Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Pete’s small.

Even for his age, he’s skinny and bony and he’s got these awkward knobbly knees, and his hands and feet look a little outsized compared to the rest of him, like the paws on a puppy.

Means that when he runs, he isn’t all that graceful.

He breaks through the hospital door, fighting the cloud of gnats that are drawn to the green-glowing Emergency Exit sign. His sneakers squish on the dew-soaked lawn. Peter collapses there, lit by the sterile white light that streams through the windows of the cafeteria and the neighboring ward.

Mom’s in there. Only she isn’t, not really.

That’s not mom. That’s a thing. Meat. A corpse on a bed that stinks of vomit and fever-sweat.

And the machines wail like scared children, and the tears fall out of Peter’s eyes even though he promised himself he wouldn’t cry, because he’s a big boy now, he’s a big boy and he has to look after grandpa for mommy, he promised, and why – why? – didn’t he hold her hand?

Peter punches the grass. All that earns him is skinned knuckles. He sniffles and clutches his Walkman – mom’s Walkman – to his chest, and conjures up her face, her smile. It fades into a runny glaze of tears. The Walkman is all that’s left of her. The last shred of her spirit is right here: stamped in the SONY logo, cushioned on the spongey earpads, wound around and around the tape reel.

That’s when the traction beam activates.

Peter turns over his palms, snivelling at the rainbows that glisten on his skin. Later, he will learn that he’s being scanned, his biometrics recorded so that the beam doesn’t grab all the creepy-crawlies off the lawn when gravity inverts and Peter Quill tumbles upwards into his new life.

In the present, it all comes as a bit of a shock.

Darkness.

It takes several blinks for Peter’s eyes to adjust, and once they have, he regrets it. He’s eight-going-on-nine, his mom’s dead and she ain’t coming back, and now - to top it all off - he’s face-to-nose with a monster.

It has no mouth. The piggy nostrils at the end of its snout flare and shrink like bubbles bursting in the peat-mud down by the stream.

Peter does what’s natural. He screams and wrenches away. One kick is all it takes; he clocks the monster dead between the legs.

It makes a noise – pain, he hopes – and folds, catching its weight on the wall. Its long nose curls like a chameleon’s tongue.

Peter doesn’t waste time gawping. Well, he does, but only a little. Halloween mask, he tells himself, tightening his hold on the Walkman as he dives for the open door. It’s got to be a mask. And as for the freaky upside-down waterfall of rainbow-light that dragged him off the hospital lawn, and the double-decker bus-sized thing he saw hovering – yes, hovering! – over him? He doesn’t know.

But there’s got to be an explanation. Or maybe (if he prays hard enough, if he really believes it) he’ll wake up and this’ll all be over. A bad dream. Mom’ll be baking cookies in the kitchen. She’ll have her hair back – thick auburn curls that Peter liked to wind through his fingers.

He remembers being scolded for braiding it while covered in jam. But even as she told him off, rinsing out the sticky red seeds, mom had been smiling, laughing, humming Fox on the Run under her breath.

Peter trips through the open doorway. He smacks down hard. His breath smacks out, burning at the back of his throat.

You wake up if you fall in a dream – he heard that somewhere. But no matter how often Peter blinks or how hard he pinches himself, the nightmare doesn’t fade.

The floor is made of flat-hammered metal plates, stuck together like crazy paving. It’s gross, coated in mulchy black slime. It coats Peter’s palms as he forces himself to his feet, leaving skidmarks down his pants, coating those knobbly knees.

No time to worry about that. He’s in a dark, poorly-lit corridor. Can’t make out much detail – which is for the best, if the walls are as dirty as the floor. It curves tightly, like when you look into the furl of a seashell. More masked men spill around the corner. Their boots ring deafening loud. They’re ugly as old pumpkins after Halloween, and they’re yelling in a language he doesn’t understand, and he can smell them, and…

Fight or flight?

Peter’s only small. He chooses the latter.

“Fox on the run,” he pants, arms and legs pumping. “Like the fox on the run…”

They could outrun him on the flat. Peter knows he shouldn’t look behind him, but he does it anyway. Bad idea. The monsters gush in a wave of tatty leather, barging each other and jabbering nonsense. They all make different sorts of noises – some hoot, some squawk, others bark like angry dogs.

Peter barely notices. He follows the corridor as it loops back on itself. His heart batters his ribs, a panicky drum roll. His bag weighs on his back. He won’t let go of it though. Not for the monsters. Not for anything.

Mom’s Walkman slides sweatily between his fingers. There’s no time to hook it to his belt. No time to wrap the headphones around his neck. No time, no time…

Another monster makes a grab for him. Whatever this place is, the floor keeps vibrating, setting Peter perpetually off balance. Peter has that to thank. He trips, shrieking as thick fingers scrape the straps on his bag, almost latching on. But then he’s around the bend and catching his balance, arms windmilling, lurching forwards on his own momentum.

The other monsters are running too fast to make the turn. They smack into the wall. Boom-boom-crash.

Peter cracks a smile. He can hear them grumbling and groaning and picking themselves up. It’s good to know that monsters can be hurt.

The tunnel forks. Three doors decorate the left-hand passage – at least, Peter hopes that’s what they are. They don’t have any visible handles, but each is set within a thick rubber-lined frame.

He doesn’t have long. The monsters are a single turn behind him. Peter assesses the doors. One has char marks, the other dents, and the third sports a disconcerting scratch down the middle, like someone tested it with a sword.

Peter picks the burnt door. When pulling at the edge does nothing, he smacks it in frustration. Whoosh. It shoots open, and Peter falls in – on top of another human.

Peter scrambles up. The door zooms shut behind him. The other person points at him, wittering in its freaky language.

Chinese? He doesn’t look Chinese. He looks American, but so do Russians, and Grandpa says he mustn’t trust them.

Peter bares his teeth. “So that’s what you look like without the masks.”

The person is tall and thin and kinda mangy looking, from his mohawk to his ratty little beard. His legs look like a pair of sticks, of the sort you pack in the bottom of a fire to make the first sparks take. Proper trailer trash.

Grandpa would have a lot of things to say about him. Especially since Peter can see tattoos, if he stands on his toes, squiggling up one side of his pencil-thin neck.

He wears red leather. Means he’s one of the a-holes who think it’s fun to dress up like demons and kidnap little kids from hospital lawns. He says something – it sounds angry – and gestures at the wall. His face has gone all red. Patches of it glow through the stubble.

Peter looks where he points. A fold-out pan sticks out at what most adults think of as sitting height. It currently houses a puddle of liquid. It’s worryingly yellow.

Peter’s eyes go round. He boggles up at the man, who can’t seem to decide between grabbing Peter and doing up his zipper.

“Ew. Don’t you lock the door?”

The man can’t understand what he’s saying, but he seems to get the gist. He crosses his arms – then changes his mind and makes himself presentable first, fastening his fly.

“Ikthx fgbhi hkgu,” he says. It sounds like he means it.

Peter pushes his eyebrows together. Mom’s music plays quietly. He hasn’t turned off the Walkman, from where he set it playing just before… she…

He can’t even think about it. He’s got to focus on the here and the now.

He’s the fox. He’s on the run. He’s being hunted. He has to move.

“You talk funny,” he says. The man looks mortally offended.

“Ishf hrzzk khc’tya,” he replies, and Peter can help but fill in no, you talk funny in his head.

“I can’t understand you.” A thought strikes – this man isn't wearing a mask, and he hadn’t been part of the chase. What if he’s a captive here? What if he’s like Peter?

Peter dips his voice, although weirdly, he can’t hear anything from the corridor outside. He wonders if his hunters have run on past.

“I need to get out of here. Can you help?”

The man rolls his eyes. Then, before Peter can stop him, he grabs him by the shoulder, smacks the door to open it, and steers him out into the claustrophobic hall. He doesn’t wash his hands first.

Peter yelps – partially because of that, mostly because for a skinny guy, he grips hard. His thumb presses so tight on Peter’s collarbone that he’s terrified it will snap.

“Ow! Ow-ow-ow-ow!”

The tunnel is deserted. The creepy red lights throb like they’re running around the valves in a giant, pulsating heart.

That must mean something, because Stick Legs mutters nonsense under his breath and frogmarches Peter down the corridor, Peter twisting futilely for freedom the whole way.

“No, wait! Don’t take me to them! Why aren’t you helping me? Why are you squeezing so hard? You’re hurting me, a-hole!”

Stick Legs makes a noise of disbelief, but his grip loosens. So he does know what he’s saying. Peter makes the most of it. He swerves to one side. Then, when the guy growls and moves to catch him, he flings himself violently in the opposite direction.

Stick Legs grabs his bag. For a moment Peter’s terrified it’s going to break. No. Not like this. He’s going to lose it – all his school work (grandpa will be so mad) and, far worse, the present from mom.

But then a whistle sounds. It’s high and sweet, splitting the air.

Peter’s brain glazes over, drowned under shock of the past five minutes. It swims to the only logical conclusion.

Mom whistled all the time before she got sick. Brandy and Fox and Spirit in the Sky, but Dixie and Swing Low and the old Confederate anthems grandpa liked to sing too. This isn’t any of them. It’s a strange melody, and it resonates just a little too much. But that’s the echo from all the metal in the walls. It’s got to be.

Peter has to find her. She can't be dead (he knows she's dead); she can't. He kicks the skinny guy in the shin and dives around the corner with his arms outspread, and…

“Mom!”

He collapses against her, eyes squeezed shut and gasping fit to burst. He clings to her leather coat, and –

Mom doesn’t wear leather. Mom wears flower-patterned sundresses and broad-brimmed straw hats. She smells nice too. This guy – and it is a guy; big and blocky – doesn’t.

He drags Peter to stand in front of him. Peter’s too terrified to break his gaze, but from the corner of his eye he can see the monsters, all of them cowering, at the mercy of a floating red stick.

The man whistles again. The stick shoots back to a specially-stitched pocket that hangs off his belt like a holster. The monsters relax.

That’s not good. That means this man’s the strongest of them all. He’s the scariest – even though he’s got a normal enough face, if you ignore the fact that he’s blue. From the tips of his pointed ears to his nose to his lips, to the hand on Peter’s neck, he’s blue, blue, blue; blue as a fresh summer’s sky. 

“Hj-clicka-hjyk clicka-click?” Blue asks. He switches between syllables and beatboxing rattles, like the Black-skinned boys grandpa tells him to stay away from when he goes to the park. (That sucks because they always have the coolest stereo sets, and they bring out their big bass speakers when it’s fine. Peter always wants to go over and shyly ask if he can try some of their dance moves. But mom told him that so long as he lives with grandpa he has to follow his rules, so Peter just grumpily dances to their music from afar, and grins when they laugh at him.)

Peter can infer exactly what’s being asked, even if he doesn’t understand a word. What the rude-word did you just call me, boy?

Peter shrinks. Blue’s smell encases him in a cloud like smoke off the Thanksgiving bonfire. Peter recognizes sweat and booze well enough, but that sharper burn is foreign to him. It makes his nose itch like it’s peeling on the inside.

Radiation, he’ll learn later, from Yondu’s arrow. Ravager.

In the moment though, all Peter can think of is how predators smell. Grandpa took him to Dallas Zoo for his last birthday, and there was a lion in a cage. It had a sore on its belly and its coat was all ragged, but Peter could still smell it, soon as he walked up to the bars.

Danger.

It cracked its eyes and it looked at him. No matter how old and sick it was, Peter knew in that moment that it saw only lunch.

He doesn’t try and kick Blue. Doesn’t try and twist away like with Stick-legs either.

“I just wanna go home,” he whispers. “Just lemme go home.”

The man studies him. His eyes are red, evil-villain red. Then he throws back his bald blue head and laughs.

The other men join in – ‘cept Stick Legs, who leans on the door and looks sarcastic. Peter doesn’t really notice. The monsters no longer scare him. Not when Blue’s right there, flipping his coat over his weird flying stick.

Abruptly, the laughter stops – Blue snaps his mouth shut, metal teeth chiming. The others follow suit. They look at Peter. They all look at him.

Then something weird happens. The palm on his neck squeezes, but not like when Stick Legs almost crushed his collarbone. Why’s Blue cupping Peter’s nape so carefully, thumb making a tiny circle under his hair? Like he wants to reassure him, without any of the others seeing?

His nail scratches Peter’s scalp. It’s sharp as the lion’s claws.

Peter swallows. “I want to go home,” he repeats. His voice only shakes a little.

Blue doesn’t laugh this time. But he shakes his head, and that seems to be pretty universal, no matter what color your skin.

Another monster jabbers in Peter’s peripherals. His voice reminds Peter of coins dropping in the collection plate at church. Peter checks behind him and – dammit. It’s Snout. He points at Peter, nostrils opening and closing in time with his clattering speech.

Blue releases him, shifting to stand with his hands on his hips. Peter knows that if he tries to run again, he won’t get far. He recognises this place. This is the stretch he scrambled through when he first came in. And there – that’s the poky room where he first arrived, all rust-threaded metal and industrial-looking pipes, with that chimney-black cannon suspended precariously overhead. This building is a circle. Even if he’d gotten away from Stick Legs, he’d have run straight into Snout again. And judging by the way Snout blusters and points, nose inflating and squeezing out air in long raspberries, it wouldn’t have ended well for him.

Blue says something.

Snout says something back. He points at Peter again, then – to Peter’s shock – at Blue himself. The clinking chimes that follow seem to insinuate this is all your fault.

What is, Peter wants to know? But before he can ask, Blue’s hand fastens on the collar of his shirt. He swings Peter around behind him.

Peter blinks at the wall. It’s a little grimy, a little crusty, just like the monsters who've kidnapped him. When he tries to turn, Blue says something curt to Stick Legs. He nods and lopes to Peter. Peter eyes him warily.

“What’re you gonna…”

Stick Legs stands behind him. He grabs his head, a palm covering each ear. Like this, Peter can only hear his pulse, and it thumps louder than ever.

What’s Stick Legs planning? Is he going to rip off his head? One twist, then crunch, squelch, no more Peter. At least, Peter thinks, latching onto Stick legs’ bone thin wrists, this way he’ll see mom again. He shuts his eyes shut and waits for the inevitable.

The whistle is high and piercing. Stick Legs’ fingers are thin as the rest of him; he makes for a shoddy ear defender.

Peter hears the scream too. It chills him like a bucket of ice upended down his collar.

He forgets how to move. He forgets how to breathe. His eyes fix on one spot on the wall. It’s a rusty ring surrounding a rivet that’ll spread and spread like the mildew in grandpa’s shed. Peter can’t stop staring at it, as his hands slip to his sides, and Stick Legs covers his ears and keeps him facing the wall until he’s ordered otherwise.

Blue nods to Stick Legs after, as if in gratitude. He squeezes his bony hip as he walks past, which is weird because Peter’s only ever seen guys do that to girls at grandpa’s favorite bar. And - why’s Peter thinking about this when Snout’s dead at Blue’s feet, and Blue’s wiping his flying needle on his duster, back and forth and back again, holding it to his eye to check the burnish before shaking it out and tucking it back into its sheath?

The pool of blood reaches his boots and keeps on going, inching towards Peter over the uneven floor.

It’s not red. Not like blood should be.

Peter claps his hands over his mouth.

Blue looks back at him, an island of a man in a bloody green sea. He jerks his chin. Peter gets the message. He turns back to the wall, and stares until the rivets blur.

The fox is caught. No more running. He’s stuck here, with these monsters and that stick-legged creep and that big blue jerkass who murdered someone for talking back to him. They could do anything to him. Experiment on him. Probe him. Eat him alive.

No one's coming for him. No one will save him. Because Mom is dead on a hospital bed and Grandpa told Peter to get out and go.

Peter’s fists tremble. He's gonna have to get out of this one on his own.

Chapter Text

He's dumped in the little room where he first arrived and left alone for the next several hours - long enough that he falls asleep. Some indeterminable time later, he awakens, and for a stupid, beautiful moment, he’s convinced that everything’s fine.

But he’s not in mom’s hospital bed, tucked up against her skeletal side. He’s not in his bunkbed at grandpa’s either, with his poster of Alyssa on the wall and his LEGO model of Pacman sat beside his lava lamp. He’s on a dirty pile of leathers. There are furs too, long and crispy to the touch. They might’ve been soft, if they’d ever been washed.

Wait. Leather.

Red leather.

Peter bolts up. His head spins; his mouth rasps tinder-dry. Something coats his hand and cheek.

Peter glances down. He sees green, and it all rushes back. Snout. Stick-legs. Whistles and needles that stitch death on bright red string...

The green stuff is blood. He’s covered in alien blood. And he’s back in the tiny room with the freaky giant overhead cannon, where this nightmare began, only this time there’s no Snout (because Snout is dead) and the door is shut up tight, no handle visible. He's trapped.

That’s not the worst of it though. Peter checks around him, first casually, then with growing panic.

His rucksack’s gone. His Walkman, the headphones – gone, gone, it’s all gone.

The aliens have even taken his chequed overshirt, and the stupid gonk in the pocket that mom won for him the last time she was well enough to visit the theme park in summer. What Peter wouldn’t give right now to see its squashed-up little face.

The floor plates shudder; the wall too when he lays both palms on it. Engines, his brain supplies. They’re taking me away. The fox can’t run anymore.

Fox ain’t on mom’s tapedeck. Even if Peter gets it back, he’s never going to hear it again. He’s never going to hear her again, smell her again, gather her up in his little arms and pretend he can keep her safe, her son, light-of-her-life, her little Star-lord.

Peter folds to the floor. He buries his face in his blood-stained knees and weeps.

He can't have slept long - his eyes are all itchy, and he's exhausted (though that might be from the crying). He tries to go back to sleep, mostly because he just doesn't know what else to do. His bedding stinks something awful. It’s not any worse than the rest of the ship, much less the people on it, but when Peter, shivering, drapes the leather duvet over himself, he finds he can't breathe.

Tempting as it is to lie there until he suffocates, when Peter holds the leather over his face it just gets stuffier and stuffier. Eventually he can’t bear it anymore. He flings the leather blanket away from him and lurches to sit, panting and sweaty, ruby in the face.

It’s got sleeves, he realizes. A jacket – no, a long red coat. Stained with grot and caked smoke and what Peter can only presume is more alien blood. He kicks it as far from him as it can get.

His hair must be sticking out every-which way. His eyes sting from all the crying, itchy and hot like embers are caught in the lashes. Or like ashes. Mom's ashes. They'll have the funeral soon, and -

Grandpa must be so worried. He'll have called the police by now. They'll be grid-searching the fields around the hospital, cruisers rolling towards all of Peter's old favorite haunts. The park. The Dairy Queen. The little bend in the local creek he and mom used to take picnics to, when she was well enough to walk, and sit there surrounded by warbling birdsong and fresh summer pollen like they had the whole world to themselves.

How's grandpa supposed to find him up here? They're flying, Peter's sure of it: he remembers a similar rumble that time he and mom flew interstate to see the ocean.

Where are they now though? That he's less certain of – but he’s willing to bet it isn’t on vacation.

Peter’s on a spaceship. This isn’t his world. This is a new world, a worse one, where there are aliens with alien tech, and traction beams and phasers and all that other cool Star Trek stuff (not that grandpa let him watch it often. Liberal nonsense, or so he claimed.)

But in all of the TV Peter’s consumed, he’s never seen an alien fly a whistling needle. Much less one that kills people.

He shivers again, rubbing up and down his arms. The dried blood flakes like sunburn.

The cold ain’t awful, but Peter lets his teeth chatter a little, just in case they've got a camera on him. If he's a hostage, they'll want him alive and comfortable, right? That's how it works in the movies. The hostage doesn't get hurt until their daddy pays the ransom. That's when the lopped-off ears start arriving in envelopes.

But Peter doesn't have a daddy to pay his ransom, and grandpa isn't rich. He hopes the aliens at least let him listen to mom's music before they kill him, one last time.

He can't say how long it is before the aliens return. No natural light reaches his bunker. The walls curve in at the top like he's in one of those conical flasks from Mr Rogers’s science class, while the trapdoor under him is made of nine stretched triangles, joining together in a spiral that reminds Peter of the center of a rose. The traction-beam thingie dangles overhead. It’s ten feet long (the bunker is much taller than it's wide) and made of a dense black material that gongs when Peter thumps it.

The noise has barely faded when the door shoots open in a whoosh of stale-smelling air. Peter leaps away, because his visitor isn't just any alien. It's Blue. He's alone and without his duster, but that doesn't calm Peter's jitters. He's alone with a murderer, after all.

When Blue steps into the bunker his shadow swallows Peter whole. Peter crowds back against the wall.

Blue waits for the door to suck shut behind him. He shakes his head at Peter and – in a weirdly human gesture – rubs tiredly at the back of his head, where that red crystal joins his skull. He plucks the coat off the floor and drags it on. The needle sits in the holster at his hip, distorting the neat lines of the leather – but it stays right where it is, and that’s what matters.

Peter finds his courage, wets his lips. “What do you want from me?”

Blue says something in return. Peter gets that strange sense again, like Blue can understand him. He's tempted to shout 'you smell!' to test the theory, but suspects that wouldn't be wise - no matter how accurate.

Blue starts towards him, then when Peter starts looking around for places to run, he raises his hands and kneels. That ugly blue face floats just a little lower than his. Its expression is unreadable, like grandpa's when he plays poker.

The lights on this ship are made from some sort of glowing fabric. There’s a panel in the corner, low-set, just above the floor. The red glow shines off Blue's gold earrings and greases his dull tin teeth.

“Hrg-gork-clicka,” he says.

Peter fidgets foot to foot. “Hug-gork-clk-ka,” he tries.

Blue's eyes go big. He laughs– a little huff, not showing off his gnarly teeth. It sounds genuine.

Before Peter can celebrate that he's not going to be hurt, Blue pulls a silver gun out his pocket. He growls something unintelligible and hauls Peter in by the neck.

Peter hollers.

Everything goes from vaguely okay to extremely not in half a second. Adrenaline punches through him, jellifying his limbs. Peter swings at Blue's stocky chest and Blue doesn't notice, and he's going to die after all, and he's sorry grandpa, he's sorry mom, he tried to get away, he really did...

“Zthrg-clicka-click-hrog,” says Blue crossly. Peter wiggles and flails as Blue pulls off the nozzle of the gun with his teeth.

...Wait. That's not how pistols work, is it?

Beneath the cap is a horrifically long syringe. That's so much worse.

Peter's pupils shrink. He opens his mouth and screams.

Blue hits his cheek.Crack. Peter snaps his mouth shut, more from the shock than the pain. That soon follows, blazing pulses through the bones of his face. He glares up at Blue with hateful eyes. They’re all runny, but he blinks back the tears. Blue is a bully, like the boys who smush frogs on the forest path. Peter won't give him the satisfaction of seeing him cry.

Blue snorts. When he speaks again - “Hyuk-clicka-hurh-zga!” tongue rapping smartly off the backs of his teeth, Peter knows he's being taunted.

Look at'chu, boy. Bet ya think yer so big.

Of course, aliens wouldn't actually have southern accents. They’re aliens! But the man's teeth look like those of the trailer park boys from the next state down, who grandpa says rude things about even though they’re white.

Blue ain't, not by any definition of the word. Peter scowls at him. “Pick on someone your own size, you mean blue turd.”

While Blue smacks Peter again, he grins like Peter’s made his day, and the second blow doesn't hurt, not nearly as much. More like a cuff. Almost playful – or it would be, if not for that syringe.

Blue holds it to the light (which does very little for Peter’s nerves). Then he reaches under his jacket, into the leather husks beneath, and pulls out...

Peter gasps. His gonk.

Blue pinches it between finger and his thumb. The gonk looks a little grubby from its stint in Blue's clothes - but it's still Peter’s. Still mom's. The plastic, when Peter tentatively reaches out to touch it, is hard and cold, as if Blue doesn't have any body temperature. The gonk smiles its usual stupid smile, and for a moment, Peter can actually convince himself that things might just be... Well, not good. But okay. He can handle okay. He’s a big boy. He’s Star-lord.

Blue's fist closes around the gonk, hiding it from view. He brandishes the needle gun. Then, when that only has Peter frowning, he rests the syringe against the doll's negligible neck. Maybe Blue's going to destroy it in front of him, to prove that Peter's under his power.

“It's okay,” Peter says, licking sweat off his top lip. “I already know. Please don't hurt him.”

Blue rolls his eyes. He tucks the gonk back into his coat lining – Peter's gaze follows it, desperate, helpless. Then he lifts the syringe to tap his own neck. He tips his head so Peter can see where the pulse beats under his skin. Then he runs the syringe down the cord that joins his ear to his clavicle, and pokes at a halfway point between, pushing so the needle indents the skin without drawing blood.

He then taps the same point on Peter, and waggles the syringe, eyebrows raised.

Oh, hell no.

No way is he letting this scary guy stick drugs in him. Peter yawned through every one of the PSAs they show you at junior school. Sure, Blue isn't exactly offering him candy in a parking lot, but Peter won’t become a meth head. He promised mom as such – not on earth and not in space neither.

Peter does the only thing he can do. He pulls down his collar and bares his neck.

Blue makes a purry noise of satisfaction. He squirts a little juice from the syringe like mom's doctors always do.

Peter waits until he's distracted. Then he snatches the troll's hair, where it pokes between all Blue's buckles and straps, and swings it full force at Blue's face.

Peter might be smaller (by a large margin) and weaker (by a larger one). But a bright orange gonk flying full-speed towards you will make even the biggest, scariest, meanest alien freak out. So Peter hopes.

Though Blue jumps, it's not by much. Still, he throws his head out of range - giving Peter the chance to wiggle around him. He smells freedom. He just doesn't get to taste it.

Arms lock around his legs. Peter windmills and flaps, but he can't stop his tumble. Too much forwards momentum. His upper body continues and his lower body stops, and he tilts face-first onto the floor.

He catches himself on his hands – just. Something pops in his wrist. It blazes like he's brushed the inside of a hot oven, so sore Peter feels sick from it. He retches – dry, because he barely ate yesterday and it's not like Blue's offered him dinner.

Would Peter be able to eat alien food anyway? He doesn't know. He doesn't want to find out. He wants to go home.

He kicks, fury and pain replenishing his energy. Blue oofs as Peter's sneakers find his stomach. He yells something – Crah-glin! Just once, a short sharp bark.

The door reels open. Stick Legs stands there, smirking. He blocks Peter’s escape.

There's something spiky about him. It's not just his body, which is thin as Peter's (although much taller, like someone grabbed his arm and legs and stretched). But an aura, as mom might've said. Something dangerous prickling just below the surface. It unnerves Peter in a different way to Blue, who wears his menace on his dirty sleeves.

(Peter soon learns the difference. Yondu kills people fast and cold, whenever he has to. Kraglin? Kraglin kills 'em slow.)

In the end, they hold him down.

Peter cries. He cries a lot. He told himself he wouldn't, but he can't help it. The sobs wobble out around his heaving ribs, wet and sore, and he knows his face is horrid and blotchy, the handprint on his cheek beginning to bruise.

Blue sits on his legs. Stick-legs pins his arms behind him. His thumb presses on Peter's throbbing wrist and Peter retches again, coughing bile and spit down his front, spluttering like a shaken baby.

Blue pulls a face. He grabs a fist-full of Peter's hair, wrenches his head to the side, and empties the syringe into his neck.

Chapter Text

The darkness clears gradually. Peter lies where he's been dropped, blinking bleary eyes. They're even puffier and sorer than the last time he woke up.

“He alive?” asks a bored voice from somewhere far away. Peter hopes it stays there. He clenches his hand into a fist and out again. Dry blood – green blood, alien blood, Snout’s blood – crinkles between the creases on his palm.

“He better be,” comes the answering grunt. It’s got a southern accent thick as a molasses, and a blue shape moves through the watery wash of Peter’s vision. “Didn’t go to all this effort for a dead Terran. Y’hear that, boy? Best wake up now. We got work to do.”

Peter’s wrist hurts. He crunches up, just a little, enough to peer down his body. His arm lies at his side, sleeve rolled up to show off the ugly lump over the break point. Pain hits like a freight train. Not that Peter’s ever been struck by one of those, or had one crush his forearm, but this must be what it would feel like. He writhes, teeth champing. Someone’s whimpering, shrill and pathetic. It takes a long time to realize it’s him.

A thin hand clamps on his shoulder. “Don’t try none of that shit again, you lil’ twerp. Cap’n might let me hurt you, this time.”

Blue bares his teeth. “Back off, Kraglin.”

Stick-legs does. He looks mighty surly about it though, and snaps his teeth together when Peter squirms onto his side, curling into a loose, miserable ball. “What did you do to me?” he whines. “Why can I understand you now?”

Blue taps his neck. “Translator implant. Can feel it if ya give it a stroke.”

Peter tries to move his injured wrist.  Mistake. He sweats out the flare, veins throbbing in both temples.

Stick-legs – Kraglin – leans over him, rubbing his stubble. “Think it’s wounded, sir.”

“Wrist,” Peter grits. “I - I hurt my wrist.”

“Hell," says Blue. "Kraglin, go fetch a bandaid. We can get him washed up and deloused after.”

“Deloused? I don’t have lice! And – and I need more than a bandaid! And who are you, anyway? Where are we? Have we left earth? I want to go home!”

Blue waves Kraglin off. His brows weigh low, and he pinches between them like mom did when her pills gave her migraines. “I don’t give a shit ‘bout yer questions, boy. Kraglin, git.”

Kraglin’s smirk cuts into his left cheek. “Ain’t sure I wanna leave ya alone with him, sir. Can’t have him gettin’ the drop on ya again.”

“Aw, fuck off.”

Peter gasps. Grandpa says the occasional ‘dang’ and ‘blast’ – even utters ‘hell’ when things get serious. But that word? Forbidden under pain of slipper. Peter half expects Kraglin to do what his grandpa would: take off his boot and chase Blue all over the ship.

Kraglin, unfortunately, doesn’t. That would’ve been quite the spectacle. He just smirks some more, winks at Blue – weird – and saunters off to do his bidding. Which leaves Peter and Blue alone. Again.

Peter eases to sit, rubbing his shoulder with his working hand. “I want my Walkman,” he says quietly. He peeks at Blue through his fringe. “And my troll doll. I know you have it.”

A tuft of orange sticks out between Blue's leathers - Blue pats it with a chuckle. He’s got a bit of an underbite, like the bulldogs some of the trailer park guys drag around on chains. His metal teeth press dimples into his upper lip.

“Ya don’t get nothin’ on this ship for free, boy. The way I see it, it cost me four hundred bits of scrip to buy the fuel for this here venture, plus fifty more for that translator.”

"That’s not fair! I didn’t ask for you to kidnap me! I didn’t ask for any of this!”

Blue squats with his knees bent up and heels on the floor. He props his elbow on his nearest knee and his chin on his hand, grinning at Peter like a freaky blue Cheshire Cat. Unlike the Cheshire Cat though, he doesn’t disappear. More’s the pity. “Count yerself lucky I ain’t chargin’ you for man-hours too. And stress. Y’know how hard it is to fly through the Prohibited Zone without pickin’ up a dozen Nova Hawks snappin’ at your ass?

“I don’t know what barely any of that stuff is.”

“Course not.” A hand bats his face lightly to the side, then back in the opposite direction, like Blue wants a look at him from every angle. “You’re just a dumb Terran. Nothin’ special about you.”

