Disclaimer: I don't own Guardians of the Galaxy.
A Song We Used to Know
Meredith Quill was feeling melancholy. Being dead gave one a lot of time to reflect, and her mind was taking her back to memories she would much rather forget. She knew that she should try to be more like the others, and revel in being free from worldly woes and responsibilities, but even after nearly forty years, her heart still had a tie to the land of the living: her son. It was hard to be lighthearted and relaxed when she was always worried about him.
She had her Walkman headphones on. Music usually helped when her spirits were low. She had only one tape, but it was a special one bequeathed to her when she first entered the afterlife, and she could make it play any song she wanted just by thinking of it. Having a vast and substantial store of songs in her memory, she never ran out of things to listen to, and she never got tired of the same old ones either.
However, on that particular day, she was having trouble making the music play on her tape. It kept pausing and skipping, and the singing voices sounded gloomier than they should. She eventually gave up and pulled the headphones off, sighing. That's when she felt a hand gently press her shoulder.
"Mind if I join ya?" asked a voice she knew well, and was always glad to hear. It was Southern-sounding but whenever she asked him why he had it, he just shrugged and said he must have had it stamped on him along with his slave number.
"It's a free afterlife," she replied jokingly to this question. He took a seat next to her on the bench, of which their otherworldly plane had a surprisingly large number.
"You've got that look again," he remarked. They made a strange pair. She, a petite human woman in a sundress, and him, a tall, blue Centaurian in the rugged uniform of a Ravager. But they had been friends for a long time and, even before that, bound together in a strange but impenetrable way. They had trusted and been destroyed by the same man. They had loved the same little boy, and still did.
"He's in danger, Yondu. I can feel it," she admitted. She shook her head in exasperation. "And he only just narrowly escaped death again."
Yondu chuckled and picked his teeth. "Yeah, that boy attracts trouble to him like a flame attracts moths. Nothin' you or I can do about it, though."
Meredith frowned, and Yondu flashed her a breezy grin. "Mer, you worry too much. Our boy's got a good head on his shoulders and he's got his ragtag bunch of chums lookin' out for him. You've seen the sword Green Knees carries. Anyone who wants a piece of him is gonna get run right through."
"I'd feel a lot of better if you and your arrow were down there, lookin' out for him."
"Arrow's got a new Daddy now and I'm…well, I've done my bit." He examined his jagged nails and picked at them too. "Froze like a fruity pop and woke up to find you waiting for me at the pearly gates. I gotta admit, you were a prettier picture than what I was expecting. I thought it would be my crew waiting for me, ready to tear me limb from limb."
Meredith shook her head. "I asked to greet you first. I had to thank you, for what you did."
"I had to do it, Mer. That jackass of an ex of yours was gonna take him down with him."
"Not just that. I had to thank you for taking care of Peter all those years. For being a real Dad to him." She then gave him a mock accusatory look. "Though some of your parenting methods are, how can I put it….unorthodox?"
He gave a mock offended gasp and raised his hands in defense. "Me! Unorthodox! Excuse you, ma'am! I'm a bonafide model of parenthood!"
"Threatening to eat him all the time? Teaching how to pickpocket? Teaching him how to fight and shoot?" She paused. "Actually, scratch that last one. He would have learned those things anyway, where I'm from."
"That boy had to learn. It's not an easy galaxy, the one we've all made."
Meredith sighed. "No, you're right. It's not. I wish someone had taught me. Maybe I wouldn't have made such a terrible mistake."
"You fell in love. That's never a mistake," Yondu reassured her. "And you were too young. That slimeball should have kept his hands off of you."
"It was so dazzling at the time. Dating a spaceman. All the other girls in my sorority house were so jealous." And then she added, in jest, "Maybe I should have dated you."
Yondu barked a laugh. "As much as I like ya, Mer, I ain't the dating type. Imagine you bringing me home to meet your folks!"
Meredith started giggling. "Oh God! My father! He would have shot you before you even had a chance to introduce yourself!"
Yondu grinned roguishly. "Because of my reputation?"
"Yes, that, and your skin. Folks where I'm from can barely handle seeing brown and black skin, sad as that is. They'd explode over blue."
"Then I guess it's a good thing it wasn't me who, well, courted ya." A slightly awkward silence fell between them after that. It was broken only when Yondu steered the subject back to safer and more familiar territory. "Hey, remember when Petey hijacked that police ship when he was thirteen?"
That brought a smile to the mother's face. "Yes, I remember. I saw the whole thing. You told him to just pick the lock on the back hatch and free the guy in it but he hot-wired the ship and made off with it instead."
"He got chased for miles, the stupid lil' bugger!"
"And he crashed it."
"And he crashed it. I was ready to kill him!"
"Then maybe you shouldn't have shown him how to hot-wire a ship in the first place."
"That was for emergencies only! That was not an emergency! That was idiocy!"
"He was thirteen," she reminded him, still smiling. "Who isn't an idiot at thirteen?"
She got him there. He sighed, leaning back against the bench and spreading his arm out across the top of it, behind Meredith. His fingers briefly brushed her hair. "I was an idiot at every age. I should have done a lot of things differently."
"If it's any consolation, I'll always be thankful for the things you did do." To his surprise, she leaned over and let her head rest on his shoulder. This was something she'd never done with him before. He didn't move or shrug her off, but waited to see if she would stay there. After a few long moments of consideration he, very carefully, wrapped his arm around her and pulled her a bit closer, enjoying for once the contact of another being that wasn't a fight or a romp with a paid or loose girl he didn't care for. This girl he did care about. In fact, he couldn't remember caring for any girl more.
Once they were relaxed in that position, he began to whistle. It wasn't anything special, just the tune of some old song he used to know. Meredith knew it too. She knew a lot of songs, and it wasn't a surprise to her that she and Yondu knew so many of the same ones. Feeling a little less forlorn in the company of a friend, she was able to do what her Walkman couldn't. She was able to open her mouth and, very softly, sing along.
FIN