Chapter Text
“Mantis has been asking about you,” Gamora says casually. She doesn’t look at Nebula—at the screen—directly, acts instead like she’s busy picking through Quill’s music for something to play.
Nebula almost cuts the call right then, her hand automatically moving towards her comms before she stops herself. Hanging up would only make this worse for her, in the long run, no matter how badly she did not want to have this conversation right now.
She runs through a selection of responses, each one sounding angrier than the last, all while Gamora continues to thumb through Quill’s music.
Nebula eventually settles on, “Is that so.” She tries to keep her tone and expression neutral, makes sure not to say it like a question, like she wants a followup (she doesn’t). Getting annoyed would be just as bad as being curious.
“Mhm.”
They sit in silence as Nebula fights the urge to disconnect and Gamora finally makes her choice. Nebula can hear Quill’s music start to play through the screen, and it makes Nebula’s mouth twitch. Somehow it’s more annoying now than it usually is.
Of course Gamora would just say that and then nothing more. Nebula would have to ask if she wanted Gamora to elaborate, and that, quite frankly, sounded terrible. Cutting the call was sounding more tempting by the second.
Nebula grits her teeth.
“And why is that?” she finally asks.
“She seems to like you.” Gamora’s mouth pulls into the beginnings of a smile. “Especially after how much fun you two had together.”
“All I did was throw some knives!” Nebula groans and Gamora laughs. “I entertain her one time and now she thinks we’re friends.”
“Nebula, you bought her a gift.”
“She should have a weapon for—”
“Yes yes, for self-defense.” Gamora rolls her eyes. “You still bought her a gift, and I’ve never known you to buy gifts for anyone.”
Nebula buries her head in her hands. “It’s practicality. I’m not going soft.”
“It’s not a bad thing.”
Nebula makes a sound like a wounded animal.
“You should call her sometime,” Gamora says suddenly.
“Why would I do that?” Nebula demands. “So you have something new to mock me with?”
“I’m not mocking you. It’s…sisterly teasing, is all.”
Nebula scrubs a hand across her face as if to ward off a headache. “That’s even worse.”
“It’s not. I’m happy for you, really,” Gamora insists. “My sister’s first friend.”
“I should have hung up on you. And there’s nothing to be happy about,” Nebula snaps. “I told you it meant nothing.”
“Sure, sure,” Gamora says.
Nebula scowls. “I’m done with this conversation. I’m hanging up. We can talk later, when you aren’t being insufferable.”
Nebula reaches to disconnect the call, but before she can Gamora leans closer to the screen and says, “Mantis will be on watch during the night cycle two days from now.”
“Why are you telling me that?”
“So you can call her. She’ll be happy to hear from you. Just…think about it, at least.”
Nebula hesitates. “I’ll consider it.”
She didn’t plan on considering it. She was going to hang up and forget what Gamora had said and pretend this had never happened. She wouldn’t even entertain the thought—she wouldn’t.
And so, of course her traitorous mind wouldn’t leave her be. She couldn’t stop thinking about it.
The thought gnaws at her, louder and more insistent the more she tries to banish it.
Call her.
“Damn you Gamora,” Nebula mutters.
Gamora’s fault. This was Gamora’s fault.
Nebula wants to cut the call as soon as she’s made it. She almost does, but Mantis answers before she can.
“Oh, Nebula.” Mantis smiles, because Nebula finds herself disconcertingly speechless. “Hello. Gamora has already gone to bed, but I can tell her you called if—”
“No,” Nebula says, more aggressively than she’d intended, and Mantis startles at the harshness of her tone.
Nebula mentally kicks herself and tries again. “I didn’t call for Gamora. I called to…speak…to you,” she finishes lamely.
Mantis blinks and goes quiet long enough for Nebula to start to feeling squirmy from discomfort. And then she smiles almost shyly, and something in Nebula twists uncomfortably at the sight.
After a moment Mantis says, “It’s nice to hear from you.”
Nebula grunts in response for lack of something to say, and for some reason that makes Mantis giggle a little bit and nebula frowns. “What?”