Peter cranes away, bruised cheek still throbbing, trying not to jostle his arm. “What’s a Terran?”

Blue pokes him in the forehead. “You, idjit. You’re a dumb Terran, an’ you don’t know shit ‘bout what it’s like up here in the black. So you best keep quiet and follow my lead, y’hear?”

“I – I don’t want to be ‘in the black’. Why do you cuss so much?”

“I got plenty reason to. What did I tell you about askin’ questions?”

“That you don’t have time to answer them, only you just did, so you’re a liar as well as a kidnapper and a blue turdblossom, and a…”

“Pirate,” says Blue, lazily running his nail up and down a gap between his pointy teeth. “Don’t forget that one.”

Peter stares. “Pirate? You’re a space pirate? ”

“Shut yer gob. You’re one too.” Blue stands with a grunt, smacking his duster to flatten out the creases. His needle winks at Peter, the glowing red bead the same color as Blue’s crystal mohawk.

“I’m what?” Peter stutters, as Kraglin slouches back in, bearing a sealed square packet and a bottle.

He hunkers down beside Peter, grabbing his arm. Luckily, he hoists him by the elbow, not the wrist. Still hurts like the blazes, and Peter has to chew his tongue to keep from screeching.

Kraglin tears the packet open with his teeth. They’re blunter than Blue’s, yellow on top and tin gray around the bottom like he tugged all the originals out with pliers. The two halves of the packet split to reveal a thick gauze strip, perfectly square and a mossy shade of green. It looks like it might be squishy to the touch.

Peter eyes it dubiously. The bone hasn’t broken the skin – thank everything – but that time three summers ago when he fell out of the tree and got a greenstick fracture, the doctor had him on crutches in a cast for weeks. Not just patched up with some weenie little bandaid.

“What’re you gonna do with that?” he asks.

Kraglin spits the packaging to one side. He rolls up Peter’s dangling sleeve, harsher than necessary – or perhaps he just doesn’t realize how strong he is. “This one’s chatty.”

“Hey, I’m talking to you!”

“The bandaid,” says Blue, budging Kraglin reproachfully with his boot-cap, “is gonna sort out yer wrist. Just you wait.”

For someone who claims to not like questions, he’s sure answering a lot of them. “And the bottle?”

“Oh, that’s for the pain.”

Peter tries to wiggle away, to little avail. “The pain? ” What else are they going to do?

As Kraglin holds the gauze above Peter's arm, Blue kneels beside them, uncorking the bottle. He takes a draft for himself – though his arm is fine – then presses the spit-slick rim to Peter’s lips.

Gross. Peter does’t want his cooties. But at least he knows it's not poison. The bottle tips, the liquid inside hitting the back of his throat, and his only choices are to swallow or hack it all up again.

Peter swallows, glaring the whole while. One gulp though, and his scowl morphs to shock.

It burns. Not like his wrist – more like he ate a razor and it's slitting his throat from the inside out. He fights away from Blue's grip, spluttering and wild-eyed.

“Was that alcohol? ” he gasps. He can feel it inside him, an ember in his belly, warm and tingling. It tastes completely gross, covering his tongue and teeth in a thick, sour film. “You’re not supposed to give kids alcohol!”

Blue and Kraglin exchange glances. “Ain’t allergic, are ya?” asks Blue.

“N-no. But it’s wrong. ”

Blue shrugs. “Pirate.”

Which means, apparently, not caring about any rules, least of all legal drinking age. Peter is torn between arguing back and being delighted – Grandpa barely ever lets him try his Scotch, and never a whole mouthful! – when Kraglin smooths the gauze over his wrist, and his nerves short like he just grabbed a live wire in the fusebox.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaargh!”

“That oughta do it,” says Blue, a small eternity later. “Five seconds. Take it off.”

The bandaid peels back. Peter, spine arched to snapping, teeth champing, tears beading in the corners of his aching eyes, sags against the metal floor. He pants, one limp arm flopped over his face, the other in his captors’ grip.

“What the hell was that?” Kraglin flicks his wrist bone. Peter jumps – but only an inch, not a mile. “Huh? It doesn’t hurt anymore!”

“Len crap.” Blue dismissively wads up the bandaid; its glow has diminished, leaving it a dull olive. “Heals you up a few hundred times faster than usual. Only downside is that ya gotta deal with all that pain squashed together.” 

Peter doesn't know what a 'Len' is, though he catches the instinctive query before it escapes his throat. He's tested his captors' patience enough - best save further questions for the stuff that really matters. Like, what are you going to do with me and when can I go home. And… 

Peter squints up at Blue. The alcohol still simmers in his belly, and his head feels disturbingly light, like if he shook it, it might float away. “Hey. Who… who are you?”

Blue’s smile could give bogeymen nightmares. “I’m Yondu Udonta,” he says. “I’m cap’n of this here ship – which means when I say jump, you ask how far. This here’s my first mate, Kraglin Obfonteri. You already met a few dumb clots from my crew. We’s called the Ravagers, scourge-of-the-stars, and there ain’t nobody in this whole quadrant who’ll fuck with us.”

He sounds all proud about it too. For good reason - the whole space pirate thing is, Peter's gotta admit, a tiny bit awesome. Kraglin and this Yondu guy are scary, sure. But they're also aliens. Actual, real life aliens! Like at Roswell!

Didn’t mom always say his daddy came from the stars? The doctors said it was the tumor in her brain, and grandpa got out the slipper whenever Peter tried to play what if. But then again…

What if.

Peter looks carefully at his captors. Neither of them, he decides, are suitable contenders. Yondu's obviously no relation – the skin tone makes that much obvious. Kraglin seems more likely, but his mean little smirk scares Peter on a fundamental level. He doesn't like to imagine his mom loving a man like that.

“Are you going to take me to my daddy?” he asks.

He might as well have loosed a long and melodious fart. Yondu’s face smoothes like it’s been run over. Kraglin goes deadly quiet, looking to his captain for a cue.

Peter crosses his arms. “Well? Are you?”

“No.” Yondu stands in a liquid push. He's weirdly graceful in comparison with Kraglin’s gawky, shiv-sharp angles. Lion, Peter thinks, as he stalks for the door. Predator. “Kraglin, give this Terran brat his decontamination bath. Don’t let me see him ‘til all that blood’s off.”

Kraglin scowls, evidently unhappy at his assignation. Peter empathizes. He's eight, not three; more than old enough to shower alone. 

“Then why the hell did you pick me up?” The cuss doesn’t quite sit right in his mouth. His scrabble to his feet is considerably less elegant, grandpa’s specter looming over him with an upraised shoe. “Tell me!”

Yondu twists, one boot over the threshold, his broad form silhouetted against the corridor’s blood-red light. “Cause the boys were hungry,” he sneers. “Stopped ‘em eatin’ ya, I did, so you better be grateful - and if you ever wanna see your bag of goodies again, you'll behave.”

Fwoosh. The door shoots across, dividing their group with a thick plate of rusty red metal.

Peter’s air leaks out of him slow. He doesn’t inhale again, not until his lungs burn and he tastes bitter in the back of his mouth. He was going to be food. That’s terrifying enough – Peter shudders to recall how Snout stood over him, nostrils sucking in and out. How he got chased through the corridors, a hoard of slathering, ravenous pirates hot on his heels. But somehow, his fear ain’t the worst part. The realization is: that Yondu was right.

There’s nothing special about Peter.

His daddy’s a no-good dandy, just like grandpa says. Ran off and left him and mom. Never wanted Peter. Didn’t even stick around long enough to see him born. He’s not a star-man, just like Peter’s not a star-lord. Those’re just pretty stories, spun up by a dying woman’s brain.

Peter rubs his neck over where the headphones usually loop. He doesn’t want to be eaten. He wants his music and all the rest of his stuff. Maybe Yondu’s telling the truth? Maybe if he does what he’s told, he’ll get it all back again?

But Yondu’s a liar, and a pirate.

Yeah, Peter thinks as Kraglin marches him into the corridor, describing the various gory things he’s gonna do to Peter if he tries to escape. He can’t rely on the goodwill of an a-hole who gives children alcohol and kidnaps them for food. He’s gotta handle this right, and he’s got to do it alone.

Chapter Text

Kraglin steers him to stand before the second of the three doors at the back of the ship. A trio of dents distend the surface, like metal warped under a hammer.

“What happened?” Peter asks, poking them.

Kraglin flashes his mismatched teeth. “Last time someone pissed cap’n off, he let me take care of it. So I left ‘em in here with the Decontam on full-blast. Melted the skin right off their bones, it did – then melted their bones too. But they got a few solid swings at the door in, first.”

Spit catches in Peter’s throat. “I thought Snout was the last person who pissed Yondu off?”

“The hell’s Snout?”

“Y’know.” Peter holds up his left arm, showing Kraglin the crumbling green blood on his sleeve. It still feels unreal, that he saw a whole-ass alien die. Still feels unreal that he's surrounded by aliens, and that mom's dead, too.

“Oh, ya mean Greedo.” Kraglin lazily rolls shoulders. “That creep had it comin’. Cap’n don’t like them what like little kids. He was looking for the excuse to end him.”

Peter can’t see how liking kids is a crime – it sounds pretty decent, to him. But Kraglin doesn’t elaborate. He smacks the back of Peter’s head, light enough to not give him concussion – considerate, by his standards.

“Get yer ass in there. Clothes off – put ‘em in the hatch.”

“The hatch?”

“On the right. You’ll see it. I’ll give ya five minutes under low-grade solvent – should be enough to get ya sterilized without chemical burns.”

The door gusts back into the rubber frame. Inside, the bunker is small, the same size as the restroom next door and the octagonal box Peter arrived in. The floor doesn’t camber, not like in grandpa’s wet-room, but Peter spies a drain, the dark slice hidden under a plastic cap. Pipes swoop overhead, fastened to a bulbous machine that could’ve been sawn from an old steam engine. Valves grind in and out, pumping a glass chamber full of lurid orange goop.

He smells antiseptic. Hospitals. Cancer medication.

Peter covers his nose. He tries to reverse, but bumps into Kraglin’s jutting hips. Kraglin stands in the doorway, a bone-thin barrier, smirking down at Peter. His is an idle sort of cruelty, like the bullies at school who brought their own lunch money but would flip a coin to decide whether they were gonna steal yours anyway.   

“I don’t need to be sterilized,” Peter tries, tongue tripping over the word. “I wash every day. I swear it.”

Kraglini's lips curl. “Disgustin’. You Terrans really don’t know shit ‘bout nothin’, do ya?”

“I still don’t get what a Terran is!”

“You, dumbass. It’s you.”

“No, I’m a boy! A human, an – an earthling? My name’s Peter, Peter Quill.” That won’t do; he’s in space now. Peter Quill sounds like a little Missouri kid with a dead mom. Peter braves a smile. “But I guess you can call me Star-lord.”

Kraglin laughs. It’s a multi-sensory experience – smell as well as sound. Neither are pleasant.

“Don’t give a shit, kid. Nobody does, not up here. Yer an uncontacted lil’ shit from an uncontacted lil’ world. Makes ya Terran, and dirty. Probably ain’t had inter-system vacs or nothin’.”

“I’m not dirty!” The hypocrisy hurts more than anything. Peter points at Kraglin’s nearest hand – or more precisely, at its glove of grease and old sweat and God-knows-what else. “You’re dirtier than I am!”

Kraglin squints at his knuckles and their ingrained pattern of grime. “S’just dirt.”

“Isn’t that what ‘dirty’ means?”

Another smack, harder than the first. Peter’s brain rattles, bouncing off the front of his skull and back again like shaken jelly.

“Translators. I ain’t sayin’ what yer hearin’. Look. Bit o’grub on your skin won’t hurt you. Stops ya smellin’ like food to most monsters in the Black. But you don’t wanna be bringin’ no bugs from Terran worlds back to the galleon – fastest way to an eppy-demic, that. Me an’ cap’n and the other boys’ll all have to go through decontam too, before we dock.” He sighs, wistfully scratching at the hairy forearm that sprouts from under the cuff of his jacket. “Shame. I been buildin’ this layer up since the last Lunar. Now I gotta start over.”

Peter’s temples ache from the information overload. Kraglin might cite translator issues, but that’s not the only reason they’re speaking a different language. One thing stands out to Peter though: pirates don’t like bathing. Yet now, because they picked him up, they have to. Doesn’t that seem like a lot of effort to go through, for a snack you don’t actually eat?

“I don’t understand,” he says.

“Gonna have to get used to that, ain’tcha? Look. I’m covered in dirt. But you’re covered in mites and bugs and parasites an’ germy shit yer species prolly don’t even know about. So get in there an’ scrub ‘em off. We got a bunch of vaccines waitin’ for ya once yer done.”

“But I thought you picked me up to eat? Why would you have vaccines ready?”

Kraglin doesn’t reply. He towers above Peter, glowering over his considerable nose. Then, without another word, he shoves Peter in the chest, hard enough to rebound him off the far wall.

Peter manages to stay on his feet – just. He can’t stop replaying Kraglin’s story in his head. That poor alien pounding on the doors, desperation mounting as the acid waterfall poured…

“Don’t melt me! Please don’t melt me!”

The door clanks shut between them. The last thing Peter hears is: “Don’t fuckin’ tempt me, kid.”

Peter survives. That’s more than he expected. When Kraglin trudges back in, hands in his pockets, he finds his Terran charge naked and shivering, curled in the corner in a puddle of sticky orange gel.

“Weren’t so bad now, was it?” He toes him onto his back, mouth ticking like it can’t decide whether to settle on a grin or a scowl. What he sees on Peter’s face veers him towards the latter. “Oh, quasars above. Them better not be tears.”

Peter huddles tighter. “There’s no light in here.”

“So? The delousing crap glows when it’s activated.”

“No, it doesn’t!”

“Huh.” Kraglin crouches beside the hatch, flipping it open. He peers into the dank little cubby beyond. “Can’t see UV? So yer eyes’re as useless as the rest of ya. Stars know what cap’n’s thinking, keepin' you around.”

Peter miserably sits, knees pressed together, ass cold on the metal floor. “The goo melted off my underpants,” he mumbles.

Kraglin sticks his arm down the hatch, fishing about until he finds what he’s after: a handful of steam-washed, vac-dried denim. “Didn’t I tell ya to put all yer clothes down here?”

“I, I wanted to keep my underpants on…”

The only thing scarier than being alone in the dark is being naked in it. Kraglin lobs his remaining clothes at his face. They’re cold and stiff and scratchy. Peter looks down at them, then up at Kraglin as the man faces away from him, one foot tapping.

“Get ‘em on, kid. I don’t wanna see none of your weird Terran danglies.”

Gluey though it is, the orange gunk doesn’t cling. It slithers off once Peter stands, taking every impurity with it. The blood is gone, as is the soil from the hospital lawn, and every other bit of dirt he’d accumulated on his journey to this point in time. Freckles stand out too bright against his skin, which appears eerily pale under the artificial lights, almost translucent. Peter half-expects to see his own organs, hanging in his belly. He steps into his jeans slowly, one shaky leg after the next.

“You don’t like me much, do you,” he says, reaching for his shirt.

Kraglin snorts. “However’d you guess.”

“You don’t want me here.”

“You ain’t as dumb as you look.”

“So…” Peter pauses, shirt bunched at his elbows, ready to roll over his head. Even his hair fluffs, soft and shiny. He can’t remember the last time he gave it a proper wash, rather than just rinsing under the faucet. Grandpa only stocks mom’s shampoo, on account of him being bald – which is stupid because mom didn’t have hair for most of last year either, after she started on chemo. Perhaps he realized Peter had been using it instead? Anything to hold the memory of the good times just that little bit closer.

Thinking about that fruity, girly fragrance, which Jimmy Wilson in homeroom class always used to mock him for; mom's fragrance, which he's never gonna smell again, which isn't really her fragrance anymore, since she stopped smelling of anything but palliative care and vomit - makes Peter well up. He swallows several times until he deems his voice steady enough to go on. “So, why d-don’t you help me escape?”

The silence stretches. It’s empty, bar the bloop of the refilling tank above and the grate of Kraglin's manky teeth.

Peter pulls the chilly t-shirt down over his chest. “Well?” he demands.

Kraglin’s negligible jaw sets in a stubborn wedge. He shoves Peter into the corridor without saying jack squat and flips open an interface panel, full of flashing diodes. At the toggle of a switch, the shower room door sucks shut.

Peter stands on his tiptoes, entranced by the fluttering lights. “What did that do?”

“Stars, you just don’t shut up.”

“I might, if you answered me.”

Kraglin levelled a disbelieving look, but apparently, he was willing to try anything. “Vac-vent. Sucked out all yer sludge, along with the air. Sent air to the oxygenerator and delousin’ gel to the engines.”

“What’s an ‘ox-generator’? Does it make cows?”

“What’s a coo? And – see? Yer still yakkin’. I’m done with this - you’re cap’n’s problem. I told him once, I've told him a million times; I ain’t cleanin’ up after his pets.”

Peter hurried after him, wanting to be left alone even less than he wanted to touch that ‘pet’ comment with a ten-foot bargepole. “Why would you send the gel to the engines? Is it fuel?”

“Everything’s fuel in an emergency.”

“What does that mean?”

“Everything burns.” Kraglin glances at him out the corner of his eye. Those are gray-blue, like mom’s. But where mom’s eyes remind Peter of the beach they flew to that one time on vacation, of warm days and tie-dye dresses, Kraglin’s are pale as glaciers and about as frosty. “Includin’ lil’ Terrans that don’t shut their yap.”

Peter doesn't ask any more questions after that.

Chapter Text

Peter tries to look on the positive side – as in, being dumped with Yondu means he doesn’t have to spend time with Kraglin. Being dumped with Yondu means he has a chance to see his gonk again. Being dumped with Yondu means he might be able to steal back his Walkman, or talk the captain into dropping him off next time they fly by Terra, or leave him with intergalactic child services (that must exist, right? If there are space pirates, it stands to reason there are space police too.)

But there’s a downside to Peter’s theory. Namely, that being dumped with Yondu also means being dumped with Yondu.

There’s a whole host of reasons why this is a bad idea. For a start, he kinda needs to piss – he hasn’t been since the hospital, where the restroom stunk so strongly of antiseptic it made his eyes water. Like hell is he telling Kraglin that though. He’ll deal.

Kraglin has all the patience of Peter's grandpa when they’re getting dressed up for church. He manhandles him through another door at the rear of the ship – one of the three Quill first saw when he fled from Snout. Greedo. Whatever.

“Crew quarters,” he grunts.

He isn’t a good tour guide. He hustles Peter through the room, which curves around the back of the restroom and shower capsules, leaving no time for him to study their accommodations. Peter gets a glance – enough for him to see two stacks of bunks climbing the wall, five on each side, mounted on rusty brackets. They don’t look especially stable. Peter certainly wouldn’t risk jumping on them. When the ship hits turbulence, the poor guy on the bottom must lay there petrified, waiting for the others to turn him into pancake batter.

…Wait. Do they even have turbulence in space?

Kraglin told him to get used to not-knowing stuff, but Peter doesn’t like it. Questions jitter like ants trapped under his skin.

He swallows them all as they approach another door at the far end of the crew quarters. Kragkin slaps his palm on a rectangular glowing box on the wall, and the rubber seal hisses. Air releases, smelling of sweat stirred in with dry leathers and a bitter taint of something he’ll come to learn is radiation.

Peter discretely drapes his sleeve over his nose. “Is this the captain’s cabin?”

“Our cabin,” Kraglin corrects. He meanders in, the fabric panels on the walls glowing when they sense movement.

Peter's glad. The ink-black stomach of the shower room will haunt him for years to come.

He cocks his head at the double bed. “You sleep together?”

“Yuh-huh.”

“But you’re both men?”

"S'right."

Peter leans away from Kraglin. Seems he's dirty in more ways than one. “God says that's disgusting.”

“I don't give no shits about your Terran god.” Kraglin mooches to what must be his side of the bed and unlatches the drawer. Peter, craning over, hopes to see his Walkman. He’s disappointed. The drawer is mostly empty, a few packets of unmarked silver cigarette-looking-things rattling around the bottom, along with a tub of dried candy, like the one grandpa keeps in his car. Kraglin pops a piece of candy in his mouth, doesn’t offer any to Peter, and tucks a ciggy up his sleeve.

“Don't tell cap'n,” he says, with a wink, and saunters out the way he came.

Peter doesn't sit on the bed. He's come too far to die of icky diseases.

He gets the sense that he's supposed to stay here and not scamper after Kraglin, but while he wants to prove he doesn't need him, doesn't need anyone on this ugly, smelly crew, Kraglin at least looks human, if you ignore his crazy strength and his teeth.

Yondu? Yondu doesn't.

But hey. Kraglin left Peter here unattended. He might not be game for helping him escape,  but at least he’d given him the prime opportunity to snoop.

Peter conducts a thorough survey of the room, opening every drawer and rifling as much as he dares. He tries to leave it all the exact way he found it, but he keeps getting distracted, humming Come and Get Your Love under his breath. He doesn’t know much about drugs, other than that if you take them you’re going to die and God probably hates you, because God seems to hate an awful lot. But if he knew more, he might liken this to addiction: the jitter in the tips of his fingers, the sense that if he doesn’t hear mom’s music soon, the universe will come crashing down.

Yondu's dresser is on the left side of the room. Peter can tell it's his because the dent in that side of the mattress is broad and shallow, whereas Kraglin's knife-blade limbs cut into the memory foam, leaving an impression of his body curled facing Yondu's back, the two of them tucked together like jigsaw pieces. Yondu doesn't keep the Walkman in his drawers. Only underpants, of a grottiness that puts Peter off rummaging deeper, plus some weird lacy scraps that look like the things the more liberated ladies wore at the beach, where mom scolded him for staring.

Peter hasn't seen any ladies here. The waists are a bit too big for Kraglin, which begs the question of...

The door thunks open.

Peter slams the drawer shut just in time.

“Kraglin!” Yondu bawls. He storms in, bristling from scuffed black boots to stocky shoulders, to the tips of his pierced blue ears. “The hell you thinkin', leavin' the kid in here alone? He's been touchin' my stuff!”

“I haven't,” lies Peter. He puts his hands behind his back. “Swear it.”

Yondu spares him a harried sneer. Really, it says. He goes back to yelling at Kraglin, who remains in the corridor behind him, out of sight. "Five minutes, that's what I told ya! Five fuckin' minutes! Ya tellin' me ya couldn't suck it up and hang out with one dumb Terran kid for five minutes!”

“It's been a bit longer than that,” Peter tries. He's not sure why he's defending Kraglin. It's not like he likes the guy. But he doesn't want to see him go the same way as Greedo, the poor, besnouted alien who liked kids.

Maybe that's why Kraglin's so mean to Peter? If liking kids gets you dead, bullying them is a matter of self-preservation.

Whatever Kraglin says in response is too tinny for Peter to hear, distorted by metallic echoes. Yondu must get the gist though, because he snarls and punches the doorframe to shut it. He stands there a moment, facing away. There’s a glint from beneath his fluffy coat collar. Yep, no doubt about it - Peter's headphones – mom’s headphones – are being worn like a circlet around Yondu’s grubby neck.

“Find what yer lookin' for?” Yondu asks. Peter crosses his arms.

“No. Don't kill Kraglin. It's not his fault he doesn't like me.”

“I'll say. Yer an annoyin' lil' gobshite.” Yondu grins, treating Peter to his full, horrific array of teeth. He fingers the foam pads on mom's headphones, and Peter's adrenaline jumps as his black-painted nails scratch the speaker grill. “But I ain't gonna kill him though. Just for you. Consider that another debt in yer books.”

“Yeah, well. You stole all the books in my bag, so no point putting debts in those.” He can't say why he's talking back to Yondu, rather than cowering like he did with Kraglin. It's strange. When Yondu looks at him, Peter doesn't feel threat.

But then again, he's just a dumb Terran. He doesn't know shit. Maybe smiling is how Yondu's species say I wanna eat you.

“Why do you and Kraglin really sleep in the same bed?” he asks. “Isn't that...” He lowers his voice. “Deviant?”

Yondu doesn't seem to understand the question. “Obfonteri watches my back,” he says, after a long moment of deliberation. Obfonteri – right, that's Kraglin's last name. Sounds fruity. Kinda European. “Means he's gotta sleep right up against it. If anyone wants to stab me, they gotta get through him.”

That makes sense. Peter nods. “Right. So, Kraglin's just skinny 'cause he's made that way.” Not like the hollow-faced men Mom used to hurry him past on the streets. AIDS, she’d told him once, when he’d asked what was wrong with them. The deviant disease.

Maybe they vaccinate against that, in space?

Yondu raises a hairless eyebrow. “You say the weirdest shit.”

“And you cuss too much.” He glances past Yondu, to the open door. Maybe, if he runs… Jumps and grabs the headphones too quick for Yondu to react…

Yondu strokes the headphones again. There's a seedy, shabby glamor to him: his ears clinking with gold hoops, his teeth bright and metallic, a dirty white-fur ruff stitched into the collar of his patchwork black-and-red coat. A pirate king? He certainly looks the part.

“You thinkin' about it, boy?” he asks.

Busted. Peter scowls at the floor. “The walkman's mine.”

“Nah. Y'see, us Ravagers, we don't steal from each other.”

“But you stole from me!”

“Cause you ain't a Ravager yet. Ain't done no initiation. Ain't kissed the flame or drunk the blood or fed the dragon yer first coin.” He smirks in the face of Peter’s confusion. “Don'tchu worry. It'll come – if yer strong enough.” Yondu raps on the wall. A red metal panel opens at foot-height, sliding behind its identical neighbor. Inside, Peter sees...

“My rucksack!”

“Mm-hm.”

“Give it back to me!”

Yondu's smile unfolds like a cat stretching in sunlight. “No.”

Smug, ugly, stupid blueberry. Peter's so angry he can almost ignore his growing need to use the restroom. “Why not?”

Yondu shrugs. He squats beside the bag, and – oh, Peter's going to kill him – pinches the zip between those long, sharp nails. “Let's have a looksie, huh?”

Peter's shouting now. “Stoppit! That's not yours, it's mine! Stop!”

“Oh yeah? You gonna make me?” Yondu excavates school text books, dog-eared at the edges, crinkly from that time Peter left his water bottle uncapped during the bike ride home. If he goes any deeper, he'll find...

“Huh? Whas this? Wrapped up all pretty like...”

No.

Peter clenches his fists, though he's not quite sure what to do with them. At least his wrist doesn't hurt anymore – if he couldn’t remember the queasy pop, he’d think the injury never happened.

Not that he’s grateful. It's Yondu's fault he broke it in the first place.

It's Yondu's fault he's here. It's Yondu's fault he's miles and miles and miles from home, and he's never going back, and while a part of Peter's glad to be away from it all, away from that awful, yawning lack of mom, he's not going to let Yondu take her last present from him. He won't let him defile her memory.

“Don't touch that,” he shrieks, as Yondu tugs at the ribbon holding the cheap’n’cheerful hospital gift-shop wrapping paper together. And with a kamikaze war-cry, Peter pounces on the Ravager captain and punches him in the head.

Chapter Text

Later, as he snivels on the bed, Yondu on his haunches in front of him, unwrapping the bandage from around his smarting thumb (and complaining all the while about how fragile Peter is and how all he does it break, and how he'd better stop being so stars-damn pathetic, boy, if he wants to be a Ravager (which is stupid because Peter never asked for this)) Peter jerks his wobbly chin at mom’s headphones.

“Can I at least put on a song?”

“A song?” Yondu tugs the headphones from round his neck. Peter’s heart flinches as the frame stretches and pings – but nothing snaps, so he doesn’t have to try and claw out Yondu’s eyes. “Thought they was just some fancy-schmancy accessory.”

He fed Peter another shot of alcohol while the bandage worked its magic. Firewater orujo claims the label on the bottle, though Yondu says it's moonshine. It burbles in Peter’s belly, smouldering hotter than his thumb. The pain isn't so bad when you're ready for it, when you know it's just bones and tendons knitting at super-speed. Still brings pinpricks to Peter's tear ducts. He wipes them on the backs of his arms, feigning an itch.

Can't let Yondu think he's crying because he doesn't have his music. Like a little baby.

“N-no. It's a Walkman. It was my mom's but she d-died.” He glances up at Yondu, just in case he’s earned his sympathy. Should’ve known better.

“Best mother's a dead mother,” is Yondu’s only response. He catches Peter's fist when he swings at him again. “Woah there. Thumb on the outside when you punch, else you’ll break it again. Like this.”

Whoom. Air blasts Peter’s hair back, displaced by the rush of knuckles, hurtling towards his face.

His shoulders spike for his ears, his belly tensing, whole body flinching in expectation of a blow –

A blow that never lands. Peter freezes, staring at the fist that hovers an inch in front of his nose.

“See,” says Yondu.

He unclenches his fist, waggling his fingers. Peter still can't get over how blue they are. Sweat cascades down the back of his neck, and his heart thumps too fast.

But that’s not the worst of it. Far from it. A scalding damp patch spreads along the inside of his thigh.

If crying over a Walkman makes you a baby, what does wetting yourself make you? Peter doesn’t want to find out. Horror sinks through him. He presses his knees together, digs his nails into his palms, and prays to anyone who’s listening.

Yondu continues his tutorial like he hasn't scared the literal piss out of his charge.

“Thumb on the outside. That way, it don’t bust when ya pop someone in the skull. Or the implant.” He pats the back of his head, where the crystal sits. Peter thinks it might be a ruby, carved with geometric lines. He doesn’t care. He can’t care. He just wet his pants, wet ‘em like he hasn’t done since his first day at school, and Yondu’s right there, and at this rate he might as well have punched him for real, because that would be infinitely preferable.

Yondu seems to be waiting for an answer. When Peter fails to give one, he shrugs and claps his hands. “Right, kid. Let's get you ready for them vaccines. Gimme your arm.”

Peter barely notices. His concentration, his focus, his entire being, is centred around that hot little stripe down his leg. It’s soaking through the denim. Seeping outwards. A dark rot, a creeping shame.

He can’t stand up. He knows what wet jeans look like. It’ll be obvious. Yondu will see and he’ll laugh and Peter’ll feel even more small and miserable and humiliated than he already does.

He offers his arm without fuss. If he sits hunched like this, glaring at his quivering knees, maybe Yondu won’t notice.  Maybe he’ll give him the shot and walk out and Peter can scurry to the restroom and pray the sleeping quarter and the corridor are deserted, and…

There’s no way he can make it. Peter sinks deeper onto the bed, flush filling the gap between his freckles.

“All done,” Yondu announces.

Peter frowns. That was far too fast. He glances at the little jelly lump, quivering against his skin. It’s bright blue, like Yondu’s carved off a little bit of himself. But before Peter can follow that morbid thought, the jelly starts to pinken, rolling around the color wheel until it matches Peter’s skin.

For all for a second, Peter forgets what’s currently seeping through his pants. “It changed color!”

“Course it did.” Yondu has removed his heavy coat; now he pushes up his sleeve, showing Peter a bare stretch of arm – blue, of course. He’s got an average build, short but muscular, with a small roll of chub hanging over his belt. His forearms are ropy, thick around as Peter’s calf, but the flesh is entirely smooth, not a single hair. Like the back of a snake, or a betta fish.

“Snipped it off mine,” Yondu explains. “It’s a lil’ parasite, y’see – a lil’ worm. See it movin’?”

