lizard things are sleeping, but not so far that they can’t still see them occasionally through the gaps in the trees.

The opening to the cave looms ahead in its ethereal blue glow the whole time, and it’s only when they start closing that distance that Peter realizes the cave is goddamn gigantic. Way bigger than it looked from far away, and plenty big enough, it seems, that any one of those creatures could hop right on in if they felt like it.

Peter nudges Gamora’s side, more for the sake of contact than to actually get her attention.

“Got that blaster?”

She nods, pulling the rigged blaster-made-bomb out of her belt, clearly already scoping out where she might be able to throw it.

The cave’s something like thirty yards away when, at Gamora’s signal, they all stop where they’re at and duck for cover. Peter quickly angles himself behind a tree, Mantis and Groot crouch down behind all the shrubs, and Loki drops to one knee. Gamora stands as tall as ever, eyeing the far trees with narrowed eyes, muscles tensing and releasing in her forearm as she thoughtfully drums her fingers along the edge of the rigged bomb.

Once she’s found her target, she glances down at the rest of them, then at the cave.

“Be ready to run,” she says, with one last particularly sharp look in Peter’s direction.

Peter offers a thumbs up and what he hopes is a reassuring smile. By now his leg feels almost as good as new, he’s pretty sure he could pull off a half-decent sprint if he had to.

Gamora, luckily, takes his thumbs up without argument. She nods once, winds back her arm to throw, and—

And the blaster goes flying so fast it’s hard to see.

One second it’s sitting right there in her hand, the next it’s damn near a football field away and obliterating a leafy tree branch without stopping like a goddamn cannonball, and the second after that, there’s the crackle of fracturing metal and the great woosh of displaced air as it smacks into a tree trunk and the whole thing goes up in a roiling ball of fire— the tree included. The actual pop of the explosion itself is a little anticlimactic, but it is, apparently, plenty loud enough for their needs.

The reaction is almost immediate. There’s a startled half-shriek half-growl from one of the creatures, then the low rumble of several of them all stirring out of sleep at once, and then the very ground beneath their feet seems to shake as every single one of them starts shrieking and roaring and stampeding in the direction of the offending noise.

Damn things could cause an earthquake if they put their backs into it, Peter thinks.

But he doesn’t have much time to think about that, or anything, since he and Gamora and everybody are already tearing through the forest in the direction of the cave in the quietest all-out sprint they can possibly manage. Mantis stealthily ducks and weaves around the trees, Groot quick at her heels, Loki not three steps behind, while Gamora lightly shoves at Peter’s back and, predictably, insists on bringing up the rear to protect the rest of them.

The fire that was once his second favorite blaster is now a dull orange sunspot in his peripheral, already winding down by the time Mantis slides into the great yawning opening of the cave like a baseball player on Earth sliding into home plate.

Groot hops in after her, and—

—and there’s a roar from behind that splits Peter’s brain in half, tears right through him from ear to ear because it’s right goddamn behind him—

Someone grabs him by the upper arm and tugs, hard, throwing him all off kilter and yanking him forcibly into the cave quicker than he could ever have hoped to run under his own power, and before he even knows what’s happened he gets shoved back-first into a rocky cave wall with dots swirling in his vision.

The vice grip on his arm releases, and Loki hurriedly ushers Gamora in front of him too so that all four of them are deeper in the cave than he is, and over Loki’s shoulder Peter sees it, he sees the creature that must have spotted them and almost went and took Peter’s head off his shoulders except now it’s about to do the same thing to Loki—

With a screech, the thing just about eclipses the whole cave opening as it comes barreling in after them, and Loki cringes like he’s bracing for a hit, eyes scrunched shut, arms thrown out to the side like he’s turning himself into a human shield. Unbidden, Peter has a quick flash of memory from first or second grade, the lesson about tornado safety and Miss O’Hara telling them about a tornado ripping through Missouri and some guy hiding his kids in a bathtub, grabbing either side to shield them before the tornado ripped the whole second floor up and sent them all spinning into the sky anyway, and Peter thinks for sure that the creature’s about to bowl straight through them all—

But it stops.

It slows from a full-on sprint to a trot, and then it just… It stops, entirely. Apparently of its own accord. Its slitted pupils are blown so wide in the dim light of the cave that the thing’s eyes almost seem black, but either way, Peter is pretty damn sure those eyes aren’t focused on any of them.

The creature tilts its head like a confused dog, pawing cautiously at the ground less than a foot from Loki’s boots. It sniffs at the air, its flaring crocodile nostrils and flicking tongue and teeth no more than a hair’s breadth from Loki’s shoulder.

Loki gulps, tense from the tips of his fingers down to the tips of his toes, eyes still shut. The usually searing light of his magic is nothing but a hazy greenish afterglow that Peter may or may not be imagining anyway. There’s a bead of sweat trailing down his temple, and he’s shaking just a tiny bit, and as the creature growls low in its chest and swivels its head around, searching, Loki lets out a measured breath and opens his eyes. He’s looking directly at Mantis.

He nods in the direction of the creature’s head looming over his shoulder, one quick jerky movement, and some kind of wordless conversation seems to pass between the two of them before Mantis carefully tip-toes toward him, one quivering hand extended in front of her.

She whispers sleep at the very same instant that her palm makes contact with the thing’s nose.

Its legs buckle. It collapses to the ground with a dull fuh-whump of several tons of flesh hitting stone, already snoring.

Loki drops his arms to his sides with a relieved sigh.

“Well,” Loki breathes, lilting to the side and bracing himself with one hand against the cave wall, “that went wonderfully.”

“I am Groot.”

“I was…” Loki starts to say, then huffs like he’s trying to catch his breath, “… being facetious, Groot.”

Outside, more of those creatures are causing a chaotic mess of noise that’s just barely muffled over the distance. Seems this sleeping beauty is the only one that spotted them while all the others were too caught up in investigating the explosion. Peter makes a face at it, watching its hind legs twitch in its sleep, watching as it bares its teeth with each snoring inhale like it’s dreaming about tearing Peter’s only remaining good leg to shreds.

Peter’s other leg, the bad one, has been just about the last thing on his mind, let alone the pint or so of blood he’s probably still missing. But now after that brief stint of hauling ass it’s like the injury’s trying to make itself heard again, like the low warning pulse above his knee is saying, hey, asshole, did you forget about me or what?

He shakes it off.

“Okay. So, which way are we going?” he asks, eyeing Loki with what he hopes is well-concealed concern.

It must be, since Loki doesn’t comment on it. With a subtle wince, Loki lifts away from the wall and gestures for the rest of them to follow as he makes his way toward the back of the cave, one ginger step at a time.

The cave is pretty well lit, just like he told them it would be, with more of those flowers dotting the rocky walls and sprouting in long swirling lines along the cavernous ceiling, creeping back like spiders huddled in the spaces between dripping stalactites.

Jesus, this place gives him the creeps just as much as the forest did.

“Hey, Groot,” Peter says, glancing over his shoulder as they make their way down the tunnel, “you want the Zune again, bud?”

Groot has long since given it back to him, once it became clear that the creepiness of the forest wasn’t gonna be drowned out with something as simple as a pair of headphones, and apparently he thinks the same of the cave, too, since he shakes his head and says, “I am Groot.”

“‘Kay. Offer’s there, though, if you change your mind.”

“I am Groot.”

“No problem, kiddo.”

They keep on their merry way, going deeper and deeper into the cave. Travelling further away from the outside doesn’t make it get any darker in here; if anything, the further they walk in their single-file line — Loki leading the way, then Peter, then Mantis, Groot, and Gamora — the more condensed those flowers seem to get, bathing the tunnel in their soft blue glow, reflected crystal clear in the little stagnant puddles on the tunnel floor until someone’s boot sends it into a ripple.

“Okay, for real, someone totally planted some of these,” Peter murmurs, stretching up to trail his fingers over one of them. It's velvety, a little slimy, colder than he was expecting.

“I am Groot.”

“Yeah,” Peter shrugs. “Makes sense if someone lives here, I guess. But the whole damn cave? That’s a hell of a lot of landscaping effort for… what, a bunch of giant lizards? Who else is gonna see it?”

Behind him, Mantis tries to hop up to touch one herself. She misses by an inch.

“Perhaps these flowers are how this… person navigates the tunnel,” Gamora offers. “Whoever they are.”

“That was my thinking as well,” Loki says, keeping his voice low.

And Peter honestly can’t tell if Loki’s trailing a hand along the cave wall to navigate or if he’s using the wall’s support to keep upright, but he knows better by now than to ask, again, if Loki’s okay.

Instead he asks, “Yeah?”

“The tunnel branches off… here,” Loki says as they pass through an intersection where the tunnel takes a sharp right and an even sharper left, but only the tunnel straight ahead is lit with these flowers. “Here, and in several other places. It’s essentially a labyrinth. The flowers are the only reason I kept walking this way the first time.”

“So it is a path,” Mantis says.

Loki nods. “So it would seem.”

That makes some sense, Peter figures, but outside of giving them something to see by and preventing them from smacking face first into the cave walls, it doesn’t do all that much for them. Doesn’t explain who lives here. Doesn’t explain why they live out here in the middle of nowhere, in a forest infested with man-eating monsters.

For a moment, Peter considers prodding Loki into investigating the door again and actually sticking his head through it to see who they’re gonna be dealing with, but one look at Loki is enough to throw that idea right out the window.

Yeah. He is totally using the wall for support. Crap.

So that nixes the whole asking him to use more magic thing, but hell, at least they’re relatively out of the thick of it now, in a creepy quiet cave instead of a creepy quiet forest. They’re no longer exposed out in the open and surrounded by giant predators and maybe-ghosts, which is good, because out there, Peter’s not sure how he would’ve even started to convince Loki to take it easy.

In here, he doesn’t really have to. All they’re doing is walking, anyway.

He starts humming, mostly to fill up the silence and drown out the sound of dripping stalactites, but also because he really can’t help it.

It’s not until he gets about two lines into Lake Shore Drive, though, that he realizes why it popped into his head in the first place.

“Rags on up to riches, fifteen minutes you can fly,” he sings under his breath, “pretty blue lights along the way, help you right on by…”

“Really,” Loki says, shooting him a look over his shoulder.

Peter shrugs. “Sue me, man. I sing when I get nervous. And hey, the song’s about blue lights, and, you know.” He waves vaguely at the flowers. “Blue lights. When in Rome. Or… when in a… creepy blue-lit cave, I guess.”

“You—” Loki starts to say, then stops walking long enough so that he and Peter end up side-by-side, so that he can send Peter another one of those baffled looks. “You do know that song is not actually about blue lights, don’t you?”

Peter cocks his head to the side. “Huh?”

“Really?” Gamora asks, sounding genuinely curious.

“It’s about a hallucinogenic drug on Earth,” Loki says, raising an eyebrow at Peter before he keeps walking. “How do you of all people not know that?”

“Uh.” Peter frowns. “Cause it’s not? That doesn’t even make sense, dude. It’s about driving on a road on Earth called—”

“Lake Shore Drive,” Loki nods, with either a deadly serious look on his face or own of his best poker faces, it’s always hard to tell. “LSD. That’s the name of a hallucinogenic drug on Earth.”

Peter scoffs. “Okay, dude, you’re not even from Earth, pretty sure I’d know better than you.”

“One would think so,” Loki agrees, shrugging as they pass through yet another intersection of tunnels, bearing to the left to keep going along the most well lit path, “and yet here we are.”

“And besides,” Peter says, ignoring that, “I am so not taking music opinions from the guy that hates the Piña Colada Song.”

“I am Groot,” Groot quietly agrees.

Loki, predictably, throws his hands up. “It’s a terrible song!” 

“I am Groot!”

“I think it is a beautiful song,” Mantis says, despite the fact that they all know exactly where this argument is heading since they’ve had it about a hundred times already. Usually with lots of alcohol involved.

For a second, though, Peter does worry that Loki’s exhaustion and the lingering effects of his sour mood are gonna put a damper on it, but it seems arguing with them is something that he always has the energy for, no matter how badly he’s been knocked off his axis. He makes a face like he just cannot believe he has to go through this again, and he shakes his head.

“Two lovers who are so tired of each other that they seek someone else out in secret, and not only do they each seek someone else out behind the other’s back, but then they never even find the person they were looking for, after all that trouble,” Loki says, essentially repeating verbatim the same argument he’s made before, like he’s arguing on autopilot, but Peter figures he’ll take even that over the stony silence.

“I am Groot.”

“It is not beautiful, it’s tragic.”

“But they do find the person they were looking for,” Mantis says. “They find each other.”

“Which is not the person they were looking for,” Loki insists. “That is, in fact, precisely the only person each of them was certain they no longer wanted.”

“Dude, how many times do we have to go over this?” Peter asks. “It’s about love!”

“It’s about falling out of love. Very different, much less fun.”

“No, no, no, come on, it’s about how you can be with someone for so long that you think there’s nothing new to learn about them, but there always is! It’s… you know, about hope. Reigniting love.”

“It’s asinine.”

Peter scoffs. “Whatever that means. Besides, I totally caught you humming to it last week.”

“I can second that,” Gamora says.

Groot nods. “I am Groot.”

“I was not—!”

He’s interrupted halfway through his denial, though, by a tremor of the ground beneath their feet.

And then there’s the shrill screeeeeeech from behind, echoing and bouncing oddly along the tunnel walls on its way toward them.

They all turn, watching the tunnel from which they’ve just come with wary eyes.

“They seem to know we’re here,” Gamora says.

“You think so?” Peter whispers, backing up a bit. “How?”

She shrugs. “They could have heard us. Or smelled us. We have no idea what these creatures’ senses are like.”

Mantis adds, “And if they do know we are here—”

“— they’re probably not too happy about us sneaking around,” Peter finishes for her.

As if on queue, another shriek emanates from way up the tunnel, followed by the sound of a bunch of great thudding rapid footfalls against the rocky cave floor. This time, when the cave rumbles, Peter distinctly sees one of the puddles of water at their feet give a ripple like someone’s dropped a rock into it.

He backs up another step.

“They are getting closer,” Mantis says, something determined in her voice as she steps around Groot and Gamora to bring herself to the back of the line, her back to the rest of them. She’s got her hands held in front of her, ready to defend. “I can—”

But Loki has already weaved around them, shoving Peter further into the tunnel with one hand and grabbing Mantis’ arm with the other.

“Let’s go,” Loki hisses, tugging her along before he releases his hold and jogs back up to the front of the line.

“But—”

“The tunnel gets too small for them further up ahead anyway,” Loki cuts Mantis off. “Let’s go!”

The rest of them absolutely do not need to be told twice, especially not when one of the creatures roars loud enough to send not only the cave floor but every inch of the tunnel shaking, dislodging little bits of rock from the ceiling to clack on the floor and plunk into the puddles they’re racing through.

The tunnel is getting smaller, but Peter can’t help feeling like it’s not getting small enough fast enough. The ceiling’s still a good two feet above his head, maybe a foot and a half, high enough that one of those smaller creatures could easily wriggle its way through if it was determined enough.

And no sooner has that thought crossed his mind than he looks over his shoulder and sees that one of them actually is coming through. He catches sight of its snout and its teeth before he turns forward and keeps on running.

The thing’s gaining on them, though. No doubt about it.

“Uh,” Peter says, breathless and running as fast as he can through the renewed throbbing in his leg.

That’s it, his injury seems to be telling him, that’s what did this the first time, so you better get the hell away from it, asshole!

“Loki—?”

“Keep moving,” Loki insists, dashing over flickering blue-lit puddles like his life depends on it.

Which, well. Duh.

“How much further?!” Gamora shouts from somewhere behind them, barely making her voice heard over the ear piercing screech of the creature chasing them and the clamor of its claws on the rocks.

Loki doesn’t get a chance to answer, though, because just when Peter is absolutely goddamn certain that the creature is gonna close in on them and they’re all about to become a five course lizard food buffet, the tunnel lurches hard enough that they all nearly lose their footing.

At the same instant, there’s the sound of crumbling and crashing and the shattering of rock, and the creature’s shrieking somehow gets even goddamn louder.

The second he looks over his shoulder, Peter figures out why.

“… Huh.”

His voice is completely drowned out, because the creature’s finally gotten itself stuck in the slowly shrinking width of the tunnel, and it is really friggin’ pissed about it. It opens its jaws wide and snaps at the empty air in front of it, thrusts its back up into the rocky tunnel ceiling in a fruitless effort to widen its path, scrabbles and scratches with its claws on the rocky ground in front of it.

“Son of a bitch,” Peter says, turning to look at Loki. “You were right, the tunnel does get too small for ‘em.”

The last few words are probably lost to everybody else as the creature lets out yet another screech, but he figures Loki got the point.

Again the ground lurches beneath them, and it's coupled with a crackle of rock as the creature bucks and shrieks and claws at the ground and snaps its jaws, but it doesn’t look like it’s breaking out of the bind it’s gotten itself in any time soon. Much less does it look like it’s gonna be able to do that and go even further into the tunnel, which is now dwindling down to the point that Peter’s gonna have to watch and make sure he doesn’t hit his head.

“Okay, cool,” he says, “guess we should get—”

Another shriek, another crackle of splitting rock, and Peter looks up just in time to realize, with quickly dawning horror, that the creature’s efforts to smash itself against the tunnel walls are not quite as fruitless as they seemed to be.

“Oh,” Peter says without meaning to, his heart sinking as he watches a fault line split along the length of the tunnel ceiling. “Crap.”

What happens next happens so quickly that Peter only has time to register three things:

One, part of the tunnel is about to collapse.

Two, it is not the part of the tunnel directly above them. He has no idea how he knows that, something about the way the fault line splits or where the rocks are chipping away from the ceiling to plunk onto the tunnel floor or some ingrained instinct of inference that he does not have the time to pick apart, but however the hell he knows, he knows.

Three, Loki is about ten yards ahead of the rest of them, right smack in the place where Peter can see the whole place coming down, and they are so far underground at this point that it’d be a massive amount of rock and dirt collapsing down on top of him.

Plenty to hurt even an Asgardian.

Plenty to kill even an Asgardian.

It’s a split second decision, but really, it’s not a decision at all. Peter drives his boots into the tunnel floor and sprints forward with everything he’s got in him, closes the distance between them in three long strides, and he throws his shoulder into Loki’s midsection and barrels straight through him.

Loki might make a sound — of shock, anger, fear, hell if Peter knows — but he can barely hear it at all over the creature slamming into the rocks and still braying its pissed off shrieks.

And, after a second, even that’s drowned out by the deafening roar of falling rock.

Well, guess that’s it, Peter has time to think in that second before the rocks come down, certain that it’s all about to come hammering right over him and Loki, squashing the two of them like a couple of bugs under a boot.

But although the sound of it pounds straight through him and rattles his teeth and gives him one hell of a headache, the collapsing tunnel does not come down on top of him. In the few seconds while he waits, catching his breath, for his ears to stop ringing and for the dust to clear, he wiggles his fingers and toes and finds every limb whole and accounted for. His leg is throbbing something fierce and his shoulder’s probably bruised to hell now, too, but that’s alright. He can deal. He pats Loki on the stomach and gets a groan in response, so he’s pretty much accounted for, too.

When the dust does clear, though, and Peter turns to look in the direction of Gamora and Mantis and Groot—

His heart sinks all over again.

It’s all blocked up. All of it.

Where there was once a six-by-six foot tunnel leading from here all the way out of these caves, where there was once a ten ton reptile screaming and scrabbling against the tunnel floor to get to them, where there was once Gamora and Mantis and Groot—

Now it’s nothing but a pile of rock spanning from the floor to the ceiling.

Peter scrambles to his feet, already yelling for them.

“Gamora!”

He stumbles to the imposing wall of rock, automatically searching for a weak point first with his eyes and then, failing that, with his hands.

“Mantis!” Peter shouts as loud as his lungs will allow, panic-stricken despite knowing that he’s never gonna figure out a way to get to them if he doesn’t calm the hell down and think. A piece of rock comes tumbling down from the ceiling, skittering along the pile until it’s at his feet, but that’s the only sound that meets his ears. “Groot!”

Nothing. Not a peep.

Christ, he can’t even hear Godzilla’s record-breaking high-decibel screeches anymore.

“GAMORA!” Peter screams, knowing it’s gonna screw up his throat and not caring one bit. “Mantis, Groot, COME ON!”

He smacks the side of his fist against the rocks even though it’s not gonna accomplish anything, and then he plants both hands on the wall and forces himself to breathe, to think.

“Okay,” he says, nonsensically, pulling in another breath. “Okay.”

With one more controlled breath so that his pulse is finally only beating like a pair of bongos in his throat rather than beating all through his brain and making his head spin and his vision blur, Peter steps back from the wall.

Okay.

He tries the comms.

“Gamora?” he asks, trying not to notice how much his voice is shaking. Presumably, they’re all on the other side of this one stupid goddamn wall of rocks, and logically, they could be as unhurt as Peter and Loki are, but that’s only could, they could be unhurt, and that’s not stopping him from thinking, What if more of the tunnel came down? What if Godzilla finally broke through the tunnel and got to them? What if, what if, what if?

“Gamora, Groot, Mantis, friggin’ anyone, are you reading me?”

Nothing. Course he was expecting that much, but it would have been dumb not to try. He drops the connection with a sigh.

Okay, then. Plan B.

“So, uh, Loki? I know you’re… I know you’re kind of beat, but what do you say, you think you’ve got enough juice left in you for…”

Peter turns around—

—and it’s like all the wind got knocked out of him again, all the air pulled out of his lungs.

“… a teleport, shit, Loki!”

Peter skids to his knees at Loki’s side with all the grace of a staggering bull, hands hovering for a second, unsure.

“Shit, shit, shitshitshit—”

Because Loki hasn’t said a word this whole time, and now it’s painfully obvious why he’s been so quiet. He’s lying right where Peter left him, right where he football-tackled him into the ground, and he’s not moving and his eyes are closed and there’s a bleeding gash in his temple—

“Loki, come on, man, say something,” Peter begs, grabbing ahold of him by the front of the leather armor thing he’s always wearing.

When the hell did he get hit? Did that happen with the collapse? It must have, right? There’s fallen rocks piled all over the friggin’ place now, and Peter hadn’t even given that a second thought until—

“Loki?”

The only answer he gets is another low groan, half a wince. Peter shakes him by the collar, then freezes, because are you supposed to move somebody with a head injury?

Shit.

“Okay, if you can hear me, give me something, alright? Open your eyes, tell me off for being a moron, anything, man,” Peter says, shakily letting go of Loki’s collar to lay a hand on his cheek instead. He gives him as gentle a pat as he can manage, then another firmer one.

And finally, finally, Loki cracks an eye open.

“Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey!” Peter says, gently patting his cheek again. “There he is. C’mon, dude, up and at ‘em.”

Loki’s entire face is contorted in a mask of dazed pain. He cracks open the other eye, both of them bloodshot and unfocused and sweeping over the ceiling of the tunnel without, apparently, actually seeing anything. Eventually his eyes have no choice but to center on the only moving thing in front of him, which just so happens to be Peter, and there’s a second or two in which his brow furrows. For that brief moment, there is not a hint of recognition in his face whatsoever.

And then that lack of recognition morphs into something entirely unexpected— true, unbridled, panicked fear.

“Hey, what’s—?”

Another flash-bang grenade blast of magic cuts him off, sends him skidding back along the tunnel floor and tripping back over onto his ass, his hair blown all over the place by a gust of wind that’s absolutely goddamn freezing.

“Woah, woah, woah! Relax!” Peter shouts as the magic dies down, his hands up in surrender. That was a lot less than what Loki’s usually capable of, but hell if he wants to provoke him into doing it again. “It’s me, dude, relax!”

By now Loki’s already scrambled away and pressed his back to the opposite wall of the tunnel, about as far from Peter as he can possibly get without getting up and running. He’s got one hand extended as if to keep Peter at bay, but his wild, panicked eyes stay centered on him until finally there’s at least a flicker of recognition in them.

Recognition, and something else Peter can’t pinpoint.

“… Quill?”

“Yeah,” Peter breathes, frantically nodding. “Yeah, it’s me.”

Loki doesn’t seem particularly comforted by that, mostly just looks terrified and still a little bit dazed, but at least he’s not attacking anymore. His eyes drift from Peter to slowly and distantly take in their new surroundings.

The gash in his temple is sluggishly oozing blood in a trickle down the side of his face.

“Hey,” Peter says, gentle as ever, slowly making to get to his feet, “I’m gonna—”

“Stay back,” Loki croaks at him right away, his eyes on Peter again, and out of pure shock Peter falls back onto his ass again.

“What? Why would—? The hell you mean, stay back? I’m not staying over here, man, you’re hurt—”

“I said stay back,” Loki repeats, hand still outstretched and shaking. “I don’t— I can’t—”

“Hey, hey, hey, it’s okay,” Peter says, raising his hands in surrender again. “It’s just me, remember?”

He tries again to come forward, fumbling to get his legs under him, but Loki practically hisses at him until Peter freezes in a half crouch, his good knee on the ground. Under the subdued bluish light of the bioluminescent flowers further down the tunnel — the ones that didn’t get smashed to a pulp by this end of the place collapsing — it’s hard to tell whether Loki’s outstretched fingertips are glowing with magic or not, at least not until Peter feels the air dip down another few degrees and the hairs at the back of his neck stand on end.

“I mean it, Quill,” Loki tells him, his voice hollow and horrified. “Stay where you are, I can’t— I don’t know whether…” He gulps. “I can’t. Just— stay there.”

“Dude, breathe, alright?”

The picture he’s putting together from Loki’s panic is starting to get a little clearer. Maybe he’s not totally in control of his magic, maybe he’s afraid he’s gonna lash out again and actually hurt Peter without meaning to. That’d make some sense.

“Deep breaths, man. It’s alright. It’s cool, I trust you—”

“I don’t.”

