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Rocket doesn’t trust her. Granted, Rocket doesn’t really trust anyone, but he definitely doesn’t trust the blue lunatic who tried to kill them all a few weeks ago. But Gamora says that they can trust her, and the man who’s appointed himself Captain (despite being grossly unqualified) has goo goo eyes for her, so Rocket has very little choice but to get used to it. There’s nothing Rocket hates more than not having a choice.
He doesn’t sleep that night. His usual fallbacks aren’t helping and he can’t stand to disturb Groot Jr. in his little pot, so he wanders out to the Bowie’s bar and pours himself a drink. He hates alcohol — it’s bitter and it burns and it makes his head swim. It reminds him of things that he’d rather not be reminded of. And yet, in some weird way, it helps, too. Which doesn’t make sense. He knocks a couple back anyway, and groans as the cloud settles in his brain.
Suddenly, Rocket hears the crunch of boots approaching down the hall. He tenses. He doesn’t like being around people, and doesn’t trust people around him. Not even on regular days, and definitely not when he’s drunk. Which is why he only drinks alone. He reaches for his blaster, and doesn’t back down when he sees who it is.
“Calm down,” Nebula rasps, “I’m not going to microchip you, you’re fine. I’m just here to get a drink.”
“Can’t sleep?” Rocket asks, still not backing off of his blaster.
“How can you tell?”
The sky outside of the Bowie is pitch black. Even the stars seemed dimmer than they should be. If Rocket had to guess, he would say that it’s not even night anymore, but early morning. Still, she didn’t need to joke around like that. She hadn’t gained joking around privileges yet, not with him or with anyone else on the ship, except maybe Gamora.
But then, something in her face changed. Rocket had gotten pretty good over the years at telling when people were angry, or were about to beat him up, and this wasn’t that.
“Can’t sleep,” she repeats, “Nightmares.”
Rocket nods, and finally releases his gun. “How often?”
“All of the time.”
No one says anything for a little while. They just watch each other. Rocket knows what Nebula is seeing. She’s seeing the same thing that everyone else sees when they look at him: something different. Something that doesn’t belong. Has she seen the metal in his spine, or the scars on his ribcage? He doesn’t think she has. He’s very, very careful about those. The last thing he wants is the wrong person asking questions, poking around with shit that doesn’t belong to them. That part of his life belongs in the dirt, with Lylla, Teefs and Floor. Even if he did want to talk about it, to stand in a circle, hold hands and talk about his feelings, he would still keep all of that a secret. It belongs to him, and no one else. Something has to.
He refocuses on Nebula, who is definitely looking at him, but he starts to think that maybe she isn’t seeing the same thing that everyone else sees. She doesn’t look judgmental, or even that curious. She looks… sad. Like she already knows what happened and she hates it. He thinks that maybe, he’s looking at her the same way. It’s hard not to notice the metal surrounding her eye, but most people probably wouldn’t see the skin under it, the way that it pulls. It looks painful. And the way her bones snap back into place after she’s injured, that looks painful too. There must be something he can do about it, some way that he can help, something he can cook up at his work bench. He still doesn’t trust her, but to be fair, he wouldn’t exactly trust himself either. And it’s hard to look at her without seeing himself.
“Do you have any ways to get around it?”
“What?” she asks, her black eyes still sad.
“The nightmares,” he explains, “Do you have anything that makes them better?”
She shakes her head. “Mostly I just get it over with. Or I avoid sleep altogether.”
“Yeah,” he says, “I used to do the same thing. Only problem is, I avoided it more than I got it over with and it started to mess with my reflexes.” He remembers one time, early in his pilot days, that he’d nearly crashed into a mountain because he tried to fight a battle with his own eyelids and lost. “Had to come up with some actual solutions after that.”
Nebula hums. “And?”
“It’s easier when you’re not alone,” he says, before rushing to correct himself, “I mean, not literally. But if you can pretend that you’re with someone… a friend maybe. Someone who’s helping you fall asleep.”
Lylla was always so good at getting the rest of them to fall asleep. She was so good at getting rid of the nightmares. Rocket can’t bring her back, not completely. His memories of her, the times when he pretends that she’s there, they’re cheap imitations. But it’s better than nothing. It’s better than missing her, and Floor and Teefs, every time he tries to close his eyes. If he focuses hard enough, he can convince himself that he hears the way their laughter used to blend together.
“I don’t have any friends,” Nebula spits, “And nobody who cares if I sleep or not.” Rocket bets that that isn’t true. He bets that if she went back far enough, she could probably find a memory or two of Gamora fussing over her. But he also bets that saying so wouldn’t make her any happier.
“Alright, fine,” he says, “Then, you find someone in real life, to watch over you.”
Rocket remembers, with something almost close to happiness, one night when the original Groot found him breathing too heavily, scratching at his own arms, scampering around their prison cell in the Kyln like an animal. Groot, who he’d barely known back then, had opened the trunk that made up his chest, and let Rocket sleep in there, by the roots. It was the kindest thing anyone had done for him since… well. Since.
She laughs, and even her laugh sounds bitter. “I definitely don’t have that .”
“No, that’s true,” he says, “You don’t have any friends because you’ve spent your whole life working side by side with a genocidal maniac and you’ve betrayed everyone who ever cared about you. People don’t tend to like that.”
Nebula stands up suddenly and slams her hands on the table. “Gamora betrayed me.” Somehow, Rocket still doesn’t flinch. He just keeps talking.
“Sure, whatever. My point still stands. Nobody likes you. You don’t have any friends. But you do have a team.” Nebula sits back down. They all have their outbursts, their bids for attention. Especially people like them. He can’t hold her anger against her, not anymore, not now that it’s harmless. “If I wanted you dead, you’d be dead already,” he says, “And I’m guessing you feel the same way about me. If you try to fall asleep here, I won’t let anything happen to you.”
She hesitates for a moment, shifting her gaze around the room. He knows exactly what she’s doing — checking for exits, analyzing the danger in each object, each corner, each shadow. She looks back at him.
She looks at him, and she sees herself.
Wordlessly, Nebula sits back down, crosses her arms on the table, and rests her head on them. It takes her a second, but she does manage to close her eyes. In a strange way, he finds that he’s proud of her.
Rocket knows that he promised to watch over her, and he does, for a while. A few hours, at least. He alternates his gaze between her and the night sky outside. The alcohol wears off, his brain feels less fuzzy but somehow more at peace. He hasn’t let anyone in on any secrets, not really, and he’s not sure he ever will. But it’s nice to have someone who doesn’t need you to talk things through. Someone who gets it, without having to have everything spelled out for them.
Rocket knows that he promised to watch over her, but he doesn’t feel bad when he drifts off. First of all, it’s the first time in two days that he’s managed to sleep, and it’s hard to feel bad about that, for any reason. And second, he knows that nothing is going to happen to either of them on the Bowie. They’re all protecting her, just by having her around. It’s everything to have a place like that. It’s something that neither of them would take for granted.
In the morning, Rocket will go to his work bench and see if there’s anything he can do to make Nebuka’s software feel a bit less like software. But for now, he falls asleep, and sleeps more peacefully than he has in years, feeling, for the first time, like he isn’t alone. That morning, once the sun has solidly risen, if Peter and Gamora stumble upon their two grouchiest team members sleeping soundly side by side, they have the good sense not to bring it up.