Peter, much to his horror, does. He boggles at his own arm, where the blob molds to the surface of his skin, rippling like a tiny manta ray.

Then the teeth dig in. Peter shrieks. “Get it off! It’s eating me, it’s eating me!”

“Dumbass.” Yondu flicks his ear. Peter doesn’t dare squirm for fear of adding to the wet patch. Yondu’s jelly-slug writhes, its edges flaring angry red. It doesn’t seem to bother him. “Look," he explains, prodding it. "Mine’s mad because I gave it the snip. Don’t get the fuss. Both bits’ll grow back, and after that it’ll be like you was tiny, after you'd just hatched from yer egg, when yer papa carried you in his pouch and let you piggyback on his immune system.”

Peter hasn’t had the Talk with grandpa yet about where babies come from, but he doesn’t trust Yondu’s potted explanation. “I don’t think that’s…”

“Yer Terran; what d’you know? Look. It’ll stop ya getting sick, an’ in exchange, it’ll suck a wee bit of blood every now an’ then when it’s hungry. Might make you a bit woozy at first” –

Woozy? Peter feels more than woozy. Peter feels sick and scared and small and very far from home. There's piss on his pants, making the denim all clingy and gross. And now he's got a mutant slug stuck to his arm! Great!

“Between that an’ only showerin’ once a Lunar,” Yondu continues, clapping him cheerfully on the shoulder, “that oughta stop ya dyin’ as soon as ya set foot on a new planet.”

“Once a Lunar? Like, a month?”

“Is that what you call ‘em? It’s thirty cycles, give or take.”

“Is a cycle a day?”

“Well, it’s measured off a day on Xandar…”

Peter doesn’t know what a Xandar is, or how long its days are, but he gets the gist. And the gist is that he’s peed, just a little, and now he isn’t allowed to wash for a month.

“I gotta wash every day,” he argues. Yondu peaks his brows.

“You wanna get eaten by a klyntar?”

“I don’t know what one of them is! I don’t know what any of this is!”

“Well, trust me.” That hand squeezes, surrounding Peter’s shoulder in genial warmth. “Ya don’t. Ain’t fun, and there won’t be enough of ya left for Ravager-rites after.”

Peter tries to shift from one ass cheek to the other, unstick his pants from his legs as subtly as possible. “Thought I weren’t a Ravager,” he mutters.

“Sure ain’t. Not yet.” Yondu helps himself to a glug of firewater. Whereas the liquor made Peter shudder and hiss and scrunch up his face, Yondu downs the stuff like it’s flat Pepsi. “You got more than a few rites to go.”

Oh yeah. What was it he said? Kiss the flame. Drink the blood. Give the dragon your first coin.

“They have dragons in space?”

Yondu laughs at him, though this time it doesn’t sound mean. “Now there, brat. Lemme give you some learnin’, as yer in damn good need of it.”

Peter doesn’t want learning. Peter wants to waddle to the restroom and see if his pants are salvageable. But he gets the idea that Yondu isn’t a man you say no to. He forces a grin. Best get this over with.

“First rule of Ravagers,” Yondu continues, leaning in. “Steal from everyone. Second rule – not each other. Third rule, sentiment’s for suckers. Fourth rule: don’t be a sucker.”

“I don’t think some of those are actual rules. They just sound like statements, to be honest.”

“Shaddup. Fifth rule, we don’t follow the laws of any civilisation – no Empire, no King, no Queen. Sixth rule: Captain’s word is law.”

“But you just said…”

“What I tell ya about shutting up? And seventh rule – this un’s the most important. Fuck the rules. You got all that, kid?”

No, is the answer, but Peter doesn’t have time for an extended lesson. There’s an urgent matter that must be attended to.

“Do you have a bathroom?” he whispers.

“Course! Even let Kraggles use it, out the goodness of my old blue heart. Sometimes. When he’s been good.”

“Um.” Peter presses his legs tight together. “Can I use it?”

“Why? You ain’t even crew yet. You use the main shitter, like everyone else.”

Peter gulps, directing his words to his newly-fixed thumb. “I-I don’t think I can.”

Yondu looks him over. Peter suffers the inspection in grim silence, as the captain’s gaze roves from his tight bloodless lips to his huge, damp-lashed eyes. And the telling squeeze of his bony little knees.

“Stand up,” he says. Peter shakes his head, hard enough that his fringe whips his ears.

“I can’t.”

Yondu growls. Big hands hook under his armpits. Heave and – hup. Peter’s on his feet. He crosses his legs with renewed desperation, as Yondu takes stock of the tiny damp streak on the mattress.

“Uh, how old’re you, kid?”

“Eight.”

“Eight annual standards. Ain’t that old enough for potty-trainin’?”

“Please, I… You scared me earlier, and…”

“Does your species’ piss scare off predators?”

“I, I don’t think so. Bathroom. Please. Hurry.”

Yondu scoffs. “Dumb Terran,” he says, but what he means is pathetic. Peter, miserably, agrees. He expects Yondu to point out the corresponding wall panel, but Yondu stretches out his arms with a grim sort of determination. “Hold tight,” he says. Next thing Peter knows, he’s being swooped up over a shoulder.

He hasn’t been carried like this since mom was strong enough – and Peter small enough.

Luckily, Yondu’s shoulder digs into Peter’s ribs rather than his bladder, otherwise no matter of willpower would’ve saved them. He still whoops loudly, kicking his legs before Yondu catches them, swaggering grouchily for the wall. He boots a panel, which unpeels to reveal a smaller, impossibly more compact version of the capsule where he first met Kraglin. He dumps Peter on his ass in the middle of the room.

“You can work out the mechanics from here, boy. If ya piss on my floor, you can lick it up.”

On that note, the door rushes to fill the space between them. Peter’s alone.

He rests his head on the metal pan, trying not to think about how you can get AIDS from toilet seats. Then struggles to his feet and unzips.

Yondu’s waiting when he stumbles out. Peter’s gaze flies, unheeded, to the stain on the bedclothes. It’s tiny, but he can’t look anywhere else. “I-I’m sorry.”

He hopes he was joking about the whole licking thing. Yondu lets him stew in that fear a whole minute, before shrugging and cracking one of his wilier grins. “That’s Kraglin’s side. His problem. Out the wet pants, kid. I ain’t got no shower in here – and I ain’t wastin’ any more gel on you anyway. But vac-cleanin’ don’t use up nothin’.”

Peter’s so grateful he hates himself for it, just a little. “Th-thank you.”

Yondu makes the mistake of turning around while he’s wiggling out his pants. “Stars! The hell’s wrong with you, boy? Didn’t tell ya to get naked!”

Peter, more mortified than ever, holds his pants at a modest level. “My underwear got melted…”

“And you only wear two layers?”

“Yes?”

Bewildered silence stretches between them. Then Yondu lobs his coat at Peter with a snarl. “Primitive damn Terrans. Put that on while ya wait for yer pants to dry. In here – that hatch, yeah. Keep that coat closed. I don’t wanna see no Terran goolies. Stars know why folks like you and Kraglin need them things flappin’ around. Damn unsightly, they is. Not to mention kinda stupid, evolutionarily speakin’. Kraglin curls up like a damn pillbug whenever he gets smacked in his ovi' – like an instant-drop button. Ain't no use in a fight.”

Peter had been letting the grumbles wash over him, but at that he pauses, jeans taking their second tumble into the vacuum dryer. “Uh. You mean you don’t have…?”

“Eighth rule of Ravagers,” Yondu interrupts, hands on hips. “Don’t never ask an alien what they got in their pants. Unless ya plan on fuckin’ ‘em, in which case do yer research. Don’t wanna wind up like poor Half-nut. Les’ just say he earned hisself that name when he decided to woo a Beteljeuxian.”

Yondu might not be as taciturn as Kraglin, but while he seems happy enough to blather at Peter, that doesn’t mean a lick of it makes sense.

“Who’s Half-nut?” he asks. Then, daringly: “And what does ‘fucking’ mean? Y’know. In your language. Because I totally know what it means in mine.”

Hey, even if he’s only in space for as long as it takes him to escape, he might as well gather intel. And grandpa won’t ever tell him that, not as long as he lives.

Yondu isn’t grandpa.

“Fuckin’! Y’know, sex!” He met Peter’s blank expression with an eye roll. “Don’t tell me Terrans split like amoeba.”

“I… we… I don’t think so?” Once again, Yondu’s explanation provides more questions than answers. Peter decides to quit while he was ahead. “Thank you for the coat,” he says, because that's only polite.

Yondu scoffs. “Y’ain’t keepin’ it. Don’t get yer hopes up.”

Peter’s fine with that. It’s heavy and it stinks. But like it or not, he needs to stay on Yondu’s good side – at least, for as long as it takes to steal back his Walkman. He fakes a cheery grin. “Thank you for washing my pants. You, uh. Won’t tell Kraglin, will you?”

Yondu shakes his head. “Don't you worry. I'm takin’ this one to my grave.”

Peter lets himself relax. That’s something. He carefully wraps Yondu’s coat around him so everything is hidden, trying to inhale as little as possible. He waits for his pants to finish their cycle in the vac-cleanser, and takes the chilled denim out again, slipping them on while Yondu glares at the ceiling. He’s steered back to the bunker with the overhead traction beam and told to wait here until he's collected. He doesn’t even complain.

Only next morning – or at least, after he’s slept – the door buzzes open to reveal Kraglin smirking down at him, all sneer and gum disease and predatory lean.

“Mornin’, piss-lord,” he says.

Peter’s heart drops like a diving bell as Yondu’s voice echoes from the corridor behind: “Ninth rule of Ravagerin’ – never trust a pirate!”

That blueberry jackass.

Chapter Text

Peter’s first home was an apartment. It was small and cosy – some might even say cramped. But it smelt of mom’s cooking and since Peter was tiny too, it wasn’t like it mattered.

Moving in with grandpa was an upgrade, of sorts. He got his own room, his own bed, his own space to put his things. But he didn’t get mom, which took all the sweetness out of the deal. Peter would live out of a shoebox if it meant he could be with her.

Now, it seems, he's destined to upgrade again. And this time, he’s lost mom entirely.

The Eclector doesn't look all that impressive when they start their approach. Kinda like a burnt out carburettor from the scrapyard back home. Peter actually has time to think smugly 'not all that' - but perspective is weird in space, and they keep getting closer, and the Ravager galleon keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger. It's massive: a sprawling city constructed around a hundred decks, ringed with canon-runners and polka-dotted with pulsar teeth, portholes glimmering like the eyes of a giant clam.

Peter stands in the cockpit of the Warbird. He's allowed to mooch about, so long as Yondu is on duty and Peter resists the temptation to poke buttons or talk. He crushes his nose to the window, greasy little palm prints emblazoned on the glass.

“Woah,” he breathes.

Yondu idly swats at his head. He isn't looking, so he misses, and Peter sidesteps before he can try again.

“Shaddup,” he says, a sentiment that's repeated every time Peter opens his mouth. Peter does what he's told, but Yondu doesn't pry him away from the emergency airlock door he's peering out of.

Kraglin's somewhere below. He makes an effort to be where Peter's not – or at least, he makes an effort to not be where he is, which amounts to much the same thing. The most he's exchanged with Peter since their shower trip is sniggers and the occasional mocking 'piss-lord'.

Peter's little fists clench against his sides. This isn't how he wants to be remembered. At least Yondu only calls him 'brat' and 'idiot'.

“Hey, idiot brat!”

That's him. Peter looks up. Yondu's in the pilot chair, although he isn't doing anything more than fiddling with the toys on his control console. Ship must be docking on autopilot.

“Come sit up here, kid. View's better.”

There are five other pirates on this mission, now Snout has been added to their emergency fuel reserve (Peter remembers Kraglin's grin when he told him that 'everything burns', and battens down on his shudder). Their names are, in alphabetical order: Brahl (whose face looks like a white fleshy pinecone), Filg (similar features, but in a blue that's closer to Yondu's skintone), Horuz (humanoid, but bigger and beardier than Kraglin), Vancy and Vim (a double-headed thing from the 'Outworlds', wherever those are - on second thoughts, Peter isn't sure if they count as one or two) and Nixib, who has a mouth like the beak of a snapping turtle and speaks with their fingers.

Peter was kinda weirded out when Yondu corrected him, when he first called Nixib ‘him’. But he’s learning quick not to argue.

Aliens, he decides, as he checks Yondu's face to see if he's serious, then quickly scrambles onto the co-pilot's vacated chair, are strange. Most of them are mean, and all of them smell bad. But he has to put up with them – for now. His headphones are still tucked in Yondu's collar, and humming the music to himself isn't the same. He's so terrified that one day he'll skip a verse, forget a chorus, not be able to remember an opening refrain. He needs mom's music back. Until Yondu gives it to him, all thoughts of escape have to be put on hold.

Still, being able to look out the front windscreen of an actual, real-life spaceship is pretty awesome. Especially when that spaceship is approaching another actual, real-life spaceship, which is the largest thing Peter's ever seen.

The console is a little too tall for him to see over. Peter, watching Yondu from his peripherals, kneels up on the seat. Then, when that doesn't get him smacked, works his feet under him and stands. He tries to put his hands on the dash, but is quickly swatted away, so he holds the headrest behind him for stability, eyes devouring the busy hive of industry that buzzes around the ship.

“Wow...”

The Eclector is parked beside another vessel (can you 'park', in space?). It's only half the galleon's size, and completely dark, whereas the Eclector is surrounded by a greasy glow, floodlights blazing out in all direction.

As their tiny shuttle scoots between them, Peter learns the reason for the outage. A scorch-black crater has been blasted in the dead ship's side.

The hole gapes in a silent scream. It's surrounded by the frayed and twisted spikes of snapped corridors and vent ducts.

Yondu cups the back of his head. He steers him to look at the Eclector before Peter can work out whether the thing floating half-out of a truncated hallway is debris or a dead body.

Peter doesn't complain. The Eclector provides more than ample interest to a young mind. It's so huge. And there's so much happening! Wherever Peter looks, there are M-ships swinging in open-space hangars, dangling upside-down like bats; canons being careened free of glittering barnacle-shells (only they can't really be barnacles, because nothing can survive in space, right?); headlamps being polished so their beams split the black rather than dispersing in an oily shimmer.

“You're captain of all this?” he asks, a little incredulous, a little terrified.

“Sure am, kid. So you best not give me no lip, gottit? I been lenient on ya so far. Don't wanna test me.”

If constantly smacking Peter is lenient, Peter doesn't want to find the breaking point of Yondu's mercy. He concentrates on the view. They sweep along the Eclector's flank, close enough that Peter can peep through the larger windows at the Ravagers within.

“Why're they upside down?”

That leaves Yondu chortling. “Ain't no up, ain't no down.”

Peter folds his arms and tries not to feel stupid. “But they're not floating. They're walking on something.”

Or welding, actually. These Ravagers wear some sort of helmet, although it's nothing like the ones Armstrong and Buzz wore when they walked on the moon. Way less bulky for a start. They extract hammered curls of metal, each as long as the Warbird's wingspan, from the dead vessel, passing them to the Eclector along an ant-bridge of limbs. More tiny figures clomp about inside the galleon, their torches glowing small as match-heads, melting the steel together.

Yondu shrugs, lazing back on his chair. “Gravity generator's in the ship's core. Like a planet. Drags ya towards the middle.”

Peter supposes that makes sense. People walk around upside down in Australia all the time even though it’s on the underside of the globe, and it doesn't seem to bother them. “Is there a gravity generator on this ship?”

A few of the tiny figures notice the Warbird pootling past. They stop what they're doing, extinguish their weld torches, and thump their chests in salute. Yondu hardly seems to notice, although his grin edges wider, showing off his sharp canines. “Yeah. It's on the bottom though, seein' as this ship's so small.”

“Thought you said there wasn't any bottom or top in space?”

“Oh, there's definitely bottoms in space.” Kraglin's voice makes Peter jump. The first mate stalks into the cockpit, folding his arms on the back of Yondu's chair. His stale breath breaks over Yondu's implant. “Ain't that right sir?”

Yondu twitches away. “Fuck off. Y'know, as yer bein' so chatty, you can show the brat around once we dock.”

Peter and Kraglin's faces fall in synchrony. “Aw, seriously?” Peter whines.

“What the hell?” Kraglin's scowl devolves into a sneer. His glare settles on Peter, icy cold. “Sir, I told ya straight before an' I'm tellin' ya straight now. This kid ain't my problem. I told ya we oughta dump him with the Nova...”

What's the Nova? Peter wants to ask. But before he can crack his lips open, Yondu whistles.

Everyone freezes. In the main crew hold below, Peter hears one of the other pirates dropping their cutlery on the way to the vac-washer.

When Kraglin gulps his throat bobs, the lump almost brushing the arrow tip. “Point taken,” he croaks. Then, after a pause a little too long to be polite: “Sir.”

He mooches back the way he came. The arrow doesn't follow him. Yondu whistles it quietly to his belt, arranging the coat over it, and continues like they hadn't been interrupted: “Here we go. Dockin', T-minus three.”

Peter slowly scoots to sit. He tries not to breathe too hard, not wanting to make too much noise.

It's easy to forget just how dangerous Yondu is. But if he'd threaten to shoot his own first mate, the man he trusts to watch his back while he sleeps... Peter glances at him sideways, gaze catching on the clash of orange foam and blue skin.

He needs to get his music back. He needs to get back to earth. These Nova people Kraglin mentioned – maybe they can help?

First though, Peter will settle for getting far away from Yondu.

“I need to use the restroom again,” he mutters, swinging his legs off the chair and sliding after them.

Yondu gestures up to where the Eclector is closing around them. The spacedock's ceiling is a reticulated network of girders on which magnetised pulleys run, dragging the ships into their berths. “Yer gonna miss the good bit.”

Peter doesn't care. “Can I go or not?”

“Y'don't need my permission to piss.” But Peter still feels those evil red eyes on his neck, watching him in the reflection as he carefully climbs down the ladder, hopping the last rung to the deck below.

The Eclector seems impossibly larger on the inside. Peter's going to get lost at some point. He knows it with an awful, creeping certainty, like how he knew the last time mom went into hospital that she wasn't coming back.

He glues himself to Kraglin's side as they head up from the hangar, into the heaving anthill of the ship. It looks like what he imagines a submarine would: circular doors line the corridor, accessorized with spinning dog-lever locks, each metal plate thicker than Peter is wide.

Kraglin doesn't bother slowing. He really has got ridiculously long legs. On the M-ship he was like a pony in a paddock; now he's on the Eclector, he can gallop. Peter has to jog to keep up. He accidentally steps on the backs of Kraglin's boots three times before the Ravager mate spins on him with a half-yellow, half-gray snarl.

“Back up, brat.”

Peter obeys – by a generous quarter inch. Kraglin's snarl persists.

“Further.”

“I – I don't wanna get lost.”

“You don't wanna piss me off neither, boy.” Kraglin rubs his teeth together; a slow and menacing grate. His eyes are all thin and squinty.

He's smarting, Peter realizes, from being dressed-down by Yondu. Is he more pissed off that Yondu whistled at him, or that he did it in front of Peter?

“I'm sorry,” he tries, sneaking another half-pace rearwards. He's painfully aware of how every red-coat that passes him – tall, small, tentacular, normal; others who are uncannily human-like but with a slightly oversized head – gives him a thorough once-over. Most are sneery. Some lick their lips – or their mandibles, or their freaky, fleshy gills.

Peter remembers what Yondu said about him being lunch. He fidgets from foot to foot, eyes scooting all over the broad industrial tunnel that bores up from the hangar into the ship's core.

Kraglin rolls his eyes. “What rule was Yondu on?”

“Huh?”

“Ravager rules: what number?”

Peter casts back his mind. Piss-lord. Never trust a Ravager. “Nine,” he mutters. Kraglin snaps his fingers.

“Well, there ya go. Ravager Rule Ten. Don't fuckin' apologize. Makes ya sound weak.”

That's not right. Apologizing is the right thing to do, if you've done wrong – mom said so, and Peter is far more willing to believe her than Kraglin.

“How do you find your way around?” he asks, instead of continuing the argument.

Kraglin jerks his mohawk at the nearest wall. “Follow the lights."

“The lights – oh. Are they You-vee?” The only lights Peter sees are the red fabric panels. A few of them have torn along the bottom. They still glow, although they flap in the stale breeze that gusts out of a vent duct in the ceiling, so high above that Peter couldn't reach it if he stood on Kraglin's shoulders and jumped.

“You-vee...?”

“Like in the shower?”

A smack to the back of his head. Peter is kinda getting used to them by now, and at least Kraglin has learnt to curb his strength. “UV, numbnuts. Ultra-Violet light. Tight-wave spectrum. You gotta know what you’re sayin’, or it won’t translate right - don't just copy sounds. Stars, you're real useless.” He points to the pipe. “Those pipes are glowin'. Pulses run out from the engines, spreadin' power all over the ship. So follow them backwards, an' you'll always find yer way to the engine block. Just gotta know where shit is from there.”

That makes sense. But... “How's that supposed to help me? I can't see that sort of light!”

Kraglin shrugs. “Not my problem, is it?”

Mom said grown-ups were supposed to help children, because they'd had more experience with everything. Mom said there was nothing wrong with asking for help.

Mom wasn't a space pirate.

Peter sighs. This isn't going to be fun.

Chapter Text

Despite his best efforts – or rather, Kraglin's – Peter doesn't get lost until halfway through his second week as a Junior Ravager.

That's what he calls himself, at least. The others mostly prefer 'mascot', 'pet' and 'lunch' (ranked in order from most grudgingly accepted to least). For the most part, they leave Peter alone. But their eyes – two, three, more; bionic, lidless, bifurcated stalks; jelly bulges and multiple-lensed semispheres like those of a massive bluebottle – always seem to follow him.

When he walks into a room, conversation stops. Oftentimes, people walk out. It would Peter feel a little more secure in himself – maybe proud that he, a puny little Terran, could successfully spook a bunch of freaks cribbed from one of mom's favorite B-rated horror flicks. Except one time, as he trotted into canteen and a mass stampede of red leather flooded out the opposite doors, Peter turned to see Yondu, hands in pockets and whistling a chipper tune, sauntering past the corridor behind him.

It makes him grit his teeth. Yondu barely talks to him. He only sees him when he returns to their shared cabin for the night, and then it's only briefly. Where does he get off, trying to act like some dumb Guardian Angel? He's the one who stole Peter in the first place!

And he still hasn't given him his music back. Peter hates him all the more, for that.

Yondu's cabin on the Eclector is massive, easily the size of the apartment where Peter grew up. He has a desk in the corner, plated with panelling that lights up and spits holograms when activated. Peter isn't allowed to touch it, and Yondu tells him in graphic detail what he'll do to him if he tries. His galleon bed is even bigger and fluffier than his M-ship one, overflowing with tatty, over-stuffed duvets and dirty pelts. Peter must be getting used to the itch of grease on his skin, because that bed, in all it's filthy, flea-and-potentially-AIDS-ridden glory, looks impossibly cosy. Peter often catches himself staring at it green-eyed, as he settles on his own crappy cot.

That rests at the end of Yondu's bed. Oddly, it looks like it's been there some time.

But anyway. Back to that bed. 

It's large enough for two – hell, it's large enough for five. But most of the time, Kraglin ain't in it. It's funny, because there's another of those dents in the mattress from where Kraglin's been lying. Peter can see from it how he likes to sleep, wrapped around his smaller, stockier captain like a snake. But so long as Peter's there, he doesn't use it, and Peter nervously watches that dent lighten and become shallower as the week rolls past.

Kraglin's his daily companion, Yondu his nightly one. Peter pulls his weight – just like everyone else. But as far as he can tell, for everyone else, mop-duty is disciplinary. For him, it's everyday life. He scrubs where Kraglin tells him to, dragging his slopping hover-trolley and his mouldy sponge and mop morosely after his guide from one grungey, rust-speckled airlocking chamber to the rest.

Parts of the routine change. Others stay the same. Sometimes Kraglin stands over him, boredly flicking through a bunch of holograms that sprout from a flat, palm-held pad (a 'datadex', it's called. When Peter tries to touch it he's smacked, but he likes to watch the pretty lights flutter around Kraglin's slender fingertips. He suspects he's playing a game, but is too afraid to ask.) Sometimes Kraglin mooches off on his own business, with a bark that Peter should be in his exact same position when he returns, else Kraglin'll squish Peter’s mop into his ear.

But one thing is definite: every night he drops his shadow off at Yondu's, after the cleaning equipment's been shoved in a cupboard to squish and stink its way through the night. Every night, he says in such a cold voice it gives Peter chills: “Night, sir,” before he stalks away.

(“Why does he hate me?” asks Peter on the fifth night. Yondu rolls over, emitting a grumbly noise. The headphones stick on his patchy stubble. But though he glares something wicked, he answers the question.

“Because yer a dumb lil' rugrat that's always askin' us about stupid shit.” His gaze sticks, but Peter gets the feeling he's not looking at him. He's looking at his cot. And for a moment, there's something weirdly fragile about those freaky red eyes. But then he yawns, showing off those manky fangs, and it's back to being Big Scary Yondu again. “Don'tchu worry. He'll get over it. Kraglin always does.”)

Kraglin does not get over it.

But no matter how much he complains, or insults Peter, or smacks the back of his head, he always comes back again to fetch him at the end of the working day. Until that fateful day – cycle, he has to call them cycles now – three-quarters of his way through his second week – no, it's decacycles, not weeks, and there's ten cycles in each, not seven.

Then, Peter's entirely alone.

It starts out a regular sort of cycle – by his new standards, this is. There's certainly no grandpa rolling him out of bed, tiredly ruffling his hair and making his eggs sunny-side up, like mom used to.

(He's not a very good cook – but he tries, he tries for Peter because mom begged him too, and Peter suddenly misses the smell of burning bacon rind, misses helping him scrape the claggy yolk from the pan, misses his smile-crinkled eyes and even his threats of the slipper, because unlike Kraglin and Yondu, grandpa never actually hit him. Peter won't cry though. According to Kraglin, that's Ravager Rule #11.)

Instead of all that, Peter gets a klaxon blaring loud enough to punch him from his dream. He tumbles out of his cot, legs tangled in the blanket. It gets chilly during the night shift. The old bucket (as Kraglin calls the Eclector outside Yondu's hearing, fondly or cruelly depending on his mood) is so big and the power supply so strained that even with the cannibalized cores of another five lesser-galleons, she struggles to keep everything toasty.

The ship is divided roughly into four, so everyone sleeps in an overlapping revolving shift. Means there's always two portions of a skeleton crew ready to muster in a crisis, and the rest can be summoned from their rec-breaks soon enough. Peter's on Yondu's shift – not that it matters. He has yet to be given visitation rights to the Bridge, where Yondu spends the majority of his time when he's not creeping about after Peter and whistling to scare his crew.

It's easy to forget that the Eclector is a mobile ship. The constant rumble under his boots made Peter queasy at first, but he's adapted well, and as he staggers into Yondu's wash racks, knowing from experience that the lazy blue a-hole will need another ten minutes and a further two warning honks of the klaxon before he's ready to leave dreamland, he doesn't stagger once.

He does look back though. His Walkman is in Yondu's lax hand. Bait in a trap.

Peter nibbles his lip. He considers it. Weighs up his options. Yondu's a heavy sleeper, right? He's snoring right now, sprawled on his back. That's weird in itself – his own dent curls to be on its side like Kragin's, the two of them tucked together like two halves of a single being. Peter supposes that if Kraglin isn't here to watch Yondu's back, Yondu doesn't feel safe unless it's pressed to the mattress.

Good for him. Peter doesn't feel safe anywhere.

“I'm sorry, mom,” he whispers at the Walkman. “I'll get you back. I promise.”

Yondu's fingers twitch, claws squeaking along the Walkman's finish. Peter holds his breath, but it doesn't scratch. He tiptoes into the washracks, crunching some of the dry-wash granules stowed in the vat outside. He looks wistfully up at the shower nozzle and the bubbling orange gel ration above it.

“Fifteen more cycles,” he says. A spacer's 'Lunar' is three decacycles, so practically the same as a month. That's how long Peter's got before he's next allowed to bathe.

He peels off his clothes – he's taken to sleeping in them, like Yondu does, because it's another layer between him and the cold. He looks at his arm, and the invisible lump of jelly. It hasn't drawn any more blood from him since that first bite, but then again, Peter hasn't died of space-typhoid, so he supposes it's working.

“You are protecting me, aren't you,” he whispers to it, as he finishes crushing his dry-wash to powder and starts applying it to his face and chest. You have to roll the dust about. It collects away the worst of the sweat and dead skin, snowballing into hard lumps that can be peeled off and shaken down the waste hatch, although it doesn't touch the smear of engine oil on Peter's nose. Peter grimaces at it in Yondu's tarnished mirror. He catches a look at his teeth – still all white and pearly, a little mismatched because two of his babies have yet to drop. Nothing like Yondu's.

With that thought in mind, he steels himself for his least favorite part of the morning routine. He takes a wad of the dry-wash and rubs it over his teeth, top and front row, back and forth. He has to hunch over, gagging and spitting, before he can do the backs, and then it's only willpower that sees him through. He spits the gunky ball to land with his others, and begins massaging the dry-wash into his hair.

The klaxon sounded midway through, and now it sounds again. Peter listens to the captain lumber from his nest. He slouches to the door, yawning loud enough to hear, and nudges the top off the dry-wash vat with his knee. “Shit, boy! How much you usin'? That stuff don't grow in space, y'know.”

“Not on trees neither?”

“Why would dry-wash grow on trees?”

“Never mind.”

“You say the” -

“Strangest things. I know.”

“Was gonna say 'weirdest shit' but I guess there ain't much difference in it. C'mon kid, git. Unlike you, I got a job to do.”

Peter moves a little slower, just to spite him. He's not allowed much in the way of rebellion. He makes the most of whatever snatches he can. “So me doing all that cleaning isn't a job?”

“Course not.” Yondu's laugh is ugly as the rest of him. “If it were a job, you'd get paid.”

Peter almost yanks out a clump of hair in his dismay. “I'm not getting paid?”

“You got a place to sleep and food to eat. You’re already doin' better than most brats in this here galaxy.”

Peter doesn't know enough about the galaxy to be sure he's lying. He must be, he decides. Rule n#7: never trust a Ravager.

When Peter walks out he finds Yondu slouched against the wall, grizzlier than ever, yawning like he's got a dislocated jaw. A knock sounds: knuckles rapping at the main cabin entrance, one-two-three.

“Cap'n?”

Yondu heads into the bathroom with his own handful of dry-wash – considerably smaller than Peter's own. “I gave you a lock override on this here door for a reason, Obfonteri. You gonna use it, or not?”

The doors move simultaneously: the wash racks sliding closed and the cabin open. Kraglin stands in the latter, scowl even sharper around the edges than usual. He looks around for Yondu. There's only Peter and the closed bathroom door, plus the sounds of overly-enthusiastic humming as Yondu lathers up.

Peter recognizes a choppy version of Moonage Daydream. His fists from rock-hard knots.

“I think you might be as mad at him as I am,” he tells Kraglin. For the first time since he arrived, he wins a smile that is neither malicious, carnivorous, or anywhere between. It fades quickly, back to the usual sour pinch. But for a moment, Peter could've sworn Kraglin was laughing with him, not at him.