“Nothing, you just…” Mantis laughs again and shakes her head. “Nothing. It’s nothing.”
Nebula feels…well, she’s not quite sure what. She thinks maybe she should be offended, and if it was anyone else maybe she would be, would find this laughter and the way Mantis is looking at her mocking.
But…it’s Mantis. So she doesn’t, and that’s confusing too.
Mantis shifts a little in her seat, a little bit of that earlier shyness coming back. “Um.” She clears her throat. “So, how have you been?”
“Fine,” Nebula says stiffly.
Mantis looks like she’s expecting more, but Nebula doesn’t elaborate.
“That’s good,” Mantis says eventually, when it becomes clear Nebula won’t say more.
Heat prickles along the back of Nebula’s neck and she realizes that she probably should be saying something more.
“I have been searching for leads on Thanos,” Nebula says, “though I have been unsuccessful thus far.”
“Oh. To kill him?” Nebula grunts in confirmation and Mantis nods, looking solemn. “I hope you find what you’re looking for.”
“Thank you,” Nebula says after a beat, still a little stiff and awkward.
Mantis smiles faintly, but it soon pulls into a worried frown. “But…be careful. Gamora would be upset if you were injured.” She hesitates, then slowly adds, “And I would be too.”
Nebula looks at her strangely. Gamora…that makes sense, sure, but the concern from Mantis is odd. “Why?”
Now Mantis is the one giving her a strange look. She sounds confused when she answers, “Because we are friends? And I worry about you when you do dangerous things.”
“Friends?” Nebula echoes.
Mantis pauses. “…yes?” She scrunches her brows. “Aren’t we?”
Nebula feels a little bit like she’s short-circuiting. Are they?
While Nebula grasps desperately for some sort of response, Mantis says, “I mean…you went knife throwing with me, and you got me a gift, too, so I thought—”
Gift? Nebula latches onto the word, leaning close to the screen, her gaze intense, and Mantis gets flustered. “You got it? The knife?”
“Yes, that…that was you, right? You didn’t leave your name on it and you never said anything about it, so I wasn’t sure, but then Gamora said—”
“Yes, that was me,” Nebula interrupts, her voice strange. “I hope it is suitable.”
Mantis blinks and then smiles, and it seems like some of the awkward tension has left her. “It is a beautiful weapon. Thank you, Nebula. I love it.”
Nebula clears her throat. “Good. That—good.” She feels foolish, stumbling over her words and struggling with her tone. What was it about Mantis that made her feel so strange? “Has Gamora been teaching you how to wield it?”
Mantis nods excitedly. “Oh, yes! She’s been wonderful. Drax has been helping, too. We’re mostly still working on the basic forms, but I’m becoming quite comfortable with it.”
Nebula nods, relaxing minutely. This is good; she can talk weapons. Weapons are easy, even with her insides feeling squirmy and tight.
“Have you been shown how to care for it?”
“Of course! It was one of the first things Gamora stressed. She said weapon maintenance is very important.”
Nebula huffs out a short laugh. She should have known; of course Gamora would have covered that.
“Good. Gamora is skilled with bladed weapons. You’ll learn a lot from her.” She says this a little grudgingly—it was hard not to feel that competitive streak flash to life sometime, even now, but Nebula had to admit, Gamora was very good.
Mantis was in good hands.
Mantis picks up on it, though; the twitch of her smile and the crinkling at the corners of her eyes give it away.
“I bet you are a wonderful teacher too,” she assures.
Nebula wrinkles her nose. “Flattery again?”
“Well…it worked last time,” Mantis laughs. “Maybe you can teach me next time you visit?”
Nebula snorts. “You don’t want me teaching you. I’m not nice or patient.”
“Oh, I don’t know. You seemed very nice last time you visited,” Mantis teases, and Nebula scowls, demanding,
“What?”
You indulged my request to see you throw knives,” Mantis points out, and Nebula’s grumpy expression deepens.
“That’s…different,” Nebula grumbles. “I wasn’t teaching you anything.”