And that… well, that throws Peter for a loop. He tilts his head, frowning. “You don’t trust you, or you don’t trust me?”

Loki doesn’t answer that question, which, well, doesn’t that kinda answer the question? Peter, again, squashes down the reflexive hurt at that, because Loki’s looking too busy with terror to bother with tact, his hand still outstretched and his fingers trembling worse than the rest of him. He looks toward the crumbling wall of rock to his right and Peter’s left, and he asks, “Where—? Where are the others?”

“I don’t know,” Peter admits, albeit reluctantly. He sees the resigned clench of Loki’s jaw when he says it, because Loki’s gotta be just as tired of losing people in this place as Peter is. “They’re probably over on the other side of—” he gestures with a flailing wave at the rocks— “all that, but I don’t know, man. They’re not answering.”

Again, he tries to come forward, but again Loki hisses, “For the last time, stay there.”

Peter falls back, frowning, and his eyes go up to the painful looking gash that’s still leaking blood in a slow line down toward Loki’s neck. That really can’t be good.

“Man, I get it,” Peter says, even though he’s not totally sure he does, “but I gotta take a look at that.”

He points, hoping Loki gets his meaning. Does he even know he’s bleeding? He must know he’s bleeding, right? Can’t he feel that?

“I have to take a look at it, okay? It’s okay, I’m not gonna hurt you, and you’re not gonna hurt me—”

“You can’t promise that—”

“Yeah, I can!” Peter finally yells, quickly losing his patience right along with the battle to keep his voice gentle. Sue him, he’s stressed the hell out, and his ability to keep a level head started dwindling about two serious injuries and a collapsed cave ago.

Loki’s unconvinced. “You cannot—”

“No, actually, I totally can, dude! I’m not gonna hurt you and you’re not gonna hurt me, and I know that, okay—”

“Oh, is that—”

“Yeah,” Peter cuts him off, throwing his hands up, because he can hear that tone, the condescending tone Loki gets when he’s on the defensive and really looking to make his words bite. “Yeah, that is so. And you wanna know why? Because, news-friggin’-flash, we’re family, okay? And— do not give me that look, asshole, we are.”

“Quill—”

“No, don’t Quill me, I’m not— ugh, God, we don’t have time for this but apparently we’re friggin’ doin’ it anyway,” Peter complains, grinding his teeth for a second. “Okay. Look. I don’t care about your, like, tough guy lone cowboy act or whatever—”

“My what—”

“—and I don’t care if you got it in your head somehow that we’re not family, or, like, that family’s just whoever you’re blood related to, man, because it’s not!” Peter shouts, gesticulating more and more wildly as he gets more frustrated. His Ravager accent starts cropping up more, too, but he is so beyond caring by now. “It’s not! Not to me, not to friggin’ any of us, and sayin’ anythin’ otherwise is enough to actually piss me right the hell off, ‘cause then that means you’re out here sayin’ Mantis ain’t my family, or Gamora’s not, or Drax or Rocket or Groot or Krag or Nebula, and— I mean, what, you gonna go ahead and tell Gamora you think her and Nebula ain’t family? Or better yet, you wanna tell Nebula that and get your damn face kicked in? Or maybe you’re gonna sit here and lie through your goddamn teeth and tell me you and Thor ain’t family, either, huh? That it? ‘Cause I know that’s a load of steaming bullshit, man.”

By now Loki has set his jaw and looked away, glaring at some vague point over Peter’s shoulder, but Peter is not goddamn done.

“It’s not— it doesn’t matter, man, none of it! Family’s whoever’s got your back, okay, it’s… It’s Mantis screamin’ her damn head off at the ghost of my father ‘cause he said something shitty about me, it’s Drax packin’ enough to feed everybody without thinkin’ twice about it, it’s me purposely taking the Quadrant through them low-intensity electrical clouds on the outskirts of asteroid belts ‘cause I know you sleep better when there’s a bit of thunder rattlin’ the—”

“That’s not—”

“If you say that’s not the same, I swear to God I’m gonna give you a matching lump on the other side of your thick goddamn skull,” Peter cuts him off, watching with more than a little satisfaction as Loki’s mouth snaps shut. He’s still revved up, though, so he throws his hands up again. “I mean, come on, man, you think you’re friggin’ exempt or something? You think it don’t count when it’s you?”

Loki closes his eyes. “Quill—”

“No, I’m not hearing it, dude. Seriously, you damn near bowled over Nebula tryin’ to get to Mantis’ room the night she had that nightmare, same as the rest of us. And you let her touch you sometimes even though you friggin’ hate anybody knowin’ what you’re feeling, and you’re always helping teach Groot stuff he doesn’t get, and you always act like you don’t give a crap about Drax but you jumped right the hell up when you thought he mighta gotten hurt, and you’ve been working your ass off tryin’ to find him and Rocket, and— oh, yeah!” Peter shouts, his voice dripping with sarcasm, like this just occurred to him. “You spent who friggin’ knows how long reading up on healing magic just in case you’d have to use it on one of us!”

Loki’s eyes widen just a bit, just for half a second, but Peter catches it.

“Yeah,” Peter says. “I’m not a total moron. Drax told me you said you didn’t know how to heal people, and then you start hanging out with a bunch of people that are a hell of lot less durable than the people you’re used to hangin’ around with, and then you got some ancient-ass textbook on you twenty-four-seven, and then two months later you pull this—” he gestures at his own leg, where the injury’s mostly healed but still plenty visible, what with the torn and bloodstained denim of his jeans— “out of your ass like it’s no big deal. Wasn’t too tough to put two and two together.”

Peter huffs, loudly, running both hands through his hair and then dragging them over his face.

“Now will you please let me make sure you’re not gonna drop dead of a friggin’ aneurysm or something?”

Again Loki’s jaw tightens. He’s still not looking at Peter, hasn’t been looking at him at all since about halfway through his rant, but he does move his head down and up in a single barely recognizable nod.

“Thank you,” Peter mutters, shaking his head as he finally gets up and closes the distance between them. He nudges Loki’s legs aside so he can kneel down directly in front of him, bringing Loki’s injury right into his line of sight. “It’s like pulling friggin’ teeth sometimes, I swear—”

“Quill—”

“Nope, you shut up, I’m still pissed off,” Peter says, even as he gently moves some of Loki’s hair out of the way and hisses in sympathy when he gets a good look at the wound.

Must have been a good hunk of rock that hit him real hard to have broken his stupidly strong sort-of-Asgardian skin in the first place, and it really did a number on him. It occurs to Peter that maybe some of Loki’s superhuman durability goes down when he’s used up too much of his magic, or when he’s too tired, but that’s not really important to figure out right now. Just a theory, and one he’s definitely gonna tuck away and ask for confirmation on later.

What really matters is the actual wound. It looks nasty, but manageable. Doesn’t look like it’s really bleeding too much anymore at least, but he’ll have to clean it up first to be sure.

“Quill—”

“Pretty sure I said stop talking, man—”

“— I don’t think I’m going to be conscious for much longer.”

Peter freezes. “I’m sorry, what?”

“I said I don’t—”

“Yeah, no, I heard you,” Peter cuts him off, because Loki’s voice is skewing slightly to the less coherent side, his words slurring just a bit. Peter leans back and gets one hand on the side of Loki’s neck, keeping him upright, and snaps the fingers of his free hand in front of Loki’s face until his eyes focus.

And Peter has absolutely no clue how much his already very limited medical knowledge is relevant when it comes to Asgardian-but-actually-Frost-Giant anatomy, but he tries anyway. He eyes up Loki’s pupils until he’s certain they’re the same size, and then:

“How many fingers am I holding up, man?”

Loki’s brows knit together for half a second before he winces at the movement, and he relents, “Two.”

“Cool. What’s my name?”

“Quill.”

“The whole thing, dude.”

Loki huffs, and annoyance somehow still shines through in his tone despite the half-asleep quality to it when he says, “Peter Quill.”

“What planet are we on?”

“What... the hell kind of—?”

“Answer. The question. Asshole.”

Another huff. “Uӓdar.”

“Thank you, and the city we were in last?”

“Urunia.”

“Okay,” Peter says, sitting back on his heels. “Okay. Cool. Your brain didn’t get knocked around too much, I guess. So, uh… talk to me, why do you think you’re gonna pass out?”

Loki gulps, and his next blink is a little too slow for comfort. “I’m… tired?”

“You said that like a question.”

“I’m tired.”

“Okay, sure, you’re tired, but let’s— uh, let’s keep our eyes open, okay? Can you do that? Eyes on me, man,” Peter says, and miracle of miracles, Loki listens. His eyes are only barely focused, but he listens. “Okay, so, uh— you might have a concussion. Maybe. Can Asgardians even get concussions? Er— can Frost Giants get concussions? Shit.”

“I’m... fine, Quill. I didn’t— didn’t sleep much.”

“Yeah, no shit you didn’t sleep much, dumbass,” Peter says, shaking his head as he digs through his pockets. “That doesn’t mean you don’t have a concussion. Now, where the hell— I know I got something around… here… somewhere… A-ha!”

Loki frowns, eyes focusing a bit as his gaze trails down to what Peter’s now holding in his hand.

“Is that…? Is that a pair of socks?”

“Yeah, dude,” Peter says, shrugging. “Always bring extra socks on a hike, that’s like… Hiking 101.”

He reaches for Loki’s temple, and somehow Loki finds the fortitude to flinch back. “If you bring that anywhere near my face—”

“It’s a clean pair, dude, and I gotta stop this bleeding somehow.”

Loki groans low in his throat, leaning back against the cave wall and staring forlornly into the distance. “Is it…” he winces, takes a slow breath and puffs it out all at once, “… Is it too late to accept Gamora’s offer to mercy kill me?”

Peter smirks, dabbing the socks on the side of Loki’s head as gently as he can. “Afraid so. That ship sailed a while ago, buddy.”

“Mm. Just ‘s… well, I s’pose…”

His eyes drift shut.

“Hey, hey, hey, hey,” Peter says right away, voice immediately hedging over into panic again. “Eyes open, remember?”

Nothing. Loki groans lowly, real lowly, but that’s it.

Peter grabs the other side of his head so he can really apply some pressure on the wound. It’s gotta hurt like a son of a bitch, but Loki hardly even flinches.

“Shit, come on, Loki, look at me.”

Peter leans down, gets them face-to-face, one hand holding him by the jaw and the other still dutifully pressed to the wound.

“Come on, jackass. You’re an almost fifteen-hundred-year-old God, okay? You are not letting a bunch of rocks do you in. Eyes goddamn open.”

Loki’s eyelashes flutter, but that’s about it.

“Loki, dude, come on.”

Nothing.

“Loki!”

Peter curses and, lacking any better options or the fortitude to leave it alone any longer, he tries the comms again. Just in case. A shot in the literal dark.

“Hey, Gamora?” Peter asks, then gulps, trying to get a hold of the tremor in his voice. “Groot? Mantis? I don’t know if you guys can hear me, but… look, we’re really in a bind here.”

He peeks under the ball of socks to find that the wound’s finally slowed up on the bleeding. Not stopped, but slowed. It’s a clean jagged line of broken skin and no bone showing underneath, which is good, that’s gotta be good, but Loki’s still not moving, and he’s still not opening his eyes.

Why the hell is he not opening his eyes?

“Loki’s hurt,” Peter says, hoping against hope that one of them can hear it. He replaces the ball of socks and presses down hard. “He’s— guys, he’s hurt, and I can’t— I don’t know what to do to help him. I need help, okay, if any of you guys can hear me, if anybody can hear me, I don’t know if you can get to us somehow, but I could…”

He gulps again around the annoying lump pressing at his throat, and he drops his forehead onto his own forearm.

“I could really use some help here.”

Come on, Pete.

Think.

There’s gotta be some other way to get him outta here—

But then, miraculously, against every single expectation he had, there’s a sound from the other end of the comms other than static.

It’s a crackle, a buzz of electricity like someone’s just clicked onto the frequency, or like they’re using some ancient-ass tech to communicate, and then—

“Hello?”

Peter swears to God he almost shits a brick.

“Yeah! Holy shit, hello! I—”

“What? Who is this?” the voice asks, harsh and so rasping it sounds painful, clipped with a thick accent Peter can’t place. “What are you doing on my channel?”

“What’re you—? This is my channel! This is my communications frequency, what do you—?”

“Oh, bah! If you are going to be like that, then—”

“Wait, wait, wait, don’t hang up!” Peter shouts, holding on tight to Loki to keep them both upright. “I’m sorry, that was— I’m just— I’m a little stressed. Sorry. You didn’t hang up, did you? Are you still there?”

“… I am still here, yes.”

“Okay, we—”

“You have not answered my question. Who is this?”

“I’m… My name’s Peter Quill. Star-Lord. Guardian of the Galaxy. Who is this? Are you—? Are you nearby? Is that how our lines got crossed?” Peter asks, and then it dawns on him. “Holy shit, you… you don’t live underground, do you? In a cave? In the forests outside Urunia?”

There’s a long pause, long and drawn out and filled with static.

“Hello?”

“How do you know that?”

“You do, don’t you? You live behind the door at the end of the tunnel, holy shit—”

“How do you know where I live?”

“We— okay, listen, we’ve been trying to find you, but it’s just ‘cause we’re lost, okay?” Peter says. “We went wandering too far into the forest, and we got all kinds of turned around, and my friend, um, he used magic to kind of take a look around, right? And he saw your front door, so we figured if we were ever gonna find our way out of this place, you might be our best bet, and—”

“Oh, and you thought you would barge into my home and demand—”

“Not demand! Just ask,” Peter cuts in desperately. “We just… We were just gonna ask for your help. That’s all.”

“Hmph. You ask many things. You ask who is this, are you nearby, do you live in the tunnels outside Urunia—”

“I know,” Peter says, closing his eyes. He gulps. “I know. You don’t owe us a damn thing, but… Look, my friend’s really hurt. We’re in the tunnel, probably not too far from where you’re at. If you can help, just… We’ll owe you one, okay? We’ll owe you one. Just… please.”

He waits, and he opens his eyes, looks again at the wound underneath the once clean ball of socks that’s now stained with a big old blotch of Loki’s blood, and then at Loki’s face. He’s still not moving. Peter gets a pair of fingers on Loki’s pulse point, feels a heartbeat flitting away there like it’s supposed to be, and he leaves his fingers there.

Finally, after way too long of a delay, the voice comes back.

“Hmph. Very well.”

Peter sags with relief. “Thank you. Seriously—”

“Yes, yes, yes. Stay there. I will come to you.”

Chapter Text

“They’re probably okay,” Peter says, hoping it’ll sound more convincing out loud than it does in his head.

And it does, a little bit.

“Gamora’s tough as nails, man. Probably just about pullin’ her own hair out trying to figure out how to get to us, but she’s alright. Mantis and Groot, too.”

As the minutes have kept ticking on by since the communication line cut off, Peter has become more and more certain that he went ahead and hallucinated the voice on the comm after all. He’s sitting with his knees and shins soaked in murky stagnant cave water, deep in an underground tunnel with half a set of functioning blasters and a little over half a set of functioning legs and an apparently sporadically functioning comm system, and he’s got no idea where ninety percent of his family is or if they’re even alive, and the remaining ten percent is sitting in front of him, unconscious and completely unresponsive.

So really, it’s not totally out of line to think that he might’ve just cracked.

Hell, is he even sure he doesn’t have a head injury, too? Would he have noticed, what with the craziness of everything else happening all at once?

For maybe the twentieth time, he lifts his makeshift compress and checks the gash on Loki’s temple. By now it’s started to look like the bleeding’s mostly stopped, the kind of thing where it’s not bleeding at all when he first looks, but if he leaves it uncovered for more than a minute or two there’ll be a little sliver of red creeping in along its edge like a goddamn sleeper agent. So, less bleeding, which is good, but the area around it’s all a faint bluish-purple with the whisper of a bruise underneath, and Loki is definitely gonna have a lump there when all is said and done.

“Wish we had a friggin’ ice pack,” Peter murmurs, replacing the ball of socks over the wound. “Course, if you were awake you could just, like, make one, couldn’t you?”

Loki, again, declines to answer.

“I mean, makin’ stuff cold is probably just about the only kinda magic you could still pull off in the state you’re in, since it’s just—” he waves with his free hand at Loki, top to bottom and back up— “you, you know? You didn’t even have to do anything that one time you let the, uh, the glamor thing down, and that beer turned to ice in a couple seconds flat.”

He huffs a sigh.

The only sound in the cave is his own voice, the rhythmic drip-drop-plunk of water somewhere, and the echo of his every movement bouncing along the tunnel walls.

“Not sure if that’d totally spit in the face of the laws of physics, though,” Peter thinks aloud, because something about that seems off. “I guess it wouldn’t work ‘cause of… I dunno, physics. Like… thermodynamics? Like, if the goal is to make this general area of you colder, then I… think any cold that comes from you wouldn’t work?”

There’s a thought there. Something about Loki being a… system? Something about systems. Systems and heat transfer and…

“I dunno, man, I could be way off,” Peter admits, well aware that he’s rambling and not caring one bit. He’s gotta talk out loud or the near-silence of this cave is gonna drive him out of his friggin’ gourd. “I’m just spitballing off of the kinda physics you need to fix M ships and phase blasters and whatnot. Eight-year-olds don’t get taught that kinda stuff on Earth. And everything I learned since then’s been from nothing but experience, and until really recently, that experience has not included any magic cold-generating aliens. Or magic, period. So.”

He shrugs.

“Still would be pretty friggin’ swell if you’d wake up, man.”

Yeah, no. Nothing.

“I’m figuring there’s, like, a solid chance you can hear me, though,” Peter says. He worries his bottom lip between his teeth for a second. “Not definite, but still. ‘Cause I used to, uh… Okay, so, first, for… context, I guess, since we never really talked about, like— our parents or anything? My mom got real sick when I was a kid. Bedridden, that kinda thing. She’d be too tired to stay awake most days, but I still hung around and talked to her just in case she could hear me. Hell if I remember about what, probably just a bunch of dumb little kid stuff she didn’t even care about, either, but… I dunno. Sometimes she’d pick up a thing or two. Even though she was asleep.”

It’s true. He doesn’t remember what he talked about, but he remembers, on occasion, going to tell her a story she’d been asleep for the first go around, only for her face to light up with recognition. Oh, I remember this one, baby. Go on, tell it again.

He clears his throat.

“Plus, I’ve been knocked out my fair share of times in the last thirty years or so,” he adds. “Remember hearing bits and pieces while I was out, every so often. So—”

Thunk.

His attention rubber-band snaps back, his heart jolting as a new sound finally breaks through the monotony of dripping stalactites.

Thunk.

It’s a hollow sound, a rhythmic thunk… thunk… thunk… that forms the background to what are definitely some slow, faintly shuffling footsteps. Someone real light on their feet.

Someone who’s coming closer.

“Hello?” Peter calls.

Theoretically, it should be the owner of the voice on the comms, and theoretically, they should be at least somewhat friendly or at least not openly hostile, but Peter gets one hand on his blaster anyway. He’s not taking any goddamn chances right now. No sir.

“Hey, who’s there, huh?”

Thunk…

Thunk…

Thunk…

Whoever it is, they don’t speed up or slow down at the sound of his voice. They don’t seem to give a crap that he spoke at all.

Peter clears his throat, tries again.

“Hey! You the person I was talking to?”

Jesus, why the hell did he never think to ask for their friggin’ name?

Thunk…

Thunk…

Thunk…

“Hey, seriously, if you—”

“You are very talkative, aren’t you, Peter Quill,” comes the voice from further in the tunnel, weirdly accented, low and croaking and pretty much exactly the voice he’d been expecting. Peter’s hackles lower half an inch, and the person’s footsteps and that slow thunk thunk thunk come ever closer, probably just around the bend now. “You can put the weapon away.”

Yeah, I’ll be the judge of that, thanks.

But, given this person might be saving both his and Loki’s hides, it doesn’t feel too smart saying that out loud. He slides the blaster back into his holster but leaves the heel of his palm resting against it, just in case.

When the owner of the voice comes into view a moment later, though… well.

It’s pretty damn clear the blaster’s not gonna be needed.

Because holy shit, that has got to be the tiniest woman Peter’s ever seen in his life. The tiniest humanoid, anyway, and damn near the oldest by the look of her.

Peter lets go of the blaster and returns most of his focus back to Loki, as the old woman slowly ambles closer, her wooden cane still making its thunk thunk thunk on the cave floor. He’d assumed by the sound of her footsteps that she was just light on her feet, but she probably doesn’t have the choice to be anything else. What is she, fifty, maybe sixty pounds? Three feet tall? Hell, even that much is probably high balling it.

“Hey,” Peter says, giving her a cursory once over. “Thanks for coming.”

“Mm.”

The eerie blue light of the cave shines and shimmers over the polished wood of her cane, and it shifts in dull patches on her skin as she moves. Her skin is a splotchy greenish-brown and so wrinkled it looks like it’s melting off of her in places, at the corners of her mouth, under her blank milky-white eyes— and those eyes are scanning over the collapsed wall of rocks on the other side of Peter and Loki for a moment, surveying the damage.

And then her eyes shift until they’re fixed resolutely on Peter.

Maybe. It’s really hard to tell. She doesn’t have pupils. Can she even see?

“Uh,” Peter says when she’s gotten within spitting distance and has yet to say anything else. They’re just about the same height, what with him still sitting back on his heels. “Hi?”

“Hmph.”

She scowls and stops right there beside him, hunched over her cane, those strange eyes of hers narrowed to white slits. Without warning or so much as a “hello,” she lifts one weathered hand from the cane and reaches out for him, and given Peter’s got one hand keeping Loki upright and the other busy trying to make sure that gash stops bleeding sometime today, he doesn’t really have enough free hands to do anything other than say, “Hey, what—?”

But she’s already got her hand on his face, her thumb and fingers holding him by the jaw. Her grip’s got all the strength of a heavily arthritic tortoise, but Peter doesn’t move anyway. Somehow he feels like he shouldn’t.

The woman’s scowl deepens, upper lip curling back to reveal what might be teeth but also might just be some seriously discolored gums.

“What,” she says, low and unmistakably angry, “have you done to yourself?”

“Uh. I… didn’t?”

Because really, what the hell kind of question is that? Does she think he’s the injured one here somehow and not Loki?

Maybe she can’t see after all. She sure seems to think she can, though, since she keeps turning Peter’s face from side to side and then up, peering under his chin and behind his ears like she’s inspecting him for injuries he hasn’t yet thought to mention.

“Hey, nothing happened to me, I’m fine. Mostly,” Peter says, leaning back and hoping she’ll get the hint and let go of his face. She doesn’t. “My friend here’s the one that got hurt, he’s the one we gotta—”

“Mm. The Jotunn will heal,” she tells him, dismissive.

Peter blinks, eyes going wide. “Wait, what?”

“He will heal, I said.”

“Yeah, but how do you know he’s—? I mean, he’s not—”

“He is Jotunn,” she says, as dismissive as the first time, “and as I said, he will heal.”

She lifts Peter’s chin again, peers at his throat, and gives a distinctly disappointed humph.

“Now, you, on the other hand.”

Finally she releases his face and steps back.

And at this point, Peter’s not even totally sure if she is scowling, or if her greenish prune of a face can only physically accommodate expressions ranging from “just smelled something gross” to “genuinely pissed off.” It’s somewhere between those two when she turns to look at Loki, something contemplative twisting her wrinkled forehead, and then it’s decidedly closer to the latter when she looks back at Peter.

“And all this time I assumed it was coming from you,” she says, which makes no goddamn sense whatsoever. “But the Jotunn. Hmph. Odd.”

“You thought what was—?”

“Not the most unusual thing I have ever seen, but still,” she goes on like he hadn’t spoken at all, idly scratching under her own chin, and now she’s looking at Loki again. “Thought it might be the both of you, perhaps also the little one with the—” she waves a hand, gesturing above her head— “the things. On her head. But no, it really is all coming from him, isn’t it? Nearly all of it, anyway.”

She leans heavily on her cane again, peering at Loki, tilting her head in a way that reminds Peter of how Rocket looks at new parts for the Quadrant. Curious, critical, analytic.

She reaches out and pokes him in the cheek.

“Hey, watch it!” Peter shouts. He tries to wave her away with his elbow. “What part of he’s hurt don’t you get?”

“Mm. Yes, you have damaged him.”

“Wha—? I didn’t do anything, the whole damn place came down on top of us,” Peter argues, directing a wide-eyed look at the very obvious wall of rock to his left, then pointing that look at her. “Or did you not friggin’ notice?”

“I noticed,” she says, with another withering look at the wall. Then, a little less gruff and almost halfway to friendly, she asks, “Was it Tatur?”

“Was it what now?”

“Tatur,” she repeats. “Big reptile. Scales, teeth.”

“I… yeah,” Peter answers, blinking in surprise. So that’s what those things are called. Taturs. Tatur? Is Tatur the plural of Tatur? He shakes the thought away. “Yeah, it was.”

“Mm. They usually do not venture this far down the tunnel. You must have frightened him.”

Peter opens his mouth, shuts it, and shakes his head with wide eyes.

“I frightened him?”

“Mm-hmm,” she nods, either unaware of his tone or indifferent to it. “They are like us. They react… emotionally, to the things which frighten them. Violence begets violence, that sort of thing, you understand. Now, come. We must be going.”

“Uh. Come… where, exactly?”

“Where do you think? My home,” she says. “We can discuss what best to do with the Jotunn and your other friends there. Come.”

She turns away from them both, gesturing for him to follow.

“Uh, wait,” Peter says at her retreating back. “I’m not— I’m not leaving him here, lady.”

She comes to a stop and then turns back to face him, which ends up being a time-consuming endeavor what with the cane and her slow meandering movements, and then she regards Peter with a look like he’s just said something supremely confusing.