“C'mon kid,” he grunted, making a space beneath his twiggy arm tall enough for Peter to walk. “We gotta lot of work to do.”

Peter doesn't do any of it. Because unknown to him, they've been sailing into the cloud of loose matter at Galaxy's Edge, aiming for the portal that'll whoosh them over to the galaxy next door. Silver Spiral's pretty desolate, after all – especially by Andrdomedarian standards.

The ship the Eclector ate was the Nova frigate sent out to intercept whoever dared pilot their vessels into the Forbidden Zone of the Nine Realms and risk calling down Asgard's wrath. They expected a few scavengers, maybe a couple of poached crews banded together for a big hit on an unpopulated Terran world. A smallish bunch, likely to be cowed by a little show of force. Not a Ravager galleon.

But before the Eclector's canons chewed through their hull and the Ravagers added their ship's engine to their pulsating collection of hearts, the Nova managed to activate their emergency beacon. That was a hidden signal, calibrated only to be received on Nova channels.

Now, at long last, reinforcements had arrived.

When the alarm starts screaming, Peter's first thought is that the klaxon has malfunctioned. But this sound is different – eerie and high and howling, like the four minute warning sirens that play on TV.

“Pilots to M-ships, gun crews to canons! Attack formations D-Alpha-6!” Yondu's voice bursts out of invisible speaker. It's followed by feedback, so loud that Peter has to drop his mop to clap his hands over his ears. “Hit! Comms rig hit – switch to private – hzzzk – earpieces – hzzk”-

Peter's buried so deep in the Eclector's viscera that he doesn't hear the boom. Great, he thinks, picking up his mop once more. My first space battle, and there aren't even any windows to watch out of.

Famous last words.

The shot is a shield-piercer: cutting edge Shi'ar-tech. It scythes into the Eclector and out the other side, boring a tunnel of pure vacuum.

Peter's mouth drops open as, two hundred feet from where he paints his lonely sopping circles with the mop, the corridor vanishes.

Then, like a plug's been pulled from a full bath, he's sucked forwards.

Everything is. Him, his mop, his bucket, its grotty contents. All of it sailing, along with the Eclector's air supply, out the breach. Slurp, gone, lost forever –

Airlocks slam shut, one after another, all along the corridor. Peter can't hear them. The roar of decompression is too loud. He can't see them either, being as they're all closing behind him.

There's only one between him and the void. It's all rushing by so fast, he can't think. But he knows he's a goner. He's going to be sucked out into space and swell up and pop like a squeezed blister, and...

Wham. The last airlock slams into the opposite wall, pressurizing with a hiss. Peter smacks into it like a bird hitting a window.

It shut in time. Just.

He drops, wailing wordlessly. His mind's a blur - he can barely remember his own name. When he looks at the mop, which he'd been gripping for dear life as if it could somehow save him, he finds it chopped in half, bisected by the closing door. Splinters waft slightly as the vents overhead open again, having automatically clamped as soon as they sensed the drop in air pressure.

But Peter's alive. He's alive.

He rolls to rest his back on the airlock, before remembering it's the only thing between him and horrible explodey space death. He scrambles away, his broken mop handle shaking in his white-knuckled hands.

Through the misty, frost-glazed window, he can see the huge hole punched through the Eclector's crust. He can see the cartwheeling bodies of the Ravagers who didn't make it. He can smell the smoke trapped within his own tiny bubble of an air compartment, feel the sweat streaming down his neck.

But he can't hear it, as Yondu screams for them to turn back into the cloud, put a billion tons of atomized meteorite between them and their foes. A sealed airlock door sits on each side of him, and his flying bucket smashed the mic in this cramped little compartment. Peter hears nothing but his hyper-fast breath and the thud of his pummelling heart.

Chapter Text

Peter's alone.

He's been alone ever since mom died. Ever since the day grandpa pulled him onto his knee and tipped his chin up with a big crinkly finger, meeting eyes as sad and terrified as his.

I'm sorry, Petey. She needs more help than we can give her. She's going to live at the hospital for a while.

But now? Now, he's more alone than he's ever been. He's on a massive alien ship, far away from Earth. He's living with a gang of mean bullies who make him do unpaid labor. He's miserable. He's literal inches from death. He doesn't have mom's music, he hurts all over, and if he peeks through the airlock porthole, he'll see the dead Ravager hooked on a bit of rebar that twists from the next corridor along. He leaks strings of gristle and blood. They float up around him as the Eclector scurries into the Great Galactic Oort.

Peter doesn't know the name of this gigantic cloud of loose particulates and cosmic dust at the galaxy's edge. But the patter of rocks that seemed so faint when he was buried beneath miles of layered-up steel is deafening now. Peter shudders in time with it, stroking his arm.

He's bruised from where he hit the door. It's not a sharp sort of pain, not like when he hurt his wrist and his thumb. Nevertheless, he's collected more injuries over the past fortnight (decacycle) than during the several years he spent battling bullies in the waterlogged Missouri woods. 

He can't die here, he decides. He won't. But when he pushes the pad on the airlock opposite, it gives him the same warning as the last time he tried.

Like before, his translator-chip takes a while to parse the piggledy letters. Even then, staring at them too long makes Peter ache like there's a needle being pushed through his left eye. But he reads the words No Access Authority again and again, blinking in time with him as he tries to chase away the tears.

Ravagers don't cry. Ravagers don't cry. And he doesn't want to be a Ravager, but he wants to be without his mom's music even less. He'll play Yondu's game for as long as it takes to get it back. That means being tough and manly and never crying, just like Yondu and Kraglin. It means swallowing his tears. It means not sitting here, snivelling at the lock in the vain hope it'll have mercy.

Peter's gotta take action. He's gotta rescue himself, and he's got to do it alone, because there's no one who cares enough to do it for him.

He still wastes a minute whimpering with his forehead pressed against the glass, gazing at the hallway beyond. The red lights actually look cosy rather than demonic, compared to the guttering panel overhead and what lies behind him – a javelin wound that bores all the way through the Eclector, swarming with a riptide of dead bodies and debris and frozen ice and dust from the Oort.

Peter actually feels a little better when the hot flood of tears passes. He wipes his sticky eyes on his sleeve, gulping the run-off that flows down his throat from his snotty nose. There. He's ready. He can do this.

First thing's first; he needs to know his surroundings. Peter stands on shaky knees, turning in a slow circle. He's stuck in a single segment of the corridor, its margins dictated by the rounded tunnel walls and the airlock at either end. It's longer than it's wide or tall, like a short stout snake.

One door leads to safety. The other: certain death. Ergo, Peter needs to pop the first.

He scouts around, hunting for anything he can use to pry open the airlock. He's not sure if it would work – the seal looks pretty thick, clamped down with vacuum-pressure. He can't get his nails under it, and even if he could peel the rubber ring from the edges, he can hear a weird hum when he presses his ear to the steel. The lock must be a supermagnet thing, like in the spacedocks. Right now, it's fully charged. Peter's weedy arm strength won't make an impression, with or without a lever.

He searches for one anyway, because that's better than doing nothing. He only finds his mop handle, which is too short to be of any use.

The hail of comet-dust and meteorite chips and fragments of snapped copper pipes booms throughout the ship, rising in a percussive crescendo. The light panel flickers again, for longer than this time. Peter tries not to think of the Warbird's pitch-black wash rack. He stares up at the light, noting how the fabric droops more than it should. It must've been damaged when the breach first opened and everything went flying for the exit, Peter included.

But it's not the light panel that makes a tentative smile curl across Peter's face. It's not the light panel that gives him hope. That's all thanks to the vent beside it, and the little gush of cool, fresh air that strokes his cheek.

Peter's just figuring out how he can scale the walls and yank out the grill when the dead guy knocks on the airlock from the outside.

Wedged with one foot between two disused pipe brackets and both hands clasping the chunky rivets that held the dull red panelling together, fight-or-flight isn't an option. Peter does the only thing left. He screams.

The knock sounds again. Rat-a-tat-tat.

Peter lets go of the vent rivets. Then, heart fluttering fast as the strobing light, he turned to face the ghoul.

Red eyes. Gray metal face. It wore a grungy Ravager coat, floating out behind it, and knocked again, pointing direct at him. This was no demon – it was the devil himself.

Your soul, boy. Give me your soul.

Peter, pressed against the far airlock, shook his head. “No, Satan,” he whispered, thinking to what the pastor used to holler from his pulpit on Sundays. “Not today.”

The demon put its hands on its hips in a very familiar way. Peter got the strangest sense that it was rolling its eyes. Only those blank red lenses didn't reveal anything, and...

Wait. Were those hands blue?

Peter quickly pushed off the door, smoothing his sweaty hair. Scared? Him? Pff. Nope. He'd known it was Yondu in a spacemask, right from the start.

“What do you want,” he said crossly. “You can't come in – there's no air out there.”

Yondu pointed to the airlock behind him. He pressed his fists close together, then flung them apart – whoosh! Peter always considered himself a master of charades. He got his gist.

“I can't. A big stupid ugly pirate captain didn't give me clearance codes. I can't get out.” His voice wobbled, just a little. “I'm stuck, Yondu. I'm stuck.”

The Great Oort funnelled along the breach, meteorites abrading the walls on either side. Yondu was protected by the small alcove outside the airlock, but it wouldn't last him long. The corpse floating beside him looked more tattered by the minute; soon it'd be shredded entirely, like meat through a mincer.

Peter shuddered. One thing was for sure – he'd rather be in here than out there. Which was why, when Yondu made the same opening motion and pointed to the airlock between him and Peter, Peter panicked.

“No! No, you can't open it! Listen, dumb blueberry – I'm Terran! Terrans can't breathe in space!”

Yondu fished in his breast pocket. How come he wasn't wearing gloves? Astronauts wore gloves. He'd swell up and pop if he wasn't careful. Then Peter would have no one. Yondu dredged out lint and a dried orange worm before he hit jackpot. He held the silver capsule up triumphantly, as if he expected that to soothe Peter's nerves, and made a big grabbing motion.

I'll catch you.

Oh hell no. Peter backed up. “Don’t,” he moaned, as Yondu swam a little closer, pulling himself over the airlock towards the locking panel. Twin straps wrapped each of his ankles, attached to cylinders that glowed in quick bursts of flame. Jet boots. That was awesome and all, but Peter couldn't give a damn, not when Yondu was about to open the door and he was about to die. “Don't do it, you a-hole. Don't. Please. I don't wanna, I don't wanna, I don't wanna...”

Yondu paused. His hand hovered over the lock release, and Peter noticed, through the panicked scramble of his thoughts, that his skin flickered weirdly, like it was overlaid with static. He turned his round red eyes to Peter.

That expressionless mask could hide anything. A silent apology. A wicked grin. Peter would never know.

“Don't,” he whispered.

Yondu pushed the button.

The door flew open. No chance to hold his breath. Any residual air was ripped from his lungs, a silent scream, as Peter Quill catapulted out the airlock, into his captain's arms.

Cold. Space is cold.

Peter knows that – everyone knows it. Armstrong wore a really thick white suit, right?

If Yondu'd bothered to let Peter stay in school long enough to pick up, say, rudimentary physics, he was the sort of geek who would've piped '2.7 Kelvin' as the residual temperature left over from the Big Bang. But Peter doesn't know that. Equally, he can't fully comprehend that space itself doesn't hold heat, but pretty much everything in it – him and Yondu included – does, and radiates it out in every direction.

He doesn't know a bunch of other facts too, like you can stay conscious for ten seconds in space and alive for a minute, though irreversible brain death sets in after four.

That's for the best. He's already panicking, as the liquid on his skin freezes and his skin burns and his eyes – oh god, his eyes. He can't see, he can't see, he can't see...

Arms close around him, firm and unyielding. A metal nugget, sticky with some sort of adhesive, is fastened behind his ear, over the frost-nipped skin. A single poke and the spacemask unfolds.

It matches Yondu's. Peter knows, because through the blurry, ice-scarred haze of his vision, he can see himself – another demonic face, featureless except for those two bright red eyes – gleaming from the reflection in Yondu's lenses.

Peter breathes. He breathes and he breathes, huge, ragged mouthfuls, scorching the inside of his chest.

“You caught me,” he whispers. He hardly believes it. Then, because the a-hole deserves it, he thumps Yondu, as hard as he can. “Jackass! What the hell! I could've died!”

There's a chuckle. It seems to come from all around him – Peter, disorientated and half-blind, tilts his head from side to side, trying to follow it. Yondu raps on the side of his helmet.

“Mic on the inside, boy. Grabbed you an old model helmet – don't got no fancy directional-audials. Hope you don't mind.”

He sounds sarky, like Peter ought to be grateful that Yondu remembered he needed oxygen in the first place. Dick.

“Why did you open the door?” Peter yells. He punches Yondu again – the captain absorbs the blow with some amusement.

“Thumb outside the fist, remember.”

“Shut up! Why’d you do that! I could've died!”

“You would've died anyway.”

“Like hell! I had everything worked out!”

“There were a breach in that vent,” said Yondu simply. “Only reason walls didn't buckle was because it's a small scratch and I built my old girl strong.” He rests a fond side on the airlock's edge. “Did ya feel fresh air?”

Peter nods.

“Yeah. It were all being sucked along that vent and out, and some flowed down to you. But I had Kraglin shut off the valve at the end of the vent, so's it wouldn't leach us dry. That air woulda run out eventually, and even if you managed to get into the duct, you woulda hit a dead end. This...” He gestures with the arm not clasping Peter, up and down the pair of them. “This was the only way.”

“You're lying,” mutters Peter, but he doesn't sound sure. He kicks his legs, suddenly realizing that he's weightless, he's flying in zero-G, he's in actual, bona-fide space. His hair raises above the mask in a sandy halo, and if he could only kick away from Yondu, he'd float.

Yondu squeezes him tight before he's tempted to try. He heaves Peter up, and even with his aching eyes, Peter can make out the blizzard of ice and rock that whirls through the breach in a hungry tornado, inches away from them. “How do we get through that,” he whispers.

He can't see Yondu's face, but he hears the grimness in his voice when he responds. “Carefully.”

He unhooks the floating corpse with his foot, shoving it off the rebar. It goes slowly, tumbling backwards, trailing liquid guts.

Peter squints after it, but before he can get a good view of it being obliterated by the torrent of space-rock, there's a gruff cuss and a hand weighs heavy on the back of his head, pressing him forwards, nose buried in Yondu's armpit. “Don’t look.”

Peter dreads to imagine the smell. Luckily, the positive thing about space is that you can't smell anything except your own breath bouncing back to you off the inside of your mask. Peter suspects his is rather more pleasant than Yondu's.

“Stick close to the wall,” Yondu tells him, pointing at another airlock, a few feet to the left and several above. “And don't get dead, boy. Thas an order.”

He pushes Peter in front of him, correcting his trajectory with a clumsy blast of his jet boots and some inventive swearing. Now they're outside the ship, they can't hear the bulldozing hail of the Oort cloud passing through the Eclector's bared innards. There's only their breath and Yondu's voice, urging Peter onwards, telling him where the next handhold is when his smarting eyes fail to spot it, gripping his calf to keep him tethered and safe. So long as Peter keeps moving, slow and sure, he can almost convince himself that everything's gonna be fine.

Chapter Text

They reach the next airlock up. Peter doesn't know how they manage it, but they do. Peter creeps in first, Yondu right behind him, crawling over gashed steel and contorted pipes, making themselves as small as possible as spacerocks clobber the ship all around them, making the vast galleon tremble like it's considering breaking apart.

Peter's still a little giddy from it all. He nearly died – but he didn't. And now he's in space, not just in a ship but free-floating. It's all so much to take in, and with the constant danger of the Oort Cloud rushing in his peripherals, Peter can barely concentrate long enough to focus on where he's supposed to be going. His hands shake, where they clutch the girder beside the airlock. His bare knuckles shimmer – some sort of forcefield. It tickles, just a little, but only if Peter tries to feel it.

“Quill,” Yondu snaps. “C'mon now. Need you out the way so I can open the damn door.”

Peter dazedly nods. If this is anything like what he went through before, as soon as the gate opens, everything inside the tunnel is going to come out of it, very, very quickly. If he squints through the glass, he can see a lump just beyond the door. That's enough reason to duck; he doesn't want to survive his first spacewalk only to be brained by a loose wall panel. 

Yondu crawls over him. His big arms bracket him for a moment, one on each side. Then he's gone, with a parting 'hold tight' and a hand that clasps the back of his neck for the briefest of moments before it moves away.

Yondu jets to the control panel. He's bigger than Peter in every dimension – makes it harder for him to stay in the negligible safe-zone, protected from the blizzard by dented outcrops of aluminum. He has to plaster himself flat against the wall to avoid the comets that hurtle past.

Peter’s vision is still grainy from the ice that crawled over his eyes, during his brief hard-vac dip. He stays curled, marvelling at how his legs float to his chest without any real help. If he let go of his hand grip, he'd keep on spinning, backrolling over and over. He doesn't try it. Maybe later, when they're safe and they've beaten the bad guys and Peter can see properly again.

“Here we go,” Yondu says. His growly voice is oddly comforting, when it's the only thing you can hear.

Peter nods. Yondu presses the button.

The door whooshes into its casing, and – much like before – everything happens at once.

It's not a loose wall panel. Peter discovers this in the worst possible way. The Ravager's upper half is long since gone – shredded by the rocky typhoon. But his lower half...

Well. The airlock did its job, sealing off the inner ship at all cost. Perhaps a little too well.

The splatter from the Ravager's shorn-off intestines fans out as it leaves the airlock. It's still lukewarm. Peter's only consolation is that, judging by the muffled swearing over the comm, Yondu got hit too. Gross. Gross-gross-gross-gross-gross.

The legs tumble by, waggling in a way that, in Peter's shock, is almost funny. Then they're gone: wrenched into the tornado and ripped apart mid-air.

“In ya get, boy!” the captain roars. “I'm right behind ya!”

Peter nods, and climbs, and doesn't let himself relax until he hears the clonk of the locking airlock. Yondu jet-boots to the far door and opens it, reintroducing air.

“Tap the back of yer ear. Get that damn mask off.”

Peter's too jittery to argue. He quickly regrets it.

He hoped that when the mask went, it would take the blood coating with it. Turned out that's not how it works. The mask slithers off his face, compacting in on itself over and over and over. The blood hangs airborn for a split second, then the renewed gravity does it's thing.

Peter makes the mistake of opening his mouth to voice his dismay. He rolls to one side, hacking and spitting, while Yondu scrapes at his own bloody facepack.

“Hey,” he says, once he's clean – or rather, knowing Yondu, once he's got enough of the mulch off that it's not running into his eyes. “Ya made it. Congrats, kiddo.”

Peter gags noisily, snorting wet air through his nose. He spits on the floor. Even with his dodgy vision, it looks red.

That's a point. He kinda figured his sight would just magic back again as soon as he got inside. Peter worriedly waves a hand in front of his face. Nope – the tunnel vision's still there. It hasn't improved, not one bit.

“Yondu?”

Footsteps. Boots park in front of his nose. Peter can see them, at least, even if he can't make out the details where the tough old leather's been stained and scuffed and, on at least one occasion, stitched back together again.

“I can't see,” he says, struggling to keep a straight voice. “Yondu, my eyes, they're...”

“Space blindness.” Yondu squats, his breath leaving him in a sour huff. Next moment a hand cards through his hair, claws scratching and pulling, tilting his face to the light. “Dammit, boy. Didn't yer momma never tell ya to breathe out and shut yer eyes when ya go in the vacuum?”

“My mom d-died,” Peter reminds him. He thinks he can be forgiven the stutter, what with the recent trauma and all. “And I wanted to be a dustbin man. Not an astronaut.”

Broad thumbs press under his eyes. Peter keeps the lids open as long as he can. When he blinks, the darkness doesn't recede nearly as far as it should.

“Not a space pirate neither?”

Peter snorts. “Every kid wants to be a space pirate. Every boy, anyway. Girls don't do that sort of thing.” He says that with the sort of surety only eight-year-olds possess. After all, he has yet to see a lady Ravager. For some reason, that pokes Yondu's funny bone; he chuckles huskily, patting Peter on the cheek.

“One day, I’ll make ya say that to Aleta Ogord's face.”

“Who's Aleta Ogord?”

“Never ya mind. C'mon. I don't got no bandages on me – there's plenty stockpiled on the Bridge though. One on each eye oughta clear ya right up, so long as we don't let the damage sit too long.”

There's hope. This weird, grainy darkness isn't forever. Peter bounces to his feet. “What're we waiting for?”

Kraglin loiters on the Bridge, pacing back and forth. Peter's never been here before, so he itches to race around and ogle everything, run his fingers over as much as he can before the inevitable smack or whistle. He resists. Ain't no point anyway, not until he's got his eyes back.

He can't see Kraglin's expression – man's just a pink blur at the end of a long red stick. But he can imagine it well enough. Sour like he's smelled a bad smell – which isn't fair, because sure, Yondu stinks, but Peter doesn't, and Kraglin's just as pungent as the captain if not worse.

“Huh,” he says, upon spotting Peter. “He survived.”

Yondu drops a heavy hand on each of Peter’s shoulders. “Ya sound disappointed, Kraggles.”

“Very,” Kraglin says. But he fetches Peter the bandages, and even asks him whether he wants to deal with the pain one eye at once or both together.

Peter chooses both. Later, as he comes around, head swimming but eyes clear, he realizes for the first time that the three of them aren't alone. For a start, there's a ring of Ravagers. Peter recognizes one – Horuz, the other vaguely-humanoid guy from the M-ship. He thinks the two-headed twins, Vim and Vancy, might be there as well, but he's seen a lot of their species on board, so he could be wrong about that. There's some sort of squid-man who oozes clear jelly, a guy who’d look pretty regular except for his hair (made of shiny silver tendrils that waft in a breeze too slight for Peter to feel), and a fella with blonde dreadlocks and tattoos swarming over one side of his face.

A scar scythes up each side of his mouth. He looks kinda like the man with the funny accent who ran the newsagents opposite the park. Moved to Missouri from Scotland, he said – got sick of all the snow and rain.

But it's not the range of alien faces, familiar and otherwise, that engrosses Peter. He gulps, meeting the eyes of the man knelt in the middle of the floor, on a lower elevation to where Peter collapsed by the door.

“A child?” that man spits. “Is there no depth to your depravities, villain?”

He's in a uniform too, but it's not red like the Ravagers'. It's blue, and far better kept. His pants might've seen an iron at some point, maybe even a press. He wears a yellow star emblazoned on his jacket breast. Where's Peter seen that before?

Oh yeah. A vast broken mountain of a ship, its plates misshapen by the blaze of plasma teeth like a bombed-out factory after the blitz - the galleon the Eclector was cannibalizing, when they first arrived. Seems Yondu kicked a hornet's nest. This must be one of the drones.

Yondu lets go of Peter with a warning squeeze. Stay. He doesn't need to tell him. Peter sits frozen as Yondu starts down the steps, closing on the man, Kraglin skulking a pace behind. “Well, if it ain't Denaarian Frazier. Pleasure to finally make yer acquaintance.”

“The pleasure's all yours,” the man grits. Peter has to admire him, talking back like that. But his face is red and his hair hangs lank with sweat, and his damp uniform collar sticks to his throat when he swallows. He knows his odds. They're not good.

“Funny,” Yondu purrs. “Ya like a good joke, do ya, Mister Nova-Corps?”

Wait – these are the Nova? The space police Kraglin wanted to leave Peter with? Peter watches with renewed dismay. If Yondu kills this guy, who'll take him back to earth?

“Here's one for ya,” Yondu continues. His voice is soft but scratchy, like stubble through silk. He crouches before the Nova man, like he does when he wants to talk to Peter on level. Although this isn't like that – not like that at all. This is all predator. A snake about to strike. A jaguar about to spring.

Peter, head still throbbing from the bandages, realizes he's trying to curl up and make himself small. He sits on his hands, scowling at his knees, and orders himself to not be afraid.

This Nova-guy can't help him. Which means Peter has to stick to his current plan.

Become a Ravager. Kiss the flame, drink the blood, give the dragon your coin. Take back mom's music. Then he’ll run – run as far and long as he can.

“What noise does a Denaarian make when he don't tell me where the tracker beacon's located on my ship?”

There's no hope in the Denaarian's eyes. None at all. He knows he's dead – was dead the minute they blew his craft and took him hostage, tossing him in the Eclector's scummy brig. “I suspect I'm going to find out.”

“Mm-hm.” Yondu pats the Denaarian's cheek. His eyes are wicked sickles, pink as a blood-moon over the bayous. “Kraglin. Wanna do the honors?”

Kraglin's flicks his wrists, loosing a knife from each sleeve. He catches the hilts, spins them and catches them in a move almost too fluid for Peter to follow. “Finally. Been missin' some fuckin' fun 'round here.”

Yondu stands, brushing off his knees. “We need him alive,” he says. Kraglin pouts like Yondu's told him they're gonna make cookies but he isn't allowed any. Yondu rethinks: “Don't much care if he can't never walk again though. Or see. Or fuck.”

“Perfect,” Kraglin breathes. He stands a bit behind Yondu, slightly off to one side. He stays there a lil' longer than what's normal. When Yondu turns, they're nose to nose – or nose to collarbones. Funny, how you never really realize that except Peter, Yondu's the shortest guy in the room. Still, Kraglin looks at him all shy-like, going patchy-pink. “Thanks, sir.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Yondu waits for him to get out of his way, then marches forwards, collaring Peter and turning him bodily to face the wall. “Make as much mess as ya wanna – so long as ya don't bitch about clean-up after. We ain't got long, boys – I want y'all to split up and scout about for any pieces of that old ship we took into our girl. Tullk, get the engineering specs up, see if you can isolate 'em on holo-map. Horuz, work with him. Guide us as we go. Kraglin...”

He smirks at his first mate. There's something there, like gravity or magnetism; their gazes lock together and pull.

Come and get your love, thinks Peter, although that's stupid because they're men, and men – even big ugly biker-like space pirates – fall in love with pretty girls, not each other. Except, it seems, like with so many things that he knew to be fact on Earth, this rule no longer applies.

Yondu rubs the headphones with a dirty leer. “Get them coordinates outta this jackass before his merry band of men catches up,” he purrs, looking at Kraglin from under his lashes. “You can use my mouth tonight, if we get out of this alive.”

There's various oohs and wolf-whistles from the Ravagers. Kraglin salutes, still holding his knife. He nicks a shallow cut above his eyebrow, but doesn't seem to notice, what with how he's staring at Yondu like he's a steak cooked to his exacting specifications, and Kraglin's been starving for a week.

Peter barely notices the commotion. He kneels there, hypertense. Kraglin's going to... what? Torture that guy? Whatever he's planning, Peter doubts he or the Nova person are going to enjoy it.

“Stop,” he whispers. Nobody hears. All too busy chuckling at Yondu's words, slapping Kraglin's shoulder or rolling their eyes. Peter's newly healed eyes shine.

“Stop,” he repeats. A few heads turn his way. Not enough.

Peter inhales. His chest still pinches from where space sucked all his air out. He remembers what Yondu said about not holding his breath, and is glad he didn't – he doesn't think he'd have lungs left, and it's hard to put a bandage on those.

“Stop!” he yells. Everyone does.

Yondu's first to break the silence. He doesn't sound pissed, just peeved – but Peter's sure the anger will follow. “The hell, boy?”

Peter's voice shakes almost as much as the hands on his lap. “Don't kill him. Don't hurt him! He's a policeman – one of the good guys! What did he ever do to you?”

Just like that, Kraglin's good mood dashes itself apart, shattered sure as the boulders that whizz through their breach, ricocheting off the broken tunnel walls. “Damn brat,” he snarls. He lurches towards Peter. It's just one step, but his knives are out and his teeth are showing and his eyes are wilder than anything Peter's seen. Peter cowers, cringing back against the floor. He repeats himself, although it ain't so much a command as a plea:

“Don't hurt him. Don't.”

Yondu thrusts his arm in front of Kraglin, smacking him in the chest. He forces him back a pace. Kraglin stays a second longer than someone of his twigginess ought to – almost like he's stronger than Yondu, like he's only moving because he wants to. But his eyes slant to the floor, and he grumpily tips his knives back up to the crook of his elbows. Submitting to the alpha in the pack.

Yondu might only be in charge because of his pretty little needle of death, but it's still impressive, seeing him cow a guy like Kraglin. Or it would be, if he didn't start towards Peter instead.

He grabs him by the collar, hauling him up. He shakes until his legs solidify, then drags him for the exit.

“Yer comin' with me, kid. Rest of ya – you know what to do.”

“What? No – no! Don't hurt him, don't, don't” -

Peter struggles and claws, but Yondu's more than a match for a pint-sized Terran. He tucks him under one arm, lugging him off the Bridge with a stoic glower, as tiny sneakers smack off his thighs. If any of his men want to comment, they keep it to themselves.

They're wise. Peter isn't.

“What're you doing?” he bawls outside the Bridge, as soon as he's dropped. The blood on his face has dried in a tacky crust; he scrapes off as much as he can. The Bridge door remains open, just a crack. Through this gap Peter sees Kraglin, a lanky string, stood over the Nova guy, His knife glitters between his fingers, flipping fast as mom used to shuffle cards.

Yondu pushes the lock plunger. The door swoops down.

Peter leaps forwards. “No!”

He's caught before he can batter against it, thump the lock that won't respond to his hand.

“No you don't,” Yondu growls.

He lifts Peter under the armpits and sets him down, facing away. He taps his comm, speaking to each of his Ravagers, all of whom are scattering throughout the Eclector, some destined to lifts, other ladder-shafts, other the crawlspaces that are crammed in the dripping, chem-stinking spaces between the decks like hamster tubing.

“At current engine outputs, we got ten minutes before we breach the cloud an' they're back in shootin' range. We can't risk stayin' in the Oort any longer than necessary – not with a second fuckin’ asshole bored in our backside.” Peter shudders. Left long enough, the constant stream of debris through the Eclector's middle will wear her away from the inside out, like a maggot chewing on a wound. “So,” Yondu continues, turning off the main comm, his hand a hot cuff around Peter's bicep. He steers him forwards, down one of the many forks that meet at the confluence outside the Bridge. “We gotta hustle. And as for you, kid? You don't like what you see on my ship? You watch the fuckin' wall.”

Chapter Text

The space helmet, Peter learns, has a function designed for people like him ('stupid-ass species', as Yondu calls them) who can't naturally see UV. It converts it to the visible spectrum, and when Peter activates his mask, he finally understands what Kraglin was going on about when he told him about the pulses of light that swoop out from the engine hubs.

The five engines are hammered deep into the Eclector's guts, all wrenched from their original homes without a by-your-leave. It's the mechanical version of black-market surgery. Scupper one ship, steal their core, implant it into another. That's what let Yondu turn his galleon into this colossus: a metropolis of battened-down crew dorms and lurid warning lights that scintillate like the monitors on mom’s old dialysis machine.

The ship's the patient, in this case. Her wound: a puncture that rips all the way through and out the other side. If they don't hurry, there'll be more like it. A whole load of them, one for each silent report of the Nova ship's canons.

“C'mon, boy!” Yondu hauls him along. The metal floor plates bounce and rattle under foot, cymbal crashes that echo long after they've gone. “You want us to get hit by another of them shield-piercers?”

“What's the point in having shields,” Peter wants to know, panting, “if the other guys can just shoot through them?”