“And you got me a gift,” Mantis adds.
“That’s different,” Nebula insists. “That knife is for self-defense. If you’re going to stay with those idiots, you need your own weapon!” Ugh! Mantis has been spending too much time with Gamora; she’s become a bad influence.
“I am just saying, I think you are nicer than you give yourself credit for.”
“I’m not nice,” Nebula stubbornly repeats. She hates how petulant she sounds.
Mantis’s mouth twitches like she’s fighting off a laugh. “You’re a little bit nice.”
Nebula huffs. This is what she gets for listening to Gamora.
“Even so,” she says stiffly (even though she is most certainly not nice), “You still don’t want me teaching you anything. I won’t coddle you.”
“And you think Gamora does?” Mantis laughs. “If anyone is soft on me it’s Drax! I assure you, Gamora does not let me slack off when we train.”
Nebula snorts. Maybe she should have expected that. If Gamora was still as intense as Nebula remembered from their own spars, she was sure Mantis’s training days were long and exhausting. Perhaps Gamora hasn’t gone as soft as she’d thought.
“You really want a training session with me?”
“Oh yes! I think it would be great fun.”
“…we can try it,” Nebula finally agrees, “at least once. Maybe,” she adds when she sees the way Mantis lights up, and does her best not to bristle. “It depends on how your training is going.”
Mantis doesn’t seem at all discouraged. If anything her eyes brighten and she says, proudly, “Gamora and I have already started sparring without knives as well.”
“I won’t go easy on you,” Nebula warns, a harsh edge to her voice. “I mean it.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to.” Mantis seems quite pleased with herself. Her smile’s gone just the slightest bit smug, and Nebula really doesn’t like how that makes her feel.
Maybe she was going soft. The thought makes her sick, but not nearly as much as the thought of what Gamora will say about this. Gamora’s already been a pest about this…whatever this was (friends? were they actually friends?), but now Nebula’s sure she’ll never hear the end of it.
“When do you think you will visit next?” Mantis’s voice interrupts Nebula’s spiral and brings her suddenly back to reality.
Nebula is silent as she considers this. “Maybe in a few weeks. I have some tasks I need to finish first.”
She thinks Mantis might be dampened by this, but the news makes her brighten instead. “That’s sooner than I thought!”
Her excitement flusters Nebula—should she have given a longer timeframe? But Mantis ignores her spluttering and says, distractedly, and more to herself than Nebula, “I should ask Gamora for extra training sessions then. I don’t want our spar to be disappointing…”
Mantis’s excitement continues to baffle Nebula. She isn’t sure she’ll ever understand why she’s like this. Maybe this is what friendship is like? Does Nebula feel anything—even a little bit like this at the prospect of seeing Mantis again?
…she’ll circle back to that later.
She clears her throat and says, “I should get going.” She feels frazzled; while speaking to Mantis has not been unpleasant, it has certainly been overwhelming, and that uncomfortable heat pricking at her skin still hasn’t gone away.
“Oh! Yes, I suppose it is quite late,” Mantis agrees. “Thank you for calling. It was nice to hear from you.”
Nebula grunts. “It was nice,” she admits.
A little more shyly, Mantis ventures, “Maybe we can do this again?”
Nebula considers this. “I guess we can. You can keep me updated on your training.”
This perks Mantis right up again, her eyes sparkling, and something inside Nebula clenches again. They say their goodbyes quickly; Nebula is already reaching to disconnect. The last thing she sees before the screen goes dark is Mantis, waving goodbye with a huge smile on her face.
Nebula hears from Gamora the next day.
“Mantis was awfully perky today,” Gamora remarks, once all the formalities were out of the way. She’s doing that thing where she doesn’t look directly at Nebula, pretending to focus her attention on something else but still peering at her sister from the corner of her eye.
“She’s always perky,” Nebula says, trying to sound dismissive.
“She was extra perky.”
Nebula narrows her eyes. That bothersome prickly sensation on the back of her neck has returned. “Uh-huh.”
