Chapter Text
Meredith Quill met Ego on a summer night in 1978. Her radio was cranked up loud. A man on the side of the road was hitching a ride into town. She was 19, heading home from school after her exams, ready to spend some time with her folks.
A handsome man on the side of the road was an unusual sight. She let him in and he thanked her before really taking a look at her. "Oh, wow," he said, breaking out into a grin. "You are certainly a sight for sore eyes." His hair was tousled artfully, his clothes were too fashionable for the side of the road. She didn't see a broken down car anywhere, either.
"You ain't so bad yourself," she said. "Where you heading?"
"Wherever you're going…" He was searching for her name, smile not fading.
She laughed. "Meredith, Meredith Quill."
"Hello, Meredith Quill. They call me Ego," he said, kissing her offered hand.
"That's a weird name, Mister, but…" Probably some weird hippie name, she reflected as she put the car back in gear and took off. They rode for a few minutes before she said anything else. He stared at her the whole time. "I gotta make a stop at my folks place. Anywhere I can drop you?"
"Drop me somewhere that you'll meet me when you're done," he said.
Meredith hadn't really thought he was serious, but she dropped him at the bar, fully expecting him to be charming some other girl when she got out several hours later. She walked in and he was sitting at the bar, waiting for her. "So, where you from?" California, she bet. Somewhere fancy.
"The stars."
She snorted her beer painfully, clapping a hand to her mouth to hide the undignified spray. He laughed. "Mister, you are weird ."
His laugh faded, and his tone wasn't unkind but it was still firmer than it had been a moment ago. "I'm serious."
She met his eye and couldn't help but feel like he was. "Oh." She was blushing.
Ego stayed two weeks during that first visit, never implying that he meant to leave, but never really saying he meant to go. They spent every moment together that they could. She found him a hotel room, not wanting to admit to her parents that she was forgoing seeing her hometown friends for this space man, but she was obsessed.
He was funny and kind and listened to her sing and acted like she was the most remarkable woman he'd ever met. And then she woke up one day and he was gone.
" River-Lily, I'll be back ," a note sitting at the bedside reassured her. She hoped he meant it.
Ego came back the following summer, too. She sped up to where he walked down the street, lowering her sunglasses and whistling at him. He laughed as he realized who she was. "Are you staying this time, Spaceman?"
"For a while," he said, kissing her as a greeting when he slid into the passenger's seat.
That week he showed her the flower he planted, glowing with a life she'd never be able to understand. He really was from the stars, she told herself, and he would grow flowers across the universe. He was there for a summer, and just as Meredith prepared to return to school, he was gone.
A week later, she was staring down at the end of a plastic stick. Pregnant.
Peter Jason Quill was two when Ego returned. Meredith was up late, watching television on her own. She had focused her whole life on Peter from the moment she heard him cry in the hospital. She worked long hours at the bar, quit school, rented a podunk little trailer close to her parents and tried to make sure he had everything she could give him. It wasn't much, but she found there was nothing she'd ever been as good at as she was being a mama.
Peter was her life. She had never felt the need to find another man, though her cousin had hinted she "needed it". She didn't have any regrets. Maybe Peter needed a daddy. Maybe his daddy would come back. Really, it didn't even matter. She had this handled.
She wasn't expecting the soft rap on the door that night in 1983. Creeping up to the door, she opened it carefully. It wasn't the best neighborhood, so her hand instinctively drifted to the gun by her door until she saw him .
"Spaceman?" she said, mouth dry. She stepped out onto the front steps. "What are you doing here?"
"I missed you, my River Lily," he said, taking her in his arms before she could resist. Kissing him felt so natural. He looked like an angel. He hadn't even aged, still all dimples and perfect hair, just a shadow of a beard to signal some kind of extra maturity.
"Ego. It's been three years," she said sternly, stepping back and poking him in the chest. "Things have changed."
He looked surprised and maybe she was imagining that he looked a little pleased. "I meant to come back sooner, River Lily, I did. My world is far on the outer reaches of space. It can take a while to travel, and my sense of Earth time can be a little off."
Meredith wasn't sure she bought the excuse, but she couldn't stop herself from wrapping her arms around his neck. He was here. Peter's daddy was standing here, and he still loved her. "Well. Can I show you something?"
He grinned. "Of course. Anything."
She guided him into the little single wide trailer. She saw the crease of his eyebrows as he took in the space. It wasn't much, but it was home to her. Peter's room was at the end, and she opened the door quietly. He slept like the dead once he actually got to sleep, so she doubted the creak of the door would wake him. "Oh, Meredith," Ego breathed. He had his hand on her waist, his lips against her ear. "Is he -"
"Yeah, Spaceman. He's just like you," she said, turning her face up to kiss his cheek.
"Can I meet him?"
She closed the door. "How long are you staying?" She wasn't about to expose her son to the same heartbreak she'd dealt with. If he were just gonna be gone in a week, it wasn't fair.