“New tech! Only a few of them swanky Nova ships have got it. Just our luck that this 'un happened to be near the other side of the portal when them fuckers we robbed sent out their distress signal...”

Peter swallows. He watches the lights sprint along the walls, diverting power around the breach to keep the supermagnets engaged around the airlocks and the auxillary generators humming on full. “What about the other fuckers you robbed?” he asks, quieter. Then, at Yondu's bemused expression: “Y'know. That guy back there – his crew. What happened to them?”

Yondu's harsh mouth downturns. “Don't ask questions if you ain't ready for answers, boy.”

Peter gulps. He leaves it at that.

The Eclector is simply too big to navigate on foot. That's what the lift shafts are for. As everything circles around the gravity core at the ship's center – and Peter almost lost his lunch the first time he walked through a center-ship corridor, his feet carrying him around the wall and up onto the ceiling – they can't drop too far or they'll meet another box coming from the far side. There are a hundred decks, each of which is a couple of miles square. The lifts plunge at high speed through up to thirty at a time. Means they can access whichever deck Kraglin points them to in seconds. It's the running which'll eat up the time.

They pass one of the dorm blocks. Someone bangs on the window glass; Yondu shoots them a strange gesture, like he's flicking them from a distance. Must be something rude, because the guy scowls and moves back.

“That's not how we do it on Earth,” Peter says, because if he's accompanying Yondu on this quest, they might as well make conversation. He breaths raggedly, trotting fast to keep up with the captain's stride. His lungs still prickle from his stint in space, but it's not anywhere near as bad as when his eyes healed.

Pain's funny like that. He would've been crying and clutching his chest a week ago. But now he has so many other pains to compare it too, his tight chest really doesn't feel all that bad in comparison.

“Look,” he says, because Yondu hasn't yet answered him, marching doggedly on, eyes fixed on an invisible horizon. “We do it like this.”

Yondu barely glances at him, let alone his flipped bird. “I don't give two shits about yer Terran cusses.”

“Really? So you're not going to tell me off for swearing at you?”

“Not yet.” Yondu glances back at him. The spacemask lenses cast everything in a red haze, like the forest fires Peter sometimes saw on TV. They make Yondu's cerulean skin look weirdly dull, while his implant and eyes stand out brighter than ever. “But I got a damn good memory. Ask me again tomorrow.”

Peter sheepishly folds his finger down. He selects the next question in his ammunition. “What would Kraglin use your mouth for?”

Yondu blinks. “Y'all don't fuck down on Terra? Why not? You even got them fancy peckers for it. Sure as hell makes things easier.”

Peter recalls some innocent questions, along with grandpa going red in the face and wiping sweat off the back of his next with his crusty old hankie. “I think I'm too young,” he says. Yondu rolls his eyes.

“Well, duh. Yer just a lil' squirt. Ain't even thinkin' about all that yet. But seriously, ain't no one told you about it?”

Peter shakes his head.

“The hell? Y'don't know how yer parents made ya?”

“My mom said my dad came from the stars,” says Peter helpfully. Then, when Yondu's mouth goes weirdly puckered - “She had a brain tumor though. We blamed it on that.”

“Stars?” Yondu pinches the bridge of his nose. “Flarkin' Terrans. So ain't nobody told you nothin'? About any of this?”

Peter wracks his brains. “I think,” he says tentatively, “that God doesn't like it?” He's sure he overheard the pastor shouting something to that effect as he toddled off to Sunday school. But according to the pastor, God doesn't like much.

Yondu throws up his hands. “How's you supposed to know if someone's creepin' on you?”

“Creepin'...?”

Yondu opens his mouth. Yondu shuts it again. Then he shakes his head and marches on, double-pace. Lift block's at the end of the corridor – Peter can see it, where all the glowing light-veins converge. The rest of the crew have been dispatched to different shafts, some heading what Peter thinks of as 'up', others down. Bridge sits smack-bang in the centre of the ship, furthest from any traumatic collisions or breaches. Course, that won't help them if these Nova folks squeeze off another shot.

“There's a lotta dickholes in this galaxy,” Yondu grits to Peter, continuing their conversation as they walk. He overrides Peter's snigger at the word. “Lotta dickholes what like doin' nasty shit to exotic lil' Terran brats like you.”

“What,” says Peter, trying to scratch his nose through the mask as they approach the lift. “Like eating me?”

Yondu doesn't even crack a smile. “Plenty worse than that. Perhaps I oughta tell ya bout it, stop you runnin' off and landin' yerself in trouble.” Peter snorts. Yondu's just trying to scare him, make him too spooked to steal one of those M-ships and fly far away. But when Yondu looks at him, Peter gets the sense he doesn't see what Peter wants him to – a kid who's ready for anything, who'll take on the galaxy alone if he has to. He shakes his head. “Nah. Y'don't need them nasty stories keepin' you up at night.”

Whatever. Peter doesn't need anyone's protection, least of all the blue alien jackass who abducted him.

“You're the only dickhole I know,” he seethes. Yondu rolls his eyes and shoves him into the elevator. It's a bare cage, elevated on a greased-up chain. Oily black drips plink onto the grills.

“What're we waiting for,” Peter whispers.

Yondu rests on the bars. He twists his neck from side to side with an audible click, then settles more comfortably, though Peter can see the tension that winds his muscles tight as industrial springs. “Kraglin's getting our coordiniates from our Nova guest. No point setting off til we know where we're headed.”

Peter can't fault that. He leans on the wall opposite Yondu, slouching to copy his body language. He dismisses his mask and fiddles with the capsule behind his ear. It really is stuck there. When he pulls, it bites. Not like the vaccine-slug on his arm – just a pull on sensitive skin.

Yondu smacks his wrist. “Quit touchin' it.”

“It's weird.”

“You'll get used to it.”

“Once I'm a Ravager, right?” Peter looks slyly up at him. “Once I've kissed the flame, drunk the blood, given my first coin to the dragon?” If he's hoping Yondu will be impressed he remembered, he's disappointed. The guy just shrugs and starts poking mom's Walkman. It's Peter's turn to snap at him: “Don't touch that!”

Yondu hits play.

Oh. It's the first time Peter's heard that song since all his stuff was confiscated. Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-cherry bomb! It starts halfway through a chorus, but that's okay. Peter knows every word, every chord.

“Damn buttons,” Yondu mutters, fumbling with them. “How do I shut the damn thing up...”

Peter's a ball of conflict. On the one hand, he's missed this. He misses so much – misses her so much. Mom. Smiling at him. Always the same smile, whether she had auburn curls or a shrunken bald head. It always creased exactly the same around the eyes.

On the other hand, this is his music. Mom's dead now, which means he's the sole owner. And he's not sure he's ready to share it with Yondu. Still, when Yondu finds the correct tab, he can't help but blurt:

“Can you leave it on? Just for a bit?”

Yondu opens his mouth to reply, but it's at that moment their earpieces crackle to life. He pokes the off button on the headphones and holds up a warning clawed finger when Peter makes to argue.

“Three trackers,” he repeats like Peter can't hear Kraglin's voice prattling away from his mask capsule - it evidently doubles as a commlink. “One in the Third Quadrant, the Nova ship's osci-regulator. Tullk?”

“On it, cap'n,” comes the grainy response. Kinda like listening through a walkie-talkie.

“Next on the Upper Deck – observation nodule. You got that, Gvarg?”

Gvarg – one of the jelly people – grunts.

Yondu turns to Peter, jagged teeth interlocking. “And one in the fourth quadrant, artillery core. That's us, brat. Alright, gents. Here's the aim of the game. You get rid of them trackers fast as possible. Shoot 'em. Stomp 'em. Eject 'em from an airlock – whatever's fastest. If we're quick about it, we can hit a jump portal and lose the Nova for good. Now let's get movin'.”

“You better, bossman,” says Kraglin. Peter pictures him scowling, imagines that the quiet shkrrrup, shkrrrrup sounds are him scraping gore off a knife. “Nova ship's just come onto radar. Firin' range, five minutes.”

Yondu swears. It's no cuss Peter's ever heard – a whistle and a click. But they all know what it means. He slams the elevator control panel. They drop like a stone down a well.

Peter hears his scream from a distance. He thinks he might’ve left it behind him, somewhere high above.

Chains rattle. Clacka-clacka-clacka, machine gun on repeat. Ten seconds later, their descent evens out. They clatter to a stomach-lurching halt that smacks Peter off the floor and his organs off his ribs. 

Yondu’s no better off. He hits the deck so hard his thumb clips Play. 

Hello, daddy! Hello mom!

No time to switch it off. Not with so much at stake. 

“Keep up or get left,” is all he says.

Then he’s off - wrenching open the cage lift and breaking into a sprint. Mom’s Walkman bats the harness of his magic whistle-stick. The music reels out behind him, an umbilical cord that Peter can't let break.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-cherry bomb!

Peter says “fuck” without quite intending to. Then he activates his spacemask and races after his captain, under the glitching red breach lights, into the dark.

The Ravagers call the main sections of their ship ‘quadrants’. There’s five of them, which is weird because ‘quad’ means four, but Peter’s learnt enough about his captors to know none of them are very good at math.

The fourth, where Peter has spent the majority of his scrub shifts, is all raw functionality. Bare valves barf steam, spiders string cobwebs in the crannies behind back-stripped panels. Steam pipes line the walls; they honk and whistle as the engine fires. The floor is a walkway of grills over live plasma coils, which snap and spark in time with the flickering breach lights above.

Peter only trips once.

The sole on his left sneaker pulls away from the toe, just a little. (Don’t make shoes like they used to, grandpa grumbles, and tells Peter to take better care of them because he’s wearing them until either he grows out of them or they fall apart). It catches on the lip where one grill plate fastens on to the next. Wham, bam, Peter goes sprawling.

Yondu doesn’t look back. Peter grinds his teeth, pushes to his feet on stinging palms, and follows the music onwards.

Hello, world, I'm your wild girl! I'm your ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-cherry bomb!

The artillery isn’t far. There are a few twists and turns, forks in the road. But if Peter disengages his helmet he can at least tell from which direction Yondu’s yelling. It’s a tough choice to make, between being able to hear and see. The emergency lights in this section are all in UV, and without his spacemask the tunnel is black as a crypt. But it’s worth it.

“Gun rear thrusters,” Yondu bawls from around the next corner. “Full burn! We need as much time as ya can give us!”

“Aye, sir,” comes the crackling response from the comm.

“Them auxillaries – how much charge they buildin’?”

“60K EVs at last count, sir. All being stored up for the shields.”

Yondu clicks another curse. “Shields ain’t much use to us right now, are they? Not if they lock them piercers on again. Awright. We gotta be two steps ahead. Divert auxillaries to starboard thrusters. Soon as the trackers’re disabled we run a high-G manouever, back into the cloud. Full-speed for the jump portal. Everyone with me?”

Peter doesn’t know what half the words in that paragraph mean, but he’s used to that by now. Among the Ravagers, the general consensus is enthusiasm, so Peter supposes whatever Yondu’s proposed can’t be too likely to get the lot of them dead.

Activating his mask – and welcoming the throb of the UV lights – he rounds the turn, hops through the open door, and finds himself in a little boy’s paradise.

“Wow.”

“Mm-hm. Feast yer eyes, kiddo. You ain’t touchin’ none of this til’ I give the say-so.”

Nothing says sadism more than showing a kid a room full of cool space-age weaponry and telling him he can’t shoot any of it. Peter folds his arms with a scowl.

“T-minus three,” Kraglin reports. Yondu hurries to the guns, hundreds and thousands of them, stacked in racks and layered up in crates. He casts his eye over the lot of them and says some very rude things about the Nova fellow’s mother.

Stone Age love and strange sounds too... Come on, baby, let me get to you...

“I’mma need him to be more specific,” Yondu tells Kraglin. “You kneecapped him yet?”

“Yessir.”

“Fingernails?”

“All gone.”

“Toenails?”

“Way ahead of ya.”

Bad nights causing teenage blues... Get down ladies, you've got nothin' to lose!

“Huh. Pretty damn thorough, Obfonteri. Nice. How’s his teeth lookin’?”

Silence. Then, in a macabre tone: “On it, sir.”

“Good,” says Yondu approvingly. Then he checks his chronometer and groans. “Ain’t no damn time… Quill! C’mere!”

Peter sticks out his bottom lip, fighting the urge to hum along to song blaring from the Walkman. “Thought I wasn’t supposed to touch nothing.”

Yondu waves him irritably over. “Don’t touch. Just look. Any with a Nova mark. Remember that sign on that prissy git’s chest?” A funny three-pointed symbol. Peter would be hard-pressed to forget. He rubs his own kneecaps together, shuddering on Nova-guy’s behalf. Yondu snaps his fingers, jolting him to attention. “Boy! Let’s get sortin’ the rifles before the next shot hits, huh? How’s about that? That sound good to ya?”

Peter weighs up his options. Stubborness versus survival. Reluctantly, survival wins. “Where do I start?”

“Found the osci-regulator tracker,” comes Tullk’s dour Scottish brogue. “Disposing of it now.”

Yond points Peter to the opposite wall. The artillery is an hourglass shaped room, far higher than the corridors outside. Ladders run on rollers along the walls. Peter stares, with equal dismay and delight, up into the rafters, guns lining the walls like grass on a steep-banked kloof.

“That’s way too many,” he tells Yondu. “We’re never gonna check all of them.”

“We don’t gotta. Look – stockin’ crew’s lazy. Ain’t gonna have put none up high. Any of the guns nearest you got the Nova sigil?”

Peter shakes his head.

“There you go. Onto the next shelf.”

“Two minutes,” says Kraglin, a little breathless. “And counting.” His voice is drowned out by Gvarg, who erupts onto the transmitters with a gassy belch.

“Got the Observation Deck tracker,” he rumbles. “Sat on it by accident. Think that did the trick, but gonna toss it out the airlock just t’be sure…”

“Anythin’ on the last tracker?” Yondu asks. "Gun make?"

Kraglin sniggers, puckering the hairs on Peter’s arms. “Not yet. But the poor sod’ll be suckin’ his food for some time to come.”

Yondu rolled his eyes. “I don’t give a shit. Just hurry it up!”

Kraglin does. However he manages it, Peter doesn’t want to know. Watch the wall, he thinks to himself furiously, even as he scampers around the artillery’s figure-of-eight, alerting Yondu to every twelve-point star, listening to the faint, upbeat melody from mom's headphones. Watch the wall, boy. Watch the wall.

“Vesper pistol!” Kraglin shouts, so sudden that Peter loses his balance. “One minute to go!”

Peter collapses against the nearest gun rack, but a hand hauls him up by the back of his collar before he can take out an eye on a rusty metal butt.

“Gotcha,” Yondu growls. He points to the gun in front of Peter’s nose. It’s a dumpy little nugget, stout-barrelled as a flintlock from an old pirate movie. But there’s a glowing filament in its side that lights Peter’s face in sickly teal. “This model. Can’t be many.”

“Forty seconds!” Kraglin’s voice pitches high in panic. “Shit sir, they’s chargin’ the Piercer!”

“Fuck-fuck-fuck…”

Yondu casts his gaze up the rack, then sweeps all the guns to the floor. Then, to Peter’s incredulity, he starts stomping on them.

“What’re you doing?”

“Crackin’ the casing! Tracker’s got to be inside. Hide ‘em well, do these Nova types. C’mon, boy!”

Peter raises his foot over a pistol - then hesitates, loose sneaker sole flapping. “You’re breaking them!”

“Better a few dud weapons than another hole in the stern! Do it!”

And Peter brings his heel down, hard.

What are the chances? There it is, glinting in between the plastic shards. A black disc, spoked like a spider’s web, with a winking light at its core.

“Yondu! Here! I’ve got it!”

Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-cherry bomb!

“Ten seconds!”

“Stand by for High-G!” Yondu roars into his comm. “On my mark!”

No time to toss the thing out the airlock. There aren’t any close to hand anyway. Peter stumbles backwards as Yondu whistles, shrill and demonic. The arrow shoots forwards. It doesn’t skewer the tracker - later, Yondu will explain that they can’t risk leaving so much as a functioning circuit. But there’s no time for words, no time for anything but the staccato pleep of Yondu’s whistle and the corresponding flare of fire from the arrow’s tip.

Peter’s jaw drops. The heat beats against his cheeks like he’s opened an oven door.

Yondu meets his eyes.

“Duck,” is all he says, before he drives the burning arrow into the tracker and the plasma core of the pistol, and everything explodes in a Christmas kaleidoscope of green-red light.

Chapter Text

“Hard port!” yells Yondu.

The flames from the arrow leave spangles dancing in front of Peter's eyes. The acrid stench of burning plastic fills the air.

Then the ship tilts.

The entire city-sized vessel swings like a capsizing yacht. Stabilizing thrusters erupt along its underside, keeping the yaw from becoming a roll. The main burner flares, and with a rumble and a whoosh, the Eclector lumbers back into the Oort as the second Piercer beam glances harmlessly overhead.

That all sounds relatively simple. Not so for the crew.

When Yondu first started hollering about High-G manoeuvres, there was a mass scramble as every man in the locked-down dorm blocks scurried to their bed, dragging translucent breathable capsule pods over themselves. Kraglin trotted to one of the pilot plinths, crushing the last bloody tooth between his pliers until it cracked. Tullk grimly opened a wall panel, selected a few inactive power coils, and strapped himself in. Gvarg squelched around the observation deck, realized there was nothing to hold onto, and resigned himself glumly to fresh bruises.

The Eclector is too large for the gravity generators to swing on gyroscopes. Still, the phrase 'high-G manoeuvre' means, in Spacer, that whatever forces they’re about to experience will override the ship's own gravity.

Sure enough, one moment Peter and Yondu are stood upright, the next, they’re flying for the wall, some twenty feet away. No time to do anything. Say anything. Yondu bundles Peter to his chest in time to bear the brunt of the impact.

Peter still feels it – and he definitely hears the captain wheeze, and the clonk as his implant strikes steel. They smash into one of the taller weapon racks, dislodging two pistols. One clocks Peter on the shoulder, the other Yondu on the leg. But it could be worse. Much worse. For one, rather than catching Peter, Yondu could've spun him behind him to use as an airbag.

Most likely, that was what Yondu intended. Just a fluke that Peter hit his belly first. That was all.

They level out, the gravity reinstating itself. Yondu shoves Peter away with a groan and flops onto his knees, cradling his head. A last gun teeters at the edge of its bracket, then ceremoniously pitches over. It spins – once, twice – and smacks Yondu on the back of the skull, over where he struck the wall. It barely elicits an 'oof'.

“That,” says Peter shakily, “wasn't fun.” He waits for the room to stop spinning before he sits. “Uh. Are you alive?”

“Wishin' I weren't.” Yondu winces, probing at the back of his head, where the crystal burrows under the skin.

Peter doesn't have time for him to feel sorry for himself. “Are we safe now?” he demands. “That ship's still in-range, right?”

“Piercer cannons... use lotsa energy. Stars, that's a sore 'un...”

“But is that going to stop them shooting?”

“We're back in the thick of the Oort cloud now.” Yondu, after laboriously heaving himself to sit, holds up a finger and demonstratively cocks his head. Sure enough, if Peter concentrates he can hear it: the ricochet of a million pebbles off the nearest stretch of hull. “Full burn for the jump point. We'll beat 'em there, and once we's through to the other side it's smooth sailing. They ain't gonna waste power firin' on what they can't see.”

Peter nods. There's still a lot that doesn't make sense to him – why can't the Nova ship just follow them through the jump point too? But maybe, just maybe, he wants to look a little cool in front of Yondu. Not like some snot-nosed Terran brat he has to protect.

All thoughts on the subject of coolness vanish when Yondu cracks his neck loudly from one side to the other. Peter's gaze is drawn to the headphones tucked inside the collar of his fur-lined coat.

“My Walkman!” He scrambles forwards, hesitating just before he touches it. “Is it okay, is it...”

Yondu presses play. The last chords of Cherry Bomb strum, and Peter's never been more relieved in his life.

“Oh, thank God.”

“Ain't no gods up here,” Yondu drawls, using the gun rack as a ladder to stagger to his feet. “And them that are ain't worth yer worship. Thank the stars, boy, or nothing at all.”

Grandpa wouldn't be very happy about that. Peter decides to change the conversation topic. “Can I?” he asks quietly, pointing to the Walkman clipped to Yondu's belt. It's not damaged – thank whatever Yondu wants him to.

Yondu smacks his hand away. “Nuh-uh. Not until ya -”

“Kiss the flame, drink the blood, give my first coin to the dragon.” Peter sighs. “What about the rest of my stuff? Is that okay? You haven't stolen anything else, have you?”

Yondu rubs his little goatee, face scrunched in a downright rascal of a smirk. It's impossible to tell what he's thinking; Peter might as well be trying to read the wall beside him. “Put the unbroken guns back in their places,” he says, toeing the nearest off the messy pile – it slides to the metal floor in a clatter. “You done good today, kid. And survivin' means we celebrate.”

“What does that mean?”

Yondu stops the music before the next track can play. Peter doesn't have time to be disappointed. “Means,” says the captain, dropping a clawed hand onto Peter's head and ruffling there, “that you get to pick somethin' from yer bag and keep it, kid. Think of it as a reward.”

Peter accepts the rough scrumpling of his hair, if only because it's what mom used to do when she had the energy. “You can't give my own stuff back to me as a reward.”

“You sayin' ya don't want it?”

“No! No, you big blue...”

“Careful.”

Peter buttons his lip. But he still can't help but smile, just a little, as Yondu helps him sort the guns onto the rack, standing on tiptoes to slot them into the brackets that Peter can't reach.

Peter kneels behind his bag. Yondu has been stashing it in one of the lockable cubbies in the walls that only opens to his handprint. It might open to Kraglin's too, and perhaps, if Kraglin was in a particularly grumpy mood with his captain, he might be tempted to give Peter his stuff back just to piss Yondu off. But Peter is very aware that, even though they're sailing safe into the galaxy beside his own, their freedom came about thanks to the broken kneecaps and plucked out teeth of a Nova Corpsman, who betrayed his faction after Kraglin was left alone with him for five minutes.

He doesn't want to think about the Ravager first mate right now.

Peter focuses on his rucksack instead. He runs his hands up and down its red front panel, nails scratching at the stitches. He had a satchel to start with, one of grandpa's old ones – because if it ain't broke you might as well use it. But all the other kids had rucksacks, and the strap ate at his shoulder something rotten. So Peter begged and pleaded, and though at the time – five years old and fresh to the schoolyard – he didn't know that mom had just got her diagnosis, stamped TERMINAL in big red caps, she still found the time to smile at him, and kiss his forehead, and promise to take him shopping if he could just wait until his birthday.

His birthday came, and out he and mom strolled. She still had all her hair by that point, although she looked more drawn and tired every day. She guided him through the little market, taking him to a merchant whose wares were strung up on all sides of his little stall, bright and studded with badges. Peter bought the bag – or rather, mom gave him money, said 'happy birthday', and let him count it into the shopkeeper's hand. He bought three little badges too. Those clink together as he opens the zip, slow and reverent, hands shaking as he peeps within.

He performs a quick catalog of what's inside. Textbooks, pencil case, water bottle, present, wallet. Only one thing's missing. Peter swallows, coating his dry throat in spit.

“Where's the gonk?”

“Gonk?”

“Little doll, orange hair.”

Yondu, one shoulder propped on the door and still intermittently rubbing the bump on his head, grunts in recognition. “Sat in my M-ship. Like cute lil' things like that.”

“It's mine.”

“You ain't a Ravager yet.”

“So I can be stolen from, right?”

Yondu flashes yellow fangs. “You got it.”

“But you said I could take one thing...” Peter chews his lip, looking at the present Mom left him. He's scared, he realizes. He attacked Yondu last time he started touching it. If he asks for it now, it'll prove that it means a lot to him. If Yondu knows it means a lot to him, he can use it against him.

Peter eases it between his text books, as if they'll hide it from greedy blue hands. Yondu watches him, smile never fading, his red eyes too clever for Peter's liking.

Peter's fingertips skate leather, cool and dry. He pulls out his wallet. That's another of grandpa's hand-me-downs, crackly with age. He pops the clasp to remind himself of what's inside.

What he finds makes the cogs in his mind whirr on overdrive.

It's a quarter. Gold and round, bevelled at the edges.

The memory hits like a spruce of icy water. Grandpa slipped it to him halfway through the night, told him to run to the vending machine. Peter forgot to hand back the change.

Kiss the flame. Drink the blood. Give the dragon your first coin.

There's blood on Peter's lips and fire in his heart, and everything clicks into place.

“Hey!”

Yondu had been loping to the shower. Now he turned, frowning. “Sooner I'm done, sooner as you get that crap off your face.”

But it's that crap – soot and blood and worse – that proves Peter's point. As much as his skin itches and his hair feels disconcertingly chunky, he can't rinse away the evidence. Not yet.

“We flew through the flames,” Peter says, determinedly. He's right, he knows it. “I'm covered in blood – again. I'm sure I must've tasted some of it – although that's totally gross. And this? This is my coin. You're the dragon. It's a trick. It's all a trick. If you become a Ravager, you have to make your own rules.”

Yondu blinks down at the little dime. Then his grin cracks across his face, broad and maybe, just possibly, proud. “Rule number five. Good memory.”

Peter bounces on his toes. “So did I do it? Am I a Ravager now? Do I get my Walkman back?”

Yondu pretends to ponder the question. “Well, kid. Y'see, yer too damn smart for yer own good. Most folks kiss this flame here.” Yondu points to the grubby yellow shape on his chest. Oh. Peter supposes it is sort-of flame shaped. “Unless yer name's Taserface, in which case ya take 'flame-kissing' even more literal-like.”

Peter squints. “What sorta dumb name's Taserface?”

“Don't even ask. The blood usually means yer first kill in the Ravager name. Don't gotta actually eat none of it. Hell, good quarter of my crew's from veggy-tarian species. Ain't gonna make 'em make themselves sick now, am I?”

Peter sinks into his boots. “Oh,” he says in a small voice. He hasn't killed anyone – nor does he plan on it. Mom would be so disappointed, and Peter still sees Snout's empty eyes in his dreams. “So I got it all wrong?”

“Nah.” The coin twinkles, flipped between Yondu's fingers before vanishing up his grubby sleeve. “I'm the dragon.”

Peter beams. So he is one of the crew! He's really done it! He'll get mom's music back, and then he can escape as soon as he learns to fly one of those cool M-ships, and make his way home!

Yondu wags his fingers before Peter can do the same with his imaginary tail. “One problem.”

“What?” Peter doesn't like the sound of that.

“That's rule number ten.”

“Twelve.” Then, at Yondu's squint - “Kraglin added a couple.”

“Didn't even consult me first. Fuckin' good-for-nothin'... Anyway. Rule number twelve then, young Terran, goes as follows. Ravagers don't hire kids. Age-of-maturity or over, by the standard of yer own damn species. Which you, boy, are sure as hell not.”

No. It can't be. He's come so close – is he really going to lose out over this? Peter's face falls, but with the sorrow comes rage.

“So I'm – what? A slave?”

For some reason, Yondu's eyebrows twitch together. “The hell? Course not. Rule number thirteen...”

“I don't care! I work all day” -

“Half days. Yer on four-hour shifts, not eight. Plenty o'time for runnin' about an learnin' and playin' and all that other shit kids're s'pposed to do.”

Ah. So that's how he's supposed to amuse himself while Kraglin wanders off? Peter mostly just sits where he's left and hums the Awesome Mix from start to finish, over and over, timing the beats out with his toe until Kraglin returns. At least with his new mask he doesn't have to worry so much about getting lost. Maybe he can actually explore, now he knows all he has to do to find an engine is retrace the glow of the pipes.

But Yondu could've given him the helmet as soon as he realized Peter was practically blind in this crazy world of aliens and shield-piercing canons and UV light. He didn't. He didn't do a helluva lot, and Peter refuses to cut him any slack.

Adults are supposed to look out for children. If they don't, they're bad people. Simple as that.

“I don't get paid! And you keep hitting me! And you won't give me my Walkman! That means I'm a slave!”

Peter knows all about slavery. Grandpa told him it was a bad thing that happened to dark-skinned people in the past, that it's all over now and done with and everybody's equal (although he doesn’t seem to like the Black folks who play their music in the park). But obviously, space hasn't got the memo.

Yondu pinches the tight skin between his eyes. “Yer an idiot, is what you are, Terran.”

Peter's rapidly turning red. “And you're a bully! Gimme my coin back! You don't deserve it – you're not a dragon, you're a monster!”

Clink. The coin lands at his feet. Peter looks down at it. Then he glances up. Yondu's glowering at the ground between them, face ducked so the overheads glance off his implant and the scars that crisscross his temple like someone tried to sketch a tic-tac-toe board with a knife. Considering everything he's learnt about his captors since arriving in this nightmare, Peter suspects that 'someone' might've been Kraglin.

“Yeah,” says the captain, toneless and quiet. His gaze lifts to Peter's, and Peter takes an instinctive step to the rear. “I'm a monster, boy. Don'tchu ever forget it.”

Chapter Text

“An’ he thought he actually had to drink blood! Can ya believe that?”

Yondu, somewhat hypocritically, is tucking into a plate of raw meat. It had been carved off the cow – or whatever else aliens eat – recent enough for it to still be warm, steaming in the chilly Outer Rim air.

A week after escaping the Nova Corps, the Ravagers have stopped on a trade planet for a much-needed refuel. Yondu, having taken Quill under his wing for the duration of the trip, has dragged him to a bar, where the captain now sits on a stool with a bot-hooker perched side-saddle on his lap. His Terran takes up tenancy on the stool to his right. Yondu subjects him to the occasional slop of moonshine and rough ruffle of his hair.

Their audience – ice traders and comet-miners, like most of the folks who subsist on the scraps around Galaxy’s Edge – chuckle on cue. Yondu regales them with the rest of the tale, voice booming loud then swooping low to a whisper as he leans across the bar, chewing his meat, watching each of them from his hooded red eyes.

Peter, arms folded, wishes he liked alcohol, so he could take a shot for every lie.

Sure, that crazy day passed in a whirl, but Peter’s fairly sure the captured Nova crew had all been stowed safe in the brig, with the exception of Kraglin’s torture-victim. There hadn’t been a boarding force, and they certainly hadn’t deflected a piercer-bolt back into the Nova Corps’s own flagship, searing straight through her burner and combusting her in a burp of fast-snuffing flame. Yondu’s just lying to make himself look cooler.

Peter could correct him, but he does have an inkling of self-preservation. Plus, this is his first proper trip off-ship since they hopped from the Milky Way (“Silver Spiral,” Yondu insists, and smacks him, lightly, whenever he gets it wrong) into the Andromeda cluster.

The distance between here and home makes Peter’s head smart and his tear ducts throb. So he doesn't think about in; just shuffles his bottom on the stool, and tries not to be bored.

The ring of workers who’ve been forking out for Yondu’s rounds are as various as the animals on a Safari. And yet, once you get over the one on the left’s big flappy ears, and the chick beside him (Peter thinks it’s a chick, but aliens seem to get tetchy if you ask) with the puffy nose, they’re just people. People doing people-y things in an inn that doesn’t seem all that different from the bars Peter loafed about in as a kid, waiting for grandpa to finish his dart game and make him dinner. Look; there’s even a dart board in the corner!

