Chapter Text
“Yeah, yeah, I hear you,” Rocket says, rolling his eyes.
Wanda isn’t sure what to call him. He looks like a raccoon, but insists that he isn’t one. Maybe he’s an alien. Maybe he’s something else. Either way, he’s rolling his eyes at Natasha, so hard that his whole head rolls with them.
“Look, I got a very important mission from Danvers, and Nebs is busy right now, working with Kraglin to make Knowhere a more hospitablistic place for Snap refugees. D’you wanna fuck over a bunch of Snap refugees, Nat?”
He crosses his arms and raises a brow up at the new leader-apparent of the Avengers. If Wanda hadn’t felt so — nothing at all, actually — she might have let a smirk curl the corner of her mouth. He’s kind of a brat, and he knows how to get under peoples’ skin. When she’d been a child, she would have found that entertaining. Endearing. She supposes she’d used to have a soft spot for scrappy survivors. Then she’d had to stop having a soft spot for anything but her brother.
Then —
“Goddammit, Rocket. Go to Washington, then. I don’t care. But we still need the Benatar.”
His challenging look turns into a glower. “Fuck off, Nat. What am I supposed to do, then? Drive your frickin’ car?”
Natasha flaps a hand at him distractedly from behind her desk. “Yes, that’s fine, take the car—”
The look he gives her is withering. “I can’t reach the fuckin’ pedals, Nat. So unless you’re giving me permission to take the whole inefficient machine apart an’ put it back together to suit my needs, you’re gonna have to—”
“I can’t spare anyone, Rocket,” the Russian snaps.
“And I can’t be alone right now,” he snaps right back. Wanda’s eyes flick back and forth between them.
Natasha grits her teeth. “You said this was a mission from Carol?”
“Yes,” he hisses, tapping one booted foot impatiently.
She closes her eyes and sighs heavily, leaning back in her chair and pressing her fingers into her temples. “Fine,” she says at last, drawing the word out — petulantly, Wanda thinks from a great distance. “Find someone who’s willing to go with you and I’ll tell you if I can spare them.”
Rocket doesn’t hesitate. Without moving anything but his arm, he’s brandishing a single dark claw in Wanda’s direction.
“I’ll take the witch.”
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Five years earlier — in the first days after the Snap, before they’d left all their hope on 0259-S with Thanos’ headless body — everyone else had belonged to somebody. Cap and Nat had each other, and Nat had Banner and the arrow-guy. Rhodey had the rich guy who thought he was a genius, and the rich guy had that other redhead. Thor had maybe lost the most, but he had Banner too, and his buddies from Sakaar. The Dora Milaje had their whole sisterhood. Only Danvers might have been on her own — but as far as Rocket had been able to tell, Captain Marvel hadn’t seemed to have a lotta close ties she was mourning.
But Rocket — Rocket had nobody.
Again.
Nobody except Gamora’s sister, whose name he’d kept forgetting.
Of course, there was the witch.
Disproportionate number of redheads on this planet, he remembers thinking bemusedly.
He hadn’t been able to remember her name for a while either, but unlike everyone else on Terra, she’d seemed almost as alone as he was. And he hadn’t been able to help but watch her, his eyes slanting sideways to stare at her as she’d sat by herself across the room, hands anchored around upper arms. He couldn't make out the color of her eyes — they’d seemed impossibly dark, with rage or grief or something else, something haunted.
Except for when they’d smouldered like furious banked fires.
She’d never said a frickin’ word, either: face blank and beautiful as a statue’s. Her silence had felt more surreal than any other stupid thing he’d encountered in space, which he supposed was probably just because he’s spent the last four years with a family of weirdos who’d never seemed able to shut the fuck up.
Still. He’d tilted his head when the other avengers had walked past her — watched as they’d seemed almost to forget she was even there. They’d barely talked to her, and once, when they’d been ordering lunch, they’d missed her entirely.
Uh — you didn’t ask the witch what she wants, Rocket had said to Nat awkwardly, and the assassin had blinked and her eyes had hunted the whole room before they’d finally focused on the other woman — like she hadn’t even known where her fellow-Avenger was.
No. The witch had been an outcast. And Rocket has always known something about outcasts. His whole frickin’ family — both, some small part of his brain had tried to speak up before he could smother it; both families were made of the unwanted — his whole frickin’ family had been outcasts and misfits. It had made some part of Rocket’s heart suddenly stretch in his chest. It had reached with grasping fingers, trying to hang onto something he’d already known he’d lost.
Family.
The next day, Rocket had cleared his throat and told Gamora’s sister that he was gonna go starside to touch base with Kraglin on the Third Quadrant — to see if he still exists, he hadn’t said, but he’d been pretty sure the cyborg had picked it up.
“You wanna come, Blue?” he’d asked — wincing when his nonchalance had been too thin to be believable. But the Luphomoid had inclined her head, eyes dark and steady. When that had been squared away — surprisingly a hell of a lot easier than he’d thought — he’d shuffled to his feet, and headed to the bench outside the compound, where the witch had been sitting since sunrise.
He’d stood in her line of vision and stared at the sky too, shifting his weight uncomfortably from foot to foot, tail trying to tuck itself underneath him. It had probably been a full twenty minutes before he’d felt her eyes on him.
“I. Uh. I heard you lost your robot-boyfriend.” The words had been as clumsy as an orloni drunk on fermented Asgardian figs, but he’d been trying.
The witch’s eyes had flared, crimson-bright. “Robot?” she’d repeated dangerously.
Rocket’s ears had flicked back and he’d taken a step away, into the grass: hands extended, palms out.
“Hey, m’not trying to be a dick,” he’d protested. “I think I might be part-robot myself.” He’d stabbed a thumb over his shoulder toward the Benatar, where he could feel his new blue companion staring holes in his back. “Gamora’s sister’s almost all-robot, too.”
He could also feel the sister in question rolling her eyes.
“M’just saying,” he’d muttered at both of them, hunching his shoulders and half-turning to kick a patch of grass. “Some of us are solo now.” He’d gestured at the cyborg again. “Might be good to stick together.”
“I was used to being solo,” Nebs had pointed out, and Rocket had winced. “You’re the one who got attached.”
His ears had flattened. “Whatever,” he’d growled. “Just thought — whatever.” He’d spun again, kicking more grass, and muttered bitterly under his breath. “So much for trying to be the captain. So much for trying to look out for the damn strays.”
“You’re the stray,” Nebula had replied with a mutinous jut of her chin — and how the fuck had she heard him? That wasn’t standard Luphomoid hearing range.
Rocket had cursed whatever aural implants Thanos had given her.
Then the witch had made a strange sound behind him — a little huff of breath. A disbelieving, agonized little shred of laughter.