“Well, I am not carrying him,” she says.

“I mean, yeah, no, I didn’t think you would, but—”

“Jotunns are far heavier than they look,” she tells him. “Even the younglings like this one. You will not be able to carry him, either.”

“I— now hang on,” Peter says, because come on, she doesn’t know that.

But… well, then again, now that he thinks about it, the only time he’s ever even half-supported Loki’s weight was back on Earth after they fought Ebony Maw, and even with the adrenaline pumping through his system and Loki helping as best he could, it was still kind of a struggle. Then there’s the fact that Peter’s football-tackled Loki three times since meeting him — probably a weird tackle-to-time-spent-being-friends ratio, but whatever — and every time he damn near felt like he dislocated his shoulder on impact.

He always chalked that up to the whole godly super strength thing, though.

“Look, I can’t— I’m not leaving him here,” Peter says, shaking his head, because the old woman is still staring at him expectantly. “We gotta figure something else out.”

For a moment she just stands there, or hunches there, anyway, leaning all her weight into her cane and peering at him with her eyes narrowed again. Like he’s a semi-interesting jigsaw puzzle and ideally she’d like it solved, but mostly she just wants all these pieces cleared off her damn table.

Again she says, “You cannot carry him.”

“I can try.”

“If you try, you will only injure yourself further. And likely injure him further, too, when you drop him.”

“So, what, I should just leave him here alone like this? That’s seriously what you want me to do?”

“He will not be alone for long, I can promise you that.”

“Yeah? And until then?”

She shrugs. “Look around yourself. My favorite tunnel is a dead end now. It is empty. What do you suppose will happen to him here? What exactly are you afraid of?”

And… well, ain’t that a loaded goddamn question. Peter gulps, casting a wary glance over at where the rest of the tunnel used to be, and then he turns his eyes on Loki again.

What’s he afraid of?

He’s afraid of whatever danger Gamora and Mantis and Groot might be in. He’s afraid of what might have happened to Rocket, and what might have happened to Drax. He’s afraid Loki’s hurt even worse than he looks. If he’s being real honest, he’s afraid that he’s gonna turn his back on Loki for two seconds and that’ll be all it takes to have him disappearing into the ether, too.

Peter shoves all that down and answers with something that makes him sound a little more practical, a little less like this place is sending him out of his damn mind.

“What if he wakes up while we’re gone?”

To her credit, she seems to consider that for a second. Then she asks, “What if he does?”

“What do you mean, what if he does? He’ll think I friggin’ abandoned him here, and—”

“And if he is smart, he will then follow the only path he can take,” she says, jabbing a thumb over her shoulder at the tunnel, “which will lead him directly to us, and you may then personally disavow him of that notion.”

“Well… yeah, I guess, but…” Peter hesitates, heart sinking. He really, really, really does not like the idea of leaving Loki here, at all. Not one bit.

But hell, does he have any better option?

“You guess,” the old woman repeats when he stays silent for, apparently, too long. “But what? Hm?”

Peter sighs, defeated. “We’re gonna come right back for him, right?”

“I will see to him shortly,” the woman answers, so simple and matter-of-fact that Peter finds himself believing it. “Now, come. I am too old to be standing around like this. Come, come, come.”

She turns away again, her cane thunking against the cave floor as she starts walking, apparently under the assumption that he’ll actually follow this time.

Peter turns back to Loki and worriedly eyes him up and down.

Come on, man, wake the hell up.

Right now, open your eyes, say something. Give me an excuse not to leave you here by yourself.

“Are you coming, Peter Quill?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m—” Peter huffs, grinding his teeth for a second. “I’m coming. Hang on.”

He lifts the ball of socks and checks the mark on Loki’s temple one last time; it’s still bluish-purple and swelling up a bit, but also clean, for the most part. He watches it for a second, making sure it’s not bleeding anymore, and then he tosses the now useless socks over his shoulder. No point in keeping them around when they’re all gross and dirty.

Then, on a whim and because he’s got no better ideas, Peter unclips the Zune from his waistband. He turns it over in his hands for a second, making sure the headphone wires are wrapped nice and snug around it and they won’t get too tangled.

Again he looks up at Loki’s unresponsive face, and again, he doesn’t get anything from him. Not so much as a twitch.

“I’m coming back,” Peter tells him, and as proof, he feels around for one of the side pockets in Loki’s leather armor and carefully tucks the Zune into it, headphones and all. Because he wouldn’t put it past Loki to assume he’s been left here — as dumb and as ridiculously inaccurate as that is, he wouldn’t put it past him to think it anyway — but he’s got to know that Peter wouldn’t just leave the Zune behind for good, right?

It’s not much in the way of reassurance, but it is the closest thing to a be right back note that he’s got.

“I’m coming back,” Peter tells him again. “And we’re gonna get you outta here and get you some first aid done by someone a little more qualified than me, and you’re gonna be good as new, and we’re all gonna get out of this place and sleep for a goddamn week, alright? Promise.”

With one last gentle pat to Loki’s shoulder, Peter stands, wincing through the movement. His leg’s mostly back up and running again, but sitting on his knees for upwards of twenty minutes wasn’t doing him any favors.

“Okay,” Peter says, taking a fortifying breath and looking in the direction of the old lady, who’s already nearly at the first bend of the tunnel. “Okay. Let’s do this.”

“Peter, please answer.”

Gamora clenches her jaw against its shaking, and she waits. She taps her communicator again, waits through the next ear-splitting cry of the creature still attempting to reach her and Mantis and Groot, and she tries again.

“Peter, Loki, one of you answer right now.”

Again, nothing.

In front of her, where Loki had been standing right up until Peter bravely and foolishly shoved him out of harm’s way, there is now only rock and silt and dirt, save for one huge irregular hole— the result of Gamora’s initial panicked attempt at forcing her way through to the other side. She only gave up on that route long enough to think of the communicators at all when it became clear that brute force would not suffice, or worse, that it might risk bringing the rest of the place down on all of them.

In front of her, nothing but rock and dirt. To her left and to her right, nothing but the same. In fact, to her left the rock wall is far closer than it was before the collapse; half the place has crumbled in on itself so that the already claustrophobic press of the tunnel has shrunk down to less than half the size it was before.

Behind her, Groot asks, “I am Groot?”

“I don’t—” Gamora starts to answer, but her voice is quickly drowned away to nothing by the creature’s incessant high-pitched screaming. She grits her teeth and waits for a lull in the noise, and then she says, “I don’t know. They… they should be fine. It looked like they cleared the area where the tunnel collapsed before—” she pauses, again, waiting through yet another screech— “before it came down.”

But that’s not entirely true, is it?

By the time she turned away from the creature, by the time she realized what its insistent bucking and shoving at the tunnel ceiling was doing, Peter had already driven his shoulder into Loki’s stomach and sent the two of them careening across the cave floor, but—

But that’s all she saw. One glimpse of the two of them, and then nothing but rocks.

“Should we try a different tunnel?” Mantis asks, only a faint tremor to her voice to give away her worry. “Perhaps there is another way around.”

Gamora nods. It’s possible. “We could—”

Once again, her voice is drowned away by the creature that is still, against all logic, attempting to reach them in this tunnel that can’t be more than the width of its head.

Her composure snaps.

She whirls around, stomps past Groot and Mantis in the direction of the snarling thing, and she screams at the top of her lungs:

“WILL YOU BE QUIET!”

And—

She hadn’t expected that it might actually listen.

The creature lets out a low whine, ducking its massive head down toward the ground, its snout still pointed at her. It snaps its jaws again, watching her with what is indisputably a note of angry bloodlust still in its eyes, a growl rumbling in its chest loudly enough to send the ground beneath it vibrating.

But that’s it.

“Oh, now you’re being civil,” Gamora shouts, “after you just did that—” she gestures without looking at the carnage behind her— “and nearly killed all of us!”

Nearly. Nearly killed.

Because the creature did not succeed in killing any of them, because Peter and Loki are both fine.

Of course, she is acutely aware of how ridiculous she looks, screaming at this creature that likely can’t understand a word she’s saying, taking out her anger and frustration and borderline panic on a brainless man-eating beast. Its growling picks up, growing louder and more defiant, and Gamora huffs a sigh and extends Godslayer with barely a second thought.

At least, barely a second thought until Mantis lightly touches her arm.

She does not use her powers, at least not to the extent that Gamora can feel it, but the touch grounds her a bit. It makes her stop where she is and think a bit more clearly. And Gamora doesn’t realize until then, until she makes eye contact with Mantis and sees the shine of tears in her eyes, that Gamora’s own cheeks are cold with tears as well.

She takes a breath. She closes her eyes. She retracts Godslayer.

“I am Groot?”

“It’s alright,” Gamora automatically replies, her voice as steady as it likely can be, given the circumstances. She opens her eyes and turns her back on the creature, critically eyeing up the wall of rock, on the other side of which — or underneath which — Peter and Loki must be.

Focus on what you have.

She has her sword. She has her communicator, useless as it might be. Most importantly, she has Groot and Mantis, both of whom are alive and well and unhurt.

And she needs to do everything in her power to keep them that way.

“Alright,” she says, nodding. She has to keep a level head above all else, for Groot’s sake, for Mantis’ sake. Peter and Loki are not lost to them, not entirely, not for long. They’re fine. Peter is capable and intelligent, far more so than most give him credit for; he has been in worse situations than this and come out alright. And Loki is, in the most literal sense of the term, a centuries-old God.

They’re both fine.

“Mantis, if I distract this— thing,” Gamora says, nodding back at the creature, “if I keep it busy, can you put it to sleep so we can move it out of our way?”

Mantis directs a worried look at the creature, which has begun scrabbling at the tunnel floor again and letting out a few muted screeches, like it’s testing out how loud it can be before Gamora screams at it again.

“Yes,” Mantis says. “Yes, I can.”

Gamora nods once, and then she stomps back toward the creature, and this time she doesn’t stop after a few angry steps. She brings herself within inches of the creature’s reach, watching with her hands on her hips and with an unimpressed raise of her eyebrow as it threateningly snaps at her and rumbles another bloodthirsty growl.

She waits, letting the creature try to scope out her next move.

Then she feints to the right. The creature’s head, predictably, lurches after her with every intention to tear at her with its gleaming yellowed teeth, but she ducks back to the left and in one swift movement clamps its jaws shut with both hands, her palms planted on the top and bottom of its snout.

It is… much easier to hold the thing’s jaws shut than she would have expected.

It’s actually bizarrely easy.

“Seriously?” she asks, out loud, because she’s honestly a little stunned by how weak the thing’s jaw muscles are. She’s hardly using a sliver of her strength, and although it whines and tries to pull itself from her grip to no avail, it hardly even tries to open its jaws or bare its teeth. Like it knows, somehow, that the effort would be useless.

And this is one of the creatures that tore Peter’s thigh into a barely recognizable mess of blood and torn denim? Its biting force has got to be stronger than this, she thinks, or else this particular creature is… crippled, somehow.

In any case, it gives Mantis a perfectly safe opening to reach out and lay a hand on the softer scales along its neck.

“Sleep.”

The thing’s eyes roll back, every muscle going slack as it collapses. Gamora releases its snout, allowing the thing’s head to collapse along with it.

“Okay,” Gamora says, rolling her shoulders in preparation for the next obstacle. She has moved things far heavier than this creature, she’s sure, but the fact that it has wedged itself firmly into the too-small tunnel is going to complicate things.

Still. Nothing she cannot handle.

“Alright, Mantis, you push from that side. Groot, from that side,” she says, pointing at what she would call the thing’s shoulders if it were a biped. “I will push from the center.”

She crouches down and lugs the creature’s massive head up and over her shoulder so she can get some leverage, one hand planted firmly on each side of its neck. With an uncertain rumble, Groot steps up to her left, and Mantis to her right.

“On my mark,” Gamora tells them. “Three, two—”

“—one, okay? We’ll owe you one. Just… please.”

“Hmph. Very well.”

“Thank you. Seriously—”

“Yes, yes, yes. Stay there. I will come to you.”

The communication feed ends with a click, leaving Nebula exactly where she’d been standing while listening to the whole infuriating exchange, her arms crossed tight over her chest, her unwavering frustrated glare all but boring holes into the walls of the Benatar.

Here is what she knows. Quill is alive. Gamora is alive. Loki is alive, though injured. Presumably Groot and Mantis must be alive, too, otherwise it would not have only been Quill yelling for the two of them but Gamora as well. The idiots are all somewhere in that massive forest.

Here is what she does not know. Beyond the infuriatingly vague answer of “the forest,” she does not know where the idiots actually are. She does not know if Drax is alive. She does not know if Rocket is alive. She does not know how badly Loki is injured or, even more simply, how he’s injured. She finds it rather annoying not to know that, and far more annoying that she even cares to know that, but, well. There it is.

Of course, the most infuriating thing of all is that she doesn’t know—

“Who was that talkin’ to him?” Kraglin asks, looking to Nebula. “Nobody you recognized?”

Nebula shakes her head.

“What about the funky accent? That sound like any kinda place you ever been to?”

Again, she shakes her head. She couldn’t tell anything about the voice at all thanks to the shoddy staticky connection, other than the fact that the voice’s owner was either very old or very sick, judging by the rasping grating quality to it.

“What…?” Axzhaat asks, staring up at them. “What are you—?”

“You, be quiet,” Nebula snaps, delivering a swift kick to his feet that shuts him up in an instant. Then she turns to Kraglin and asks, pointing at Axzhaat, “Did the man you saw on the screen talking to Nova Prime look like him? Like him, but younger?”

Kraglin tips his head from side to side, then shrugs one shoulder. “Could’ve been I guess, yeah.”

“Then let’s go,” she says, grabbing Axzhaat by his robe and hoisting him roughly up onto his feet. He just barely manages not to stumble and fall right back down to the floor when she lets him go, but he catches himself with one hand against the wall, the other half-raised like he means to reach for his own throat again.

“What? Why—?”

“You’re coming as well,” Nebula cuts him off, leaving no room for argument. “I am not letting you out of my sight until we know for a fact that you had nothing to do with this.”

“But coming where?”

“To find your conniving snake of an offspring,” Nebula says, upper lip curling in a scowl. “Now let’s go. We don’t have all—”

“No,” Axzhaat cries, frantically shaking his head. It’s all he says, and when Nebula directs an affronted look at him, shockingly, he does not cower in on himself again. Much.

“What,” Nebula grinds out, “do you mean, no?”

“I mean, no,” Axzhaat repeats, shrinking back a bit, but it seems that he’s gained something of a spine in the last few minutes, because he holds his ground. He trembles from head to toe, yes, and he regards her with the air of a small terrified child standing up to a tsunami that’s about to swipe him off his feet and kill him, yes, but he holds his ground. For the moment. “I don’t— I don’t know why you’re so insistent that either of us has anything to do with any of this, but did you not hear me? My daughter, she’s—”

“Gone missing, yeah,” Kraglin finishes. “We heard ya.”

“And so you understand that—”

“There is one more victim to add to the list, yes,” Nebula says. “A list of victims we might be able to recover if we track down whoever is making them disappear, and at the moment, that seems to require tracking down your son and demanding that he explain—”

“But why? Why do you think he knows anything?” Axzhaat pleads, near tears all over again. “He wouldn’t, I swear, I would know if he did, and I don’t know why—”

“Because he,” Nebula shouts, anger mounting as she points back at Kraglin, “heard him speaking with Nova Prime, and he heard him saying that he knows exactly who is causing all of this!”

She takes another step toward Axzhaat so that he’s crowded back against the wall with renewed fear in his eyes, and suddenly she remembers him in the interrogation room at the precinct, his squishy little granddaughter drooling in his arms as he told Nebula about his son. Always a bit of a worrier, he said, seems utterly convinced that one of us is bound to be the next to disappear.

More pieces fall into place, and they’re filling in a picture that has Nebula seeing red.

“He knows,” she repeats, low and menacing. “He knows who’s causing all of this, and whether he kept it from you or not means nothing to me. Do you understand?”

“Did he…? Did he really say that?” Axzhaat asks, visibly wilting and turning his gaze on Kraglin. “He said he knew who was causing it? Are you sure?”

“Well,” Kraglin shrugs, “I mean, he didn’t say it in all them words, nah, but yeah, it sure seemed like he knew.”

“How?” Axzhaat asks, looking desperately from Kraglin to Nebula and back again. “How did it seem like he knew? Perhaps you heard wrong—”

“Nah, I dunno ‘bout that,” Kraglin says, “‘cause he was bein’ real specific about it. Kept talkin’ about the person responsible and whatnot, y’know, sayin’ she’s gonna keep threatenin’ him, and askin’ why we ain’t caught her yet, and—”

Nebula reaches out, swiftly grabbing a hold of Kraglin by the sleeve, cutting him off. She stays like that for a moment, frozen, staring into space and processing what Kraglin’s just said, and making absolutely sure she heard every word of it correctly.

“What?” Kraglin asks uncertainly into the silence. “What’d I say?”

When Nebula speaks, she’s not the only one. Both she and Axzhaat ask at the very same time, with equally incredulous voices:

“She?”

Given the three-foot height difference and the fact that Peter’s not a million years old, it only takes about two seconds of light jogging to catch up to the old lady where she’s thunking her way back up the winding tunnel.

“So, uh,” Peter says, hunching over to avoid the stalactites as they walk. “Never did catch your name.”

The old lady gives a vague hum. Then she says, “You can call me Tath.”

“Tath. Cool. Good to meet you.”

“Mm.”

“And thanks. For, you know, picking up the call and coming out here. I don’t suppose you got a good first aid kit at your place?”

“I have medical supplies, yes.”

“Okay,” Peter says, eyeing her up and down again, “I mean, I can run it back to where Loki’s at and take care of him myself if you want, that way you don’t have to go running back and forth so much.”

Another vague hum, this time closer to a grunt, and the old lady says, for what’s around the third time by Peter’s count:

“The Jotunn will heal.”

“Wha—?” Peter shakes his head. “Okay, seriously, how are you so sure of that, huh? You mean, like, he’s gonna heal on his own, or what?”

“Mm. On his own.”

“And you’re sure.”

She nods. “If he were not so drained, he would have healed already.”

“If he—? Really? What, because of his magic?”

“Mm.”

Huh. So it is because of that.

Peter sags a little with the beginnings of relief. It makes sense, he thinks, if Loki’s been scraping out the bottom of an empty tank this whole time. All Peter really cares about is the fact that he’s gonna be okay, but hell, it’s nice to have an explanation anyway.

“So, what, he’s not as durable as usual ‘cause he used up so much of his magic, right? That it?”

The old woman doesn’t answer right away, but when she does, she repeats, “He is drained. Not enough magic energy to function at proper capacity.”

“Yeah, yeah, magical energy, that’s the thing. Uh— seiðr? That right?”

She pauses, her shuffling steps coming to a halt so she can peer up at Peter with those weird blank eyes again.

“You know of it.”

Her surprise does not go unnoticed. Peter nods, hands in his pockets. “Yeah, I mean, you hear him talk about it a million and a half times, you pick a few things up.”

“Hmph.”

As the woman starts walking again, Peter has to duck under another particularly low hanging stalactite in order to follow. The tunnel bears right, then left, then right again, and Peter realizes that he is incredibly grateful for how tiny and old this lady is; it makes it a whole lot easier to keep pace with her.

“So he has told you of it,” Tath says. “And that is what he calls it. Seiðr.”

“Uh, yeah, isn’t that what it’s called? Guess I could be saying it wrong—”

“You are not. Seiðr is a name the Aesir have given it,” Tath tells him, and then she sighs and adds, “Suppose that does help explain it, at least.”

“Uh… huh. Cool,” Peter nods along, even though he has no idea what the hell an Aesir is. “So that’ll… I mean, what, is it… like, self-replenishing? Like all he needs is time, that kinda thing?”

“Mm. It will return to him.”

“Awesome,” Peter sighs. One less thing to worry about for now, at least. “Okay, so, my other friends, they got stuck on the other side of where that tunnel came down, and there’s like, maybe another two dozen or so of those Tatur things waiting for ‘em out there. Once Loki’s less… uh, unconscious, is there another tunnel we can take to get back to them?”

She looks at him out of the corner of her eye— or that’s Peter’s best guess, anyway, and he realizes that with the solid blankness of her eyes and the piles of wrinkles on her face and the dim light of the cave, it’s just about impossible to work out what any of her expressions actually mean.

But then she looks ahead and finally answers, “There are many routes into and out of this place.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes. That was but one.”

“And you know where those other routes are at?”

She nods. “I do.”

And that… well, that puts most of his unease to rest, really. He’s still scared as all hell that Gamora or Mantis or Groot might have gotten hurt with the tunnel collapse, but assuming they didn’t, which they shouldn’t have if Peter’s remembering the collapse correctly, they should be okay until he’s able to get back to them. A few fifteen-foot-tall man-eating monsters aren’t gonna get one over on the deadliest woman in the galaxy armed with Godslayer and with an empath on her side. They’ll be fine.

As for Rocket and Drax, though…

“So, can I ask? Since you live here and all, and ‘cause I got other friends wandering around somewhere out there,” Peter says. “What’s with this place, huh? The forest, I mean. Is it actually haunted or…?”

Tath grunts, a sound that might be a scoff or might be a no.

Before she gives him a genuine answer, though, or while she apparently thinks over what her answer will be, they make their way around another bend and finally see something other than endless rock.

It’s a door, exactly as Loki described, set perfectly into the irregular shape of the tunnel with an iron door knocker at its center. It’s maybe four or four-and-a-half feet high, just high enough that Peter should be able to duck under it without having to get on his knees again. Tath picks up her pace a fraction, only detectable thanks to the metronome beat of her cane on the floor.

“This is… a very special place,” she finally answers, in a low tone that makes Peter believe it. Or at least believe that she believes it, with every fiber of her being. “There is none quite like it. Not on this planet. Not on any planets for quite a distance.”

As they reach the door, she lifts her cane and taps the foot of it to the right-most side, right by what Peter would call a door jamb if the door was set into a normal wall, and prepares to push it open.

“Come. We will discuss inside.”

Chapter Text

Here are two facts:

Fact number one.

Axzhaat’s slimy cretin of an offspring was gifted a very large, very pristine, very expensive mansion on the East side of the city by his father seventeen years ago. The mansion is a thing to be envied; ringed with a sleek brick wall, gated with a ten-foot-tall wrought iron gate and a call box, protected with state-of-the-art security in the event that any of Urunia’s citizens gets it in their head to… redistribute wealth, as it were. Cameras track every movement on the grounds, and each door and window is secured with the most reliable locking mechanisms and burglary alarms on the market.

It is, for all intents and purposes, the safest place in all of Urunia, a designer safehouse carved out of fashionable terracotta, brick, and shimmering plate glass.

Fact number two.

Fashionable terracotta, brick, and shimmering plate glass create the most aesthetically pleasing burst of orange-and-red glittering dust when an M-class ship pulverises the roof and several walls before it lands, groaning and creaking and swaying to a stop, in the building’s conference room and three of its bedrooms.

“One way to do it, I guess,” Kraglin mutters from where he’s slouched comfortably in the co-pilot’s chair, at around the same time that Axzhaat screams—

“Have you LOST YOUR MIND?!”

He’s clutching the armrests of Drax’s chair in a death grip, his chest heaving as he shakes from head to toe, open-mouthed and wide-eyed.

“You— you just— the entire sixth floor—”

“Fifth, too,” Kraglin helpfully adds, and he leans over to peer through the leftmost edge of the windshield, where a bit of sunlight is still visible through the swirling brick dust. “Yep. Pretty sure it’s the fifth floor.”

Nebula nods. “Sounds accurate.”

“You— destroyed two—” Axzhaat pales, covering his mouth with a fist. His wide eyes somehow manage to get even wider. “Oh, Gods, what if— what if he was on this floor, you could have— you might have killed him—”

“He wasn’t,” Nebula rolls her eyes. “And I didn’t.”

She flips a switch on the piloting console so that the windshield flickers with the holographic infrared overlay. The entire view dims, like the suns have nearly set and pulled everything down into the darker blue of twilight— except for a distinctly person-shaped blob of red somewhere around the third floor, and then, one more floor down, a second person-shape accompanied by a third, far smaller and rounder blob.

“See?” Nebula asks, sliding off the captain’s chair and onto her feet so that she can open up the exit ramp and get this over with. “No harm done.”

“Ooh, boy,” Kraglin murmurs with a wince, and for some reason he leans across the co-pilot’s chair, reaching for the nearest cardboard box he can find. He hooks a finger around the edge of the box, pulls it closer, and then overturns the whole thing so that a litany of metal tools fall out, clattering and clanging all over the cockpit floor.

“No— no harm—? Oh, Gods,” Axzhaat sits back,  frantically fanning himself. “Oh, Gods, oh, goodness, I’m—”

Kraglin spins the box around and stretches across the gap between their seats, offering it up to Axzhaat, who takes the box in both hands and promptly vomits into it.

“Eugh,” Nebula scowls. “That is disgusting.”

Kraglin shrugs, evidently uneffected. “Better a box’n the floor, ain’t it?”

“You— are both—” Axzhaat shudders— “out of your minds.”

“And you,” Nebula says, eyeing the putrid box that Axzhaat is still gripping tightly by its edges, “are taking that with you off the ship. It will begin to smell otherwise.”

With that, she turns away and presses the button to open up the exit ramp, which immediately extends down from the underbelly of the Benatar and lands with a kerthunk on the floor, scattering bits of debris from the demolished roof and sending a plume of powdered brick and plaster into the air.

As Nebula makes her way down the ramp, she takes stock of their surroundings where the Benatar has, of course, made an absolute mess of the top two floors of Axzhaat’s spawn’s home. The ship has actually landed on somewhat of a slant; its starboard wing hangs precariously out of what might have been a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows about ten minutes ago, while the opposite wing remains one floor above the rest of the ship.