Beeping arcade games ring the room, aflutter with fluorescing jellyfish-lights. Peter wears his spacemask so that he can see them all. He wants to go poke them. He wants to poke everything. But he hasn’t been permitted to leave his stool, and every so often Yondu swings out his arm to jostle him, as if to remind himself he’s still there.

So he sits; mask activated, sneakers dangling several inches off the floor; and spins. Around and around and around, until today’s dinner – yaro-root stew, which tastes disturbingly of liquorice, and beasties, which are like slimy cheetos – bubbles at the back of his throat. He hits that queasy point and keeps on going, until his body adjusts to the revolutions and the dizziness evens out into a strange sort of bliss.

A hand lands on his neck. It lurches him to a halt. Peter’s stomach contents keep travelling around longer than the rest of him, like milk in a churn, slopping up to hit the back of his tongue. He swallows it down, although perhaps that’d teach the a-hole who stopped him a lesson: a lapful of Terran puke.

“Damn brat,” mutters Puff-nose. “Makin’ me head spin jus’ watchin’ ya.”

Yondu raises a finger, a little wobbly from the drink. “Hands off the kid,” he slurs.

Puff-nose chuckles, but does as she’s told. Peter can’t help but notice the deadly glint enter Yondu’s eyes. It manifests fast as a magic trick, changing his expression in an instant from jovial drunk to murderer. When it leaves again, everyone expels a collective sigh, Peter included.

“Can I go play over there?” he asks hopefully, pointing to the Arcade.

“You’d need scrip,” Puff-nose points out.

Scrip must be what aliens call their dollars.  Peter turns big eyes on Yondu. He gave him that coin, after all. Yondu rejected it, and he might not be ready to make him a Ravager yet, but surely that counts for something.

Yondu shrugs. He elbows the bot on his lap in the process, but the way he explained it to Peter, she doesn’t have pain sensors, so it’s not as if she notices. “Don’t come cryin’ to me.”

Puff-nose chortles again at Peter’s falling face. “Aw! Here, kid.” She scoops a few rectangular glass chips from between her breasts. Peter doesn’t want to touch them – grandpa said broken glass will cut you, and just… ew – but she wiggles her six fingers enticingly, her ugly cauliflower-lump of a nose flushed ruby from the drink. “Go on. Remind me of my own littlun, you do.” Her voice takes on a melancholy note. “Six Lunar-cycles til we rotate back an’ I get to give her scrip again. Go on. You play.”

“Don’tchu go coddlin’ him neither,” Yondu warns, but there’s no dangerous edge to the words, and he scoops the back of Peter’s head in one broad blue palm, pushing him in the right direction. Peter’s only too eager to go. He flashes a shy, grateful grin at Puff-nose, and only hesitates a moment before claiming the shiny glass tabs.

He trundles away from the crowd at the bar, their conversation receding. Yondu’s talking about Kraglin now, loudly airing his grievances (And he ain't fucked me since we picked the brat up, y'know? Turned down a blowjob – who the flark does that?) There’s a bite to his words, although they don’t yet whistle, so the ice-trawler men sit around and nod sympathetically rather than fleeing for their lives.

Peter lets them get on with it. He counts the scrip he’s been given. His translator chip must’ve migrated from his neck to his brain, because it works on his eyes as well as his ears. There’s five of them, each saying twenty. Must be like quarters, right?

Peter approaches the first machine. It has a clear sapphire case, like an expensive watch, and he can see all the little mechanics bouncing away inside, motors moving the paddles up-down-up-down like marching ant legs. He turns the chit over in his palm. It isn’t sharp – the edge is blunted, and when he fumbles putting it into the slot, it doesn’t shatter when it hits the floor.

Peter stoops to pick it up. He glances around to check his blunder doesn’t have witnesses. He needn’t have worried – Yondu’s deep in his tankard, moonshine fringing his upper lip. He’s donated the bot to the trawler captain, who’s shamelessly making out with her – or attempting to eat her face; Peter wouldn’t put anything past aliens.

He presses the chit to the slot again. This time, it fits in perfectly. Peter doesn’t notice, even as the holograms flurry in a cheerful rainbow and a jingle bounces through the air. He’s just seen the other man, the one not dressed in a trawler’s greasy overalls. The one sat quietly in a booth by himself, shadow bisecting him from the neck down like a guillotine blade.

Peter can’t see much of him, except the hand laying on the table top. That’s blue, blue like Yondu’s, and it’s curled in a lax fist around the barrel of his gun. At his side, leaning up against his chest, rests a huge metal warhammer, which looks so heavy Peter can't help but imagine what would happen if it swung at his head.

His head, he's pretty sure, wouldn't win.

Peter doesn’t know why his heart rate jumps. Is it the sight of the blue man's weapons? No; Peter’s seen enough of those. After he helped locate the tracker, Yondu actually promised to teach him how to fire a gun – which makes Peter feel a little guilty, because mom donated the peace sign badge to his rucksack. But he figures that if he’s to be a space pirate, learning to shoot is a matter of survival.

Everyone carries, in space. Even the trawler folk have holsters bulking out their hips, guns and knives and weapons Peter doesn’t recognize lashed to them with soft-worn leather belts. Yondu’s probably the least-armed of the lot. Not that he needs a sidearm as well as his arrow.

The other blue man notices Peter staring. His face is awfully blank. He’s got regular eyes, nose, mouth; unlike some of Yondu’s crew, who either have gelatinous blobs on the end of their necks or have fallen afoul of engine fires or blaster bolts that gobbled up the majority of their features. But somehow, even though this fellow boasts a regular configuration of features, they don’t look animated. His eyes are white as a corpse’s, his face a heavy blue mask. He's built bigger than Yondu, broader and taller by a long shot. He doesn’t have the same funky red head thing, and his eyes are lost in wells of jet black paint. His skin shimmers like he's wearing some sort of forcefield, an extra layer under his clothes.

The arcade machine beeps and twinkles for Peter’s attention. The little timer in the top right corner dwindles steadily to nought. When it reaches zero, it emits a mournful beep, and goes dark to simulate Peter’s defeat.

“Better luck next time, kid!” calls Puff-nose from the bar. Peter snaps back to reality. He looks at his machine, hands shaking worse than when he was yanking the guns off those racks, searching for the tracker, Kraglin counting down in his ear. Nudging the next chit into the slot, he settles his sweaty palms around the controls.

When he looks up, the trawler captain has swaggered off with the bot-hooker. Yondu’s snoring on the bar, empty plate and cup stacked together, Puff-nose and the others chuckling around him. As for the blue man with the dead eyes? He - and his hammer - are nowhere to be seen.

He tells Yondu about him, later. He dithers over it something awful, because Yondu is still the enemy, the asshole who wears mom's headphones around his neck, and only occasionally plays a song if he thinks Peter's been good. But there was something about that man... Peter can't put his finger on it.

Those eyes were so cold, colder even than the bar itself – because heating costs precious scrip out here at Galaxy's Edge, far from any star. Peter shivers when he relates how he just sat there, looking at Peter, then vanished into thin air.

Yondu laughs. “Weren't no one there,” he tells Peter, playfully scrumpling his hair. “Ya think I don't scope any bar I wanna get shit-faced at?”

But he requests a glass of Soberer before they leave, and makes Peter walk in front of him back to the port. His eyes roam the docks, and the hand on Peter's shoulder squeezes just a bit too tight.

Chapter Text

Yondu activates his space-mask a lot more after that. So Peter hears, anyway. Yondu doesn't take him along on more missions – doesn't even take him shooting like he promised, which just goes to prove that he's a liar and a jerkwad and a dickhole (Peter's trying to be more inventive with his cussing, because last time he called Kraglin a meanie, Kraglin laughed).

Speaking of Kraglin, he's no longer his chief tormenter. Peter's duties have rotated; he spends his four-hour work shifts in the galley, crushing up the massive tablets of Nutri-powder that form a base for almost every meal, mixed with diced Orloni for the meat-eaters and yaro root for the herbivores. Peter surreptitiously tries to check the galley for carcasses of a more humanoid nature, but as he's not allowed in the industrial freezer or anywhere near the hanging hooks in the cool-room at the galley's back, he can't be sure that Yondu was lying, with all his guff about him being picked up as a snack.

He mostly just sits in his corner with his pestle and mortar – which are called something different in space, although they do exactly the same thing – and crushes protein blocks, staying out of everyone's way, humming his music until he's barked at by the chief chef.

Narblik is a Black man. When Peter apologetically tells him he shouldn’t talk to him, because Grandpa says so, Narblik laughs and says good. But though he yells if the other workers complain about the singing, he's not all that bad, for a Ravager. He even lets Peter steal little chunks of sweetpaste, which tastes like marzipan, despite its gross grey-purple hue.

Peter, feeling rebellious, decides he wouldn't mind talking to him after all. Grandpa's not here to wave his slipper. But Narblik's so busy, running around reading from two data pads – one for culinary requirements and the other for stock – that Peter doesn't get the chance.

Still, while the job's simple, he doesn't get smacked, and he can gobble all the sweetpaste he can eat, Peter would rather be roaming free. Armed with his spacemask, the Eclector is no longer a labyrinth but a maze, and he has a map. As soon as his shift's over, he sprints out the door, tossing his apron onto the freezewash pile and waving at Narblik (who acknowledges him with a grunt). He spends the rest of the day exploring, strutting through store rooms, along winding, airlock-studded tunnels which look onto the vast training decks and spacedocks.

Most doors won't open to him (Yondu's given him basic emergency-airlock access, and made out like he was doing Peter a huge favor, rather than giving him the bare minimum he needs to survive). But enough of them have glass fronts that Peter can smush his little face up close and gasp mist onto the view.

What a view it is. Ravagers shooting holographic targets in a range, Ravagers sprawled in front of a projection cube that's showing some sort of soap opera featuring tentacular doctors in a space-age hospital and a lot of shouting and crying, Ravagers manning a camera-studded ball that relays feeds from every treasure room and brig block on board.

It's slow-dawning, Peter's jealousy. They just seem so weirdly comfortable with each other. Oh, there's more than a few fist-fights – some blaster fights too, which Yondu is a bit more strident about breaking up, especially if they're within range of an exterior wall. But on the whole, the crew pulls together in a chaotic spill of red leather. Swooping the M-ships out their dock every morning; bringing them back again each night. Donning their space helmets and hopping out the breach, followed by their spider-bots, tethered to the ship with coils of safety harness that sometimes get tangled and leave two men dangling in the black like stuck fishing lures while their brothers all laugh.

Brothers. That's what it is. For all that they smack each other about and chortle at one another's misery, as soon as another ship flags on radar (or sonar, or whatever else pirates use) it's all-hands-on-deck. Like family.

Somehow, it seems strange to Peter that Yondu – the weird guy who fills his room with crappy tourist souvenirs, who kills with a whistle and, despite his claims to the contrary, obviously has a fondness for Blue Swede, because Peter often hears the faint chant of ooga chaka when he and Yondu lay in their respective cot and bed at night – is their leader. That he runs all of this, a colossal operation that can strip a ship to her rivets in under a cycle, cannibalizing her to help heal the rift in the Eclector's side and ripping her parts open for scrap.

Peter can't help but be curious. He's a kid; it's in his nature. And so, one night, he asks.

“How long've you been captain?”

Yondu's flat on his back in the bed; hasn’t bothered kicking off his boots. He peels up the headphone. He doesn't have the music on – that or it's playing too quiet for Peter to hear – so he's wearing them just to piss him off.

“Whassat?”

“How long've you been captain?”

“How long've you been a lil' shit?”

Peter scowls. “That's not an answer.”

“I ain't bound to give ya one of those.”

“Did you do anything before? Were you born a Ravager? No – you can't have been. There's barely any ladies on board.”

Yondu shoots him a quizzical look, then shakes his head, as if to say weird Terran shit. “Ain't no one born a Ravager.”

“Right. You gotta be an adult.” Peter sighs, wistfully staring at the Walkman. He can't wait another ten years before getting the music back. For one thing, the tape'll wear down before then. He's painfully aware that each time Yondu rewinds, the reel gets a little baggier, everything a little looser in its flimsy plastic shell. It's nice to hear the music, even if it's only second-hand, but every song Yondu listens to is one stolen from Peter.

“You said you'd teach me to shoot,” he says after a while, changing the subject.

Yondu grunts, rolling onto his side. “I'm goin' to sleep.”

“No you're not. You're an adult – you don't need as much sleep as I do, and I ain't tired. You said you’d teach me to shoot. Did you mean it?”

If he can shoot, he can take back his music by force. Maybe the rest of his stuff too. Peter's not stupid – he knows one human kid can't hijack a galleon this big and demand they take him home. But Yondu is perfectly willing to fall asleep around a brat who wants him...

Well, not dead. Peter doesn't want anyone dead. But the blue bastard can be mighty annoying, and Peter can't help but wish, in the way of the powerless, that something would happen, that someone would do something to take him down a peg. Someone who Yondu can't just pull rank on, like with Kraglin. Someone he can't whistle at, to make them toe the line.

But anyway. The point is: Yondu seems to think that just because Peter's small and gullible and will eat underripe yaro if you tell him it's a delicacy (then spit it up all over your shoes, which frankly served Yondu right) he's not a threat. If Peter had a pistol and knew what to do with it, he could prove him wrong.

“Take me out with you again,” he wheedles, kneeling in his cot and resting his elbows on the side. “C'mon, boss. This's my first time in a new galaxy! I've only seen one bar so far. Even if you don't teach me to shoot, just let me tag along on your next job?”

Yondu snorts. He flicks on the Walkman and settles onto his nest of pillows and furs with a grunt. “Not a chance.”

“Why not?” The other blue guy's face swims, unbidden, through Peter's mind. “Are you scared of that creepster from the bar? Is that why you keep wearing your mask when you leave the ship?”

“Don't know who yer talkin' about.”

“Y'know, that other blueface. From the bar with the trawlers.”

Yondu goes deadly quiet. That's the sort of silence that comes before a whistle. Peter resists the urge to drop down and quiver in his cot. He stays right where he is, looking at Yondu dead-on.

Go on, he thinks. Prove me wrong.

But then Yondu drops a hand over his face and grumbles through the fingers. “Okay kid. Next job. You an' me, start of the cycle. Even give you yer first gun lesson after. How's about that?”

It's more than Peter hoped for. He nods, eager as the bobble-headed dolls on Yondu's bedside dresser, and, when he's told to shut up and sleep, he tries his best. He doesn't think he'll ever manage – he's buzzing like he touched the metal ring around the airlocks where static likes to gather. But he must've slept, because next thing he knows the klaxon is buzzing and Yondu is gone.

Peter hauls himself out of bed. He doesn't bother with his usual routine – freeze-washing his clothes, coating his face and mouth in dry-wash granules, checking the squishy gel-critter sucking on his arm to make sure it hasn't grown in the night. He just wedges on his sneakers, not bothering with the laces, and dashes out the door, down the corridor to the nearest dock.

The Warbird isn't on her harness.

Dammit.

Ravagers lie, and Yondu's a dick, and Peter obviously needs to take matters into his own hands.

If Yondu smells a rat when he returns home to find Peter beaming rather than fuming, it doesn't matter. He's in too much of a bad mood to care.

He steps out the hangar, dismissing his spacemask, and says something in a non-translator compatible language, a rattle of vituperative clicks. Kraglin, who's been none-too-subtly waiting for him to get back under the guise of nitpicking the work of every engineer unfortunate enough to pass him, pushes off the wall, arms still folded.

“Chasin' ghosts,” he mutters, just loud enough for Peter to hear. “Kid were lyin'.”

The kid most definitely wasn't. Peter assumes they're talking about the creepy guy, and almost storms over to tell Kraglin just how wrong he is. But his mission is more important than finding out more about Yondu's vendetta against some weird dude who likes lurking around bars and glaring at small children.

Yondu shoulders past Kraglin. “Fuel her up,” he growls, scratching his neck under the headphone wires. He pulls down his scarf a little way to do so. There's a band of paler skin wrapped around his throat, like a tan line after summer. Or a scar. “I'm headed out again in the mornin'.”

Kraglin looks concerned for all of a second. Peter decides that must've been his imagination, because next moment the sneer's back full force. “You do got a ship to run, if you ain't forgotten. No good spendin' all your time out there lookin' for a man what died decades back.”

Yondu flips his coat off his arrow. It's a harsh movement, clumsier than usual, too much energy behind it. The tail of his duster snaps against Kraglin's skinny legs. “Want an extra windhole?” asks the captain sweetly. “Keep right on talking, darlin'.”

Kraglin shuts up, but he doesn't look happy about it. He shoots Peter an eviller look than usual as he and the captain pass, like somehow, this whole business is his fault.

To be fair, Kraglin looks at him like that a lot. The jerk.

Usually, Peter would run after them, demand to know more about what's going on. But right now, he's gleefully hoarding the scraps of information he's been fed.

Yondu's looking for the creep from the bar. He's heading out tomorrow. For tonight though, judging by the datadex Kraglin is trying to get him to cast his attention over, there’s plenty of paperwork for him to catch up on.

That gives Peter time to prepare.

Peter rolls through the usual morning routine – scowling at Yondu, then skulking to the shower rack to fill his mouth with bitter, dusty dry-wash. Swill, spit, repeat. There's no snoring accompaniment today; Yondu's awake before the alarm, and he watches Peter trot past his bed with sore-looking eyes.

He looks like he barely slept. Huh. Kraglin must've come down hard, had him up doing paperwork way past his bedtime. It's not like Yondu to do anything that he doesn't want to, but between his knives, his sly smirk and his inventively graphic threats, Kraglin can be very persuasive.

Which is why, Peter hopes, his cover story will have weight.

“Kraglin wants me to go scrub the bog pans on low-deck C,” he says. Yondu rubs a hand over his stubble-rough cheeks.

“Huh. You piss him off too?”

“I guess.” Peter ought to hurry off to the hangar and see about squirrelling himself away in the Warbird, but he finds himself dithering. Yondu seems frazzled, and perhaps – just perhaps – a little less guarded because of it. “Why does he hate me so much? You ain't never given me a proper answer.”

Yondu chuckles, sounding like the old man he is. He rolls onto his back – Peter biting back his instinctive yelp of warning to mind the Walkman. The headphones squish a little, but they don't snap. Yondu's got a low song playing – Come and Get Your Love. Peter lets his shoulders slump slowly, fingers tapping to the beat.

“Kraggles,” says Yondu, both arms crossed over his eyes, “is from an egg-layin' species.”

Peter frowns. “What, like a chicken?”

“Whassa chicken?”

“A bird.”

“No then. He's got an ovipositor – lays his eggs inside other people.”

Peter's eyes go round. “Inside?”

Mom drew the line at letting Peter watch Alien, but that hadn't stopped him and some schoolfriends sneaking into the local drive-in lot after dark. They lasted all of forty-five minutes before the attendee caught them and tossed them out. Even confiscated their popcorn. But those forty-five minutes had been more than enough.

Yondu nods. “Yeah. Keeps 'em nice an' warm an' all. Course, only makes babies if he's with someone of his own kind, so ain't no hope of that from me.” This time, his laugh had more of an edge to it. “Not that it stops him tryin'.”

Peter's not listening, not really. A very important point has wiggled its way to the forefront of his mind. “Don't hens lay the eggs?”

Yondu unpeels his arms from his face to shoot him a quizzical look. “Hen...?”

“The lady chicken.” He's a little hopeful, he has to admit. Sure, there's precisely nothing about Kraglin that's feminine – no curves. (Those are important on a woman, right? Grandpa says so (or he used to until mum lost all hers, at which point he stopped.))

But if Kraglin's a girl, it means he and Yondu aren't queers. They claim Peter's god doesn't keep watch out here, but Peter learned the word omniscient in Sunday school. All-knowing means all-knowing, even in space.

Yondu snorts. “Stars, don't let him catch ya sayin' that. Look, kid. Yer a boy, right?”

Peter nods.

“How d'you know?”

“I got a. Um. Thingie.” Yondu tilts his head at him like he's waiting for more. When no more comes, he shrugs and creaks to sit, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. His toes poke through his holey socks, the nails naturally blue – which means the black ones on his hand must be painted, though Peter’s never seen him with a pot of polish.

“A thingie?”

“Um. Y'know.” Peter waggles a demonstrative finger in front of his fly. Yondu rolls his eyes.

“I know what a damn dick is. What I'm askin' is if that's all.”

Peter's never really thought about it before. It's just natural. Mom calls him her little man and Star-lord, Grandpa calls him boy when he does something wrong, he runs around with the boys at school. It just feels... right.

“I'm not sure,” he says tentatively. Yondu stands, lumbering past him for the shower, scratching his baggy pants as he goes.

“I don't got no thingie,” he tells Peter like he's giving him the time of day. “Ain’t how my species works. Kraglin's got a thingie like yours, but eggs come out of it rather than whatever you shoot.”

“Pee?” He’s fairly sure Kraglin pees. He kinda caught him in the act, first time they met. To be honest, he's still pretty horrified at the thought of an entire egg coming out his John-Thomas.

“I guess. Point is, space's a damned big place, an' yer gonna meet all sorts. So when someone tells ya they's a girl or a boy or somewhere between or neither or whatever the fuck else, ya don't start up twenty questions, yeah? You listen.”

Big words, coming from him. Peter doesn't think Yondu's listened to him once since he got here. Not properly.

“Anyway…” Yondu’s gaze treks to the cot. “His species are pretty vulnerable, when they first hatch, so they all get real protective of their offspring. Now, Kraglin don't like kids much - thinks you're all annoying gobshites - but that don't stop him getting attached. We’ve had a few brats join the crew before, but they... they didn't last. After the tenth one, he learnt better than to let that sentimental shit take hold.”

Ah. Peter’s mouth drops open. He’s slow to shut it. “W-what happened to the other kids?”

“They annoyed me,” says Yondu, but Peter knows him well enough by now to tell he’s lying. Still, it seems the conversation’s over. Yondu unwinds the Walkman, tugging the tangles from the wire – then tosses it onto the pillow, points warningly at Peter, and takes his handful of dry-wash into the shower.

Peter spares the Walkman a longing stare. But if he takes it, Yondu'll track him down. He's not going to ruin his own plan, not now. And so, he steps up to the bed and, rather than clipping the Walkman’s box to his belt, he turns it off so the tape won't run down.

One fact’s for sure. He can’t stay here, even if Kraglin and Yondu aren’t entirely awful. Even if Yondu’s gonna teach him to shoot. Not if he’s the latest in a long line of kidnapped kids, and all of his predecessors are dead.

“Bye mom,” he says quietly. Then, with a quick grin: “I'm gonna make you proud.”

Chapter Text

It's surprisingly easy to sneak onto the Warbird. You wouldn’t think so, given all Yondu’s recent paranoia, but he seems satisfied that the creepy blue man isn’t squatting on the Eclector.

The M-ship has been winched out of the space dock. It currently sits on the metal patio beside it, next to a refuelling pod. This means that one of the engineers on duty needs to hop in and check the cockpit gauges, make sure the pressure dials match up with what shows on the pod.

So Peter thinks, anyway. He has yet to learn the ins and outs of M-ship maintenance, but he absorbs what he can from observation.

What does a spaceship even run on? Petrol? Diesel? Whatever it is, it guzzles a helluva lot, and it smells weird, making Peter’s head all wobbly. His eyes water as he steals up the gang ramp and onto the ship. The engineer manning the fuel pod doesn’t notice – the job mostly seems to be comprised of kicking it and cussing.

The M-ship seems smaller than last time he boarded (or was sucked up via traction beam, against his will). Logic tells Peter it’s all a matter of perspective. He’s gotten used to running around the Eclector, wayfinding between the engines, following the flow of the UV lights. Of course an M-ship feels cramped. But overall, the Warbird hasn’t changed. Still the same rust-braided walls, the same interior snailshell curling back on itself, the cockpit elevated above.

Peter pads along, running his hand along the walls. The solars aren't on, so he activates his spacemask and watches UV thrum through the pipes. His fingers skate over dirty rivets, set in place with hard amber resin. By the time he hears footsteps, he’s stashed himself in the octagonal traction beam room, through which he entered this galaxy of pirates and aliens and music-thieving blue bastards. He peeps out to watch boots descend the cockpit ladder at the end of the corridor, followed by legs far shorter than Kraglin's, but just as thin. An engineer's toolbelt bumps against the man's bony hips. Peter ducks back into the traction beam room before the man steps onto the final rung of the ladder, wincing when his sneaker squeaks against the floor.

The engineer scratches at their long, unkempt hair. “Divu?” they call, boredly. “That you?”

“What’s me, Nutty?” comes a voice from outside.

“That squeak.”

“Eh.” The bearded engineer in charge of the fuel pod unclamps the nozzle, the pneumatic whine making Peter wince. “Prolly. Sorry, Nutty. Oh – uh. Hi, cap'n.”

Peter holds his breath as Yondu grunts greetings to his men and heads up the gang ramp.

“Still got that space mask on, sir?” Nutty blurts.

Yondu doesn't give Nutty the dignity of a response, even a whistled one. He barges the two of them out of the ship and punches the pressurize button.

Peter listens to the hiss of the airlock. The fuel-stench lingers, throbbing around his head, thick enough that every inhale feels like he’s chewing on air. It'll filter out once the oxy-scrubbers start cycling. That faint purr means Yondu has activated the vents – pushing out the bad gases and letting in the good. Peter only has a vague awareness of how it all works, but his mind isn't on the logistics.

Vents. Last time he tried to wiggle into them, during the whole airlock fiasco, he wasn't successful. But right now, those vents might be the best hiding spot on the ship. As soon as the engines start, Peter eases open the door to the traction bay and steals outside.

He glances at the cockpit ladder. Yondu is almost scarily silent when he's alone. No chatter, no cusses. Not even a whistle.

Peter can't hear mom's music playing either. He sure hopes Yondu hasn't forgotten the Walkman, left it lying on his crumpled, smelly bed. Mom would hate that.

He pussyfoots around the M-ship's inner loop, scanning the ceiling, walls and floor for those familiar grills. First one he spots is too high. Second – in the restroom – promises unpleasant smells. He hits jackpot in the crew dorm. The vent is tucked between two of the bunks, all of which are currently folded vertically, locked into the wall with magnets. Peter almost misses it thanks to his UV goggles; it's the exact shape as the light panels and everything's way brighter than it looks in actuality. He gets better results when he dismisses his spacemask. The grill sticks out like a clean patch would on Yondu's grimy skin.

Peter lets his grin curl out. He scurries to the vent, crouching beside it, running his fingers around its edge. It's got two latches that are supposed to let it pop off in your hands so you can run a space-hoover along the insides. He flicks them down, but the grill won’t budge.

It’s stuck. Crap.

Peter heaves and heaves again. Panic builds, turning the cramped dormitory into a cage that closes in on him with every breath.

He doesn’t have long. Once Yondu’s plotted a course for his autopilot, what’s he gonna do? He’s gonna stomp to his cabin to catch up on all that lost sleep.

“C’mon,” Peter whispers. The wires cut into his fingers. If he pulls any harder, he’ll draw blood.

He’s weighing up the pros and cons – access to the vents over bleeding hands – when things (for once!) go his way. The seal breaks with a pop. Flakes of rust speckle Peter's jeans, along with weird black gunk – but he didn't come this far to be put off by a bit of Ravager grossness. The tunnel ahead is far too tight for a grown man, but a kid should be able to wiggle through, no problem. There won't be room to turn around, so he'll need to crawl in backwards and reattach the grill behind him.

His pulse bounces at the thought. Even with his spacemask, he won't be able to watch where he's going. He's heard orloni (gross hairless mole-rats with far too many teeth) scuttling about the Eclector's intra-deck storage spaces. If he backs into a nest and gets stuck, they'll start eating him feet-first.

Clunk, clunk, clunk. Steps down the cockpit ladder.

Peter doesn't waste time freezing. He faces away from the open duct and places his boots inside. He gets his hands under him like he's in a wheelbarrow race and walks backwards, metal closing over his hips, his chest, his head.

It takes longer than anticipated – not least because Peter keeps banging his knees. Yondu, thank everything, decides he needs a swizz. By the time he swaggers for his cabin, still doing up his fly – gross; and his hands obviously haven’t been washed, grosser – Peter's far enough up the tunnel that he can’t be seen. He creeps as close to the bars as he dares and checks to make sure Yondu has the headphones around his neck.

Yes – there they are. Bright orange against dirty blue. Yondu lifts one pad then the other, scratching underneath, and digs a finger into his ear for good measure.

Peter grimaces. He never thought that Yondu might actually be more hygienic when he had company.

They pass through a single jump port. There’s no getting used to the sensation; everything crushes onto a quantum scale and elongates into infinity, then snaps back into shape like a rubber band. It makes Peter's skin feel brittle like bone and his bones soft as flesh, although they invert again just as rapidly.

Yondu barely seems to notice. He yawns, showing off all his snaggly teeth, and takes his first step towards the moldy comforts of his mattress.

That’s when his comm goes off. Bring-bring, bring-bring.

Yondu taps the button without bothering to check the caller. “Yeah, yeah, Krags,” he says, scratching at his stubble. “Love ya baby, wish you was here.”

“Good,” says a new voice. Peter stiffens so tight his legs cramp. He forgets how to breathe. “I'm going to be, shortly. I'll admit that I didn't expect to see you in this neck of the galaxy, Udonta. But as I hear you're looking for me, shouting my name at every port you pass, I suppose it's only polite to drop in personally and invite you to desist.”

Peter knows who it is. He never heard him talk, but there’s no doubt about it. The hunter has become the hunted. This is the creepy guy from the bar.

If Yondu’s just as freaked out, he doesn’t show it. He pauses for a moment, drawing a deep breath and pushing it silently out. Then says, in a voice as flat as his expression: “You’re a war criminal. You’re supposed to be dead.”

“You certainly did your best to kill me last time we met.” A chuckle. It reminds Peter of crackling leaves. “Think of me as a revenant, Udonta. This is Galaxy’s Edge: here there be ghosts, and monsters, and dead men walking.”

Yondu sneers, obviously unimpressed by the creep’s melodrama. Peter’s not so brave. He shivers, and not just because of the cool fresh air blowing against his back.

“I oughta call the Nova Corps,” growls Yondu. “M’sure there's a whole loada bounty hunters who'd like a piece of an exiled Accuser.”

The man – Accuser? – chuckles again. “There's no law this far from the Core. No jurisdiction from any Empire. Not even the Ravager Code has meaning this far out – not that it would matter to you. After all, I am not the only one in exile.”

Yondu’s muscles bunch all the way up to his jaw. “How the fuck d’you know about that? You been followin’ me, freak?”

“I did my research after you showed up at that bar.” The Accuser tuts. “Oh, Yondu. What have you got yourself wound up in?”

Yondu's teeth scrape, gold on silver, metallic and harsh. “Shaddup. I'mma call my men, have 'em come an' tear you a red gapin’ new one” -

Ka-boom. The blast rocks the ship. Peter slides down the vent shaft, scrabbling at the walls. He wedges himself in place at the cost of a fingernail and the rubber treads on his shoes. Hurts – ow. He pants through the pain, elbows and shins jammed into the duct’s flimsy sides, holding himself still.

Yondu, thankfully, is too busy peeling himself off the wall to notice any odd noises from his ventilation system. “The hell was that?”

“Your communications array.” The Accuser sounds insufferably smug. “I didn't only commandeer Halan stealth tech when I retreated from the warfront.”