"Not long. I know, I know. It's not fair. But my world needs me. I wanted to come and let you know...I haven't forgotten you. I've thought of you every day. What's his name?"
"Peter."
"Peter," he breathed. She liked the way it sounded when he said it. "Is he special?"
"Of course he's special. He's kind...he loves everyone, always wants to help. He reminds me so much of his daddy."
Ego nodded, but something in his eyes was colder than she expected. Leaving was hard for both of them, she thought. "I'll be back soon. Sooner this time. Peter will need to see where he's truly from. He's one in a trillion."
Meredith couldn't help but feel a little small. "And me?"
" And you. One in a million, my River Lily." He touched the tip of her nose in a gentle, affectionate gesture. "It'll take time to be ready. Earth is an 'officially' uncontacted planet. There are procedures to follow. People to discuss things with."
Meredith could understand that. It was probably like traveling to another country times a million . "I'm glad you visited. But...if you ain't staying...I don't want to get his hopes up. I know he's jealous of the other boys having dads and I feel like this would just make it worse."
"I understand," he said, running his hands down her arms, leaning in. "But I'd love to leave you something to remember me by…so you don't go running off with some Earth man."
Pulling him in and kissing him, she stifled a giggle. "Maybe I should be the one making it memorable, since you gotta go so far."
Ego chuckled. "Oh, any moment I'm with you is memorable, River Lily. It's so hard to leave you behind."
Some time in the night she stirred. Ego was watching her and she could just feel love in his eyes. He stroked her hair and she snuggled in tighter as she felt a finger press into her temple. He was gone when she woke up, and she couldn't help but wonder if he'd have stayed longer if she'd woken Peter.
Three years later, occasional headaches turned into splitting migraines. Migraines turned into scans they couldn't afford and lost shifts at work and dizzy spells.
Cancer. Terminal. The most unusual brain cancer they'd ever seen.
It was hard to explain to a five year old that his mother was dying, especially when she had been a healthy 25 year old six months ago. No one else at school had a dying mom. She wasn't going to keep it from him, though.
He raged and cried. He disrupted his classes and vexed his teachers. She dutifully went to her appointments. She lost her hair, which may have been the hardest part. She was angry at the idea of leaving her little boy alone.
Mostly she was angry at Ego. He wasn't here. He wasn't raising their son while she was sick, her own father was. She knew it would take time, but the truth was she didn't know if she wanted to go anywhere with him. Her friends worried; none of them had really believed Ego was from space, they just thought he was a deadbeat piece of shit. She understood.
The doctor said hallucinations could've started well before the tumor was big enough to make her sick, so the stars and the strange flowers could've been... Regardless of what was true and what had been the result of a brain tumor, all of it felt so colossally unfair.
But when Peter crawled up into her lap, pressing his face to her neck, she told him his father was of the stars. A good man who would come for him some day. She wouldn't hide the truth about her illness from him, but it hurt almost more to admit his father might not have been an angel. She couldn't do it. So she made a mixtape instead.
Two years was a long time to die. Meredith was tired . Tired of being tired and nauseous and bald. Poked and prodded and pricked and scanned.
Mostly just tired of pity. Sad looks. Whispers that she was sick , poor dear. She tried to do anything to distract herself, but it was all exhausting. She could still look at the stars, and it was something she could share with Peter.
He was an angel. A beautiful boy with more heart than she could fathom. She taught him all of constellations and the rotations of the stars, things she'd spoken with Ego about so long ago, when they'd not been too busy to speak.
But sometimes she just listened to her music on her own.
Brandy used to watch his eyes when he told his sailor stories…
Tears fell and she didn't bother to wipe them until she heard the door open. She hastily rubbed her eyes and turned to see Peter, wrapped in a blanket. "Hey mom," he said, sitting next to her.
"Hey baby." She turned the music up and sang a little, trying to get him to smile.
He joined in, but trailed off, looking sad. "I wish you weren't sick," he said faintly.
"Me too," she said, kissing the top of his head. "But they say my head ain't great." No amount of surgery seemed to stop the spread.
Her daddy said it was too much for Peter, but she wasn't having it. She wasn't gonna gloss things over just because he was little. He needed to be ready for when she was gone. Lying wasn't what she did. Not about this.
"Maybe I can fix it," he said, standing up and walking in front of her. He looked at her with concentration written on his little, scrunched up face. "You know how my scrapes go away real fast? Maybe I can do that to you, too."
"Well let's give it a try, baby," she said as he planted his hands on the side of her bald head. She wanted to cry. What had she ever done to deserve such a perfect son?
As he focused, his eyes and hands started to glow bright white. Her heart hammered as the pressure she'd become so used to seemed to burn away and then...nothing. For the first time in a long time, she wasn't in pain.
"You really are just like your daddy," she said with tears in her eyes. A being of pure light.
A week later her doctor stared, stumped, at her clean scan. "The chemotherapy must have worked in a delayed way. This is incredible," he said. "Miss Quill, you are...cancer free. We'll have to do some more tests. And frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if people wanted to write papers on this. But congratulations."