Despite Axzhaat’s dramatics, though, Nebula notices that over half of this floor is actually still fully intact. That’s to say nothing about the demolished sixth floor thanks to the Benatar’s rocky descent, but still, it seems the ship fits neatly into about four of the mansion’s wildly oversized rooms, leaving the rest of it largely untouched.

An alarm is blaring somewhere, likely one of the idiot’s million burglary alarms. Somewhere a few floors down, someone has been driven into a near-panic by the commotion up here; Nebula can just barely make out their wailing voice.

Kraglin steps down beside her, squinting through the debris.

Behind him, Axzhaat stumbles down the ramp with the box held tightly to his chest and his eyes forlornly scanning over the damage.

“So, uh,” Kraglin says, discreetly stifling a cough brought on by the brick dust. “Where to?”

The answer to that question comes a bit sooner than any of them expect — that is to say, almost immediately — and it comes in the form of a door swinging open. At the other end of what Nebula is now certain was once a conference room and where the wall is more-or-less intact, the door is thrown open so quickly that it smacks into the opposite wall and sends another hunk of plaster falling from the ceiling, and the younger Aakon man from the precinct hurries in through it.

Hm. A shame, really. She’s been holding out a bit of hope that he might try to run, make all this nonsense a little more interesting for her.

Oh, well.

“What—?” Axzhaat’s spawn starts to say, mouth agape as he falters in the doorway, his eyes wide. “Oh— my God, what in the name of— how on—”

His voice, Nebula notices, is slightly deeper than his father’s. It’s deeper and a bit smoother and lacking in that manic quality that his father’s voice never quite seems to shake, but some of Axzhaat’s mannerisms are there in the oddly aristocratic tone, the way he emphasizes certain words to make what he’s saying sound more important.

For the most part, he seems utterly incapable of tearing his eyes away from the walls that have been reduced to nothing but crumbling heaps of brick, scanning over all of it with the confused look of someone whose thoughts have stalled, helpfully, on things like what the hell and how in the world to avoid dealing with the actual situation at hand.

But then his eyes catch on his father, and shortly after that, on Nebula.

“What,” he says again, heaving with the apparent effort of having run up the stairs to get here, or the shock, or both, “did you do? What did you do?”

Nebula regards him for a moment, and then she turns just slightly to raise an eyebrow at Kraglin. It only takes a quick tilt of her head in the direction of Axzhaat’s spawn to get her point across.

“Oh, yeah,” Kraglin nods. “No, yeah, that’s the guy, a’right.”

“Excellent.”

“Are you— are you hearing me? What the hell did you do? Are you out of your mind? This is my home, you can’t…”

Nebula turns back toward Axzhaat’s spawn, who’s watching all of them with mounting confusion and the beginning thrums of actual fury, but the former seems to win out over the latter when he catches sight of the smile on Nebula’s face. There’s confusion, then burgeoning alarm, and then—

There it is.

Because really, the most important fact is this: Although Nebula has been working diligently on her anger issues, and although she continues every day to put her service under Thanos further and further behind her…

Oh, she has missed this.

“Axzhaat, is it?” Nebula asks, reveling in that note of bonafide terror in his eyes. “Let’s talk.”

The problem with navigating these tunnels and finding a path back to wherever Peter and Loki might be is, very simply, that Gamora has no idea how to do it.

She doesn’t even know if such a path exists. Loki called this place a labyrinth, and the longer Gamora spends wandering these tunnels with Mantis and Groot in tow, the more she finds that she’s inclined to agree— with the slight exception that a true labyrinth would have paths leading in all sorts of random directions, and this one, to her utmost infuriation, only seems to point in the opposite direction she wants it to go.

She, Mantis, and Groot try every single tunnel, working their way further and further back toward where they came. They’re systematic about it. At each intersection, they turn left down the darkened path where the bioluminescent flowers above grow scarcer and scarcer, and Groot marks their path with flowers of his own. They walk until it becomes clear that the tunnel is not angling back in the direction they want to go any time soon, and then they turn around and try the tunnel on the right.

Because while Gamora desperately wants to find where Peter and Loki are, there is one thing she absolutely refuses to risk, and that is getting Groot and Mantis trapped in this place as well.

They’re systematic, but careful.

Now, as Gamora presses her back to the cave wall just before a bend and listens for the sound of more of those reptilian creatures up ahead, she starts to realize that their odds of finding Peter and Loki in this place by simple trial and error of searching the tunnels are, frankly, slim to none.

And even if they do find them, it’s been, what, half an hour since they were separated? An hour? What could have happened to them between then and now?

“I am Groot?”

“No,” Gamora assures him, keeping her voice to a whisper. She can hear a rustling up ahead, the faint puff of those creatures’ breathing. “No, we’re going to get back to them. We just have to find a more efficient way through this place, but we’ll find them, okay?”

She listens, focuses: Claws clacking on the rocky cave floor. The huff of breath. Forty feet away at most. Two creatures, fully grown, maybe four or five tons a piece. At this point she and Mantis and Groot have traversed enough of the main tunnel that the ceiling is a good fifteen feet high again; any of the creatures could be lurking around here without a problem.

Gamora lays a hand on Godslayer’s hilt. It’s pure instinct, something she doesn’t realize she’s done until the steel is cold against the palm of her hand, but when she does realize it, she releases the sword and flexes her fingers.

Non-lethal force first. She can handle that.

“Mantis,” she murmurs, glancing in her direction. “Be ready.”

Once Mantis gives a nod, bouncing on the balls of her feet with her hands poised in front of her, Gamora nods back and whirls away from the cave wall, throwing herself around the bend toward the two creatures.

The first of them looks up, beady eyes centering on Gamora as she sprints directly at it, its toothy maw already opening wide with the beginnings of yet another ear-splitting screech—

Gamora drops to the floor and slides beneath it, hooking an arm around one of its legs and delivering a swift powerful kick up and into its underbelly. The thing lets off a pained roar as it’s sent toppling over and directly into its friend, and the two of them smack with a fleshy thump-thump into the tunnel wall. Half a second later the cacophony of their angry screeching dies away to nothing—

Or almost nothing, anyway. These creatures do, evidently, have a tendency to snore.

“Good work,” Gamora pants, smiling as Mantis shakes her hands out, looking worriedly down at the snoozing beasts.

“I am Groot?”

“Oh, I am alright,” Mantis says.

“Me, too,” Gamora tells him as Mantis helps her to her feet. “See? We’ll be just fine as long as we—”

She’s cut off by another rumble and a distant screech. The sound of these two creatures’ short-lived fight has definitely drawn more of them out, all but announcing their location to the entire horde, and they’re already coming closer.

“—stick together.”

As the cave floor quakes with the hammering stampede of a hundred scaled claws, Gamora has enough time to think, I’ll try to get us out of this without resorting to killing them, but if it’s a choice between Mantis or Groot and any of these beasts—

And then they’re already nearly upon them. The first comes barreling into the tunnel with its great galloping strides and its snarling teeth, and Gamora dives at it. She leaps over the two sleeping beasts and meets the creature halfway, jumping up and wrapping both arms around its snout to pin its jaws shut, and as she suplexes the beast over her shoulder its tail and hind legs smack into the tunnel ceiling, dislodging entire meter-tall stalactites and hunks of rock on its way down.

It smacks the floor, too dazed to attack before Mantis puts that one to sleep, too.

A fourth and a fifth creature are already sprinting their way through the tunnel as well, pushing and shoving at each other, each vying for the front spot and the opportunity to tear Gamora and Mantis and Groot to shreds first. Gamora ducks out of the way of the first one’s teeth and throws a punch into its throat, grabbing its front leg in the next instant and yanking it off balance so it careens to the floor. She wraps her right hand around her left fist and drives her left elbow into the thing’s skull so that it’s knocked unconscious, and in the same moment she sees as Mantis dives toward the next creature — there’s a horrifying split second in which she’s certain that Mantis is about to throw herself right into the thing’s gaping maw — and taps the side of its head, bringing it down as well.

Five down, Gamora thinks, no time to be relieved. And how many more to go?

By now the noise in the cave is near deafening, the roaring and the screeching and the scraping claws, which means the answer to that question can only be a hell of a lot.

Gamora gets a hand on Godslayer. She’ll make an effort to save it for a last resort, but if she has to slice these things’ heads off their shoulders to keep Mantis and Groot safe, then so be it.

The cave rumbles and quakes, and another creature is already sprinting around the bend at full speed, so quickly that it’s nearly losing its footing and colliding with the tunnel walls in its haste to reach them. Another creature is hot on its heels, and there’s another behind that one, and who knows how many after that, and Gamora feels a sinking in her heart with the realization that there might be too many for her to fight off anyway, even if she does throw the non-lethal force out the window entirely.

She corrales Groot and Mantis behind her and extends Godslayer, and—

And then, from the direction of the snarling bloodthirsty beasts, hardly audible over the endless screeching, she hears a voice.

A very, very familiar voice.

“Not so fast, not so fast, yeesh!”

There’s a disgruntled whine from one of the beasts, all of them slowing down from their all-out sprint, and the few at the front of the pack turn and look over their shoulders with unmistakable hesitance, heads tilted in confusion.

“Oh, yeah, yeah, sure, whine all ya want, ya keep runnin’ this fast and you’re gonna end up splatterin’ me on the frickin’ walls—”

Mantis asks, incredulous and hopeful all at once, “Is that—?”

“I am Groot!”

Gamora’s jaw has long since dropped, and she stares at the shifting mass of reptilian bodies moving around each other, her eyes searching until she finally sees—

“Rocket?!”

For a moment, Gamora genuinely thinks she might be hallucinating.

Because there, sitting atop one of the smaller — though no less fearsome — of the huge reptilian creatures in this tunnel, is none other than Rocket, whole and alive and apparently completely unhurt. He’s sitting right on top of the thing’s skull, holding himself steady with what looks like a mesh of cables knotted around its snout like a set of reins.

At the sound of Gamora’s incredulous shout, Rocket looks up and finally seems to notice the three of them staring at him with their jaws hanging slack.

“There you guys are!” Rocket shouts. “About frickin’ time, I thought I’d never catch up to yas—”

“I am Groot!”

“Language!” Rocket automatically yells back. He tugs on the cables in his hands like he’s riding a pack mule and not a several ton reptilian predator, and the thing lets off a disgruntled growl but complies with whatever Rocket’s demanding. It shuffles forward and past the rest of the creatures that are eyeing it uncertainly— probably because they’ve never seen anything quite like a raccoon successfully ordering one of their brethren around— and finally it lowers its head enough that Rocket is more-or-less at a normal talking distance. “And what the hell d’ya mean, where was I? You’s are the ones that went and disappeared on me, had to go trackin’ you all down for the last frickin’ hour—”

“I am Groot!”

“Huh?” Rocket makes a face, leaning back in his… well, not his seat, really, but the effect is there. “I ain’t the one that disappeared—”

“I am Groot!”

“Uh, no,” Rocket insists, “you’s all ran the hell off while I was climbin’ up to the frickin’ forest canopy tryna figure out which way we had to go! I come back down and none of you’s are where you’re supposed to be, and where the hell’s everybody else at, anyway—?”

“Rocket,” Gamora cuts in, hands on her hips. She casts a wary glance at the other creatures, sees that they’re all still hanging back with little apparent intent to attack, at least for the time being, and she brings her attention back to him again. “To answer your question, we lost track of everyone else. But more importantly, we never ran off. We waited right where you left us for at least six hours before we had to move on.”

At that, Rocket blinks, his eyes going wide and then his whole face twisting in confusion. “Six hours? The hell you talkin’ about? I came right back down and you were all already outta there.”

“I am Groot.”

“He’s right, Rocket,” Gamora tells him. “We all camped out right in that spot, hoping you would come back, and you didn’t.”

“Wha—? Did you all hit your head or something? It ain’t even been six hours since then, maybe one, one and a half, tops. And I been spending that whole time followin’ your trail with Tiny here.”

Gamora stares at him, open-mouthed and with her hands still on her hips. Rocket is, as a general rule, the worst liar she has ever met in her life including herself, so she knows beyond a doubt that he’s being entirely sincere.

But how is that possible?

Before she can ask, though, Mantis beats her to a different — but no less pressing — question. She points at the massive creature that Rocket’s comfortably perched on top of and asks, “How are you doing that?”

“Oh, what, this guy?” Rocket asks, leaning over to pat the top of the thing’s skull. “Easy. So long as you’re on one of ‘em, the rest of the dumbasses just kinda assume you’re s’posed to be there. So I tied Tiny here up so he can’t bite no more, and he got docile as a frickin’ puppy.”

As if in deliberate defiance of that statement, the creature curls up its lip and bares its teeth with a low rumbling snarl, but it does little else.

“Well,” Rocket shrugs. “Maybe docile ain’t the right word. But it ain’t like he can do much about it, I mean, obviously these guys got a bitin’ force like ya wouldn’t believe, but if ya hold their jaws shut they can’t do a damn thing. Can’t open their mouth or nothin’, the muscles just ain’t built for it.”

“I am Groot?”

“Whaddaya mean, how’d I know that? The ally-raiders on Earth—”

“Alligators,” Mantis corrects.

“—were the same damn way!” Rocket goes on without acknowledging the correction, and he throws his hands up. “Am I the only one who paid any attention at that frickin’ aquarium we went to? They told us all about it. Ya get their mouths shut, and they can’t open ‘em ‘cause all the muscles in there are made for clamping down. There was a whole thing about it.”

Gamora asks, “Was this before or after you broke open the octopus tank and got us thrown out?”

“Obviously it was before that,” Rocket says, rolling his eyes. “And you know, you got a whole lotta nerve gettin’ on my case about that again! How many times do I gotta say it, huh? He looked sad in there! Some kinda frickin’ Guardian of the Galaxy I’d be if I just waltzed on by and let him keep wastin’ away in that tank for the rest of his life, and… What, what’re ya smilin’ for, huh? What’s so frickin’ funny?”

Gamora bites her lip, shaking her head. “I’m just very glad you’re alright, Rocket.”

At the sincerity in Gamora’s voice, Rocket gets visibly caught between the argument he’d been gearing up for and the sudden understanding that said argument is, of course, not actually happening. He rolls his eyes again, though this time he’s obviously quietly pleased with the knowledge that they’d been so worried about him, and he says, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

“I am Groot!”

“I get it, alright? No need to get all sappy on me,” Rocket sighs, and then he nods at the creature beneath him and adds, “So are we gonna go find everybody else you’s three lost track of, or what?”

“Yes,” Mantis nods. “Peter and Loki should not be far.”

“We need to get back to them as soon as possible,” Gamora says, pointing with a thumb over her shoulder. “Part of the tunnel collapsed and they were trapped on the other side.”

Rocket shrugs. “A’ight, well, Tiny should be able to help us figure out where they’re at pretty quick, he’s crazy good at trackin’. Hop on, he ain’t gonna bite so long as I don’t let him.”

Groot wastes absolutely no time in climbing up the creature’s massive scaly sides, growing his arms long enough to pull himself up to the top with hardly any effort, and no sooner has he gotten settled comfortably with his legs on either side of the creature’s neck than he leans down and wraps Rocket up in a tight hug.

“I am Groot.”

“Okay, okay,” Rocket half-laughs, doing his best and utterly failing to sound annoyed as Groot all but lifts him off his seat, hiding his face in the fur on top of Rocket’s head. “Yeesh. You were that worried?”

“I am Groot.”

“Yeah, well, clearly I’m doing a hell of a lot better’n the rest of you,” Rocket says, while Gamora busies herself with lacing her fingers together and giving Mantis a boost onto the creature’s back. Mantis gets comfortably seated behind Groot, and she leans around him to affectionately ruffle the fur on Rocket’s head. The rest of the great snarling reptilian beasts, true to Rocket’s word, merely tilt their heads and watch this strange situation play out with curious eyes.

Rocket goes on, “Gonna take a whole lot more than some pea-brained reptiles to do me in, you know that.”

“I am Groot.”

“Huh? The hell ya mean, it ain’t just them?”

“I am Groot.”

“Ugh, for the last time, Groot,” Rocket tells him, “that was just that creepy old bat in the Markets talkin’ crazy, and Quill only thought he saw his mom when he was missin’ like half his blood supply. This place ain’t actually haunted.”

“Actually,” Gamora says, settling herself behind Mantis, “we’re starting to think it might be.”

Rocket twists around and leans over to shoot her a confused look, or a have-you-lost-your-mind look. “What? Seriously?”

She shrugs one shoulder. “Possibly.”

“How come?”

“Because we saw it,” Mantis says, her voice low. “Ghosts.”

“Rocket,” Gamora says, frowning. “Are you saying you didn’t?”

“Didn’t what?” Rocket asks, grimacing. “See any frickin’ ghosts walkin’ around? No, I haven’t seen that. Why the hell—?”

“You really haven’t seen anything?” Gamora asks. “You’ve seen nothing out of the ordinary at all the entire time you were tracking us down?”

Rocket shrugs, turning forward again and tugging on the cables he’s got wrapped around the creature’s snout. It lets out a warning grumble, but it does start ambling its way down the tunnel without much more of a complaint. The other creatures still hang back, evidently either unconcerned with them now or simply too baffled by the situation to do much else.

“I mean, the place gives me the creeps, I’ll give ya that,” Rocket says. “But nah.”

“I am Groot.”

“Yes,” Mantis agrees. “There were so many of them when we began approaching these caves. You did not see any at all?”

“Frickin’ ghosts? No,” Rocket tells them again like he can’t believe they’re still asking. “You even sure that’s really what ya saw? Coulda been a trick of the light, y’know, or all that creepy-ass fog makin’ ya see things—”

“We’re sure,” Gamora says. “At least, sure it wasn’t anything like that.”

“Yeah?”

She nods. She feels… fairly confident stating that much. Ever since Ego, she’s been turning it over and over and over in her mind, trying to determine through observation alone whether these apparitions are truly the spirits of the dead or if they’re something else entirely, something specifically engineered to look that way. But one thing she knows for certain is that it can’t be anything as simple as a hallucination or a trick of the light. Every time it’s been too detailed, too real, for all of them to have seen the same thing and not noticed any discrepancies.

“The last… thing we saw,” Gamora says, because she’s still not entirely sure what she wants to call them, “took the form of Loki’s dead mother. Apparently very convincingly.”

“I am Groot.”

Gamora nods. “And that was in addition to several dozen that took no true form at all. It’s like Mantis said, the closer we got to these caves, the more of them there seemed to be. And before that, just after we lost track of you and just before we lost track of Drax…” And she hesitates for a second, hyper aware of Mantis sitting just in front of her, but she decides rather quickly that nothing good can come of trying to find some softer way to put it. “… We saw Ego.”

Rocket’s ears perk up, and he twists around again. “Like, Ego Ego. Ego, the piece-of-crap-planet Ego. That Ego.”

Mantis nods.

Groot confirms, “I am Groot.”

“But how’d ya know it was really him?” Rocket asks as he turns back around.

“If it wasn’t,” Gamora says, “if it was some kind of trick, then it was a very… lifelike one. It looked exactly like he did. It spoke exactly like he did.” She shakes her head, frowning as she pictures it again, the hateful look on Ego’s face and all the horrible things he said and how distraught Peter was and how furious Mantis was. Gamora runs a hand up and down Mantis’ arm now as she recounts, “He… said things, too. Specific things. Things no one else would have said.”

“What kinda things?”

“Well, who other than us even knows that Peter’s half-celestial in the first place?” Gamora asks. “Who else would have known about Ego’s existence at all?”

Rocket grunts, reluctantly conceding, “Yeah, ‘s a good point, I guess.”

“He said things to all of us,” Mantis says, then corrects, “most of us. He called me naive. Ego always said that about me. I do not know who else would have known that, or who else would have said those things, if it was not Ego.”

“I am Groot.”

Gamora smiles. “I second that. You’re not naive at all, Mantis.”

Mantis seems to appreciate the sentiment, and Gamora gives her arm a gentle squeeze. It doesn’t do much to alleviate the heavy weight of knowing that whatever they saw was, in all likelihood, actually the spirit of the person who made Mantis’ life a living hell for so many years, the person who slayed thousands and who tortured Peter and who nearly decimated the Universe and who they all thought was gone forever.

After all, who else would have spoken to Mantis like that? Who else would have spoken to Peter like that? All those horrible things he spat in their faces, insisting that Peter took after him of all people, that Peter’s not like any of them, that he doesn’t belong with any of them because of the twisted image that Ego’s made Peter out to be.

And then, of course, there’s the part that technically isn’t even the worst of what Ego said, not by a longshot, but what’s been festering in the back of Gamora’s mind all the same, and—

The realization hits her all at once like a crashed M ship.

“Oh, my God,” she breathes, staring wide-eyed ahead at nothing.

How? How had she missed that? How is she only realizing it now? She’d been so concerned about what he said to her, about the implications of it, about her own guilt, that she had never even stopped to consider—

“I am Groot?”

“What is it? Mantis asks.

“Ego,” Gamora says, breathless to her own ears. “When we saw him, he said… he said all those horrible things to you, and to Peter, but— when he spoke to me, do you remember what he said?”

“I am Groot.”

“Yes,” Mantis agrees. “He said a lot of very mean things to you. To all of us.”

“No, specifically,” Gamora insists, and then she carefully recounts every word to the best of her ability. “He said that I’ve… helped kill every person that’s ever attempted to raise me. He said I bring everyone I love to ruin, and that he wasn’t going to listen to anything I said about Peter’s mother after—” she gulps, because as important as it may be, it still hurts terribly to say aloud— “after what I let happen to my mother.”

“Yeesh,” Rocket mutters, shaking his head. “Tell ya what, I’m real glad we blew that asshole to Kingdom Come, huh?”

“I am Groot.”

“But that’s just it,” Gamora says. “We did. We killed him… what, a day after he met me? If that?”

“So what?” Rocket asks.

It’s Mantis who first realizes what Gamora’s getting at. She gasps, reaching up with both hands to cover her mouth, and then she asks, “So how did he know about your mother?”

Gamora nods. “How did he know anything about my mother?”

For a moment, all that meets her and Mantis’ questions is resounding silence.

Then Rocket says, not unkindly, “Quill could’ve told him about it.”

Gamora shakes her head. “No, he couldn’t have.”

“Hey, he didn’t know what an asshole the guy was, remember? Not at the beginning. None of us did.”

“No, I mean he literally couldn’t have,” Gamora insists. “He couldn’t have told anyone about it because at that point I hadn’t even told him about it. I hadn’t told anyone.”

Because she knows, precisely and to the day, exactly when she did tell him. She remembers that night vividly, remembers the fear, remembers how convinced she’d been that this would be it, this would be the last straw that would finally allow Peter to see her for what she truly was, this would make him realize that he had been travelling and working alongside the likes of her, the likes of Thanos, a cold-hearted killer. It was my fault, she remembers confessing to him, alone in his quarters on the Quadrant, her jaw set and tears escaping despite her best efforts. If I hadn’t screamed, he never would have found either of us. And even after, if I had done something, anything, if I hadn’t stood there and let it happen…

Really, it’s worth noting that she only remembers it so vividly because of the way Peter reacted. The way he said, absurdly, I’m gonna hug you now, if that’s cool, like her comfort somehow still mattered above all else, even then. The way his voice thrummed in his chest against her ear as he held her, as she sobbed herself hoarse over the loss of her mother for the first time in decades.

You were just a kid. None of that was your fault, ‘Mora, not one bit of it.

“It was a full month after Ego when I told Peter about my mother,” Gamora tells them now. “I’m sure of it.”

“And you’re sure you never mentioned it before that?” Rocket asks. “Not even once?”

“I’m sure,” she says. “And even if I had, even if Peter knew, and he told Ego about it before we killed him… That’s not all he said. Remember? He said I helped kill every person that’s attempted to raise me. Every person. And Thanos was still alive when we fought Ego, he was still alive years after Ego died, so… why would he say that?”

“… Don’t make any goddamn sense,” Rocket mutters.

“I am Groot?”

“A different Ego?” Rocket parrots, then scoffs. “How many frickin’ Egos you think there are, Groot? Pretty sure if there was more than one of him we’d have found out about it a long-ass time ago.”

“Perhaps,” Mantis offers, though she seems hesitant to, “perhaps when a person dies, they learn more than they knew in life. Perhaps he learned these things after his death.”

“That’s… possible,” Gamora admits, but in her gut she feels that that’s not quite it. She shakes her head again. “But I don’t know. I really don’t know.”

“Well, I’ll tell ya what,” Rocket says. “I don’t know either, and I don’t care. We’re findin’ Quill and the Royal Pain-in-the-Ass, and then we’re findin’ wherever the hell Drax ran off to, and then we’re taking that reward money whether they give it up or not, and we’re getting off this krutackin’ rock and never lookin’ back. Who’s with me?”

“I am definitely with you,” Mantis agrees.

“I am Groot.”

And while Gamora can’t say she doesn’t care what’s going on in this place, while she can’t say she doesn’t ache to know whether Ego really knew about her mother and whether everything else they’ve seen has been real or an elaborate hoax all along, well…

If it’s a choice between understanding this endlessly confusing place and getting everyone out of it in one piece, she will gladly take the latter.

“I’m with you,” Gamora agrees. “Let’s find them and get out of here.”

Axzhaat’s spawn briefly considers running.

Nebula can all but see the thought cross his mind before he realizes with the quick shuttering of his expression that running would gain him nothing, and least of all running from her.

Instead he slowly backs away, trying and failing to suppress that glimmer of fear in his eyes, and he holds up a finger like that will deter Nebula as she stalks toward him.

“N— now, you wait one second—”

And that’s about all he manages to get out.