“Ran away with yer tail between yer legs, ya mean?”

The Accuser’s voice lowers, sinking from velvet to guttural. “Fool. If you'd bothered to send out a scanning probe when you dropped through the portal, you might've picked up my cruiser. But then again, you've always been... sloppy.”

If Yondu’s goal is to piss the guy off, he’s excelling. Peter isn’t scared – course he isn’t. He’s seen what Yondu’s arrow can do. He’s seen him whistle through crew and tracking beacons and whatever else takes his fancy. This Accuser guy – this coward – doesn’t stand a chance.

Yondu seems to agree. “By the time I'm done with ya,” he says quietly, “slop'll be all that's left.”

“Unfortunately,” says the Accuser, “you’re outgunned. One shot from my ship can rip through your engines. So – would you like to surrender, place that ridiculous arrow of yours in a vented airlock, and let me on board? Or I can shoot you now and save myself the worry.”

Peter grins. This is it. Yondu will have a trick, a plan, an ace up his sleeve. The Accuser won't know what's hit him.

Yondu raises his head. Even from his low vantage, Peter sees the cold-forged determination in his freaky red eyes.

“I’d rather die than let you touch me again,” he says.

What? No! That’s not how this is supposed to go!

There’s a sigh from the far end of the line. “Very well,” says the Accuser. “What a shame.”

Yondu folds his arms, jaw squared. “Bring it,” he says.

Oh, hell no! Just because Yondu has a death wish, that doesn’t mean he gets to drag Peter along!

Only one thing for it. Yeah, he’ll be in deep doo-doo – but frankly, Peter prefers a week on scrub shifts to space exposure. His lungs still sting from last time, whenever he draws a deep breath. They’re hurting right now, in fact. He breathes too high and too fast, sweat lubricating his slide down the vent.

“Yondu!” he hisses, wrapping his hands around the bars. “Yondu, hey! Down here! What the hell man? Don’t just give up!”

Yondu’s eyes go round as the quarter Peter gave him. His mouth drops open, and for a whole awful second he looks terrified.

“Ready to give?” murmurs the Accuser. Gentle clicks filter over Yondu’s comm watch, as he toys with the targeting array.

Yondu’s still staring at Peter. His eyes are helpless as mom’s were when she pulled him onto her knee and whispered mommy’s sorry, but mommy’s sick, and mommy’s not going to ever get better. Then that horrible expression smooths, gone so quick Peter’s not sure he ever saw it. He raises his watch to his mouth and activates the comm.

“Yeah,” he says. “I surrender.”

Chapter Text

After Yondu snaps off the comm, it’s time for Peter to face the music. His captain stomps to the vent, effortlessly pops the panel (Peter loosened it for him, that's all) and fishes out his stowaway by the nearest ear.

Peter lands on the cabin floor, hollering something fierce. “Ow! Ow-ow-ow-ow-ow!”

“Shuddit,” Yondu snarls. Peter was wrong – that wasn’t fear on his face. It was anger. The most Peter's ever seen directed his way. And it's stone-cold terrifying.

He can see where Yondu's metal teeth have been hammered into his gums. The creases around his snarling mouth are deep as canyons. Peter wars between cringing away and growling right back – because he's practically a Ravager now, no matter what Yondu says. Before he can make up his mind, Yondu plucks the headphones from round his neck, bundling them up in wire. He shoves the Walkman into his chest and Peter back up the vent shaft.

Peter's almost too bewildered to talk. Almost. “W-what the hell? What're you doing, what's going on...”

“Shut,” said Yondu, “up.”

Peter, after a rebellious 'why?' does so. Yondu's eyes blaze like red suns, but he cups Peter's cheek rather than smacking it, his palm rough and smelling of radiation. Peter’s too shocked to do more than stare. “Ya crawl back up there. Ya listen to yer music. You keep away from any vents. Watch the fucking wall, remember?”

Peter’s throat dries up. “Is he gonna kill you?” he whispers. Mom's music rests against his chest, an inch away from his fast-thrumming heart. “Yondu, is he...?”

“What part of 'shaddup' are ya not understanding, brat?” Yondu stands, eyes still crackling. He sneers down at Peter, then start unbuckling his arrow harness, scowling all the way. That was part of the creepy guy’s – the Accuser’s – demands for his surrender: the arrow should be placed in one of the two external airlocks and vented, so it won’t respond to Yondu’s whistles.

Meaning he’ll be defenceless.

Peter quivers deeper into the vent. “Tell me he's not gonna kill you,” he croaks.

Yondu yanks at the harness straps, dragging the leather through the metal rings. When it sticks he wrenches, and – snap. There it goes. The two halves of the buckle twinkle on the floor, and Yondu glares at the little ruby beads set into the arrow fletching, their glow and ebb matched to the pulsing crystal on his head.

“He ain't gonna kill me,” he says quietly. “Not up close an' personal. For an Accuser, he sure don't like gettin' his hands dirty. If he wanted to, he'd do it from a distance. Anyway, this ain't about gettin' me dead.”

Peter still doesn't know what an Accuser is. But this is some relief, at least.

“Is he gonna hurt you?” he asks instead.

Yondu's eyes flash. “Get up that fuckin' vent, Quill.”

“Well, is he?”

“Put on yer music, watch the fuckin' wall.” Yondu's grin doesn't have a dash of humor in it. “Then you don't gotta find out.”

Peter, for once, does what he’s told.

The vent is dark. It’s uncomfortable to listen to his music with the space helmet on, so Peter removes it, counting his breaths as the metal peels back from his face. He can’t turn the volume up full. Every bump of his knees echoes, and while the sounds of an eight-year-old scuffling through the pipes might be fobbed off as fighting Orloni, strumming guitars aren’t so easy to ignore.

However, as Peter discovers, if he keeps his volume low, he can still hear everything that’s going on.

The Accuser and Yondu are in the main airlock. Yondu’s arrow is tied to the wall in the minor emergency airlock at the ship’s aft end, fully vented. Peter tries his best to concentrate on the music.

Ooh, child, things are gonna get easier…

“Take off your coat,” is the first thing the Accuser says. Yondu, predictably, snarls. “Oh, calm down. That nasty arrow might be out the way, but I need to be sure you aren’t carrying concealed weapons.”

Ooh, child, things will get brighter…

Peter can’t hear the leather hitting the floor.

Some day, yeah, we’ll get it together and we’ll get it all done…

“Good,” the Accuser purrs. “Turn around, face away. That’s it. You remember me?”

Yondu grunts his affirmative. The Accuser must’ve taken off his cloaking device, or whatever he wore that made him undetectable to anyone who wasn’t in a spacemask.

“Good.” He cocks something – a pistol, Peter thinks, or the alien equivalent. “Remember this too. If you try anything, I shoot you. If, by some miracle, you get the upper hand... Well, I have a detonator here that will blow my ship's entire arsenal. Both of us will go out in a supernova, and your men will have no body to burn." A quiet scoff. "Not that an exile like you would ever be allowed into the Ravager afterlife, but even so – unlike yourself, when I kill someone, I like to be thorough about it.”

Some day when your head is much lighter…

“What d’you even want?” Yondu’s voice is barely audible. Peter finds himself straining to hear it, then clenches his eyes shut and determinedly drowns him out, singing along to the music in his head.

We’ll walk in the rays of a beautiful sun; some day, when the world is much brighter…

There’s no ignoring the Accuser though. Whenever he speaks, a knot yanks tight in Peter’s guts. Footsteps narrate his passage as he walks in a slow ring, circling Yondu like a hungry shark, fabric rustling as - what? He pushes up Yondu's shirt?

“You lasered away the brands of bondship?”

“After I killed every one of you fucks.” Yondu manages a laugh – Peter doesn’t know how. “Seems I jumped the gun on you.”

“Mm. Seems you did. Perhaps I’ll renew my mark...”

 Ooh, child, things are gonna be easier…

“I’ll get rid of it again,” Yondu says. “Don’t think I won’t.”

An odd serenity fills his voice. Peter would be pissing himself in his place – hopefully not literally, unlike last time. Thinking of that brings a mortified flush to his face. Kraglin still calls him ‘Piss-lord’ when he’s feeling ornery. Dick.

“You can scar me up as much as ya fuckin’ well like, you jackass,” Yondu continues. “Ain’t nothin’ you can do to me that ain’t been done before. Ain’t nothin’ you can do to me that I won’t walk off. I’m gonna kill you properly this time, an’ then I’m gonna laser off every scar you leave on me, and it’ll be like ya never fuckin’ existed.”

The silence lasts a whole beat. It’s broken by another of Yondu’s laughs, even uglier than the first.

“That’s it, isn’t it?” he says. “You been out here so long, running from the bounty hunters, no one to boss about and give orders to. Soon as you see me, you wanna relive the glory days, huh?”

Peter peels up one side of his headphones – sorry Jackson Five, but he’s not even pretending to listen now. Yondu’s voice lowers, roughens, dipping into a deadly whisper.

“But y’see, it don’t work like that. I ain’t scared of you no more.”

Is this empty bravado? Yondu sure looked pretty spooked when he first heard his old ghost’s voice. But no – there’s something in his tone. Like he’s starting to believe what he’s saying as he says it, working it out as he goes.

“I’m stronger than you,” he tells the Accuser. “Don’t matter who’s holdin’ what gun or what scars you leave. I’m stronger, cause I’m gonna forget about this and get on with my fuckin’ life as soon as you’re dead. Just one bad day. That’s all you can give me. Just another shitty memory to drink and fuck out of my head.”

The Accuser is quiet for a while. When Peter slithers silently down the vent, he catches a glimpse of them through the open door: Yondu fighting not to tense as the big blue guy steps up to his back, not touching him in the slightest, but leaning to breathe his answer over Yondu's pointed ear:

“That sounds like a challenge.”

No music can drown out the next noise. It’s a high sharp keen, there and gone so fast Peter would think he’d imagined it if it wasn’t for the sudden gloss of sweat on his face, smothering him in the stink of his own fear. He knows that noise. He’s heard it before. It’s the same noise the frogs made when the bullies smushed them with sticks down by the forest pond. The same noise that came from the bunny grandpa ran over on the way back from the hospital.

And now? Now Yondu’s making that noise as well. Peter scuttles back up the vent like a spooked orloni, a bright splash remaining on his eyes from the white-hot glowing ring at the end of the Accuser's hammer.

No more noises follow – to the Accuser’s disappointment. “It’s not like you to be so quiet. If I shred a bird’s wings, I want to hear it sing. So why don’t you be a good boy, and…”

Peter pulls his headphones back down. He claps his hands over him, huddling up as much as he can in the confined space.

Yondu wouldn’t want him to hear him scream. Peter definitely doesn’t want to.

Tears leak out the corner of his eyes. Dammit. Dammit all. He promised himself he wasn’t going to cry anymore, didn’t he? But this is all so much, too much; and sure, if Peter hadn’t spoken up when he did, they’d both be dead, but at least Yondu wouldn’t be making those awful stomped-bunny squeaks as the Accuser hurts him.

Peter pauses. His shoulders press on the roof of the pipe, his legs on the sides and the floor. He thinks back to a sticky summer day – his last on Earth. How he hurled himself against the older boys, screeching and flailing with untrained fists, thumb inside the fingers.

Don’t hurt it! Don’t hurt the frog! He’s only little – what did he ever do to you?

In hindsight, he’s lucky he walked away with a black eye rather than a dip in the pond. They were older than him, bigger than him too. But while Peter was too late to save that little frog, he caused enough of a ruckus to bring over some adults, causing the bullies to scatter and the rest of their amphibian prisoners to escape to the cool, dark sanctuary beneath the lily pads.

This time, the adult is the one who needs saving. Peter doesn’t have any back-up – he considers getting to the cockpit and comming Kraglin before recalling that the Accuser blew out their transmitters. They’re on their own.

What can Peter do? One little Terran against a big, nasty monster, one who's cruel enough to make the a-hole who kidnapped him afraid?

Peter doesn't stand a chance. If he ran out and started swinging at that a-hole's legs, the Accuser would barely notice. He'd pick him up by the throat, letting Peter's legs kick and dance at the air. Then he'd hurt him, same as he's hurting Yondu.

Or he'll blow them all up. Peter had only gotten a glimpse of him, but in addition to the glowing hammer and the cold, dead eyes, he remembers the remote-sized box hanging from the Accuser's belt, with a big red button at the tip. That must be the detonator.

But he can't just lay here! C'mon, think. Think. Just because Peter can't fight, it doesn't mean he can't be useful in other ways.

The Accuser made Yondu lock away his arrow first, didn’t he? That means he’s scared of it. That means he thinks that if Yondu has control of the arrow, he can win.

That means there’s a chance.

Peter turns off his music. He knows what he has to do.

Chapter Text

Peter hangs the headphones around his neck. He wishes they still smelled of mom - but he's old enough by now to know you can wish as much as you want to, plead and pray and beg until you’re blue in the face as Yondu, and it won't do jack.

God has a plan, mom whispered into his curls the last time she’d been able to sit up in her hospital bed and hug him. You'll see, Petey-pie. One day it'll all work out.

But what if you didn't like God's plan?

Peter hadn't dared ask that back then. Now though, he lets himself explore that question in the privacy of his head.

What if you don't want to sit back and let things unfold? You can still make choices, right? You can still decide whether you want fate to wash you away or whether you want to swim against the current.

Peter's swimming right now. He needs to kick hard just to keep his head above the water. But maybe, just maybe, if his luck holds and he's very, very careful, he might be able to save himself - and his captain.

He creeps through the pipes. It's slow-going; he freezes at every creak. Despite all the stopping and starting, he knows he has to hurry. By the time he reaches the grill opposite the cockpit ladder, the furthest point away from the Accuser and Yondu, he's perspiring from more from fear. He squeezes his fingers between the dirty bars, feeling for the latches, eyes on the prize.

Thank everything that his mental map of the Warbird held true. The emergency airlock is right in front of him, tucked neatly under the cockpit ladder. It's smaller than the main hold, and the light strobes violent red.

Means it's open. Sure enough, through the thick, greasy glass, Peter sees nothing but darkness.

If he opens that door, they all die. Their air will rip out into the black, along with the three of them and anything else that isn't nailed down.

Forget whatever grudges Yondu and the Accuser hold against each other. They'll be dashed off the walls hard enough to snap their necks before they get the chance to activate their spacemasks. Which means, if Peter wants to fetch the arrow, he has to close that external door.

Yondu logged him for airlock access on the Eclector. Peter prays he did the same here.

This time, God's listening.

Peter undoes the vent grill, catching it before it swings down and smacks the floor. If the Accuser walks twenty paces around the curving internal corridor, he'll find Peter half-in and half-out of the wall, like a rat in a trap.

No. Don't think about failure. Think about winning. Think about fetching the arrow, Yondu ruffling your hair.

Think of mom.

Peter strokes his headphones. While he knows better than to hum, Ain't No Mountain High Enough buzzes around his head.

He's Peter Quill. He's Star-Lord. He can do anything.

After wiggling out of the vent, he approaches the airlock. The arrow twinkles at him through the glass. Peter tentatively pokes the interface panel, static whispering against the pad of his thumb.

“Close,” he whispers back, and silently cheers when the airlock does as it’s told.

For all of three seconds. That's when the control panel issues a cheerful 'access granted' tone – beep-boop, like a finished microwave.

Peter's stomach flips. Oh hell.

“What,” snarls the Accuser, “was that.”

“I had some clothes on vac-wash,” Yondu growls back. “Means they're done.”

A scoff. “I'm no fool. The only question is who do I shoot first? You or your friend? Or..." Peter imagines him stroking the detonator. "I take us all down together..."

Sweat slimes Peter's neck. He can't get the airlock door open and nab the arrow before the Accuser shoots Yondu – or smashes his skull with that giant hammer, or blows all of them up. He's failed.

Dammit.

“Dumb fucking kid,” Yondu mutters, which is kinda uncalled for, seeing as Peter at least tried to save him. “Shoulda stayed in the vents.”

“A child?” Peter imagines the Accuser's eyebrows rising, under their dry-caked coat of black paint. “The pink creature from the bar? Is he Xandarian?”

“Terran,” says Yondu, far too fast.

“An uncontacted species? But why would you have one of those? Unless... Don't tell me you procreated?”

That startles a bark of a laugh out of Yondu and a noise of intense disagreement from Peter. “You kiddin'?”

“No way!” Peter yells. “My mom had taste!”

“Bullshit,” Yondu calls back – as if he'd know! He's deviant with Kraglin.

The Accuser speaks up before Peter can shout as much. “He certainly sounds youthful. Boy. Why don't you come here?”

Sweat saturates the underarms of Peter's shirt, turning the fabric heavy and dark. “You've still got the gun,” he says.

“Well, of course. What did you expect? But I vow to do you no harm.”

“He's lying,” says Yondu. “He'll shoot you as soon as he sees you.”

The Accuser scoffs. “Do not do my character a disservice, Udonta. I am above harming children.”

“Didn't stop you from forcin’ us to wipe out whole damn cities.”

“That was different. They were infidels; it was war.”

“Still hate getting yer fuckin' hands dirty. Fuckin' freak.”

A clonk is following by a cuss. From the sounds of it, the butt of the gun just bounced off Yondu's implant. “Enough lip,” says the Accuser coldly. “Child, come here.”

“Don'tchu dare, kiddo.”

Peter glances between the airlock and the corridor.  His brain stalls. He turns up blank after blank. There's no way out. Either he walks around the curve of the corridor and the Accuser shoots him – because like hell does Peter believe his guff about not hurting kids – or he stays here and the Accuser shoots Yondu first.

The Accuser makes the decision for him. “If you won't come here,” he says, “you can get in that airlock and shut the door. There are some things children shouldn't listen to.”

Oh yeah. Peter recalls Snout's execution all too well, and every horror that followed. Yondu, in contrast, snorts.

“Big talk from a slave-keepin' jackass.”

Peter isn't experienced in the art of hostage negotiation, but he suspects you're not supposed to piss your captor off. “I'm getting in the airlock!” he yells, before Yondu gets himself killed and makes this whole grand rescue pointless. “Bye!”

“See,” snarls the Accuser. “The boy knows how to listen. He knows how to obey. All this time as a freed man has left you with a severe deficit in discipline.”

“You,” says Yondu, so quiet it's only the echo of his words off the metalwork that reaches Peter's ears, “ain't nothin' more than a washed-out freak on the run from every damn Empire there is. Outcast by yer own fuckin' race. You’re just tryin' to pretend like things're the way they were. But newsflash, a-hole. You lost. Ain't no more war. Ain't no more brands on my back. It's over.”

Yondu is a lot more confident in this guy's reluctance to kill him than Peter. He smacks the airlock palm-pad, jumping over the rim before he hears the beep. An idea is forming, although it's flaky as of yet. Already, the biggest variable is how much Yondu plans on antagonizing this guy, and how long the Accuser's patience will hold.

“In the airlock!” he cries.

“Good," calls the Accuser. "Now activate your spacemask, strap yourself to the lifeline, and vent.”

“He don't know how to use the lifeline,” Yondu tries. He's starting to sound frantic. “Stars above, he's just a little kid.”

“And if he wants to stay a kid rather than jetsam, he'd better figure it out.”

Peter glances down at the arrow. It's tucked into a wall-mounted contraption made of crisscrossing black straps. Perhaps, if he squirms into it, buckles them over his chest and around his waist...? It's like a bungee jump. He'll still be sucked out when they vent, but not by much, and he'll have a rope to pull himself back along.

He can do this.

Peter activates his space helmet. He holds Yondu’s arrow in one clammy hand while the other arranges the harness. It's intended for outside maintenance, chunky and secure. Like wearing multiple seatbelts at once. Peter looks it over ten times, assures himself there's no faults, and looks it over twice more.

His hand shakes above the vent panel. The space helmet generates a small, weak forcefield, enough to protect his skin.

His idea loiters in the clumsy prototype phase. He's kinda banking on it all just rolling together at the end. But he's not gonna sit here and listen to Yondu get hurt – even if thinking of the last time he was in an airlock gives him the jeebies all the way to his heebies.

Yondu caught him back then. Yondu caught him, and now Peter's gotta repay the favor.

“I'm shutting the door,” he calls, hating the quaver in his voice. But at the very least, that quaver will reassure the Accuser that he's just a stupid Terran, far too scared to pull off what he's about to.

“Y’all strapped in?” yells Yondu. “Spacemask on?”

For a moment, Peter could forget that Yondu's kneeling on the floor with a gun to his head. A memory flares: bumping along in grandpa's truck with no seatbelt, grandpa keeping one arm over his chest to hold him steady. He rolls his eyes.

“Course I am, cap’n,” he hollers, and pushes the button.

The door in front of him gushes shut. The door behind him gushes open.

Whoosh. Out he goes.

The rope is an umbilical that stretches from his belly, where the harness wraps around. Peter somersaults into space. He tumbles over and over, cartwheeling past a map of stars he's never seen. When he faces the conjoined ships, they look oddly two-dimensional, like a paper cut-out pasted to a blackboard. When he's facing away, space is so vast and empty that it feels like it's crushing him.

He's here. He's really here. He's up in the heavens, gazing starry-eyed (ha-ha) at the constellations. With his helmet activated, every color in the far-off nebula reveals itself to him: toxic greens and fluorescing pinks and yellows, warm autumnal oranges and brilliant blue. But he can't just float here forever, the arrow clutched to his chest. He's got a job to do.

Peter reaches the end of the cord. It pulls taut, leaving Peter bobbing like a buoy. He raises a hand, then the other, still clutching the arrow. Kicks his legs - and doesn't move. It's an unnerving sensation, like when you're running and running and running in a nightmare but not gaining any ground. Peter thrashes out of sheer confusion, but soon enough he works out that he's not going anywhere unless he pulls himself along the rope.

He does so, tentatively at first, then faster when he realizes just how effortless weightless travel is. One heave and he just keeps going, floating closer and closer to the ship on the momentum of his weedy eight-year-old muscles.

It's strange. So strange. He can't tell if the ship's coming towards him or he's going towards the ship. The contradicting sense of inertia and movement makes his belly pucker, like the time he drank too much slushee at the drive-in cinema and, on the journey home, had to beg Grandpa to pull off the highway so he could be sick.

Peter shudders. He doesn't want to know what vomiting in a space helmet is like.

He prefers moving himself to floating, so he grips his rope and keeps tugging himself along. He reaches the Warbird in no time, way faster than he could ever climb the rope in gym class. Only, as it turns out, it's far easier to speed up in space than to slow down. Peter smacks into the hull. He bounces off – ouch! Then has to pull himself back again, slower this time, digging his fingers into the rubber sealant ring that circles the airlock to prevent himself drifting away. Then and only then, he allows himself to contemplate the next phase of Plan Rescue The Captain And Prove You've Got What It Takes To Be A Ravager, Even If You're Only Eight Years Old (working title).

This is the bit he doesn't like, the bit he's been putting out of his mind.

He's gotta remove the harness.

If he lets go, if he moves just a fragment of an inch beyond the ship, he'll keep drifting forever. Peter trembles at the thought of bobbing alone in the black. There'll be nothing to catch him if he falls, and he's only gonna have one hand because he's got to hold Yondu's arrow, and this is all too much, and if mom could see him now she'd be so worried and she'd hug him extra tight – but she might just be a little proud as well.

Peter sniffs. Mom's watching, strumming her guitar beside the spirit in the sky. Yondu needs saving. He's not giving up now.

Peter clips the Walkman to his belt and tucks the arrow through the belt loop beside it. The fletching sticks on the denim, so it's not like it's going to fall out. After that, he grasps both sides of the harness's big central chest buckle. He thinks of Yondu shoving the Walkman into his hands, banishing him to the vents so he wouldn't have to face the Accuser. He thinks of mom on her hospital bed, tracing his bruised eye with delicate fingers, thin as the bones in the wing of a bird.

Be good, baby. Be good.

Peter presses the release on his umbilical. It pops open, soundless in the vacuum. Peter holds onto the airlock as he kicks loose, too terrified to release his grip for so much as a second. Now he's floating without a safety line, the Accuser's ship has never looked so far away.

Peter chomps his left cheek until he tastes blood; until the sharp, pure pain snaps him free of his spiralling thoughts. He's not going to snivel in the safety of the airlock while the Accuser's hurts Yondu. Peter Quill, savior of frogs, would never do such a thing. Peter Quill, lord of the stars, son of Meredith Quill, certainly wouldn't.

And so, Peter starts to climb.

He picks his way across the M-ship's fuselage, never letting both hands leave the metal at once. Creeping over the ship, dodging all the portholes, he swings to cling gecko-like off the main airlock, where the magnets clamp it to the Accuser's ship in a dry metal kiss. No way is he getting in that way. He needs to find another door.

The Accuser's ship looks nothing like the Warbird – or the Eclector, for that matter. Not like the shiny star-fish of the Nova cruisers either. Spaceships, Peter decides, are kinda like cars. All cars have a steering wheel and wheels and a brake pedal, but some have cool wings or speedstripes. And you have trucks and beetles and jeeps too, so they come in all shapes and sizes, even though they’re all sort-of the same thing.

But spaceships have an even greater degree of variation. The Accuser’s vessel is made of seven jet black spikes. It’s longer than the Warbird but considerably slimmer, narrowing to the point that connects to the Warbird. When Peter touches both it and the Warbird at the same time, they vibrate at subtly different frequencies, like subwoofers at one of the raves mom used to sneak out to, the ones he wasn't supposed to know about as a kid.

Slowly, gradually, he releases the Warbird. He drifts along the outside of the kissing airlocks to the ship next door. It’s significantly smoother than the Warbird. While that might look prettier, it also means fewer handholds. Peter has to follow the lines where the plates are welded together, which leaves him with just enough knobbly sealant to grip.

He travels slowly. But slow and steady wins the race, like grandpa used to say, and if Peter gets stuck he'll be of no help to anyone. Just as he's despairing ever finding another way in, he spots a ring standing out from the ship's flank. If he holds the external pipeline one-handed and kicks away – careful, careful – he can crane around the metal curve and see the glass within.

Another airlock. Jackpot.

Peter inches over – and realizes the first snag in his barely sketched-out plan. He’s not going to have airlock access to a stranger’s ship. Stupid. What the hell was he thinking?

He touches the pad anyway, just in case. He's pleasantly surprised when the door reels open.

Emergency access: permitted, read a scrolling series of lights, broadcast over the interface relay. There isn't even a microwave-bing.

Peter grins. “I like you more than the Warbird already.”

He shuts the airlock behind him. The vents open and a gush of air smacks his chest. The forcefield from his spacemask regulates his temperature well enough that he can't tell whether it's hot or cold, but Peter performs a tiny victory-dance all the same.

He did it! He made it! This might actually work!

The arrow sits snug in his belt loop, the Walkman beside it. Now, he has to get it to Yondu.

First though, there’s the small matter of their broken communication array – and the Accuser’s threat to blow them sky-high if Yondu tries anything (is there such thing as ‘sky-high’, when you’re already in space?)

Peter creeps through the alien ship. The solars glow a different color to the ones on the Warbird, and pretty lights twinkle from the cockpit, lit up like the city at Chrismas, entrancing him, drawing him in like a bug to a zapper.

He heads there first. From watching Yondu fly the Warbird, he’s got a pretty good idea of which button does what – but, it turns out, the Accuser lays out his cockpit differently. Peter scowls at the alien controls, throttles where there should be joysticks, buttons where there should be levers, all made out of purple-glowing quartz. Thankfully, when he taps the central screen, a menu comes up in a spiky language that it only takes his translator a second to parse.

Peter scrolls through until he finds the comm panel. It’s set to Stealth, scanning nearby long- and short-range signals without giving any output.

If the Warbird’s tracking and comms system went offline at this precise location, Kraglin will have noticed. Peter’s sure of it. Only problem is, Kraglin might assume Yondu’s turned everything off on purpose, to hide from those Nova Corps space-police guys.

Unless…

Peter jabs the off button besides ‘Stealth mode’. The lights in the cockpit change from purple to red, which makes him jump, but apparently that’s just the normal non-stealth setting, because no alarm goes off and no big laser gun pops out the wall to zap him. Whatever tech the Accuser’s using, it isn’t biocoded like that of the Ravagers – which fits with what Yondu said about him being an outcast.

Despite the fancy guns, it seems the Accuser can only afford low security. Peter's glad. That makes the next part easier.

Satisfied that the Accuser’s ship is now broadcasting – meaning, if Kraglin’s half as smart as Peter thinks he is, he’ll notice that a mysterious ship popped up at the exact location the Warbird vanished – Peter starts scrolling again. The detonation command is at the bottom of the list. He taps it, heart in his throat – it can't possibly be this easy, can it?

Apparently not. Rather than letting him turn off the detonation command as quickly as he activated the comms, a new screen flashes up, demanding a password. Damn. Peter doesn’t know anything about the Accuser, other than the basics – creepy, big, mean, blue. And even if he could guess the password, he wouldn’t know how to spell it in the Accuser’s native language.

So, he can’t manually override the Accuser’s ability to blow up his ship at will. Which means…

Which means he’s gotta do this another way.

Peter checks the command panel, searching for a schematic of the cockpit. He finds one eventually - this ship seems to be a hire-out, complete with user manual. Once Peter has memorized which levers and joysticks he needs, repeating them to himself until he’s certain, he dismisses the holographic command panel with shaking hands.

Second thoughts clamour at his mind – there must be another option, another route to take that’s way less likely to piss the Accuser off. But Peter can’t think of one. And every minute he sits here in the cockpit of the Accuser’s ship, is another minute where Yondu gets hurt.

The little frog squeaks in his memories. Peter lowers his headphones over his ears, hitting play. The last chords of Ooh Child hum through his head, followed by the boppy opening to Go All The Way.

He shuts his eyes. Imagines mom sat up on her hospital bed, fighting not to collapse back, arms shaking with the strain, but still smiling at him, still cuddling him close and kissing his hair.

He can be strong like her. He knows it.

Headphone volume low, Peter steals along the main tunnel. The layout is considerably easier to get his head around than any of the Ravager ships, which are designed to confuse intruders or young kidnapped Terrans. It’s just one long straight passage. Beyond the airlocks, what he can see of the Warbird looks deserted.

Perhaps the Accuser took Yondu into the cabins, or the cockpit? Peter hopes so. He doesn’t want them to see the Warbird's empty rear airlock, or the safety harness floating beyond it, devoid of arrow or small Terran boy.

“Please,” he mutters under his breath. “Please don’t see me.”

His sneakers squeak horrendously loud. Beyond the muffling pads of his headphones, the only other sounds are white noise, space static: the quiet hum of oxygenerators and the low rumble from the engines, low as an idling school bus. But Peter makes it down the corridor unaccosted. He peeks through the opened airlocks, his helmet's luminous red eyes glowing in the gloom, and scans the Warbird's main hold. Satisfied he’s alone, he pulls the arrow from his belt and gently lays it on the Warbird’s side of the airlocks.

There. Now Yondu can defend himself. And hopefully, defend Peter, too.

Next up is the tricky part. Grandpa used to bet on horses, but he lost big this one time when Peter was tiny and had to swap his car for the cranky old truck. He didn’t bet any more after that. Peter knows that when you play the odds, you’re not guaranteed to win. The question here is whether he really thinks Yondu can notice the arrow and shoot the Accuser dead before he hits the detonator.