“You called her, didn’t you?” Nebula groans and Gamora looks triumphant. “It must have gone well if Mantis is so cheerful.” Gamora peers at her, the corner of her mouth pulling into a smirk. “Not that anyone would guess that from the way you’re sulking.”
“I’m not sulking,” Nebula snaps. “Is that why you called me? Just to mock me?”
“I’m not mocking you,” Gamora says, and Nebula humphs in response. “I’m simply pleased you took my advice and called her. How did your talk go?”
“None of your business,” Nebula snarls reflexively, and only gets more annoyed when Gamora simply rolls her eyes at her.
“The way you’re acting I would think it went poorly,” Gamora snorts, “but Mantis is far too pleased for that to be the case.”
Nebula glowers at her and shifts in her seat, but eventually huffs out a breath and, somewhat grudgingly, says, “It was…fine. She said she liked the knife I left her.”
“Oh, she was thrilled. You should have given it to her yourself instead of taking the coward’s way out.”
Nebula wrinkles her nose. “Ugh, no. She probably would have tried to hug me or something, and that would not have ended well.”
“Oh please. If you were willing to hurt Mantis for annoying you a little, you would have done it already.”
Nebula bristles at the insinuation—she does not have a soft spot for Mantis! Mantis would have gotten the same treatment anyone would have if she’d made herself insufferable to Nebula; the only reason Mantis hadn’t was because of Gamora, which Nebula is quick to remind her of.
“I asked you not to be cruel. The decision to show off your knives and buy her a gift was yours alone.”
Nebula’s expression is sour as she sits there and seethes. Gamora’s ability to perfectly push her buttons made her want to break something. Of all the things she had to be good at, why did this have to be one of them?
“I wasn’t showing off, she snaps. Gamora opens her mouth to retort but Nebula barrels on, hastening to change the subject. “Enough about that. She said she’s been training with you.”
Gamora narrows her eyes, unimpressed with Nebula’s hurried attempt, but she nods her head and backs off for now. “We have.”
“How has it been going?”
“Pretty well so far. She’s very enthusiastic about it. And she asked for extra training sessions today.” Gamora gives her a pointed look. “I think she’s trying to impress you.”
White-hot anger flashes in Nebula’s chest and before she can stop herself she snarls unkindly, “If that’s what she’s angling for she’s going to be very disappointed.”
“Don’t be cruel,” Gamora says immediately. Her tone is sharp. “Don’t take your irritation with me out on Mantis.”
“If you want me to be nicer, maybe you should stop agitating me.”
“But you make it so easy.” Nebula grits her teeth and Gamora sighs. “Fine, fine. I’ll stop teasing.” She frowns and says, more seriously, “I wasn’t trying to be a jerk. I really am pleased at how nicely you and Mantis have been getting along.”
Nebula eyes her sister suspiciously, eyes narrowed into angry slits. There’s an angry, stubborn, mean part of her that wants to stay mad, but she finds that she can’t. The urge sputters and dies in the face of Gamora’s solemn earnestness.
Eventually, she mutters, albeit sulkily, “I know,” and the tension between them eases just a little.
But it’s enough for Nebula to pick and prod for more info on Mantis’s training, and thankfully this time Gamora keeps it to just the training. She seems to be an eager pupil, from what Gamora tells her, perhaps overly so, but Nebula can’t fault her for that. She must have been so stifled under Ego’s control. It must be nice to learn skills she had once been denied.
Her talk with Gamora leaves Nebula agitated. Even after Gamora had stopped her teasing, and even after they’d moved away from the subject of Mantis and her training and onto other things, Nebula couldn’t stop thinking about it—about her, and Mantis, of their—friendship?
Were they friends?
She…she supposes they were, maybe. They had done things friends do. Mantis’s company wasn’t unpleasant. Maybe she could even admit that it was nice, enjoyable. They were friend-ly, at least, Nebula could concede that much.
Friends. The word feels strange on Nebula’s lips; unfamiliar.
It makes Nebula’s chest feel tight.