The next instant he’s flat on his back, and Nebula’s knee is driving into the soft fleshy space between his ribs, squeezing all the breath from him in a sputtering woosh. Kraglin circles around them until he’s standing in front of Nebula, watching the spawn upside-down with his arms crossed over his chest. Out of the corner of her eye Nebula sees Axzhaat — not the Axzhaat under her knee, the other Axzhaat, this one’s father, and Nebula has always hated people who felt the need to name their children after themselves and this only makes her hate it even more — she sees him attempting to intervene, stepping forward with that box still clutched in his arms and his face several shades too pale, stepping forward like he possesses even the remote capacity to stop Nebula from gutting this cretin under her knee if she so chooses.

In any case, he doesn’t get the chance to try. There’s a low whistle, and Axzhaat backpedals as a glowing red arrow blocks his path and inches ever closer, forcing him back a step at a time.

The spawn attempts to speak.

“You— you can’t do this. I’ll have you arrested, you— you’ll never see the outside of a prison cell again for the rest of your lives, either of you—”

Kraglin snorts. “Aw, Neb, ain’t he cute? He thinks we ain’t never been arrested before.”

“I mean it, you can’t— do you have any idea who—”

Nebula presses down with her knee a bit more firmly, cutting off the spawn’s voice with another choked wheeze, and then she bends down and leans in close so the idiot’s field of vision is reduced to hardly anything but her.

“Listen to me,” she says, calm and low, and she punctuates the sentence with an extra little oomph into his diaphragm. “And listen very, very carefully. There is one reason that I did not drive my ship all the way through your putrid, garish home and reduce your fragile little body to a splatter mark on my windshield. Do you understand? One reason, and one reason only. It is because I have been led to believe that you have information. Supposedly you have information that can lead me to my sister and the rest of her idiot friends, information about how they might have disappeared and what’s causing everyone to disappear— a phenomenon that, I will remind you, you and your father hired us to investigate in the first place.”

She lifts her knee a hair’s breadth, giving him just enough give to speak.

“Now I’m asking: Do you have that information?”

The spawn visibly gulps, a tremor running through him as he opens his mouth and stammers, “I— I don’t— know what—”

“Hm, no,” Nebula says, pressing down hard enough to bruise and, in one fluid movement, also pulling her dagger from her belt. She flips it around in her palm and lowers it beneath the spawn’s chin, and he tries fruitlessly to shrink back into the floor.

“Don’t hurt him!” Axzhaat shouts, even as, with another whistle, the arrow forces him back yet two more steps. “Don’t hurt him, please, you don’t even know that he knows anything!”

Nebula ignores his wailing, because the fact of the matter is that she does know that his idiot son knows something, at least something more than she does.

She doubles down, tipping the point of the blade against the spawn’s pulse point.

“Let’s try a new question, shall we?” she asks, smiling down at him. “Answer honestly this time. Does the name Thanos mean anything to you?”

The flash of recognition is impossible to miss, and then a hint of confusion through the fear.

“Yes, of course it does. But you’re wondering what my father has to do with any of this, aren’t you?” Nebula asks, applying just a bit of pressure to the blade at his throat so he can’t so much as twitch without cutting himself. “It used to be every day you would hear more and more tales of the Mad Titan and his conquests, the death and destruction he left in his wake, and yet… no one has heard anything about him in weeks. Tell me, spawn, do you know why that is?”

Nebula leans in ever closer, and once again he attempts to press himself flat into the floor, like he hopes he’ll be swallowed up by it.

“It’s because I killed him,” she says, whispering it like it’s a secret, like she’s letting him in on something of utmost importance. And she is, really. “I drove a dagger through his eye and into his brain, and do you know why? I killed him because he did all of this—” with her mechanical arm she waves at the next most prominent of her modifications, the synthetic eye and metal plates embedded into her skull— “to me. I murdered my father in cold blood and let his lifeless, eyeless, armless corpse rot, simply because he wronged me.”

All… half-truths, technically, but this idiot does not know that, and he does not need to.

Kraglin, luckily, does not correct her.

“So I ask you now: If I was willing, and eager, to do all of that to my own father, the man who raised me,” Nebula continues, as an infinitesimal speck of blood wells up at the point of her blade, “what exactly do you think I would be willing to do to you?”

She lifts her knee enough that the cretin can properly breathe, but she leaves the dagger where it is.

“Lie to me again,” Nebula tells him, “and you will surely find out.”

For a moment he remains silent, shrunk back against the floor, shaking and sweating and drawing in measured breaths so as not to provoke the blade any further into the flesh of his neck.

When he does speak, it takes him one or two faltering tries to get his voice in working order.

“I— I didn’t— None of this was my doing,” he insists, “none of it, I wanted her gone so that people would stop disappearing, that was the whole point—”

“Wanted who gone?” Kraglin asks.

But the spawn hardly seems to have heard him at all. “She said it would be one of us next if I didn’t bend to her demands,” he all but spits, scowling, “and now my sister is gone and more of us are sure to be next, and you were supposed to kill her, I specifically requested that Nova send someone that would do so without asking too many questions, and—”

“Kill who?” Nebula presses.

“I don’t— I don’t know her name!” he all but squeaks, turning his head away from Nebula in a vain attempt to escape the dagger. “I don’t know her name, I swear, she never gave it to me. She’s… a woman—”

“Yeah, no kiddin’,” Kraglin says. “We got that much.”

“Details,” Nebula prods. “Now.”

“An old woman. I… I don’t even know what species she is. But— she lives out there, in the forest somewhere. I don’t know exactly where, don’t ask me, I only know it’s— it’s underground. Near the center of the forest, underground.”

Nebula feels a pit descend into her stomach just as Kraglin spits a curse, turning away from them both and nervously pacing in a circle. After just one circuit he stops right where he’d been and plants his hands on his hips.

“That person livin’ underground out in them woods, the one we heard Pete talkin’ to—”

“I am aware,” Nebula says. “He’s in danger, they all are. We’ll need to move quickly.”

“Oh, move quickly,” Axzhaat’s spawn repeats, mocking under his breath. He’s got a strange smile on his face now, almost laughing but not quite, and without a single trace of humor in it. “Why did I never think of—?”

“You knew,” Axzhaat interrupts, loud and aghast, seeming to have forgotten about Nebula and Kraglin altogether, along with the arrow still dutifully hovering three feet from him. His eyes are wide and fixed squarely on his son, who instinctively shuts his mouth the moment his father starts talking. “You really knew. All this time, you knew about this woman? You knew she was causing all of this?”

His son sets his jaw. He looks near tears himself, though his are furious and frightened all at once where his father’s are only heartbroken. “I told you,” his spawn whispers. “I told you, all that work with the police, all that talk about slave traders and the Kree, I told you it was a waste of time—”

“But you didn’t tell me why! You could have told me, you could have told the police— hell, you could have told any of these— these Guardians!” Axzhaat shouts with a flailing wave at Nebula and Kraglin. “You’ve known all along exactly who was causing all of this, Axzhee, why in the world wouldn’t you say so?”

“‘Cause he figured we weren’t gonna take his side,” Kraglin says, quiet, prompting both Nebula and Axzhaat to direct a wide-eyed look at him. “Or catching this lady’s gonna bring somethin’ else to light that he don’t want us knowin’. Ain’t that right?”

The spawn grits his teeth. “It doesn’t matter.”

Nebula presses the dulled edge of the knife into his throat hard enough to hurt. “Why don’t you let us be the judge of that, hm?”

“I—”

“Tell us. Now.”

“I didn’t— She— She made… demands.”

“What kind of demands?”

The spawn stares at her for a long moment in which he seems to be debating whether to risk her blade after all, but finally he admits, “She demanded that I halt every single mining operation within a five mile radius of the forest. She wanted to cripple the entire Urunian economy and decimate our company just because she got it in her head that the entire forest belongs to her, because we dared to begin construction at its edge, and—”

“And,” Kraglin says, “I’m guessin’ you didn’t listen.”

“What? No, I didn’t— I was not going to negotiate with this madwoman, she—”

“Dunno, the way you tell it, it sounds like she gave ya an easy out,” Kraglin shrugs, “and you didn’t take it.”

“An easy—? You call that an easy out? Do you have any idea how much Uru there is under that forest? Do you have any idea what I would be throwing away?”

“Sounds like you threw away the thirty-some-odd people that this old lady got rid of—”

“And it would have been far less if you had done your jobs like I hired you to do!”

“Axzhee, this woman made these demands to you,” Axzhaat speaks up, once again ignoring Kraglin and Nebula and the arrow hovering in front of him, “and she told you that one of us was going to be next if you didn’t comply, and you still—?”

“Oh, do not get self-righteous with me, you would have done the same in my position—”

“No, I most certainly would not have!” Axzhaat cries, stomping his foot. “I’ll admit I would have done all I could to stop this woman first, but the moment she threatened any of us I would have given in and complied with her demands and you damn well know it! Bury the company, Axzhee, your sister—”

“Ahza’s gone,” the spawn cuts him off. His voice is flat except for, if Nebula is not mistaken, the first hint of guilt he’s shown since they got here. “There’s no use arguing over it, Dad, she’s already long gone.”

“But we can find this woman, we can reason with her to get your sister back—”

“No, we can’t.”

It’s said with such finality, with such resignation, that Nebula can’t help saying, “You mean she’s dead.”

The spawn hesitates, and then says, “No. She’s not, or… at least she’s likely not, but she might as well be for all the difference it makes.”

Axzhaat cries, “It makes plenty difference!”

“It’s too late,” his spawn tells them, louder, closing his eyes for a moment before opening them again and directing an almost apologetic look up in the general direction of his father, who he likely can’t entirely see right now from his position. “If this woman already got a hold of her, Ahza’s gone far enough away that it doesn’t matter one bit if she’s dead or not. It’s too late for her, and—” his eyes shift over to Nebula— “if the woman’s gotten a hold of your friends, then… I’m sorry, I really am, but it’s too late for them, too.”

It happens like this.

One minute, Peter’s… somewhere, but he has absolutely no goddamn clue where, just that he feels kind of… floaty, like he’s moving without really moving, and there’s this whitish mist everywhere he looks, and—

Wait, no. That’s not right. There isn’t this whitish mist everywhere, the whitish mist is the everywhere. Like, that’s literally all there is. Everything is white, white, white— or maybe nothing is white, white, white, but whatever it is, whether it’s everything or nothing or what, Peter is right smack dab in the middle of it. Just white as far as he can see in all directions, maybe a speck or two of blue in his peripheral, but every time he tries to focus on that it flits away before he can actually catch it.

What was he saying?

Right. One minute he’s here, in this weird whitish nothingness, and the next—

Wait.

No, no, no, shit.

That’s not right either.

Because there’s not a one minute he’s here, the next he’s somewhere else, even though he kind of feels like there should be. There’s not, because despite the fact that Peter’s in this weird whitish nothing place, and despite the fact that he obviously had to have gotten here somehow, and despite the fact that there must have been something that came before, a place he must have gotten here from…

For the life of him he can’t remember what it was. Or where it was. Or when it was.

If it was?

No, come on, that’s nuts. It definitely was.

“Oh, what the hell,” Peter murmurs, pivoting in a circle and taking in his surroundings, and it’s not until his own voice meets his ears that he realizes he’s a bit surprised to find that it works at all. He’d been half-expecting the words to dissolve into the same white nothing the second they left his mouth.

Jesus, where is he?

“This is… really friggin’ weird,” Peter says aloud, mostly to fill up the silence, but also on the instinctive hope that there’s someone else in this… whatever it is, and that maybe they’ll hear him.

And somehow, maybe a little bit miraculously—

Someone is. Someone does.

He’s in the middle of a slow pivot when he sees her, not five feet away, and his heart gives a painful thudding jolt.

“Je-sus,” Peter breathes, glaring with a hand on his chest. She’s about three feet tall and looks frail as all hell, but she’d somehow gone ahead and scared the daylights out of him anyway. “A little warning, lady?”

“Mm,” is all she says at first, shuffling past him with a cane. In the nothingness that surrounds them on all sides, somehow she finds a seat, and as she lowers herself into it Peter sees the barest afterimage of a chair right there where, logically, there should be one. Just an afterimage, like closing your eyes after staring at a neon sign for too long.

The old bat doesn’t seem to mind the impossibility of the seat she’s sitting in, though. She gets comfortable, laying her cane across her lap, and then she pulls something out of one of the many folds in her flowing little robes. It’s some kind of hand-rolled cigarette or cigar or something, and she lights it with a match before shaking the match out and tossing it aside into the white mist.

And Peter realizes, out of nowhere, that he knows this woman.

“Wait,” he says, hardly believing he forgot until just now. Is this place messing with his head or something? What the hell? “We… We met. Tath, right?”

“Mm.”

She nods, takes a puff from her rolled up cigarette, and flicks some ash aside.

“Apologies for the theatrics,” says Tath, sounding about as unapologetic as someone can possibly sound. “At my age, you learn to err on the side of caution.”

“The… The theatrics?”

“Mm.” She nods, waving a tiny pruney hand at the space around them, wafting little tendrils of smoke into the air so it intermingles with the mist. “Welcome to the in-between, Peter Quill.”

Chapter Text

“Welcome to the in-between, Peter Quill.”

Peter echoes, “… The in-between.”

“Yes.”

The first thing he thinks to ask is in between what, but for some reason even thinking that question sends a cold pit of dread all the way down into his stomach, like some instinct he doesn’t totally understand is holding the words trapped at the back of his throat for his own good, sitting far to the back of his tongue and refusing to budge. Like it’s saying oh, you don’t wanna know the answer to that, pal.

“And you…” Peter tries again, squinting. Every time he tries to get a hold of a good coherent thought it slips like sand through his fingers. “You said you’re… being… cautious?”

“That I did,” the old lady answers. “Because you may have… well, let’s say hobbled yourself, Peter Quill, but you are still young, and quite strong, and very large compared to me. This—” she waves a hand back and forth between them, at the white shifting mist— “is only a precaution, you understand.”

“I, uh…”

Something’s setting him on edge and he doesn’t know what. Might be the strangeness of everything around him. Might be the fact that his brain’s refusing to latch onto anything that could be called a bonafide memory. Might be something else altogether. Who the hell knows.

“I gotta be honest, lady, I don’t think I understand… any of this. I don’t even remember how I got here.”

“Mm. Yes. Give it time,” Tath says, taking another puff of the rolled up cigarette-cigar thing in her hand. “The in-between usually has that effect.”

“The what-now?”

“The in-between,” she repeats without a single word of actual explanation. “As I said, give it time. It will come back.”

“It’ll…?” Peter starts to ask.

But even as he says it he realizes there are… blips. Little pinging signals lighting up in the back of his brain. It’s all still so indistinct, like a fading dream except — and Peter’s more than a little relieved to make this observation — it seems to be happening in the opposite direction. Little bits of memory filling in the gaps rather than fleeing his subconscious entirely.

“Mm,” Tath says. She leans back on her white cloud chair of nothingness and exhales slowly, letting the smoke curl slowly in a gray halo around her small, pinched face. “See?”

“Holy shit,” Peter breathes out the words without quite meaning to.

It’s all still so fuzzy and dreamlike, the memories that his brain’s finally decided to snag onto, but somehow he knows it’s real, feels it in his bones that it won’t stay dreamlike forever, none of the vague thoughts flitting around his mind are gonna stay dreamlike forever, and that means—

“Loki. Shit, he—”

“Yes, yes,” Tath says, waving a hand like she’s shooting a fly. “You have only mentioned this, what, fifteen times? Him and your other friends. My, you do bounce back quickly, don’t you?”

“I… what?”

“Bounce back,” she repeats, tapping her own wrinkly temple with the hand holding her cigarette. “Suppose it makes sense, even with your… condition.”

“My condition,” Peter echoes.

He crosses his arms, and he means for it to come off at least a little authoritative, captain-like, but deep down he suspects that all it really does is make him look like a scared little kid hugging himself in the cold. Because that’s kind of how he feels. It is cold here, but not cold as in… cold cold. Just distant. Numb.

“Yes,” Tath says. “Your condition.”

Peter frowns. He remembers it, sort of, if he really wracks his brain. He remembers her scowl, her angrily muttered what have you done to yourself, the way she’d held his face and moved it around like she was inspecting him. “Are you really still on about that?” Peter asks. “Look, lady, I’m not the one that’s hurt here, alright? My leg’s practically good as new, and—”

“Your leg?”

“Uh.” Peter blinks. “Yeah?”

“Who said anything about your leg?”

“I… I mean, didn’t… didn’t you?” Peter asks, tilting his head. More of it’s coming back, and he definitely remembers her yammering on about how he got himself hurt, and how Loki’s gonna heal just fine, unlike him. “Right?”

“Your leg is no concern of mine.”

“Then why—?”

“Although, for the record,” she says, taking a quick puff of her cigarette, “it would not even have been a concern of yours had you not gone and thrown your Celestial abilities away without a second thought.”

“My—?”

Peter very, very abruptly feels like he’s been dunked in ice water.

“How the hell do you know about that?”

“Your heritage?” Tath finishes for him, foggy white eyes on him. She almost looks amused for a second, but… well, it’s still hard to really tell. “You may look human, Peter Quill, but that is only to someone who does not know where to look. I have been around for a very, very long time, and over the course of my life I’ve perfected the art of knowing exactly where to look.” She shrugs. “And when to look. But rest assured, a half-Celestial hybrid is far from the strangest thing I have ever seen. There were once thousands of you, you know.”

“I—”

Peter’s voice comes out smaller than he wanted it to be, because very abruptly all he can think about is piles upon piles of skulls left at the bottom of a ravine where no one would ever find them for centuries after their deaths, and one after the other they failed me and not one of them carried the Celestial genes until you, Peter, and on and on and on and this is your purpose—

He tightens his grip on his arms and averts his eyes from the old woman, only to find that there is, literally, nothing else to look at around here. Not a goddamn thing.

“Yeah,” he says, and his voice is firm but unmistakably bitter. “Yeah, I know.”

“Mm. Of course you do,” Tath nods. “And so you understand why, when I felt this—” she waves the hand holding the cigarette again, vaguely, like she’s waving away some of the white mist around them— “this disturbance in my forest, I thought for sure it must have been coming from you.”

Peter frowns. “What kind of disturbance?”

Tath takes a puff, flicks some ash into the great white nothing, and eyes him with yet another wrinkle forming between her brows.

“Magic. Obviously.”

“Yeah. Uh— right,” Peter says, shaking his head. “Yeah, no, that wasn’t me, that was—”

“The Jotunn runt, yes,” Tath says, not… entirely unkindly, or maybe just not any more unkindly than her general base level of unkindness. Like the word runt isn’t an insult so much as it’s a point of fact. And maybe that’s true; Loki is small for a Frost Giant, after all. “As I said, a half Celestial is far from the strangest thing I’ve ever seen. A Jotunn with the kind of magic that one has, now that comes a bit closer.”

“I mean, he was raised by Asgardians,” Peter shrugs. “He probably picked it up from them.”

“Yes, I have already discerned that much for myself, thank you,” Tath sighs. “I admit that was an error on my part. Made too many assumptions. Forgot to look in the proper places. It is quite a bit of magic for any Jotunn, especially one of his age, but still hardly spit in an ocean compared with what you should have been bringing into the forest.”

Tath shakes her head. Her cigarette thing must have burnt out, because she digs into her robes for another match and relights it.

“A half-Celestial standing right in front of me, honestly,” she laments with a slow shake of her head, though Peter’s… not exactly sure what she’s lamenting, because hell, it’s a good thing he doesn’t have any connection to that jackass planet anymore, isn’t it? Before he can speak up in his own defense though, she sighs. “Ah, well. So tell me, Peter Quill. Do you know where you are right now?”

“Uh,” Peter chances another glance around him. “The… in-between? That’s what you called it?”

“Yes, but I mean physically,” Tath says. “You are in my home, remember?”

Peter opens his mouth, hesitates, eyes unfocused. He thinks he might remember it, maybe. He remembers the forest, the cave. He remembers the giant reptile things. He remembers the place coming down on top of them. He remembers Loki, hurt and all out of sorts. He’s remembering more and more every second, even though it’s still all a little… off, the way dreams are.

“Yeah, I think so,” Peter answers, because there’s something there about a door at the end of a tunnel, an iron door knocker, the door swinging open, and… that’s it. “We went in through that door, right?”

“Mm. Into my home.”

“And we’re… still there.”

Tath nods. “Physically, yes. And do you know where my home is?”

“In a… a cave? In the forest?”

Again, she nods, like he’s a little kid following along with a math lesson. “Very good. And do you know what is so special about this forest, Peter Quill?”

“I have a feeling you’re gonna tell me.”

The wrinkles on her cheeks pull a bit as she smiles for what is definitely the first time since Peter’s met her, and before she answers, she takes one more pull from her cigarette and slowly blows the smoke out into the ether between them.

“I told you there is no place quite like it. Not on this planet, at any rate,” Tath says. “And your friend even told you why, though he was a bit… dismissive about it. I will grant him the excuse that he is quite young, and naive besides. But honestly, even given millenia I doubt he would quite grasp the enormity of it, or the… unique effort that was spent attuning myself to it.”

“What’s it?”

“The barrier, he called it,” Tath tells him. “The line between dimensions.”

It dawns on Peter all at once, as soon as she calls it a barrier, and he immediately jumps on that.

Finally, something he gets.

“It’s thinner,” he says, echoing what Loki told them all… however many hours ago. He can’t remember. “There’s an overlap, right? The dimensions aren’t totally lined up the way they’re supposed to be?”

“Very good, indeed,” Tath nods again. “It’s rather a subtle overlap. Not many are capable of sensing it. Even fewer are capable of seeing past it.”

“Okay, sure. And let me guess,” Peter says, crossing his arms again. “You’re one of those few?”

Tath’s grin widens, deep fissures carved into her cheeks. “I am, indeed. My kind are… were capable of it from birth, though it takes nearly a lifetime to attune oneself to a particular rift. Given enough patience, enough dedication, we can see through that line and observe whatever we like. We can also… widen the rift, so to speak. Shift it, flatten it, alter it to our own benefit.” She shrugs again, takes another puff. “Within reason, of course. We were never true magic users, so there are limits.”

“And you can… what,” Peter says, “take people… through the rift? Into the space between dimensions?” He points at the white mist around them and swirls his finger in a circle. “That’s what this is?”

She gives a little monosyllabic laugh. “That is what this is, but no, I cannot do that. Again, you are not physically in the in-between. Neither of us is. And even this much,” she points at their surroundings with a little twirl of her finger that feels like a deliberate imitation of him, “this projection of consciousness, it is far beyond what I was ever capable of until very recently. I could observe neighboring worlds, and I could thin out the space between in very particular places so that you end up with a sort of… an image, let’s call it? An image of something from that other world, and that image shows up here, visible to even someone who cannot do what I can do. But that’s all.”

“An image,” Peter repeats.

“Mm-hmm.”

The realization, right then, is a cold shock of electricity up Peter’s spine. His fight-or-flight response rears its head and sends his heart rate skyrocketing at the knowledge that he walked right into this lady’s goddamn house.

He tamps down on it.

Not the time to panic. So not the time to panic.

Shit.

Peter gulps. “This forest isn’t really haunted, is it?”

She shakes her head, taps some ash from her cigarette out into the white mist. “Not in the traditional sense, no. It is not.”

“So you… you’re… making the place seem haunted. You’re what’s causing all those—” ghosts, apparitions, hallucinations “— whatever the hell they are?”

“Mm. I am.”

“And they’re not ghosts. They’re… people. Real people, from other universes.”

“Correct.”

“But why?”

“At the beginning all I could manage was… faint images?” Tath muses, tipping her head back and forth. And that’s not an answer, at least not to the question Peter asked, but she doesn’t seem to give much of a crap whether his questions get answered or not. “It more than sufficed, though. If anything, the faintness, the indistinctness, it helped. Made the Urunians more inclined to believe that they were really seeing ghosts. Idiots, really. They’d see someone they used to know and follow it without a second thought.”

“So it’s you,” Peter breathes. “It’s— You’re the one making people disappear. You’re luring them out here and then… what, sending them somewhere like this? Or sending them into other dimensions, or…?”

The old lady regards him with a befuddled look, eyes narrowed. “Have you not been listening? No, I do not send them into other dimensions.”

“But—”

“Until very recently I was not capable. I was not even capable of this,” she reminds him, again waving between the two of them. “Gods, you are worse than the Aakon, I tell you. Do you not remember me telling you this? Is the in-between messing around in your head more than you are telling me?”

“If you don’t send them to other dimensions, then what the hell happens to them?” Peter demands. “Because it is you, isn’t it? You’re the one behind all these disappearances?”

Tath watches him, indifferent, and takes another puff. And then she says, “The forest takes care of it.”

“The hell you mean the forest takes care of it?”

“I mean,” she says, quiet and annoyed, “that as of yet, I have not been able to send anyone across the barrier between worlds, and as of yet I have not needed to. All I have to do is lure someone far enough out into the forest, and then, as I said, the forest takes care of it.”

“What, you just leave them out there?”

“I do.”

“And the forest takes care of them, you’re saying it kills them. They wander around and end up turning into lizard food, that’s what you’re saying?”

Tath shrugs. “Some of them may still be alive.”

“Some of—?” Peter feels like he’s been punched in the stomach. She said that so casually, so indifferently, that he’d almost expected her to end that sentence with for all I know, and who the hell cares, anyway? “Thirty-some-odd people just wandering around this creepy-ass place, maybe dead, maybe not, and you’re— you don’t give a rat’s ass what happened to any of them?”

“Why should I?”

“Wha— because!” Peter shouts, gesticulating with both hands to try and get across a concept he can’t exactly put to words, so eventually he just settles with, “Because they’re people. What the hell, I mean, some of them are kids.”