Peter imagines what that’ll feel like (the boom, the whoosh of air vanishing into space, the heat that’ll slam into him like balled fist). Then he squeezes his fists tight, and smacks the panel in the Warbird to shut the airlock between the two ships.

Beep-boop, the airlock announces, to everyone on board.

No time to see how Yondu and the Accuser react. Peter hits the matching panel that activates the Accuser’s outer airlock, which closes in a sleek swish of plexiglass, sealing Peter in - and the Accuser out. No sooner has it clamped shut then Peter bursts into action, sprinting to the cockpit. He flings himself into the pilot’s seat, fingers flexing at the thought of all those lovely shiny buttons that Yondu never lets him press.

Time to prove that little Terrans aren’t to be messed with.

“It feels so riiiight,” he sings, bobbing his head along to the beat so he doesn’t do anything else, like scream or cry or shiver with fear. At least, he figures, if he's gonna die here, he'll get to fly a spaceship first. “To be with you here, toniiiiight…”

Then he rams the thrusters to full, and blasts the Accuser's vessel away from the Warbird, into the endless night.

Chapter Text

Or at least, that’s what Peter tries to do. Turns out, just shutting the airlocks isn’t enough to initiate a decoupling procedure. Which means, when he activates the engines, he drags the Warbird – and Yondu, and their enemy – after him.

“Shit!” Peter screams, clinging to the rattling joysticks, smushed into his chair as both ships shoot into empty space.

A whoosh from behind him – the airlocks have opened. “What in stars' name?” the Accuser roars.

Shit. Shit-shit-shit-shit-shit. This isn’t how it’s supposed to go. Peter is supposed to put enough distance between them that if the Accuser activates his failsafe, the Warbird won’t be damaged, and Yondu’s supposed to shoot the Accuser and come save him.

Instead, the Accuser staggers up the shaking corridor, lip bruised black from where he must’ve slammed the floor when the ships accelerated. His glare is pinned on Peter. Yondu is nowhere to be seen.

Peter meeps. He has no cover in the cockpit. His only consolation is that there's a massive sheet of glass behind him, so it isn't like the Accuser's gonna shoot – although, now he thinks about it, the whackjob has already proven that he’s willing to take them all down together.

Thankfully, the gun stays by the Accuser's side – as does his hammer. The end of that is still glowing, hot metal shaped in a circle, with a funny swirly symbol in the middle. Its bright ring burns a hole in Peter’s vision as the Accuser storms towards him, a stormfront of black leather and furious blue.

“You're going to regret this, boy,” he snarls. Peter cowers in his chair, still squeezing the thruster. He dials back the acceleration, just enough that he doesn’t feel like he’s being crushed into his seat.

“I thought you didn't kill kids!”

One phase of his plan is successful; the Accuser is so incensed that he marches past the arrow, tucked in the corner of the airlock, without looking twice. “I may not kill them, but that will not stop me making your life miserable, you foolish, repugnant, Terran brat...”

Ah. There it is. The noise Peter's been waiting for – the buzz as the cabin door slides open once again.

“Dammit Quill,” croaks Yondu. His voice is real hoarse. Like, worse than usual. “Don'tchu hurt him, y'hear me? Don'tchu dare hurt him! Or I'll...”

“You're hardly in a position to be issuing ultimatums.” The Accuser starts up the steps to the cockpit. “If you will not discipline the child, I suppose I must take matters into my own hands.”

Those hands are big and blue and – oh, Peter can see it. Stained over in blue-black blood.

Yondu’s blood.

Peter snarls. He strikes first, diving into the Accuser, using the chair as a launchpad. He bounces off, obviously. The Accuser doesn’t even have to hit him – just sweeps his arm around and knocks Peter aside like he’s a swatted midge.

But Peter wasn’t trying to take him down. Peter sits, grinning, wiping his bloody nose on the cuff of his shirt. Holding the remote with the big red button that he snatched from the Accuser’s belt.

“I got the detonator!” he yells. “Yondu! Whistle!”

Under normal circumstances, Yondu would snap at him for daring to issue orders to his captain. Maybe throw in a smack, or a boot up the backside for good measure.

Now though, he wastes no time. As the Accuser growls and raises his pistol, aiming directly at Peter, Yondu licks his cracked, bloody lips, and does as he's told.

“Idiot,” is the first thing he says, after. When it’s all over. When the Accuser’s freaky black blood has stopped pumping, the spreading pool staining Peter’s sneakers. “Hell were you thinkin'? Stupid-ass plan like that. More likely to get you dead than anythin'.”

Peter skirts around the corpse. He can't look at it. Looking at it too long threatens to wash away the soapy sheen of victory and remind him that he just told Yondu to kill someone, and Yondu did it.

That makes him responsible, right? Like when he got put in detention for egging on a fight at recess.

“It didn't,” he says.

“Dumb brat.” Yondu has closed the door to his cabin again, him on one side, Peter on the other. Not the whole way – a chink remains through which their voices carry, Peter's high from adrenaline, Yondu's tired, slow, a little gravelly like he’s had to swallow something too big for his throat. A scream, Peter thinks. “Be the death of me, you will.”

Peter admits, he was expecting less doom and gloom, more gratitude. Maybe even a good-natured noogie and an agreement to call Peter Ravager and pay a weekly stipend of pocket money. “I saved your life,” he says.

Yondu snorts. “No need to get so dramatic. Told ya he weren't gonna kill me.”

“He had a gun!”

“Mm-hm. Well, I stopped my boys eatin' ya. Don't hear me crowin' about that, do ya?”

“Yes,” says Peter crossly. “You do. Constantly. What did you want me to do? Just sit in that airlock? Listen to him hurt you?”

“Coulda played yer music,” Yondu drawled. “Looked the other way. S'what ya do best, ain't it?”

No. He doesn't get to say that. He doesn’t get to pretend Peter is the coward here, not when Peter performed his first ever solo spacewalk with no voice in his ear to guide him, no one to catch him or hold his hand.

He did that, all of that, for Yondu. And Yondu isn’t even happy? This isn’t fair.

He’s just jealous, Peter tells himself. He knows he’s never gonna be as awesome as Star-lord, even if he has a super-cool whistle-powered arrow and a funky crystal jammed in his head and bright blue skin.

Still, he can’t help but feel a little sorry for his loser captain. Yondu breathes too deeply, like grandpa that time Peter was trying to press his shirt into some vague semblance of neatness before visiting mom, and accidentally dropped the hot iron on his foot. The sound men make when they’re too tough to cry.

He shuffles to Yondu’s discarded leathers. Looks like the Kree had him remove his shirt as well as his coat. That’s… kinda gross. If this were a cartoon there’d be flies buzzing over it, but it isn’t, so there aren’t. The leathers tangle together, red-brown and deep, velvety purple, interspersed with the occasional stripe of blood and engine oil. When Peter stoops to touch them, he finds them crackly on the outside and worn smooth on the in, like the shell of a crab.

“Do you want your shirt?” he asks.

There’s a strange smell in the air, like cooking meat. The silence persists for two heartbeats. Then –

“Yeah,” comes the gruff reply. A hand pokes through the gap. “Pass it in.”

Peter looks at the hand. It’s blue – that goes without saying. But while the nails are usually chipped and dark-painted, Peter’s never seen them like this. The two nails on the index and middle have snapped, broken clean across the bed, and sticky navy blood pools in the cuticles.

Just looking at them aches. Did the Accuser do that? Or did he do something else, something so awful Yondu had to dig his nails into the floor, scrabbling for freedom like a rat in a trap, burrowing into the metal until either it had to break or his nails did?

Peter shivers. “Do you need a bandage?”

For some reason that makes Yondu laugh. It rattles out of him like he’s falling apart. “Gimme the fuckin’ leathers, kid.”

That doesn’t really answer anything, but Peter holds them out anyway, watching with gross fascination as those bloody fingers curl. The hand retreats, followed by the soft, weirdly sticky hush of Yondu pulling on his shirt, and a softer selection of cusses.

Peter dithers until he hears those rustles that means Yondu’s finished with his under-layers and has moved on to battle his duster. How’s he fastening the buckles if he doesn’t have any nails? Peter knocks.

“Do you need a hand, or” –

“Fuck off.” Yondu’s voice is pure poison. Peter actually flinches before remembering that if Yondu’s determined to be a grouch it’s because he’s a bad person, not because Peter’s done anything wrong.

But at the same time, Peter can’t stop turning mom’s last words over in his head.

Be good, baby. Be good.

He might be pissed off - but walking away from anyone who’s hurting, even a mean old assbutt like Yondu, just doesn’t sit right. What can Peter do? If Yondu doesn’t want to talk, if Yondu doesn’t want his help? How can Peter make this better?

There’s one way.

As soon as he thinks of it, he regrets it. But nothing else comes to mind, and Yondu’s next breath hitches sharp and high. He swallows his hiss and drops the belts that strap his coat together; Peter hears them patter off his chest.

He needs something. A distraction – and Peter’s been informed that he’s very good at those. But is he really going to do this? Is he really going to risk everything he won today?

Peter unwinds his headphones from around his neck. He decides against offering the Walkman; Yondu can’t be trusted not to steal it again. You’re not supposed to rescind gifts, but despite their insistence on Code, Ravagers don’t seem to care much for manners.

“Here,” he says, holding out the headphones. He presses play. Out wafts Moonage Daydream. Peter doesn’t like this one as much as the boppier tunes, but it’s so soaked in mom that he swears for a moment that he feels her: her hand on his shoulder, her fragrance on the breeze from the vents. Not barf and drugs and hospital food, but the way mom used to smell – cookies and skin and summer and strawberry-scented shampoo.

Yondu isn’t so charmed. “The fuck’s this?”

Peter’s outstretched hand trembles, just a little. “It’s Bowie.”

Bowie was the pretty man with the stripe over his eye whose posters mom blue-tacked to the walls to hide mold-stains in their first little flat. She wasn’t allowed pictures at the hospital. Only a fresh vase of flowers every Monday, and the patchwork quilt her own mom left her to warm her knees.

(Did mom take grandma’s hand before she died? She must’ve done. Mom was good like that – not like Peter.) 

“No,” says Yondu, slow like he’s talking to Gef, the dumbass guy on the Bridge crew who wears goggles thicker than the bottoms of grandpa’s beer bottles. “It ain’t no bow. It’s yer stupid Walkthing.”

“Bowie’s the guy singing.” Peter wiggles the headphones, as if that’ll make them more appealing. “C’mon. I’ve heard you listening. I know you like the music.”

Yondu scoffs. “You don’t know shit about me.”

“I know you’re hurt.” Peter crouches on the other side of the door like he’s soothing a scared animal. The analogy doesn’t quite fit; Yondu is more of a street mutt, one of those mangy, threadbare dogs that grandpa never let him pet, because they’d rather bite than roll over for belly-scratches, and they might have rabies. “I know music always makes me feel better when I’m sad.”

Yondu thunks his head against the doorframe. “I ain’t nothin’ like you,” he drawls. “You ain’t nothin’ like me. Don’t go spoutin’ none of that dumb sentiment now.”

Moonage Daydream ripples in the background, chords strumming a beat out of pace with reality.

“You’d like Bowie,” tries Peter. “He’s a Star-man, just like you.”

A shuffle and a grunt narrates Yondu’s passage, as he struggles up the other side of the door to stand. It sounds like it hurts him. “You leave them headphones there one more minute,” he tells Peter quietly, “I stomp on ‘em. Goddit?”

But Ravagers lie, and if you want to stroke a street mutt, you have to accept that it might growl. Peter clenches his chin and shakes the headphones more adamantly.

“Listen to it,” he insists. “It’ll make you feel all better! You won’t hurt anymore! Don’t you want that?”

As for what happens next – well. He was warned.

Yond grabs the headphones.

Peter’s elated for all of a second, before he yanks them out of his grip. The plug pops out the socket, and Peter can only watch, petrified, as the wire snakes through the gap in the door.

Gone.

The music cuts off. There’s a horrible crunch. Then the door chimes open and Yondu looms over him, clad scarf to boots in full captain-regalia, barely an inch of skin on show. There’s blood dripping from his broken nails, and his scarred cheek crinkles from the breadth of his snarl. And there, hanging limp and sparking from his fingers, is…

Peter’s chest contracts. It feels like his heart is breaking. “No!”

Yondu won’t look at him. He sneers at the Accuser’s corpse instead as he turns his hand over, letting the warped headphones clatter to the floor.

Peter throws himself at them, holding the pieces together as if they’ll magically fuse. But magic ain’t no more real than that ghost of mom who touched his shoulder. The tape decks spin silent, playing their song in binary code. And the headphones…

Oh, the headphones.

Wires lie in kinky shoestrings, the band crumpled beyond repair. One of the foam pads dangles off its mic, and the mic itself sports a crack through which the electrical components fizzle. 

“I fuckin’ told ya so,” says Yondu, and his hands shake in their fists, even though he won’t let his voice match them.

Thirty-four years later, Peter Quill lies face-up on his bunk in the Milano, his very own M-ship. He can’t sleep, despite the rumbling lullaby of snores from his new crew. His dreams roar like the tornado of purple fire that had blazed over Xandar’s ruined citadel, as the Infinity Stone ripped him apart from within. Ronan’s maniacal scream reverberates through his head.

Peter rolls onto his other side, facing the wall. Ronan was just a mortal man. Mortal men die. But still, it felt like meeting a ghost. He casts his net further into the trench of his memory, trolling for the first time he met an Accuser, three whole decades ago.

That’s when pieces start coming together. Adults and children see things very differently, after all. When Gamora wakes up to find his bunk empty, and pads around the ship until she finds him in the pilot’s seat, gazing out at nothing, he doesn’t reject her offer for company. They sit up together and watch the stars, and Peter allows himself to wish things had gone differently.

But back then, all he knows is that he offered to share his music with Yondu and rather than just saying ‘no thanks’ like a normal person, Yondu decided to destroy Peter’s last – his only! – connection to his mother.

He broke his Walkman. He broke mom.

“No!” he shrieks. His eyes overflow; each breath chokes him like he’s inhaling smoke. “No!”

Yondu staggers past him. He keeps a hand on the wall to steady himself, shutting his eyes, just briefly, while Peter cries. Then he sets off, limping slightly, for the airlock between the two ships

He glances back just once, after resealing the Warbird and jettisoning the Accuser’s ship, along with his corpse. He finds Quill bowed over his headphones, sobbing like he ain’t sobbed since that first day.

You can’t bundle up sentiment and vent it into space. Dead bodies are a helluva lot easier to deal with in that regard.

Chapter Text

They return to the Eclector in silence. Peter bolts the moment the Warbird's airlock reels open, fleeing into the galleon’s tangled guts, clutching mom’s Walkman – the remains of it – to his chest. Eyes burning. Heart pounding. Lungs screaming like he’s been blasted into space again, this time without a mask.

For once, he knows exactly where he’s going. Doesn’t even have to check the fucking UV lights. His feet find their route like he was born and raised on this ship, like he’s as Ravager as Yondu himself.

But he isn’t. He isn’t, he isn’t, he isn’t.

Because Yondu broke his fucking Walkman and Peter was just trying to help and Yondu’s a fucking evil a-hole just like Peter’s known all along –

Peter is panting by the time he reaches the armory, his eyes blurry with tears. He struts over to the racks and grabs one of the small models, identical to the gun in which he found a tracker. What was it called again? A Vesper?

Peter doesn’t care. Something’s swollen in him, hot and bright as a bursting star. All of it – the abduction, the sneers and snarls, the jokes about eating him, the hard clips to the ear, the threats, the piss lord… It swells and swells and swells, like one of them nasty space-parasites has hooked its needle-teeth under his skin, stuffed him full of its larvae, and they’re eating him from the inside out.

He can’t think of anything but hate. He can’t. He won’t. Because then he’d have to deal with everything, with the Walkman being broken and mom being gone and him being on the other side of the galaxy and –

And he’s never gonna see her again.

Even if he escapes. Even if he gets back to Earth, like he’s been telling himself he wants, she won’t be there.

She’s dead.

She’s dead, and Peter didn’t take her hand.

He knew that, objectively. Has known it for a long time – however many weeks it’s been, since Yondu stole him from the hospital lawn; just plucked him up and took him like he was a collarless dog. But it strikes him now, with the full force of a meteorite. Everything does: every unfair slice of shit-pie life has shoved in his face.

Whose fault is it? Whose fault is everything?

Fucking Yondu. He might not have killed Peter’s mother but he killed her music. Ain’t that damn near the same thing?

Peter’s not thinking straight. He’s aware of what his body is doing, but distantly, like he’s watching from the other side of the room, as he marches out of the armory, pistol hidden under his jacket, tucked into the waistband of his jeans. He feels everything. He feels nothing. He feels…  cold. Moving like a robot, one foot in front of the next.

A few Ravagers jostle him, like they always do, jeering and making to scrumple his hair or barge his shoulder as he storms by. Peter doesn’t respond. Just bounces with the blows and keeps walking, glare fixed dead ahead.

His destination is the Captain’s cabin. That’s set up near the Bridge, on a quiet corridor so as not to let Yondu’s precious sleep shifts get disturbed by the tramp of passing feet. Several Ravagers see Peter walk down that corridor – but this ain’t unusual. He kips down with the Captain, after all (and the first mate, on nights Kraglin joins his boss in his berth). It also means the whole crew will know who’s to blame, if Peter does this. But he doesn’t care about the future much, anymore.

The broken headphones have stopped spitting sparks. The Walkman hangs on his belt, dead-dead-dead. Peter doesn’t dare look at it in case he starts crying again, but he strokes it just once before hitting the door panel, reaching under his jacket with the opposite hand.

The unlocking mechanism activates. The tail-end of a conversation snags Peter’s ears, as he catches the door to prevent it noisily hissing back into the corresponding socket on the opposite side of the frame. Means he overheats the words Yondu mumbles into his pillow: “Just branded me again. Weren’t nothing more than that. Stop givin’ me that look.”

Then Kraglin’s reply, far softer and scratchier than it ought to be, accompanied by a gentle hand running down Yondu’s bare blue flank: “You ain’t even watchin’. You can’t see what look I’m givin’.”

Peter can’t either. Yondu’s laying facedown on the bed, Kraglin knelt beside him, both facing away. Kraglin’s got a load of glowing Len bandages on his bedside table. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why. There’s something on Yondu’s back. Several somethings, at least twenty of 'em. Circles of raised, shiny, angry-purple blisters, with a funny squiggly shape inside, like…

Like…

Peter gulps. He thinks of the creepy dude’s hammer, the shining metal ring on its blunt end, the smell of cooking meat that permeated the air. He feels a little sick.

What would it feel like, to have that white-hot piece of metal stamped into your flesh? Over and over and over again?

“He’s dead now,” continues Kraglin. “He can’t do nothin’ to you no more, cap’n.”

“Yeah.” Yondu’s voice is barely audible. He’s got his face twisted to the side so he won’t suffocate in his gross unwashed pillow, but Peter knows he’s not looking at Kraglin, just staring blankly through the far wall and every wall beyond, to the stars and all those empty spaces in between. “Thought that last time too.”

Kraglin sighs. He leans forward to press a whiskery kiss to the back of Yondu’s neck, above the highest of the ugly, swollen brands, and the noise Yondu makes is small and soft and everything he isn’t.

Peter’s hand shakes on the pistol. Slowly, he lets it droop. Backs away, easing the door shut after him, locking that scene in private, where it belongs.

Hate still hums around his heart. But he can’t avenge mom like that. She’d never forgive him – and try as he might to convince himself Yondu deserves such an end, the conviction just won’t stick.

He plonks down outside the door, energy leaving his limbs like a plug’s been pulled. The gravity has increased tenfold. He can’t wedge his legs under him and stand, let along lift his head.

Peter rests back against the door, curls his knees to his chest, and buries his wet face in them. He’s cried so many times the past few weeks. For mom. For his injuries. For grandpa and Earth and everything he’s left behind. But this time, it feels like he’s crying for himself. For what he almost did – what he wanted to do.

The Ravagers stole him. They hurt him. But they ain’t gonna change him. Peter decides that much then and there, rubbing his arm under his runny nose, smearing it all over his sleeve. He waits for the leaden exhaustion to pass so he can sneak the pistol back to the armory. It doesn’t, so he rocks his head back to rest on the door instead, shutting his eyes, pistol a forbidden weight pulling at his waistband.

He's Peter Quill, Terran. He might become Peter Quill, Ravager, too – because now mom’s death has finally sunk into him, hollowing him out like a papery shell of skin, the prospect of donning red leathers feels far less awful than setting foot on a planet where she should be, but isn’t. He can't go home. But he’s never gonna be Peter Quill, mean fucking bastard who hurts people just because he can.

It’s Kraglin who opens the door in the morning. He wakes Peter with his boot, but it’s more a poke than a kick – practically nurturing, by his standards. That, or he just miscalculated how hard to swing his leg.

“Oi, Pete.” His voice is haggard and tired as his face. “Scat. You's entertaining yourself with today. I gotta get to Bridge.”

Peter scrambles away. “What about – “

His mind’s still sore, flurrying with images sharp as glass shards: his broken Walkman, mom’s hollow face, the outside of the Accuser's ship, the glowing hammer, the marks on Yondu’s back. Brands, Peter thinks. Like farmers put on cows, to show which ones are their property.

Kraglin doesn’t kick him again. Just steps over him on spindly, red-clad stork-legs. “Don’t bother captain,” he orders, over his shoulder. Peter, pistol throbbing beneath his shirt like a second heart, obeys. He contemplates returning the gun to the armory, after Kraglin rounds the corner, stalking out of sight, then decides against it.

No – this is his. And it’s the very least of what Yondu owes him.

Yondu’s up on bridge the next day, bouncing back to his usual bombastic self like nothing happened. Peter thinks of those vicious words he spat at the Accuser – you’re nothing but one bad day – and, despite everything, he hopes that wasn’t hyperbole. At the very least, Yondu seems to be pretending as much, out of sheer spite.

But Peter’s Walkman is still broken. And the pistol’s still tucked in his belt.

“Wanna learn to shoot that?” asks Yondu at the end of the day, as they trudge to the cabin together. It’s the first words he’s said directly to Peter since he broke his headphones. Peter doesn’t intend on issuing any in return.

He doesn’t expect an apology. But he wants one, and he knows one’s deserved. He squeezes his shirt tighter around him, scowling at the floor.

Yondu sighs. “I can fuckin’ see the outline of it through your pants, boy. Yer too skinny to hide it. Thought you’d jump at an offer to fire the damn thing.”

Peter sneers at his sneakers. He clutches the ends of his sleeves, feeling the tug of the pistol on his waistband as much as that of his useless, soundless, musicless Walkman.

“Ya need a proper holster,” Yondu continues, like Peter’s silence is somehow an invitation for further chat. “Can’t go carryin’ it around all gangster-like – that’s how you get plasma burns where the sun don’t shine, and trust me, them ain’t fun to explain to a doc.” He halts Peter with one hand on his shoulder, pulling him to a full stop with disgusting ease. Peter hates it; how much smaller he is, weaker, stupider.

“Oi, brat. I’m talkin’ to you.”

Peter keeps right on glaring at the floor.

Yondu’s hand squeezes, not hard enough to hurt. “Thought you wanted that," he says. "To shoot. We can go on my M-ship. Might even let you hold the controls, if I can find a booster seat…”

Peter brushes his hand off. “I only ever wanted my mom’s music,” he says, cold. Then he walks to the cabin and opens the door, leaving Yondu stood in the corridor, illuminated by the light panel above, which refracts through his implant and gives him a red, unearned halo.

Yondu stays there one second, two. Almost enough for the door to whoosh shut behind Peter. Then he stomps forwards, lurching into the cabin, angrily tearing at the belts that hold on his coat. He flings that at his chair and flops on his bed, facedown again, though surely the bandages Kraglin put on him have healed his brands, so his back shouldn’t hurt anymore.

“Whatever, kid,” he grunts, burrowing into the pillow. “Like I care.”

A week later, they stop at a port and Peter’s broken Walkman goes missing. He turns the cabin upside down for it – the whole damn Eclector, in fact, but discovers nothing but orloni and a few lost socks that Scrote nabs for the scrap bucket. 

Yondu’s missing too. A fact Peter doesn’t quite put together until after – he presumed Yondu had gone out to explore the new port with his men, and hadn’t  bothered to ask if Peter wanted to come with, the dick. Not that Peter would’ve said yes. The allure of incalculable stars, a whole universe laid out for him to discover... It just ain’t worth it, without his Walkman.

Even if it’s broken.

Peter crawls from the final, lowest store cupboard on the Eclector, defeated. He’s down near the gravity core, which means every movement weighs five times as heavy – but that’s not the only reason he feels crushed. He touches the gun – Yondu had dug out a holster for him, insisting it was a matter of safety, and Peter grudgingly strapped it around his waist, if only for fear of Yondu’s cautionary tales about shooting off parts of himself he’d rather not lose.

It’s weirdly comforting, if in a harder, colder way than the Walkman. Like Peter has a grasped a bit of power for himself, right from the jaws of the galaxy.

He’s not sure he likes the way that makes him feel, but equally, it’s better than feeling power-less. If Yondu took the wreckage of the Walkman… If he tossed it down a garbage chute to burn in the incinerator core, without waiting for Peter to grieve… Well, Peter’s already sure that he’ll never, ever forgive him for this. But if there had ever been a chance of that happening – a fragment of a glimmer of a hope – Yondu destroying the Walkman’s remains would flush that chance out as surely as a mutineer being sucked out of an airlock.

Peter smears a dusty, oily hand over his unwashed face. Sniffs. Starts the long, sore process of struggling to his feet.

He wants to cry some more. But he’s finally hit the point where he has no tears left.

Or so he thinks. Until he walks back into the captain’s cabin and –

There it is.

Peter’s jaw drops. His eyes mist over, his heart pumping so hard he can almost taste the beats.

Because there, sat coiled on his pillow in the little cot he sleeps in at the foot of Yondu’s bed, is mom’s Walkman. His Walkman. And it’s fixed. Completely fixed, shinier than it had been when Peter first left the hospital. Looking brand fucking new.

“Stupid Terran tech’s way too fragile,” says Yondu gruffly, and Peter jumps – he hadn’t noticed he was in the room, all his attention fixated on the familiar orange headphones and blue Sony case. But there the captain sits, at his desk, facing away from Peter, flicking through the contents of a holocube – 3D blueprints for some big fancy building, decorated with the Nova symbol. His voice is toneless, practically bored, and he doesn’t look at Peter once. “Shouldn’ta broken at just a li’l tap. Wouldn’t have lasted a damn year out here. Figured an upgrade was due.”

Peter dares take a step forwards. Then another. His fingers brush the wire curve of the headphones. They certainly feel real. “An… an upgrade?”

Yondu hunches over his holocube. “Ain’t changed nothin’,” he says, more to it than Peter. “Not even the tonal quality – though the tech gal says it’s shit, by the way. Just got it repaired and packed with a proper spacer battery, tapes coated with long-life varnish, all that shit. Should play all your stupid tunes for the next couple hundred years. Outlive the both of us.”

Peter’s throat closes up. He makes a weak, wobbly noise that has Yondu dropping the holocube and spinning on his chair, wide-eyed.

“The fuck? Why you cryin’ for?”

He sounds near frantic. Like he can’t understand the concept of ‘happy tears’ – which isn’t surprising; Peter’s not sure if his species have tear ducts. But perhaps he’ll understand how, even as fat tears roll down Peter’s cheeks, as his shoulders shake, a laugh bubbles out of his throat.

Yondu freezes. For a split second, Peter sees relief fold into the creases around his smile – but then the mask’s back on, and he leans back on his chair in a creak of leather, folding his arms. “Fuckin’ ungrateful li’l Terran,” he complains to the universe at large. “I do something half-decent, and this’s the thanks I get…”

Peter grabs the Walkman. He clicks on the tape and shuts his eyes, more tears falling as he’s greeted by the opening chords of Ooh Child.

“You’re the one who broke it,” he says, when he trusts himself enough to speak again. “I ain’t thanking you.”

Yondu huffs. “I fixed it, too.”

He did. And though Ravagers don’t apologize (rule number ten) - though even with the translators in their necks, it still feels, half the time, like they’re speaking completely different languages...

Peter understands what he’s saying.

“I thought the tech girl did that,” he says, just to be a shit. Yondu snorts, and Peter finds another laugh brewing in his own chest. “Dick.”

“Brat,” responds Yondu immediately. He tries to glower at Peter, but the corner of his mouth keeps twitching. “Cost me a fucking arm and leg too, by the way – so I’m putting that on your tab.”

“My… tab?”

“Y’know, for bathin’ and feedin’ and clothin’ ya and the like. And not eating you, of course.”

Peter gapes at the injustice but he thinks that quirk in Yondu’s lips means he’s joking. It isn’t funny in the slightest, but Peter can’t remember how to be mad at him. He’s so happy it hurts.

“That’s so messed up! Why should I pay you after you abducted me? And – and normal people don’t even think about eating people.”

“See? Ungrateful, like I said…”

“Much less them having to be grateful for it!”

But despite his words, Ooh Child croons softly in his ears. The dirt on his face from his earlier cupboard-crawling can easily by wiped away with a handful of dry-wash, and maybe, just maybe, Peter can allow himself to feel a tiny glimmer of excitement at the prospect of becoming a space pirate. A proper real space pirate, just like his captain.

He doesn’t forgive Yondu. Not fully. He’s not sure he ever will. The concept of ‘forgiveness’, of the simple sort he was taught about in Sunday School, will never fit what lays between them. There’s too much hurt and hate compounded in the space between his ribs; too many nightmares of snout-nosed monsters and alien blood and Nova soldiers writhing under Kraglin’s pliers. Not all wounds are as easy to heal with a Len bandaid as a broken wrist. Or a brand.

But Earth feels further behind Peter than it ever has done, while Mom feels like she’s right here, her soul dancing in the music box that Peter clips to his belt besides his pistol with shaking hands. Accompanying him on his biggest adventure in life so far.

He’s gonna make his own way in this galaxy, he decides. Explore it, fall in love with it, even its ugliest parts. He’s gonna fly cool spaceships and shoot cool guns and meet cool pretty ladies, just like David Hasselhoff. And he’s gonna be kind, like mom always wanted him to be. 

He’s gonna be Star-Lord.

And though Yondu’s a total a-hole – though he’s untrustworthy and vicious and dangerous (which, after watching him crush his Walkman like an empty eggshell, Peter will never again let himself forget)… Well, Peter reckons that for now, the big dumb blueberry can come along for the ride.

“Did you mean what you said?” he asks, sitting on the edge of his cot, Walkman cradled in his lap. Ooh child, things are gonna get easier… “About teaching me how to fly, and shoot?”

Yondu scrunches his nose, and Peter fears he’s gonna spout the usual bullshit about never trusting a Ravager. But then he shrugs. “Aw, why the hell not.”

Peter bounces to his feet, scrubbing the damp from his puffy red cheeks. “Now?”

“Damn kid…” Yondu swings a hand out as he strides for the door, but it's not with the intent to hurt - only to ruffle Peter’s hair. Peter doesn’t even flinch. Much. “C’mon then. Guess I can find an old rustbucket ship for you to put dents in.”

Ooh child, things are going to get brighter…

For the first time since he ran from his mother’s hospital bed, Peter Quill lets himself believe it. He hurries after Yondu, jabbing the button on his Walkman, amping the volume to full.