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The scream echoes. Screaming and desperate pleas, then the sobbing of a soul that knows he is damned. Helpless.
The Chitauri hold him down, hands on his wrists, ankles, his arms, his head. Everywhere they scratch at his skin, pull at him. He struggles. He bites at the hand reaching for his face. It recoils back, and the taste of the blood makes him gag. He spits, snaps again, pulls at the hands.
Finally they loosen their grip he is able to scurry back into the wall, watching as his attackers slowly back away. The image is coming into focus. His eyes dart from one spectre to another, his vision tanned at the edges. He can't breath. He can't...he has to...his lungs are on fire. Not again.
Not the fire again. The burning, his blood boiling. And the terrible, terrible laughter filling his ears, drowning out even his anguished cries as he feels his skin flake and fall, and all the time he is alive. Hyper alert, conscious and alive to every sensation. The smell of his own flesh burning.
His cries are strangled.
"Breath with me Boy, just a nightmare. Come on, I ain't gonna let this beat you." The spectres hand, blood stained, blue skin. The blood tastes sickly sweet, like liquid sugar. It takes his arm, and he screams, pulls away.
The spectres slowly swims into focus. Three of them, worried faces, eyes fixed on the fourth kneeling on the ground, waiting for orders.
The captain holds one hand bleeding against his chest. The other hovers between them, reaching out. "That's it Boy. Just a nightmare, Peter. That bastard Thanos ain't here to hurt you. You're safe. You're home, remember. We brought you home."
Yondu's bleeding hand reaches up, signalling for the three Ravagers behind him to leave the room. They do so slowly, worried glances fixed on Peter as he sits in a heap on the floor, the bed blankets surrounding him where he pulled them down with him. Slowly he is getting his breathing under control.
"I'm gonna to come over there now, Quill." Yondu says, moving slowly, inch by inch until he is sat beside the Terran and able to put an arm around his back, rubbing up and down the opposite arm. Peter responds by slowly lowering his head so that it rests against the Centaurian’s chest.
"I'm..."
"If the next word out of your mouth is sorry, then you will be." Yondu says with a slight chuckle as he tightens the embrace.
"Did I do that?" Peter asks, lifting Yondu's bleeding hand into his own. The Captain pulls it out of his grip.
"You weren’t yourself. And it don't even hurt." That is a lie, but he isn't about to admit to it. At least the bleeding has stopped. "Ready to try getting some more sleep?"
Peter shakes his head so violently that Yondu thinks it must hurt him to do so. He’s tired, the exhaustion is so deep inside of him that it aches. It is all that is left of the physical symptoms from Thanos’s tortures. Crippling exhaustion that can come on so suddenly, and so completely, that it is as if someone flicks a switch.
That and the nightmares. The nightmares that leave Peter afraid to sleep, wandering the halls looking for anything to keep his mind off of how tired he is, until he collapses from sheer depletion into a state that is as much unconsciousness as it is rest.
Now that Yondu's hand has stopped bleeding he feels able to lift it into Peter's hair. He can feel moisture seeping through the material of his shirt. "Just a nightmare, boy."
"They're memories." Peter whispers, the sentence broken. Each quiet sob makes Yondu want to hunt down every last chitauri in the galaxy. He wants to be personally responsible for wiping out the race, and he thinks he'll take down Thanos as well. He’ll do it with his bare fucking hands.
He struggles to get a lid on his anger as Peter's breathing slowly evens out.
"I thought I was getting better?"
"You are."
"Then why..." Peter’s words slur, but he jerks himself awake when his eyes fall closed.
"Come on." He gently pats the Terran's arm, and pulls them both to standing. "Put your coat on."
It's pre-dawn, and a cold dew filled air surrounds them as they slowly exit the ship. The lights of the nearby colony are dim, and only some sound (talking, bar music) filters through. They turn away from this though, walking out into the near pitch black of the beach that they have landed near.
Peter is bare foot, his toes scrunching as they step into the sand, letting the grains filter between them. It feels itchy. The sand is warm, and it dusts his skin, sticking to the bottoms of his trousers.
He walks along, his eyes closed, the sound of the sea filling his ears with white noise, and he can almost feel himself slipping back into that cocoon that was his world for the weeks that Thanos held him captive, and a while afterwards. That escape, that conduit into dreams and memories. A gentle, but solid hand on his shoulder, and another on his arm, guide him along. Keeping him safe.
"We’re just gonna walk, Quill?"
He listens to the sea and he remembers when his Grandpa took him to the beach. A whole week. They stay in a campervan, and spend all day every day building sand castles, throwing balls and paddling. The evenings they spend eating ice cream and watching boats. He is five years old, the sound of the sea in his ears. He gets sunburn on his arm.
His Grandpa chuckles. "You Mom ain't gonna be happy about that." He says, a hand on his shoulder as he rubs cream into the burn.
"Where are we going?" He asks, slowly opening his eyes. The first glimmer of sunlight is peaking over in the distance, and he can see that this beach stretches for miles.
"Nowhere. Just walking. Take some breaths."
Peter nods, bringing his arms up to wrap around himself. He's not cold, he just...or maybe he is a little cold. He checks his route and then closes his eyes again, ears focused on the sea. As ordered he deepens his breathing, taking in the smell of the sea air that surrounds them. He thinks he can hear his mixtape, but only the melody, not the words.
It's someone whistling.
He can feel himself slowly relaxing, the muscles in his shoulders releasing their tension in a wave that seems to flow all the way down Peter's back, hitting each vertebra and leaving numbness behind. He stumbles, but arms wrap around his own before he can fall, pulling him up to lean against a solid figure. He's surrounded by warmth, darkness, the noise of the sea, and melody of the whistle as he is gently turned around. He doesn't know where they are going now, but he doesn't open his eyes. He knows that he is...he feels safe.
Peter is a dead weight by the time they get back to the ship, and Yondu has to carry him up to the ramp, gently laying him on his side along it, so when his eyes open he'll be facing the sea. He removes his own coat, wrapping it as a pillow beneath the Terran's head. That done he sits there behind him, watching Quill sleep, a hand resting gently on his arm. Waiting in case of further nightmares, still whistling his way through his memory of the mix tape.
The ship, the rest of the crew, everything else can wait today.
Yondu will sit there for as long as he has to.