“I have taken great care to affect no one too young,” Tath says, with an attitude like even that much was a huge favor she did for all the people of Urunia. “The youngest was… fifteen, I believe?”

“Yeah, and fifteen is still a kid, you goddamn psychopath.”

Tath sighs, totally unaffected by his anger. “I do not know why I thought you might understand—”

“I sure as hell don’t, either!”

“This place,” Tath continues, undeterred, her voice rising just a hair, “is my home. It is my family, Peter Quill, and it is the only family I have had for millennia. I am doing what I must, what is necessary, to protect it. Do you have any idea what they are doing to it even now, as we speak? Do you have any idea how many of my children have been lost to the force that is creeping in upon this place, day after day? Every day I lose more of it. Do you have any idea what that feels like?”

“So? That’s not—”

“I tried to be civil,” Tath tells him, voice calm again. “Do you know this? I tried to reason with the person in charge of these… construction operations, and he did not yield. He refused. So I began thinning out the barrier as I do, and I began… showing people. Not luring, not yet, simply showing them. I thought if I could create enough fear in the Urunian people, if I could make them think the forest was a place they should not disturb, then it might be safe. But even then, they persisted. Even then, that moronic Aakon doubled down and even increased his encroachment on my home. So I answered in kind.”

Peter throws his hands up. He’s like, six seconds away from grabbing this lady by her tiny shoulders and actually physically shaking some sense into her. “So what, some guy cuts down a few trees, you think, ‘Hey, you know what’d be a good response to that? I know! Killing thirty-some-odd innocent people!’”

“Once more, I did not kill anyone.”

“You might as well have!”

“Maybe so. But again, it is what is necessary—”

“Bull shit it’s—”

“— and it is not as if I could do much else, could I? I could not go directly to the person in charge of these operations, I could not threaten him personally. Look at me,” she says, gesturing to her tiny three-foot frame. “Even now, even after I have been… testing the limits of what I can do, the last day or so, I still cannot reliably shunt a person fully across the rift. I managed it with the little one, the rodent, but only for about… seven hours? And far less than that, if you go by the nonlinear progression of time in the in-between, and the rift spat him back out before I could stop it.”

Cold dread takes Peter over for an entirely new reason. “You’re talking about Rocket.”

She nods. “I am.”

“You’re the reason he disappeared,” Peter says. “And Drax? What about him?”

“Drax, that’s the big one, yes? With the, ah… the tattoos? No, no,” Tath shakes her head. “I tried, but I could only manage it with the small one. Strangely enough, I believe the size of the person has an effect on how easy it is to—”

“Where are they?” Peter cuts her off. “What the hell’d you do to them?”

“My goodness, relax. Did I not just say? I did not interfere with the big one’s placement within this plane or any other, because I couldn’t. I simply lured him away from the rest of you.”

“You—? Why?”

She shrugs. “To see if I could send him across the barrier, eventually, given enough practice. And I could not exactly attempt it on any of you when you were all together, obviously. But it did not work. Again, I believe it may depend on the size of the person. Perhaps given more time I could work it out, but for now, I assure you he is somewhere in the forest and well within the dimension in which he has spent his entire life. I was unsuccessful all seven times I tried it.”

“Seven—?!”

“Yes, yes, and then I gave up. For the time being.” Again, she shrugs. “The last I checked he was quite unhurt.”

Peter huffs. “Last you checked. Great. Awesome. What about Rocket, huh?”

“Mm,” Tath pauses, apparently thinking that over. “The little one was in the in-between for… seven hours, or roughly thirty seconds, depending on how you look at it, and then the multiverse spat him back out.”

“The multiverse,” Peter mutters, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Jesus. Is he—?”

“He is also alive and unhurt, as far as I know. As I said, it was a temporary trip through the in-between, nothing more.”

“But I thought you said you couldn’t do that at all!”

“I could not.”

“Okay. Okay,” Peter huffs, scrubs both hands over his face. “I don’t get it. What the hell changed? You said you couldn’t do any of that before, why the hell can you do it now?”

Again she regards him with her head tilted, eyes narrowed. “Is it not obvious?”

“Uh, no, lady, it’s not friggin’ obvious.”

Her answer is delayed for long enough that Peter almost shouts at her to get the hell on with it and tell him, but then she sighs, and she opens up her hands. Smoke wisps in little plumes from the cigarette pinched between the pruney fingers of her right hand.

“Magic, Peter Quill. Magic is what has changed.”

“Magic. Seriously,” Peter deadpans. “You’re saying magic’s how you did that. How you’re doing this.”

She nods.

“No, that doesn’t… That doesn’t make any sense. Loki said he’d have been able to tell. He said there wasn’t anyone anywhere around this place that’s got magic in them, no one other than him. So how…?”

The wrinkles above one of Tath’s eyes move in such a way as to suggest the raising of an eyebrow, and she doesn’t say anything. She just waits, watching as it dawns on him.

A lead weight sinks into his stomach.

“Because you’re using his magic,” Peter says, shoulders dropping, eyes widening. “You’ve been using Loki’s magic. Shit.”

“There we are,” Tath nods. “I had faith you would get there eventually.”

“You’ve been—?” Peter starts to ask, but the anger comes back quick enough to trip him up. “You— What the hell, all that talk about ‘oh, he’s too drained to function at full capacity’ or whatever, and you’re the reason he’s so goddamn drained in the first place?”

“I never said I was not.”

“Oh, bullshit!” Peter yells. “That’s bullshit and you know it. How long?”

“How long…?”

“Don’t play dumb. How long have you been using my friend,” Peter shouts, jabbing himself in the center of the chest, “as your own personal magic battery, huh?”

Tath takes another puff. Her hand-rolled cigar-cigarette thing is nearly burnt down to a stub, but she doesn’t seem to mind. As the smoke curls in little wisps around her face, she turns the stub over in her fingers and takes a moment to think.

“Perhaps… two hours after you all ventured into the forest?”

“Two hours.”

“Mm. Roughly.”

God, that’s something like… what, ten hours ago now? They spent an hour or so walking here from the little camp they made, after sleeping for five or six, after walking around for who knows how long, and it’d only been two hours at most when—

“He wasn’t drained from healing me,” Peter realizes aloud, and Tath cocks her head to the side, brow furrowed. “That was never it. He thought… We all just figured that the healing magic took a lot out of him, but it was you the whole damn time, wasn’t it? Because you were sucking all that— that seiðr stuff out of him and using it to throw our friends into goddamn other dimensions—”

“Again, I have not quite managed to—”

“The in-between, friggin’ whatever, you actually think I give a crap about the difference at this point?”

“Well, you should,” Tath tells him, matter-of-fact. She eyes down the burnt stub in her hand, sighs, and flicks it away. “Because the more I push the limits of what I can do with the Jotunn’s magic, the more likely it becomes that I will be able to send someone into another dimension entirely. Permanently. That is the goal, at any rate.”

“Oh! Great! Awesome!” Peter throws his hands up again. “And then, what, you’re gonna throw the rest of us into the Nova Galaxy 2.0?”

“You?” Tath asks, looking genuinely taken aback for a second. “No, no, no, relax. Believe it or not, Peter Quill, I hold no ill will toward any of you. You have been in… convenient range to be used as test subjects, I admit, but only harmlessly. You are all guilty of nothing more than some minor damage to my home, and a few casualties that — while I am not happy about them — are still orders of magnitude fewer than those caused by the Aakon and his bloodthirsty construction operations.”

She says that last bit with a particularly venomous scowl, looking down at her hands and thoughtfully rubbing the pads of her fingers together.

“I may be getting close. I think… and bear in mind, I may be wrong, but I think it is a proximity thing, you understand,” Tath says. “The closer the Jotunn is to me, the more accessible his pool of magic is, and the easier something like this—” she waves between the two of them— “becomes. Soon I may be able to shunt the Aakon and all who work for him into another world, to be a problem for someone else far far away, and then all of this will be over.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes. I only wish to secure the safety of my home, and then you can leave and go on your merry way. As can your friends.”

“Oh, sure,” Peter nods, arms crossed again. “We can just go on our merry way. And what about Loki, huh? What happens to him?”

For a moment, again, she only watches him. Then she says, “In case it has escaped your notice, I have never done any of this before. This is all rather new to me.”

“So you’re saying you don’t know. You don’t know what’ll happen to him.”

“I don’t.”

“Yeah, that’s what I friggin’ thought. And, what, you think we’re all just gonna sit back and let you do whatever you want with him?” Peter asks, shaking his head, arms crossed. “That’s not how this works.”

“Well, no,” Tath says. “Obviously not. After all, why do you think I’ve told you all this? For my health?”

Peter frowns. Again, something akin to dread curls in his gut. “Why?”

“Two reasons, really,” Tath tells him, reaching into her robes and pulling out yet another of those cigarette-cigar things. “One is that I hope, given all the facts, you might be swayed to see my side of all this, and the… benefits of allowing me to proceed. Things would be far easier if I could deal with the Aakon without having to fight with all of you as well, don’t you think?”

Peter blows right past that, because yeah, like that’s gonna friggin’ happen.

“And the second reason?”

Tath lights the cigarette and says, “To keep you busy, of course. Had to wait for the Jotunn to wake up and finally make his way to my door, didn’t I?”

“What? Woah, wait, hold on, you mean he’s—?”

“Mm. Yes, it would seem so,” Tath says as calm as anything, and she stands, flicking her spent match out into the ether. “I suppose it’s about time I saw to him, isn’t it?”

“Wait, wait, don’t—!”

Peter lunges forward, desperately trying to grab a hold of her as she moves to walk away, but his hand passes right through her arm.

Like she’s made of smoke. Like she was never there in the first place.

The next instant she’s really, truly, fully gone, vanished into nothing, and Peter stumbles forward another step and then another, and he falls, trips over his own feet and goes tumbling straight into the white, white, white all around him. There’s no ground to catch his fall, nothing but mist, and his stomach flips over itself at the sudden understanding that he’s about to go into free fall, like the seconds at the end of one of those freaky falling dreams—

There’s a tug somewhere at his core, something yanking at him just above and behind his navel, and his diaphragm spasms like a hiccup, and then—

“Perhaps you need more convincing, Peter Quill.”

— and then everything goes black.

Peter opens his eyes, and he’s on Earth.

And not just Earth.

He’s at his grandpa’s house in Missouri.

He’s standing in the— kitchen? He thinks? His vision’s not totally cooperating with him on that front, and everything’s kind of vaguely floaty, and the room doesn’t spin around him so much as it churns in a slow, meandering circle like he’s stuck at the center of a Merry-Go-Round. Plus he’s pretty sure the kitchen doesn’t even look the way it’s supposed to anyway, like there’s something off about it, and he’s at least half sure it’s because of the color of the walls. They’re supposed to be darker. He’s pretty damn sure they’re supposed to be darker.

Also, he kind of wants to puke.

“Oh, what the—”

Are you still with me, Peter Quill?

Peter puts a hand on his stomach, doubling over and reaching for— something? To hold himself up? He just needs a stable surface, just for a second, while he tries to get his bearings and not yak all over the floor, but when he throws a hand out to grab onto the edge of the kitchen island—

His hand passes right through it.

Like it’s made of smoke. Like it was never there in the first place.

He stumbles forward one step, and then another, but at least this time he doesn’t go falling through the floor like it’s a goddamn cloud. He breathes slowly and deliberately, squeezes his eyes shut, waits until it almost hurts, and then opens them again to find his surroundings exactly the same except for a few stars swirling in the edges of his peripheral vision.

“Hey, what the hell’s going on?” Peter asks, looking around for the old lady, but she’s nowhere to be found.

Just an empty kitchen. His grandpa’s empty kitchen, and yeah, the walls are definitely a different color than they’re supposed to be. Off-white instead of that reddish tan color. And the toaster’s in the wrong spot, Peter realizes. It’s flipped with the coffeemaker for some reason. And there’s… more stuff than usual on the fridge, he thinks, under the plethora of magnets his grandpa usually keeps in a box in the junk drawer. He can’t really focus enough to tell, though.

You do tolerate the transition far better than expected, the woman’s voice ricochets around his skull, sound without real sound. Suppose your Celestial make-up is not entirely lost, hmm?

Peter ignores her as best he can, stumbling forward on queasy legs.

It’s weird; his head’s pounding, and he still feels liable to puke, still feels that wishy-washy uneasiness in his gut like he’s trying to balance on a boat on rough waters, but that’s it. He’s a maelstrom of feeling from the inside, and none of it’s good, but from the outside he can’t feel a damn thing at all. The room around him isn’t hot or cold, he can’t feel the air hitting his face. He even tries waving his hand around, trying to get something, but there’s just nothing there.

“This is… trippy as hell,” he murmurs, looking down at his hand.

And then—

“Son of a bitch, that song is about drugs.”

He shoves the thought away — because holy hell, this is so not the time — and directs his attention to the old lady again. Wherever she is.

“Okay, so what the hell’s going on here, huh? You didn’t answer me,” Peter calls out, sweeping an uncertain gaze around the room that’s sort of his grandpa’s kitchen, sort of not. “And this don’t feel like any kind of in-between anymore.”

That is because it is not.

“So where am I, then? And why’s it look like my grandpa’s kitchen on Earth?”

It is your grandfather’s kitchen on Earth.

“Is it?”

Well. An Earth. But you are not really there, either, Peter Quill.

“Yeah, no kidding,” Peter answers, rolling his eyes and waving his arm back and forth again, even though he knows he’s not gonna feel anything. “I got that much, thanks. So I’m still in your house, then? Physically?”

Physically.

“Awesome. Where’s Loki, then?”

Nothing but radio silence to that question.

“You’re using his magic to do this, aren’t you? Well, then, where is he? In your house?”

Still nothing. No answer.

Peter huffs, shaking his head. Goddammit, he so does not have time for this. And Gamora and Mantis and Groot and Rocket and Drax sure as hell don’t have time for it, either, and Loki really doesn’t.

Okay. Shit. He needs to think.

It’s a proximity thing, isn’t that what the old lady said? Or at least that she thought it might be? The closer Loki gets, the more of his magic she can use. And the more of Loki’s magic she uses, the more she can pull off. Projecting images of stuff (people) from the other side of the barrier, that much she could do and has been doing without an ounce of help from her personal magic battery. Sending Rocket fully across the barrier for a few minutes took a little more oomph, and then projecting Peter’s… consciousness? Across the barrier into the in-between, that took even more, and now this?

She’s using more of Loki’s magic every second he wastes here. How much of it is she gonna use up? Is there a hard limit like a fuel tank, or is it more complicated, or—

He’s jarred out of his thoughts by the shrill alarm bell of the kitchen’s phone, ringing out so loudly that it makes Peter jump, even though it’s a little muffled as if it’s coming through a layer of insulation.

“What,” Peter says, crossing his arms, “you expect me to pick that up? The hell kind of game is this?”

I do not expect you to pick it up. I do not expect that you could if you wanted to. Because, again, you are not really there.

Peter groans, drags a hand over his face. “So why, then? Why am I even sort of here, huh? What’s the point?”

The old lady doesn’t answer. Seems she only does when it’s convenient, and ain’t that just a kick in the nuts.

In the house, someone finally seems to be coming to get the phone. In the quiet spaces between its shrill vaguely muffled rings, Peter can just about pick up the faint sound of feet slapping across linoleum, approaching from around where he knows the stairs are at, and Peter waits for some alternate universe version of his grandpa to come rounding the corner into the kitchen.

“Now, now, I’m comin’, I’m comin’, hold on.”

… Oh.

Oh, shit.

It’s familiar, those words spoken as if the person on the other end of the phone can actually hear them; hell, it’s exactly what his grandpa said every time the phone rang when Peter was a kid, and it’s exactly what he said every time the phone rang for that week he stayed at Gramps’ place after whole Thanos thing. Old habits, mannerisms unchanged after thirty-some-odd years.

That wasn’t his grandpa’s voice, though.

She comes into view half a second later, huffing a bit from what must have been a rush to get down here from all the way upstairs before she would have missed the call, her flowy pajama pants swishing around her ankles as she makes her way across the kitchen, snatching the phone up off the receiver.

“Quill residence.”

A smile steals over her face, bright and happy and exactly as Peter remembers, except—

Except she’s older. She’s older than she ever got the chance to be, older than Peter ever allowed himself to imagine her— not that that’s saying all that much. There’s laugh lines and a few wrinkles dimpling up her cheeks. There’s the tiniest bit of gray creeping its way into the blonde hair she’s got pulled up into a big ball on the top of her head, held in place with one of those big oversized hair clips. She’s maybe, what, forty-something? Fifty-something?

Peter has no idea who his mom’s talking to, mostly because her voice is hard to make out past the blood pounding in his ears.

“She can’t—” he cuts off, gulps, and asks, “She can’t see me, can she? Or hear me?”

No, Tath says. She cannot.

Peter watches her, familiar pressure building up behind his eyes, in his throat.

“Why not?”

God, he hates the way his voice cracks on that. He knows it’s so messed up, he knows this isn’t the time or the place, but he wants her to see him. He wants to talk to her, he wants to take her hand and hug her and tell her he’s sorry, even if this isn’t the same Meredith Quill he knew, even if this isn’t technically the same woman that raised him.

His mom is his mom, no matter what universe she’s in.

Because it is more difficult, projecting an image from our reality into theirs, Tath answers. And you are not really there. Remember, I cannot reliably send a person across the barrier between worlds. Not yet.

“Not yet,” Peter echoes.

His eyes don’t leave his mom, all happy and smiling and idly twirling the phone cord around her finger, and — sue him — he tries to commit it to memory. All of it. Because he can’t stay here. He knows he can’t. He’s not an idiot. Now he knows exactly why he’s been brought here, why he’s being made to see this. It doesn’t take a genius to put two and two together.

Peter sniffs, scrubbing at his cheeks.

“God, screw you, lady. Using my mom against me, that’s your plan? You think you can just— just bribe me with the chance to see her again, huh? That it?”

Not bribing. Simply allowing you to see things from my perspective.

“That’s bullshit and we both know it.”

So you seem to think.

Peter squeezes his eyes shut, shaking his head.

“Where’s Loki?” he asks, then opens his eyes and finds that nothing’s changed at all. Still in his grandpa’s kitchen, still watching his mom happily chat away on the phone. He looks up, glares at the ceiling, hoping the old lady can see him. “Look, I don’t care what the hell you think you gotta show me, and I sure as hell don’t care about seeing things from your crappy perspective. I don’t care if you can send me into a universe where everything I ever wanted falls outta the goddamn sky! Save it! I am still not gonna let you do whatever you want to my friend, you hear me?”

Mm. Yes, I suppose this is rather far removed, isn’t it?

“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

The room teeters, shuddering on an uneven axis. 

This reality is too different from yours, I think. Perhaps it is… difficult, for you.

“What are you—?”

Difficult to wrap your head around, yes? Perhaps something a bit… closer to home?

Peter throws his hands up. “You know what? Fine, if it gets me back in the right goddamn reality, then—”

The rest of his sentence is lost as he gets that tugging feeling in his core again, his stomach somersaulting over itself, and everything around him shudders out of reality like a fizzling hologram. The underwater quality of his mom’s voice fades out and in and back out again, and—

“Oh, I know,” she’s saying, “he’s…”

— black dots swell and burst in his peripheral vision until they’re all he can see, and—

“… a good boy, takes after…”

— and Peter stumbles backward, one arm pinwheeling and trying desperately to grab onto something while the other hand remains firmly clutched over his stomach, and—

“… his granddaddy…”

“Eugh,” Peter groans, cringing with his eyes shut tight, dead silence ringing in his ears. When he thinks he can finally speak, he calls out, “Hey, I did not sign up for this ride, lady! I want off.”

He opens his eyes, and he’s…

Oh.

He’s on the Quadrant.

Why the hell is he on the Quadrant? In the… medbay, he thinks? Peter straightens as best he can, ignoring the queasy feeling in his gut and the trippy sort of numbness that’s still tingling along his skin, and he eyes up the deep crimson walls in front of him, the doorway, the hallway outside. It all looks pretty much how Peter remembers it, pretty much on par for how it should be, and for a second he wonders if the lady actually did pull him back into the right reality and just… messed up his placement in three-dimensional space a little bit.

But then he pivots, trying to take in the rest of his surroundings, and—

Jesus Christ, it’s like he’s been punched in the gut.

Something a little bit closer to our own plane, hm?

“Oh, definitely screw you, lady,” Peter breathes, trying and utterly failing to inject some venom into his voice when he says it. “This is— this is so messed up.”

Because the medbay isn’t nearly as empty as he’d assumed.

Kraglin’s here. He’s sitting in the chair by the bed with his feet kicked up onto the mattress and his ankles crossed, fingers laced over his stomach, head tipped forward with his chin on his chest. It looks like he just fell asleep. He looks a little different than he should, though, a little different than the last time Peter saw him, mostly due to the fact that he doesn’t have Yondu’s old fin on his head.

Because Yondu’s here, too.

Here, alive, out cold and laid out on the medbay’s single bed with a blanket covering him all the way up to his chest. One bare arm is exposed and hooked up to one of those life support monitors. There’s a nasty ice burn that’s turned his fingers nearly black, and the skin along his arms and his neck and his face don’t look much better, and the monitor looks like it’s picking up a heartbeat that’s too slow and too faint, but—

But he’s alive.

Kraglin jerks awake out of nowhere, the way he always does every time he wakes up from even the most peaceful of naps. He blinks, shaking his head and directing a barely lucid sleepy look at Yondu, and then toward the door behind Peter.

“So you are still here.”

That voice isn’t Krag’s, and it makes Peter jolt, looking over his shoulder with wide eyes.

“Gamora?”

She doesn’t hear him, because of course she doesn’t. She doesn’t seem to see him, either, with her arms crossed and a stern look in her eyes that’s not directed at him.

“Uh,” Kraglin answers, and he and Gamora both sound like they’re speaking from behind a film, like everything’s two steps removed from Peter so he can’t totally hear them right. Just like his mom sounded. Krag pulls his feet off the bed so he can sit up straight, and he says, “Yeah, I am. Did ya—? Did ya need me, or…?”

Gamora watches him, eyes hard and completely unyielding to anybody that doesn’t know her as well as Peter does. But she’s worried, he can tell. After a second she softens just a hair, hardly enough to see it, and she steps into the room and right past Peter like he’s not even there. Because he’s not.

Peter reaches out for her anyway; he can’t help it. His hand passes through her upper arm like it’s nothing, and she doesn’t notice a thing.

“No. We have things covered for now.”

“Oh,” Kraglin says, shoulders sagging. “‘Kay. How’s, uh… How’s Pete?”

“Fair. All things considered. He’s resting.”

Kraglin offers a half-smile. “Right, yeah, thanks to you.”

Gamora smirks at that. She pauses at the side of the bed, eyeing up Yondu for a second, and then she turns and sits at the foot of the bed.

Kraglin asks, “Everybody else?”

“Rocket is piloting the ship,” she says. “Nebula is making repairs to the ship’s escape pods. Groot, Mantis, Drax, and Peter are all resting, as they should be. Everything is under control.”

Kraglin nods, slowly, eyes drifting from Gamora to Yondu and back again. He looks dazed.

Gamora asks, “How long have you been here?”

“Oh, uh. I dunno, it’s been like—”

“That was a rhetorical question, Kraglin.”

“A what—?”

“I know you haven’t left this room since your captain’s been in it.”

“… Oh.”

“Yes. ‘Oh.’ That was well over thirty-seven hours ago,” Gamora says. Then she sighs, softening a bit more, and she adds, “Look. I know you don’t know me well. We’ve barely met. But I know Peter, and I know Xandarian biology closely mimics Terran biology, and so I know you need rest, too.”

“Nah, I, uh…”

“Kraglin.”

He sniffles, and for the first time Peter notices that Kraglin’s just on the verge of crying. “I don’t— I just don’t wanna leave ‘im here alone, y’know?”

“He will not be alone. I’m more than happy to watch over him while you and the others get some rest.”

“Yeah, but— he—”

“Kraglin,” Gamora cuts in, breaking out the tentatively gentle voice she only rarely used back in those early days after Ego. “He will recover.”

“He wouldn’t’ve needed any recoverin’ at all if I was a little quicker bringin’ the ship around—”

“And if you did not get the ship to them as quickly as you did, he would have been long gone by the time we reached them, and Peter might have been, too. Any number of variables could have brought about any number of possible outcomes, and not one of them would have been your fault,” Gamora tells him, her voice tipping back into that stern tone again. “I will tell you the same thing I told Peter. We all made it out of this alive.”

Kraglin opens his mouth, looking like he’s raring to argue, but Gamora doesn’t let him.

“We all made it out. Do not waste that by driving yourself into an early grave. Go get something to eat, and sleep in a real bed.”

There’s a shudder like the Quadrant just passed through the top layer of a planet’s atmosphere, but neither Gamora nor Kraglin seem to notice it.

The walls blur and blend again, and Peter—

“Go, or I will…”

— his first thought is goddammit, come on, lady, not again, but that does nothing to stop the feeling of someone reaching into his middle and twisting around his insides—

“… force you myself…”

— and there’s yet another tug, and Jesus, he really thinks he might blow chunks this time—

“… stubborn as Peter, I swear…”

“Okay, seriously, lady,” Peter shouts, a fist held in front of his mouth. The newfound silence is disorienting, a weighted blanket over his head that dulls down all his senses. Something, somewhere, is dripping (drip, drop, plunk) but yet again it’s like he’s hearing it through a thick film, and this time it is literally the only sound he can pick up at all except for his own carefully controlled breath, his own voice. “I got three things to say: One, you’re an asshole. Two, you’re an asshole. And three, if you keep slamming me around dimensions like a goddamn pinball, then I swear I’m gonna yak all over your house and that’s, like, the bare goddamn minimum of what you deserve for pulling this crap.”

Yeah. Nothing. No answer.

Peter groans, hunching over with his hands on his knees while he tries to catch his breath.

“Screw this.”

He’s gotta figure out a way out of here. He doesn’t know how, and he doesn’t know where the hell he is now, and he doesn’t know a whole lot of shit, but he’s gotta figure it out.

And fast.

“Okay,” he says aloud, mostly to himself as he shakes his hands out and straightens up.

This time he braces himself for whatever emotional gut punch she’s got in store for him here. He’s ready. He’s fine. He’s got this. He’s just gotta remember that it’s not real, not in any way that matters.

“So where the hell’d you take me this time, huh?”

Wherever he is, it’s dark as all hell. Peter’s forced to open his eyes as wide as they’ll go, blinking slowly and deliberately until his eyes adjust— which is taking a damn long while, especially since everything’s still kind of teetering around and his equilibrium is all kinds of thrown off.

Eventually, though, his surroundings trickle in.

The first thing he registers is that the place is goddamn enormous, practically the size of a football field, though it’s broken up a bit by interspersing black-blue walls and huge doorways spanned by… cell bars? Really? Is he in a prison? He’s been arrested more times than he can count, but this place sure isn’t ringing any bells.

The next thing he registers, as he scans over his surroundings and tries to figure out why he’s been brought here—

“… Oh,” Peter says, shoulders sagging. “Oh, holy shit.”

It’s Loki.

He’s sitting against the far wall. Hard to get any details with the dim lighting and the weird headache pinging behind his eyes like a hangover, but Peter thinks he looks like he’s just about been to hell and back. Beat up and exhausted, probably hanging on to consciousness by a thread by the look of him. He’s also the only person in here, in this prison cell, and the only person in sight despite the fact that the cell door is wide enough that you can see nearly all of this place’s wide labyrinthine halls.

“Guess this is… what, Sanctuary?” Peter sighs, already knowing that this Loki isn’t gonna answer. “Yeah. Sounds about right.”

He thinks it must be Sanctuary, at least, based on the fact that Loki’s here looking just about the same as he probably looked when he was here, and based on the bits and pieces Peter’s gleaned from what little Gamora’s mentioned of the place. Dark and gloomy and hopeless, like Ronan’s ship was but bigger, scarier, more imposing. Peter’s never actually been on it, or even near it, not in real life.

So why’d the old bat bring him here?

“Hey!” Peter calls out, hands on his hips as he glares at some vague point in the ceiling. “Don’t know if you heard me the first time, but I want off this ride! I’m done, take me back!”

Nothing. She’s not talking to him anymore.

Friggin’ fantastic.

Peter scrubs both hands over his face and groans, “What’s even the point, huh?”

He doesn’t get an answer to that, either, but it’s not like he was really expecting one. Because there isn’t a point, far as Peter’s concerned. This old bat wants to ping pong him around dimensions to… what, bribe him into letting her do whatever she wants with the magic she’s syphoning out of his friend? Scare him? Convince him to see things from her stupid perspective? Just plain keep him busy?

Either way, he’s getting out. He’s just gotta figure out how.

He glances down at his own hands, frowning, rubbing the pads of his fingers together.

What had the old lady said before? About his Celestial abilities not being totally lost?

God, he hates thinking that. He hates entertaining the possibility that there’s even a goddamn sliver of Ego’s influence left in him; that possibility’s only been the primary subject of his nightmares for the last three or four years, after all. Even the thought of it makes him sick to his stomach.

But, hell, he’s already sick to his stomach anyway.

Worth a shot, ain’t it?

He opens up his hands, flexes his fingers, tries to bring back that feeling of reaching down into the core of that shitheel planet and pulling the energy up through his own veins and into his palms. No thinking, no using his head. He clears his thoughts, closes his eyes, inhales nice and slow like that one time Gamora tried and failed to teach him how to meditate, imagines blue light cascading in a ripple from his heart all the way out to his fingertips, and—

Nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

It’s a little bit of a disappointment, and a little bit more of a relief, even if it brings him right the hell back to square one. Thank God no one’s around to see him, though, because he probably just looked like the world’s biggest jackass holding his hands out like he expected to shoot lasers out of them.

He drops them to his sides now, huffs and rolls his eyes.

“It was worth a shot,” he mutters, as if there’s anyone around to argue otherwise. “But like, now what?”

Peter scratches at the scruff on his jaw. Still nothing from the old lady, who seems to have decided that she’s gonna stick to radio silence for the time being. Still nothing about this place that jogs his memory. He’s, like, pretty damn sure he’s never been here before. He can’t for the life of him imagine why Tath would’ve wanted to bring him here.

“Tell you what,” Peter says aloud to not-Loki, mostly out of habit. “It’s too bad the real you is, like, probably halfway unconscious and out of my reach, ‘cause I could really use your help right about now, man. Not exactly a magic expert. I am totally out of my friggin’ element here.”

He glances in the direction of not-Loki, again, totally out of habit, and—

And Loki’s looking at him.

Loki’s looking at him, dead-on. Peter can tell, because that’s not the look of somebody who’s staring into space and just so happens to be doing so in the direction of a person. That’s the look that Loki specifically gets when Peter’s doing something he doesn’t understand. A little confused, a little taken aback, a little wary. Very tired.

But he’s looking at Peter.

“Can you—? Holy shit, Loki, can you see me?”

Loki doesn’t answer him, but his eyes don’t waver. The look on his face doesn’t change.

“Wait, can you hear me? Anything? Give me something, man, come on, I thought no one was gonna be able to see me at all—”

Oh, there you are!

The return of the old lady’s voice is jarring, and Peter takes a step back, glancing up at the ceiling. Loki jolts, too, the very first movement Peter’s seen from him since he got here, and Peter’s jaw drops before he asks, looking again at Loki, “Wait, can you hear her, too? How in the hell—?”

Now, now, that is cheating, Peter Quill.

“What? What the hell are you talking ab—?”

My mistake, just give me…

For the fourth time in who friggin’ knows how long, something wraps around his insides and tugs, and Peter’s voice smacks into something inside his chest and gets stuck there, but he keeps his eyes on Loki for as long as he can—

… a moment, we cannot have you here…

— the bleak black walls of Sanctuary fall away like raining bits of shattered glass and everything turns on its head—

“… Quill?”

“Okay, now I’m just pissed off!”

God, Peter wants to hit something. He wants to shoot something, actually, that’s what he wants to friggin’ do, but even though his blaster’s still on his hip it’s gonna do just about jack for him when he’s not solidly in the right dimension, when he can’t interact with anything around him at all let alone blow a few holes in it.

He glances around. He’s on the Benatar, but he files that thought away for later, because frankly, he doesn’t give a shit right now.

Apologies, the old lady’s voice rings in his head. Seems I lost track of you.

“You can take your apologies and shove them right up your ass, lady!” Peter screams in the general direction of the Benatar’s windshield.

You’re angry.

“Yeah, no goddamn shit, I’m angry!” Peter shouts, gesticulating with both hands even though he’s not sure she can even see him. “You go and mess with my head, you send me back and forth across this bullshit barrier like a hot potato, and you make me see my mom and— and Yondu, and— and what even was that, huh? That last bit? Sanctuary? I’ve never even been to Sanctuary, so why—?”

That, she cuts him off, was a mistake on my part.

“A mistake.”

Yes. It is… more difficult than I had expected, keeping track of his placement in the multiverse and yours at the same time.

“Both of our…?” Peter freezes, staring wide-eyed through the Benatar’s windshield. “That was… That wasn’t some alternate universe version of Loki, was it? That’s why he could see me. That was— That was our Loki.”

Mm. Yes, it was my mistake.

“Take me back,” Peter demands. “Take me back there now.”

I am afraid that would be counterproductive.

“Why do you have him there? Why have him on Sanctuary? Are you doing the same thing to him that you’re doing to me?”

At that, the old lady doesn’t answer, and Peter gulps, hand twitching by his blaster even though there’s still nothing to shoot. God, that’s why Loki could see him. That’s why Loki was giving him that look, that’s why Loki looked like he’d been to hell and back— because he pretty much has! He’s just had a goddamn cave collapse on top of him and he’s being used as a magic battery. Of course he looks like shit.

“Look. Tath. I already told you,” Peter says, clenching and unclenching his fists. “It doesn’t matter what you do, it doesn’t matter what crazy alternate universes you show me, I’m not just gonna sit around and let you use my friend. I’m not. You’re not gonna convince me otherwise. It’s just not gonna happen.”

Yes, I have gathered that. Your tenacity is admirable.

Peter rolls his eyes. “Gee, thanks. That mean we’re finally done here?”

Not quite.

“Friggin’ shocking,” Peter mutters, ducking his head down and pressing his thumb and forefinger into his eyes for a second. He huffs and drops his hands and says, “Look, we can work something out, okay? Something that doesn’t involve all this mystical alternate universe bullshit. You want people to stop messing with the forest, right? Well, we’re the Guardians of the Galaxy.” He throws his hands out to the sides, drops them again. “We’ve got some pull. We can talk to whoever’s in charge, stop all that construction you were talking about, get you some bonafide protection, the whole nine yards. How’s that sound?”

There’s a beat of silence, and then:

You are a terrible liar, Peter Quill.

“I’m not lying!” Peter shouts, even though… well, he kind of was. Not about the fact that they’ve got some pull, because they technically do, but about the fact that they’d all be willing to help this lady rather than getting her tossed in a high-security jail cell the second they’re out of the forest.

But shit, if it gets them all out in one piece, he’ll promise her the key to the goddamn city if he has to.

“Seriously,” he tries again. “You’d be way better off having the Guardians of the Galaxy as your friends than as your enemies. Trust me, it’ll work out a lot better for you that way.”

Threatening me now, are you?

“I’m really not. Just bring me back to where I’m supposed to be, bring Loki back to where he’s supposed to be, and we’ll figure something out together, okay? I promise we’ll figure something out.”

I am already figuring something out.

“No, you’re not!”

But I am. Very soon, I will be able to send someone permanently across the rift, Tath tells him. And when that time comes, would you not rather be my friend than my enemy as well, Peter Quill? Wouldn’t you rather I sent you to one of those lovely realities where your loved ones are alive and well? Wouldn’t you rather I sent you to one of the good ends?

“The good ends, huh? As opposed to taking me back to where I’m supposed to be?”

I suppose you will see, won’t you?

“The hell’s that supposed to mean?”

She doesn’t answer, but for the first time Peter registers his surroundings, registers that he’s not as alone in the empty Benatar as he thought he was, and that the old lady’s voice — as unvoicelike as it is — has not been the only one he’s hearing around here.

There are voices, actual voices, coming from down below deck.

Peter looks in the direction of the hatch, which has been thrown open like someone was in a real hurry to get down there, and he can hear it, someone talking like they’re behind a film, like they’re underwater.

It sounds like Gamora, and the thing is, Peter doesn’t want to humor this old lady anymore. He doesn’t want to humor her, and he doesn’t want to go down there, and he doesn’t want to see whatever shitty reality the old bat’s dumped him into now. He doesn’t want to.

But it’s Gamora. He has to.

By the time he’s made his way down the hatch, Gamora’s voice has cleared up a bit, though she’s still speaking low and dark the way she only does when she’s talking about something terrible, the way she only does when she’s really, truly freaked out.

“… entire time I knew Thanos, he only ever had one goal,” she’s saying, “to bring balance to the universe by wiping out half of all life.”

Chapter Text

“… entire time I knew Thanos, he only ever had one goal, to bring balance to the universe by wiping out half of all life.”

Peter steps down onto the lower level of the Benatar, eyes sweeping around the room. Seems like just about the whole family’s there, all of them gathered around—

“Uh. Thor? What are you doing here, man?”

Thor, naturally, doesn’t answer. None of them acknowledge him at all, including Gamora, and including himself, who Peter really has a hard time looking at without that pinging hangover headache intensifying by a thousand, so he doesn’t try. The rest of them are there, though, mostly. Gamora and Rocket and Groot and Drax and Mantis. No Nebula, no Loki, no Kraglin. Thor’s sitting on one of their spare seats with a blanket draped over his shoulders, spooning soup out of a bowl that’s almost comically tiny in his giant hands, and he looks…

Oh, yeah. He looks more-or-less the same as he did when they first met him, when they tugged him half-conscious out of the vacuum of space before they all set off toward Earth.

“He used to kill people planet by planet,” Gamora goes on, “massacre by massacre.”

Drax, standing off to the side with his arms crossed, adds, “Including my own.”

“If he gets all six of the Infinity Stones he can do it with a snap of his fingers,” Gamora says, snapping her own, “like this.”

Thor doesn’t look up from his soup, barely changes his expression at all, but his voice is unmistakably deadly when he says, “You seem to know a great deal about Thanos.”

Oof. Right.

Yeah, no, that’s not good.

This must be right around when they did pick Thor up, Peter thinks, right after the attack on what was left of Asgard, right before Thanos headed for Earth in search of the rest of the Infinity Stones. It’s damn close to what actually happened, too. The differences are hardly noticeable, but they’re there, little details that are just slightly off.

This is right around when the conversation almost turned south, if Peter remembers right. Before they convinced him that they were all on the same side. Before they convinced him to head to Earth with them, to gather their defenses and take Thanos down once and for all.

The room goes tense with Thor’s observation. And then Drax, as expected, says, “Gamora… is the daughter of Thanos.”

Thor looks up, places his spoon down. Peter feels the hairs on the back of his neck prickle and stand up, and his first thought is that it’s because the old lady’s finally managed to give him a little extra oomph into fully existing in this universe. Maybe he’s starting to feel things the way he would if he were actually here, maybe it’s Thor’s power crackling through the air like it always seems to do when he’s pissed off, a warning flare of static electricity that’s creeping up his spine and raising goosebumps.

But maybe, he thinks, that’s just Thor. The guy’s normally a teddy bear, but he never seems to have a problem being downright scary when he needs to be.

Of course, at that moment, Thor says—

“Your father killed my brother.”

— and all thoughts of whether Peter’s really in this universe or not go right out the goddamn window.

Peter gulps. “I, uh… I don’t suppose you got another brother you never thought to mention before, huh buddy?”

Thor, again, declines to answer. He’s already standing, one remaining eye intent on Gamora as he stalks forward with that blanket still hanging off him. The rest of them, Drax and Rocket and Mantis and Groot and probably this universe’s version of Peter, too — though it’s really hard to tell when everything’s still so wobbly and fuzzing in and out, when so much as glancing at the space where he’s standing sends a hot spike through Peter’s brain — all shift around, getting closer to Gamora, warily eyeing up Thor as he approaches her.

Of course, Peter knows Thor pretty well by now, so he’s not surprised one bit when all that wariness turns out to be for nothing, when Thor reaches up and clamps a hand on Gamora’s shoulder, steady and comforting.

“Family’s can be tough… father died, he…”

Thor’s voice fades in and out, and the familiar stomach-swooping sensation of being tugged out of this reality comes back, the entire place shuddering in and out of existence again—

“… a half sister… imprisoned in…” 

— and this time Peter braces for it, clenches his fists, grits his teeth, squeezes his eyes shut as his ears pop—

“… life, though, isn’t it…”

When Peter opens his eyes, he’s on Sanctuary again.

“Holy shit,” he says aloud before he even realizes he’s said anything, and he holds one hand over his stomach as he gets his bearings. This whole jumping thing is still disorienting as all hell, but it seems his body’s finally cottoning on to the fact that the sudden changes in position aren’t gonna stop any time soon, and that it’s just gonna have to put up or shut up.

Judging by the churning in his stomach, it’s still not happy about having to put up or shut up, but whatever, screw it, he’ll take it.

“Okay, so, uh…” he thinks aloud, turning on the spot until he sees— “Loki! Awesome, you’re still here!”

Sure enough, Loki is still here. He’s still sitting against the far wall of this prison cell, still looking like he’s been to hell and back, still looking directly at Peter with that oh so familiar what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-your-brain look.

Peter could almost pass out, he’s so relieved to see that friggin’ look again.

“Hey, man,” Peter says, cracking a smile. “Long time no see.”

He very determinedly does not think about the haunted look on Thor’s face, and his unwavering glare on Gamora, and your father killed my brother, because that’s not— It doesn’t matter. It didn’t happen.

Loki’s right in front of him, alive, and uh…

Maybe not well, but definitely alive. And now that Peter finally gets the chance to look him over, to really look him over, it becomes clearer and clearer that this isn’t some alternate universe version of Loki. This is the real deal. For one thing, he’s wearing the exact same thing he was when Peter last saw him, that bluish-green leather armor he always wears on missions, dinged up a little from the hours they’ve been spending in the godforsaken Urunian forest but otherwise in pretty good shape.

For another, he’s still got a gash just above his left temple, cleanish but ringed in a painful looking bruise.

“Eugh,” Peter cringes, eyeing it up. “So. Uh. You can hear me, right?”

Loki stares at him, eyes narrowed, and that what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-your-brain look is now tinged with something else Peter can’t exactly place.

“Yoohoo. Loki? Can you read me? If you can’t hear what I’m saying then that just gives us a whole messload of new problems, but, uh… I mean, I guess we can—”

“Why are you here?”

Peter freezes, mouth open, and asks, “Huh?”

“I said, why are you here?”

“What— I don’t… know? Exactly?” Peter admits, then shrugs. “I guess the old lady’s having more trouble controlling your magic than she bargained for, I don’t know. But the point is, uh… I’m here, and you’re here, so maybe between the two of us we can figure out how to get the hell out of… Uh. Loki?”

Loki’s ducked his head down, threading his fingers into his hair and pressing his palms into his temples like he’s got the world’s worst headache.

Which, yeah, duh. Friggin’ of course he does.

“Hey, man, you good?”

“Go away.”

Peter blinks. “Uh. What?”

Loki doesn’t repeat himself this time. He stays right where he is, just keeps dragging his hands through his hair, pressing the heels of his palms into his temples so hard it looks like it hurts. He does not look up. Peter can’t even see his face.

Go away? Really?

“Dude,” Peter sighs, hands on his hips. “I’m not gonna go away. We’re not doing this whole argument again, alright? We don’t have time. Remember what I said? I’m not gonna hurt you, and you’re not gonna hurt me. We’re family. I know you’re not—”

“Please,” Loki cuts him off.

And just like that, all the wind dies out of Peter’s sails.

Holy shit, has he ever heard Loki say please? Like that, totally serious, genuinely pleading, without a heavy layer of sarcasm to go with it? Ever, in the entire time he’s been living on the Quadrant?

Loki doesn’t say anything else, not at first. He only curls in on himself further, turning his head and pressing his forehead into his hand.

“Loki?”

“Please, leave me be,” Loki says, quiet and strained. “I— I can’t…”

He doesn’t finish the sentence, just lets it hang there in the silence of Sanctuary and the muffled drip drop plunk off in the distance.

So Peter asks, “You can’t what?”

Loki flinches. “I can’t,” he says again, even quieter than before, like he’s not so much even talking to Peter anymore but saying it to himself. “I will not fall for this.”

“Fall for what? Come on, man, work with me here.”

“You’re not here,” Loki tells him, and okay, yeah, that’s… technically true, but Loki isn’t either, so what’s that have to do with anything? Finally, Loki lifts his head from his hands and, despite the exhaustion visibly weighing down on him, he manages to level Peter with a glare which…

Jesus, Peter doesn’t think Loki’s ever looked at him like that.

“You’re not real—”

“Woah, woah, wait,” Peter immediately stammers, eyes wide. “The hell you mean, I’m not—?”

“You are not real,” Loki says again, doubling down, his voice deadly quiet and his glare unwavering, “and I will not fall for this again, do you hear me?”

“What… the hell are you talking about, man?” Peter asks, helplessly, glancing around like there’s gonna be somebody else here, someone he can look to and ask, Hey, can you believe this guy? The hell’s he talking about, huh? But, obviously, there’s no one. No one and nothing, just an endless stretch of dreary cave-like prison cells and Loki, alone, sitting there and glaring at Peter like he wishes he’d crumble into dust. “Fall for what? Why wouldn’t I be real? I don’t—”

“You must truly think I’m a fool,” Loki cuts him off, “if you—”

Bah! Again?

The old lady’s voice startles him as it ricochets around his skull, but this time, Loki either doesn’t hear her voice or he’s too pissed off to acknowledge it.

“— think I’d fall for—”

               not to worry, I’ll

                                “— the same—”

                                                  get you

                              right

                                        back

He stumbles on the landing like he’s been dropped, arms flung out to the side to regain his balance, chest heaving.

“Oh, COME on!” Peter shouts as soon as he’s got the breath for it. “Take me back!”

I just did, Peter Quill.

“You know what the hell I mean!”

Mm. I do.

“So take me the hell back!”

You know I will not do that.

“Why do you have him there?” Peter asks, sparing a glance at his new surroundings as he speaks. Once again, he has no idea where he is. Just huge, curved, gunmetal gray walls. Fires are flickering here and there. A bright bluish-white light pierces down from above, through a domed glass ceiling. A ship? Is he on a ship? Is that a nearby star? But then he catches sight of the rest — and shit, there’s bodies, there’s people, dead and dying people scattered around the wreckage of what used to be the interior of a vast sprawling space ship…

He shuts his eyes. Nope. Maybe it’s petty, but he doesn’t care. This lady can try showing him whatever the hell she wants, he is not giving her the satisfaction. He’s not giving her a goddamn inch.

“Why do you have him on Sanctuary, huh?”

That is not your concern.

“Why did he think I wasn’t real?”

Also not your concern.

“I’m seriously gonna friggin’ lose it if you don’t start answering some of my questions,” Peter says, squeezing his eyes shut tighter against the urge to open them.

There’s a screech and a hum that he recognizes as the sound of a dead ship lazing its way through open space. The clunk clunk clunk of someone stepping across a metal floor in metal boots, though it’s muffled and hazy just like everything else. Someone, somewhere, lets out a long and pained groan. Someone, somewhere else, screams like it’s the end of the world, and something in Peter’s chest shrivels up at the sound of it.

He knows that voice, but he doesn’t even let that thought run its course before he slams a wall down.

It’s not real.

None of this is real. Or it is real, somewhere, but it doesn’t matter. There’s nothing Peter can do about it. There’s nothing Peter can do for Thor, or at least nothing he can do for the Thor that’s here, in this universe, nothing he can do to ease the agony in his voice, so he blocks it out.

“Why do you have Loki on Sanctuary?”

As I said, it is not your concern.

“I will keep asking the same damn question until you’re annoyed enough to humor me and give me an answer, and you can bet on that,” Peter shouts. “Why do you have him on Sanctuary? Why there? Why not literally anywhere else?”

She doesn’t answer right away, and Peter waits, and waits, and waits.

Then, from somewhere beneath the film that’s muffling all sound here, there’s another voice, and without making the conscious decision to, Peter opens his eyes.

He’s still in the wreckage of what probably used to be a very nice, vast, sprawling ship. There are still fires crackling here and there. There are still… people, bodies, lying scattered across the floor in the aftermath of a massacre, and right at the center of it—

Huh.

Peter’s never actually… seen Thanos before, not in person, and certainly not alive.

Asshole’s probably, what, eight or nine feet tall? And he’s got that Infinity Gauntlet on him, and he’s surrounded by his stupid cronies. Peter spots Ebony Maw pretty much right away, sneering with his fingers steepled together. Thanos and the whole Black Order, all together, all in one place. That, at least, explains the bodies. It explains the fires. It explains why Thor’s kneeling trapped with what looks like a few tons of steel wrapped around him.

“This is the Statesman, isn’t it?” Peter asks, horrified, his eyes stuck on Loki, who’s stepping carefully through the wreckage and debris toward Thanos. “This is… This was Asgard.”

Yes, it was.

There are so many people lying all over, dead and dying. Dozens, just in Peter’s field of view, and who knows how many more beyond that. People who were alive until Thanos showed up. People who’d only barely escaped their own planet bursting into smithereens. These were refugees, for God’s sake, people who had just survived a literal Apocalypse, people who even the seediest of Ravagers wouldn’t have messed with. Peter gulps down a lump in his throat.

Jesus. No wonder Thor was so messed up when they first pulled him on the Benatar.

Loki’s saying… something, to Thanos and to the rest of the Black Order, but beneath the groaning of the ship and the crackling of the fires, Peter can’t quite pick out any individual words. He sees Loki flash a placating smile, and he can see that he’s got that very particular look in his eye, a look that Peter’s only seen once or twice when Loki’s trying to bluff his way through a game of cards.

He’s trying to keep their attention on him. Deliberately, he’s trying to keep their attention on him, or at least he’s trying to keep them focused on whatever it is he’s saying.

Why, though? To give Thor a chance to get away? To give someone else a chance to attack?

Peter can’t tell.

“This is… right before we met Thor, I guess,” Peter thinks aloud. “Right before they took Loki to Sanctuary.”

Mm. No, I do not think it is.

“Huh?” Peter asks, glancing up at the high domed ceiling, even though he doesn’t actually know where the old lady’s voice is coming from. “The hell you mean, you don’t think it is? If this is the Statesman, then this is right before we met Thor. This is right before the Titanic Dickhead took Loki prisoner. How could it not be?”

Up ahead, Loki takes another step forward so he’s right smack in front of Thanos. He’s still keeping all eyes on him, still distracting them, but for what Peter still doesn’t know. He has no friggin’ clue.

Because, Tath answers, they do not always take prisoners.

They don’t always take prisoners.

They don’t—?

Peter’s heart plummets into his stomach, because it’s at that point that he sees—

Loki, twisting in one swift movement and thrusting a dagger up toward Thanos’ throat, totally oblivious to the fact that Peter just involuntarily shouted, screamed at him not to—

Loki, frozen by the blue light of the Space Stone—

Loki, dangling, kicking at the empty air underneath him as Thanos drags him up and up and up into the air—

Peter turns away as fast as he can, covering his mouth with the back of his hand, but he’s not fast enough. He’s not fast enough not to see it, and for a solid three or four seconds, he wonders if he’s actually gonna make good on his threat to puke all over this lady’s house. Bile rises, sour and bitter at the back of his throat, but he forces himself to breathe through it until the feeling passes. In the back of his mind he hears Thor again, sitting in the lower level of the Benatar with genuine bloodlust in his voice, saying your father killed my brother.

“Why are you showing me this?” Peter asks, glaring in the vague direction of up. “What’s the point?”

I need you to understand.

“Understand friggin’ what?”

There are many a great thing I can do, given enough magic, Tath says. You saw as much, when I showed you your mother, when I showed you that Udonta pirate. But I need you to understand that there are terrible things I can do with this, too. You do not want me as your enemy, Peter Quill.

Oh, it’s a little goddamn late for that, Peter thinks.

“So you’re threatening me.”

Not so much threatening. Educating. Your Jotunn friend may yet survive the loss of a bit of his magic for my purposes. But there are quite a few realms where the same cannot be said. Would you not rather take the chance with me? Do you see the alternative? I am not the Mad Titan, Peter Quill.

“Yeah, you’re not Thanos. Big whoop. And you’ve got nothing but Loki’s best interests at heart, right?”

I wish him no unnecessary harm, if you can believe it.

“Yeah?”

Yes.

“Then why the hell do you have him on Sanctuary, huh?”

No answer. Dead silence again, and Peter huffs, dragging his hands over his face. He holds out for another half a second before his eyes are drawn back to the carnage, before he can’t help turning and taking it in again, the last of Asgard, strewn about the ship, dead or close enough to it that it makes no difference. Peter doesn’t see any familiar faces among the dead — other than the obvious — but then again, it’s not like he’s really trying. He’s not looking to torture himself.

It’s just…

He can’t not look, or bear witness, or whatever the hell you want to call it.

Thanos and the Black Order are gone, vanished. Probably used the Space Stone to jettison themselves to the next place they’ll decimate. Knowhere, Earth, hell if Peter knows. Bright violet fissures are creeping through the ship’s walls, and that much Peter recognizes, feels like a phantom pain through his chest, a sizzling burn along his every nerve, a prickle in his spine.

The Power Stone.

Thor doesn’t seem to care that the whole ship’s about to blow, but— well, it’s not like Peter can blame him for that. The steel that had been wrapped around him is now lying in bits and pieces on the floor, and he stumbles, crawls forward until he’s gripping Loki by the front of his armor.

Loki, who’s all twisted up and staring without seeing at the high, domed, crumbling ceiling.

“I’m sorry,” Peter says, even though he knows Thor can’t hear him, even though he knows there’s literally nothing he could have possibly done to stop any of this. Because he is. He is sorry. “Thor, I’m so so sorry, man.”

There’s a shudder, just as Thor collapses with his forehead on Loki’s chest, the ship lurching as if caught in a new planet’s atmosphere.

Peter plants his feet, waits, wary and ready for the expected swoop in his stomach, but instead—

It’s like the scene in front of him is overlaid with another, nearly the same but just different enough to send a headache throbbing behind his eyes, and when he shakes his head and blinks, it evens out into…

Oh.

It is the same, or at least it’s the same place. It’s the same place, at the same time, the same crumbling spaceship and the same deep violet fissures of the Power Stone and the same death and destruction everywhere, but it sure as hell isn’t the same reality the old lady was just showing him.

Because this time, it’s not Loki lying cold and lifeless on the floor of the Statesman with his body all twisted up and his throat all swollen and grotesque and bent the wrong way.

This time it’s—

“No, no, no, Thor. THOR.”

And the weird thing is, Peter can’t even really comprehend it, not at first. Because Thor’s always seemed so weirdly unbreakable, so untouchable, that seeing him like this, lying on the floor like that with his one bright blue eye staring at the ceiling… It sits all wrong in Peter’s head, like he can’t even quite breach over the barrier of believing it even with the evidence right in front of his eyes.

Loki, as it turns out, is in the same boat.

“Don’t— don’t you dare,” this universe’s version of Loki is saying to his brother’s dead body, and he’s shaking, putting his fingers to Thor’s broken neck and funneling magic into it even though there’s not a chance in hell that that’s gonna work.

Peter tears his eyes away.

Bearing witness to the last of Asgard is one thing, but this? This is a whole other shitshow entirely, and Loki would literally murder him if he found out Peter saw this. Weird alternate parallel dimension bullshit or not. This is… This is not something Peter was meant to see.

“So what’s the point of this one, then, huh?” Peter calls out, his voice hollow and quiet.

Apologies.

“Yeah, one more time, you can shove those apologies right up your ass. What am I doing here?”

Some planes are… closer together, than others.

“So?”

So, it is difficult to differentiate at times.

Before Peter can say another word, the ship lurches yet again, and this time Peter thinks he knows why. The damage left by the Power Stone is taking its toll on the ship, and the violet light that’s hazing around Peter’s peripheral vision blooms out in all directions. It washes everything in that searing bright bright bright bright violet until it’s nearly white, until he can’t see a damn thing, until he’s pretty sure the Power Stone went ahead and took him out like it was supposed to do all those years ago, until…

He’s back on Sanctuary.

He’s actually back on Sanctuary. How the hell did that happen?

Whatever. Doesn’t matter. This time he doesn’t bother waiting for his stomach to stop doing somersaults. He’s got his sea legs by now, so to speak, and anyway a little nausea is the least of his problems, right? So without wasting a second he spins around until he spots Loki again.

And— okay, wow, it is no small relief to see Loki whole and alive in front of him after what he just saw. Holy shit. It’s no small relief to see that he’s here and he’s not lying dead in the about-to-explode ruins of what used to be Asgard, to see that he’s breathing, to see that he’s okay.

Even if he still seems a little (or a lot) worse for wear.

Even if he’s still looking at Peter like…

“Right,” Peter shakes his head. “Right, you don’t think I’m really me. Shit.”

“I told you to—”

“To go away, yeah, yeah, I know,” Peter nods, rolling his eyes. “Sorry, dude. It’s not happening. I’m not going anywhere.”

“And yet you have,” Loki all but snarls at him. “You disappear every—”

“Yeah, because some million-year-old hag is flinging me around different dimensions like a goddamn pinball, alright?” Peter shouts, desperation leaking through the edges of his voice. So maybe he’s a little raw from seeing his friend die horribly right in front of him, okay? Sue him. “I’m not going anywhere if I can help it, but I can’t help it, because I’m not— I’m not in control of any of this, man. I just want out. I just want to get us out.”

Loki, infuriatingly, actually laughs at that. Sort of. It’s not even close to a genuine laugh, zero humor in it whatsoever, and he shakes his head and leans back against the wall.

Peter says, “You don’t believe me.”

There’s a second or two in which Loki doesn’t answer, and Peter means to wait, honestly he does, but the fact is every ounce of his patience vacated the premises about three universe-jumps ago.

“Loki.”

“I can’t,” Loki answers, quieter than Peter was expecting, and he makes eye contact for half a second before looking away. “I just— I can’t.”

“You can’t believe me,” Peter echoes, deadpan. “Dude, I don’t get it. Why the hell wouldn’t I be real?”

Again, he’s met with silence.

“Okay, you know what? Fine. That’s fine. Whatever. I’ll prove it,” Peter says, and he wracks his brain for a second, tugs a hand through his hair as he thinks. “You, uh, you hooked up with a fairy — sorry, fae — that tried to steal your soul back in your… seven hundreds? I wanna say? You used to sneak off to Earth all the time around then ‘cause you liked showing off your magic to a bunch of humans who never saw anything like that before—”

Loki’s glare has returned full force. “Stop it—”

“— and you told me all of that right after you told me you’re actually a Frost Giant,” Peter goes on like he hasn’t been interrupted, “and even though I don’t really think it’s that big a deal, I still haven’t told anybody else ‘cause you seem to think it’s a big deal, and, uh… Shit, what else… You’re always acting like nothing good ever came from Earth, but you friggin’ love coffee and chocolate,” he says, pointing an accusatory finger at Loki as he says it, “so I don’t know who the hell you think you’re fooling there. You can’t stand the lyrics of the Piña Colada Song but you don’t mind the tune, apparently, since I hear you humming it around the ship sometimes. You actually like Bowie— like, unironically, you like Bowie, and that one Allman Brothers song too, which… I gotta be honest, I couldn’t’ve guessed in a million goddamn years, but.”

Peter shrugs again, throwing his hands up and then dropping them. By some miracle Loki actually did shut up and listen to the last bit of that, and now he’s staring at Peter like he’s a bomb that’s about to go off or something.

“It’s really me, man,” Peter tells him. “I don’t know what the hell else I’m supposed to say to convince you.”

For a very long, quiet moment, Loki just… keeps staring at him.

And keeps staring at him.

And keeps goddamn staring at him.

Peter maybe loses it a little bit.

“Loki, come on, man! I don’t know what the hell I’m doing here, and I can’t do any of this crap without your help!” Peter shouts. “Seriously, why the hell wouldn’t I be real? You think the old lady’s tricking you? You think she’s… what, making an illusion of me or something? How would I have known all that stuff I said then, huh? Who else would’ve known that? I mean, how—?”

“I do,” Loki cuts him off, glaring at him again, though it’s not so much with genuine hatred anymore so much as it’s just wary, distrusting. Peter sees it when he gulps, when he sets his jaw and averts his eyes again. “I knew all of that. Everything you said, I already knew, and so he does, too.”

And Peter knows, he knows he’s gotta have the dumbest look on his face right now, because… Huh? What? What the hell is Loki talking about? Who the hell is he? 

Peter very nearly asks that question aloud, but then he’s glancing around at the cell on Sanctuary, listening to that muffled drip-drop-plunk in the distance, his brows pinched, his mouth hanging open like an idiot, and he realizes it all at once.

Oh.

Oh.

“You think you’re actually on Sanctuary, don’t you?”

Loki doesn’t answer that at all. He doesn’t move, doesn’t give any indication that he heard Peter speak, doesn’t so much as glance in his direction.

And that’s pretty much answer enough, isn’t it?

“That’s why she’s got you here,” Peter mutters, dragging both hands over his face again. “That dickhead in the Black Order. Ebony Maw. That’s who you’re talking about. Jesus.”

A sympathy pain lances its way through the center of his chest, along with a brand new surge of anger. He’s pissed at the old lady, obviously, way more than he was before now that he knows she’s keeping Loki here, on goddamn Sanctuary, the worst place he’s probably ever been in his life, all just to… what, to keep him pliant? To keep him from fighting back?

Of course, he’s more than a little pissed at himself, too. He should’ve figured this out sooner.

“Dude. You’re not actually on Sanctuary,” Peter tells him. “You’re not. It’s… this, all of this, it’s not—” he gestures a little manically at their surroundings, dark dreary cells and the glistening black walls and all— “that’s what’s not real. We’re on Uӓdar, remember? We’ve been running around the Urunian forest like a pack of chickens with our heads cut off, right? And you said all that stuff about the barrier between dimensions being thinner here? Remember?”

He watches Loki, and waits, because he’s not gonna go on friggin’ monologuing if Loki’s not keeping up.

“Hey,” Peter says when no answer comes, careful to put a lid on the impatience and sound more-or-less gentle this time. “You remember that?”

Loki still isn’t looking at him, instead staring into the space somewhere far to Peter’s right, but he says, “I don’t…”

“You don’t remember?”

“I don’t…” Loki tries again, gulps, and says, “I don’t think that was real, either.”

“Oh— no, okay, yeah,” Peter says. “I get that. It kinda feels like a dream, right? Everything that happened before you ended up here, it all feels kinda hazy? Same thing happened to me, man. It fades. I promise.”

That earns him a very skeptical look.

“I promise. Seriously. It’s probably just taking longer for you since this batshit insane million-year-old lady is busy draining you like a damn battery. She’s messing with you. She’s been messing around with that… barrier… thing,” Peter says with a wince, because wow, real smooth there, Star-lord, “and now she’s using magic that she’s pulling from you to mess with it even more. She’s keeping you here, or, you know, making you think you’re here while she sucks all the magic she needs out of you, and meanwhile she’s flinging me around different universes like it’s nobody’s business, but I, uh, I think physically we’re still in her house? I don’t know, man, it’s all so messed up. But— whatever, the point is, none of this is real. Uӓdar, Urunia, all our friends out in the forest waiting on us, that’s what’s real.”

A beat of silence passes.

And then another.

Peter waves his hands at Loki, miming like he’s shaking him. “Dude!”

“I don’t…” Loki starts to say, then looks away, and tries again. “I thought it was. I thought all of that was real, but…”

“Loki, it’s been months since you were actually on Sanctuary. Months. What, you think you dreamt up everything between now and then? All of it? There’s no friggin’ way. Sanctuary’s been broken down in a scrapheap for months. You’ve been hanging around with us, being a Guardian of the Galaxy with us, for months. And Ebony Maw’s been dead for months, too. I mean, dude, you killed him right in front of me!”

There is, it seems to Peter, a goddamn eternity of silence after he says that, while Loki’s just staring at him with that wary look on his face and saying absolutely nothing. Like he’s scoping Peter out for a lie, or he’s waiting for the other shoe to drop and for Peter to drop all pretense and attack him or something.

Then he opens his mouth to say something, and—

Ah, ah, ah.

Peter spits a curse, glaring at the ceiling. “Hey, no, lady, I’m not done here—”

Now, that really is cheating, Peter Quill.

“Bullshit, it is! You’re—”

There’s another tug under his diaphragm that punches all the wind out of his voice, and this time it comes with a prickly feeling alighting along his nerves, and his vision whites out for a second before it’s replaced with

Mantis standing on a planet bathed in

red light with terror clear on

her face as she says,

Something is happening,

and she can’t get

             another word out

before she vanishes into

                                    dust and

Somewhere else the

whole of the universe is

              gone,

                        engulfed,

                                   consumed,

not even dust left and

       Ego’s standing over him

               and smiling and he’s

                              so proud, so so proud

There, now, son.

Wasn’t it so much easier to give in?

A planet bathed in red and Drax

        watches Mantis collapse into dust

and he looks scared

       really properly scared

               for the first time since

                       Peter’s known him, and

Quill…?

                                  Steady, Quill—

Aw, man—

Earth has been turned into a battlefield, Thanos’ forces cascading over scorched hills.

There’s a familiar face here and there. Stark’s friend with the gray suit flies overhead, dropping bombs all over the place.

(Like thinning out numbers this huge is even gonna matter.)

The Hulk bellows somewhere, tearing through enemy forces, but it doesn’t take a genius to see that that’s not gonna be enough, either.

It’s not long before Thor shows up, and he shows up with all the fanfare that Peter’s come to expect from him. The gathering of storm clouds, the ear-popping roar of the Bifrost opening up, blue-white lightning crackling down from all directions, and

somewhere else, there’s no Thor.

There’s no Thor anywhere, no crackle of lightning or rumble of thunder beneath the chaos of firing weapons and death wails, no Bifrost roaring down from the sky.

But there is Loki.

For a little while, anyway.

Loki’s there, slicing through Thanos’ soldiers, ruthlessly precise, ducking and weaving, flinging daggers into throats, firing bursts of magic like flash bombs.

Then, as a last resort apparently, there’s a ripple of blue light, and ice surges out all around him, instantly freezing everything in its path.

(He can do that?)

It’s enough to buy him a few seconds, but no more than that. Another wave of Outriders clambers over the fallen and the frozen, and they pile on top of him like starving dogs on a hunk of meat, and Loki’s too spent at this point to stop it, and

I am Groot…?

                                                  Aw, no.

                                        No, no, no…

Now, Peter Quill, are you beginning to understand?

Gamora.

Peter’s goes cold all over because he knows, he knows exactly what Nebula’s getting at even before she says it.

     He took her to Vormir.

           He came back with the Soul Stone.

                        And

                            she

                      didn’t

Again, Peter stumbles on the landing, even though he’s pretty damn sure he hasn’t moved, his heart racing and his stomach lurching like he just came out of free fall. It’s like one of those falling dreams, almost, except he’s still not totally positive that he’s woken up.

… Oh, this is disorienting as all hell.

Peter does not want to think about any of what he just saw, what he just experienced, especially that last bit, no friggin’ thanks, but—

Well, except for one part. There’s one segment of that highlight reel horror show that’s hovering in the back of his mind, a half-formed thought that he latches onto and refuses to let budge.

Finally, he’s got a plan.

Maybe. Sort of.

“Why won’t you go away?”

Loki’s voice almost startles him, and Peter presses the heel of his palm into his sternum, letting himself breathe for a second or two. Jesus, he doesn’t know how many more of those jumps he has in him before he’s gonna crumble like a house of cards.

“I told you, man,” Peter answers, forcing some steadiness into his voice. “I’m not going anywhere if I can help it.”

“You don’t know when to quit, do you?”

Despite himself, Peter laughs at that, and if it comes out a little deranged, then… well, whatever. “Yeah, no, I really don’t. Never have.”

He turns toward Loki, looking him over again. For a second, he thinks about sitting down, too, just plopping right down on the gross grimy floor of the Sanctuary cell and folding his legs up like a little kid, but then he realizes that if he sits down right now, exhausted as he is, he’s never gonna get back up.

“So. I think I got a plan.”

Loki’s brow creases.

“Sort of,” Peter amends, because right now it’s really just the bare bones of a plan. Maybe fifteen percent of a plan, but hell, he’s worked with less and come out alright. “Got a question for you first, though, so, uh, even if you still don’t believe I’m me, it’d be super cool if you could hear me out anyway. Remember when you dropped the, uh… the magic… glamor? Thing? The magic that keeps you looking like this.” He gestures at Loki, waving up and down at him. “When you told me you’re a Frost Giant?”

As expected, Loki doesn’t answer, but it was mostly a rhetorical question anyway.

“The room dropped like forty degrees,” Peter reminds him. “And your drink froze solid in a few seconds flat, and you weren’t even doing anything, right? You were just sitting there.”

“What’s your point?”

“My point is, I know you’re not firing on all cylinders right now, and I know the kind of magic you normally do is totally out of the question since the old lady’s draining you down to empty, but,” Peter says, “I think you still got a trick up your sleeve. We’re still technically in the old lady’s house, and I think if you really tried, you could freeze her out. Just a—” he smacks his hands together and opens them up like a miniature explosion— “quick burst of ice, and she’s out of commission long enough for me to get a shot in.”

He pats the one remaining blaster on his hip.

“So my question—”

“You’ve already asked quite a few of those.”

“My actual question, smartass,” Peter goes on, rolling his eyes, “is could you do it? If you dropped the glamor thing, could you get the room cold enough to pull this off? It’d have to be colder than you did on the Quadrant, like, subzero at least. We’d need to at least knock the wind out of her. Could you do it?”

Loki opens his mouth, and Peter can already tell he’s getting ready to shoot the idea down.

“Humor me, man,” Peter cuts him off. “Even if you still think I’m a hallucination or whatever, humor me. Please. It’s a yes or no question. I’ll even take a maybe.”

Nervousness passes quickly over Loki’s face, a new crease in his brow, a glance at the far wall and the cell bars. He’s got his legs bent up in front of him, and he’s wringing his hands together in his lap as he thinks.

“Let’s say, for sake of argument, that I believe you.”

“Yes!” Peter shouts, throwing his hands up. “Please! Let’s!”

“Say you’re right, and you really are… you,” Loki says, glancing at Peter and then away again. His Adam’s apple visibly bobs as he gulps, his hands shaking a bit where he seems to be on a personal mission to jab a hole in his own palm. “Say you’re really you, and neither of us is really… here, and we are, in actuality, both in the same room in an alternate dimension, under the influence of a million-year-old woman who is hellbent on harnessing my magic for her own use.”

“Uh. Yeah. Sort of,” Peter says, shrugging one shoulder and bobbing his head from side to side. “The million-year-old thing is kind of a guess, if I’m bein’ honest, but she called you young, so I’d ballpark it at, y’know, at least a few thousand—”

“You believe that we are in the same room,” Loki raises his voice to speak over him, which only really draws attention to how hoarse his voice actually is, but it does get Peter to snap his mouth shut. “You’re saying that we are physically in the same room, and in the very same breath, you’re suggesting that I plunge that room into subzero temperatures for an extended period of time.”

Peter opens his mouth to argue, then sighs, and rolls his eyes.

“I— yeah, okay. Not my best plan, sure. But it’s kind of all we’ve got to work with, so if it gets us out of here, then I’ll deal with a little chill, you know?”

Loki narrows his eyes.

“What?” Peter crosses his arms. “Come on, I can handle it.”

And there’s something so quintessentially Loki about the fact that he’s sitting here looking like he’s been dragged all the way to hell and back, half-convinced Peter isn’t even real, half-convinced he’s still in the throes of actual literal torture and never escaped it in the first place, and yet he still manages to pull of the look he’s got on his face right now. The raised eyebrow, the judgemental tilt of his head that wouldn’t be out of place with a sarcastic, Oh, yeah, sure you could, pal.

“I’ll handle it,” Peter doubles down. “Or at least I’ll handle it better than she will. I’ve got, like, at least a hundred pounds on her.”

“I’m not sure that quite matters—”

“Dude, please just trust me, okay?”

Without warning, something shutters off in Loki’s expression. His shoulders go tense. He even stops fidgeting with his hands, going completely still from head to toe, and Peter immediately tries to mentally backpedal.

“Or… you know, don’t,” he offers in a lower voice, hiking his shoulders up to his ears and then dropping them in an exaggerated shrug. He frowns, trying to keep his own expression from tipping too far into sympathetic — because this is Loki and Loki would sooner crawl into a hole and die than receive sympathy from anyone — but he’s pretty sure he doesn’t succeed in that. “What, you still don’t believe it’s me? You still think everything that happened before this wasn’t real? I mean, I know it all kind of feels like a dream, I know that, but you remember it, don’t you? You remember you got away, you remember these assholes are all dead, you remember it, you know it happened.”

Loki hesitates for a second. Then he looks away, and his voice is quiet when he says, “It wouldn’t be the first time.”

“Huh?”

“It wouldn’t…” Loki starts, but his voice cuts off. He takes a breath and says, forcefully, “It wouldn’t be the first time I was led to believe I’d… gotten away. It wouldn’t be the first time I was wrong.”

Peter deflates like a hole’s been punched in his lungs. “What?”

Loki doesn’t answer that, staring resolutely ahead at nothing, and Peter curses under his breath. Goddamn it. He glances around the cell again, instinctively trying to seek out some clue, some imperfection, some tell that’ll make Loki realize that where they’re at now isn’t real, but it’s… Shit, it’s pretty damn convincing. It’s like they’ve really been dropped off at Sanctuary, and honestly, if Peter didn’t know any better, he’d probably think it was real, too. He tucks his hands into his pockets, and—

Oh.

“Oh, holy shit,” Peter murmurs. “My Zune.”

A sliver of the haunted look on Loki’s face slips away, and a sliver of that what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-your-brain look comes back to take its place.

“My Zune,” Peter says again, hope swelling up in his chest. “That’s the proof. It’s— You have it! When you passed out and I had to leave you behind, I gave it to you so you’d know I was coming back. Dude, check your pockets. My Zune’ll be there—”

“I don’t—”

“If you think I’m lying, then call my friggin’ bluff, man!” Peter shouts. “Please, just check.”

“— as for the Soul Stone—”

Peter freezes at the sound of Thor’s muffled underwater voice, his heart sinking. Damn it, damn it, damn it, not now, not yet! Shit! The old lady’s already sending him off somewhere else, and even though Peter wants nothing more than to stop it, he knows he can’t, so he plants his feet and sucks in a breath in preparation for the world to tilt off its axis and shudder out of existence.

But it doesn’t.

Because he’s already back on the Benatar.

“— well, no one’s ever seen that, no one even knows—”

There was no transition this time, no stomach-churning dip, no ringing in his ears, nothing at all. Peter doesn’t even think he blinked. One second he’s on Sanctuary trying to shake some sense into Loki, and the next he’s standing in the Benatar’s lower level and watching Loki’s brother pace around with a blanket draped over his shoulders.

“— therefore Thanos can’t get it—”

Why was it like that this time?

Is Peter’s body somehow getting used to the ping ponging around different realities? Or is it because the old lady’s getting better at flinging him back and forth?

God, he really, really hopes it’s the first one.

“— therefore he’s going to Knowhere, hence he’ll be getting the Reality Stone,” Thor says, turning away from the rest of the Guardians. “You’re welcome.”

There’s a moment of hanging, tense silence. Gamora does that thing she does when she’s real upset about something and doesn’t want to show it. She huffs a small sigh, eyes closing for a moment as she collects herself, and then she tells the rest of them, “Then we have to go to Knowhere.”

“No,” Thor speaks up again. “We have to go to Nidavillir.”

“That’s a made up word—”

                                        all words are made

woah

     Nidavillir’s real?

                    powerful

            horrific

                       weapons to

                                      ever torment the

                              universe

                                              has

                               judged

           you

                             words are made up

asked it for a prize

                                   and

                                                  it

                            told

                                             you

if things go

                  wrong

                    powerful

            horrific

                           weapons

                   to

                               ever

         if

                thanos

                           gets

                                      me

Oh, you are slippery aren’t you, Peter Quill?

because you love nothing,

                                  no one

           very much like

                        to go there please

        no, this isn’t

                        this isn’t love

                hear me

                      and rejoice

Not to worry, I’ll get it under control…

join me on my quest to

               ignored my

                             destiny

                                            once

she’s asked, hasn’t she

                           if things go wrong

                       if thanos

              gets

      me

Now, where did you—?

            no

                     no,

                          this

                                isn’t

                                     love

                         peter

            not him

you

              p

                          r

                     o

          m

               i

                             s

                  e

           d

    no, this isn’t

                no, no, NO—!