This is an aside set during Book 2: Chapter 9 of my main series Astronautical. It won't make any sense out of context.
Set during their first night on Ego's planet.
Title is from "Even if it Kills Me" by Motion City Soundtrack.
Characters and GotG belong to Marvel, this is a fan-made work for entertainment only.
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Even if it Kills Me
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Moonlight blanketed the landscape like a heavy sheet of frost. The usual night sounds of singing insects and the lives of nocturnal wildlife were conspicuously absent. Even to Nebula's enhanced hearing, the only sounds beyond her own footsteps were the rustling of leaves in a soft breeze and the distant booming of a waterfall. She'd been on enough planets conquered and lain to waste under her father's fist that the silence alone did not disturb her; what was so out of place here was the way the plant life bloomed, lush and vibrant against it. Normally, this level of silence was only achieved after even the trees and forests had been burned to ash, and taken the insects with them.
Here, everything flourished, but nothing lived.
After so long cramped into small, bright, crowded places, the silent empty night was a welcome break. Nebula soaked in the nothingness around her as she paced the edges of a sharp canyon wall. She could jump down. She knew she would survive the fall, she'd jumped much farther than this more times than she could count. Her joints were designed to survive high impact, and any broken bones would be fixed in a matter of moments. But she was feeling uncharacteristically patient tonight. No one spoke to her. No one asked anything of her. No one knew or cared where she was. Life had been turned right side up again, and all was as it should be.
That's what she assured herself of as she searched the canyon wall below for a path down. In the morning she would return to check on Peter and Drax. The feeling of responsibility was as unfamiliar as it was unwelcome where it sat heavily in her chest and tugged like an anchor, dragging in the dirt behind her, and weighing her close. In the morning, perhaps, she would admit that her life had never been right side up to begin with. She just never really had anything to use as perspective. For tonight, however, she would enjoy the silence, and the comfort of being nothing and nobody.
Eventually, the moonlight revealed a portion of the cliff face with a series of jutting points that she could use to climb down into the forest below, and she did just that. The air grew steadily cooler as she lowered herself down into the canyon, but the thousands of nanobots and other regulating systems in her enhanced body kept her from any need to shiver or wish for more covers.
She had already circled the buildings and fountains above and found evidence of nothing but an overzealous architect. Now, she turned her attention to the wilder portions of the small planet, outside of the carefully arranged gardens that surrounded where they were meant to stay. She didn't know exactly what she was looking for, or what she could do with anything she found. It had been made pretty clear to all involved that there was no way off of this planet, and no one other than Ego, the empath Mantis, and those who had come down with her. Being powerless, however, had never sat well with her, and days of being locked in the prison on the Sunburst so close to her sister had left her restless.
Most frustrating of all was her own compliance in her imprisonment. The security measures were clearly not meant to control a threat of her caliber, and by the end of the first cycle onboard she had counted over a dozen weak points she could have exploited to gain her freedom. But she hadn't, because she had discovered that she was bound by a much more subtle, yet far more effective means. The anchor tugged on her, a heavy weight that threw her off-balance and made her feel uncomfortably vulnerable. It was like learning to use her false arm all over again. She didn't know how to handle these new feelings, they resisted her attempts to shake them off or ignore them, so she left tracks through the dust of Ego's planet in an attempt to leave them behind.
At the bottom of the canyon, the rough cliff gave way to soft dirt and springy grasses. She followed along the river for a ways, but found nothing to peak her interest. By the time the moon had reached the center of the sky, she had meandered her way across to the far wall. If she followed this back up, she would be close to where the ship they had come in on was docked. Most likely, this was where the Uplift had run off to.
The breeze dipped down for a moment, and she could just make out a faint clanging noise in the distance. Seems he was already hard at work.
Another night she might be tempted to check on his progress and assure he had not found some way to weaponize this strange technology. Tonight was too pleasant to be wasted on company, though, and she was, for once, in no mood for a confrontation. She turned back to the forest, weaving through the trees and following along the withering cliff face towards where it opened up into some sort of flatland beyond. Somewhere out there should be the tunnels Peter had spoken of; the ones that lead to the mass grave of all of his siblings. If she could locate those caves, she could check if there were any other secrets lurking in them. After that, she would turn her attention to searching for ways down to this 'core' of the planet.
She hadn't quite made it out of the canyon yet when she caught the sound of something moving through the trees behind her. The first thought to cross her mind was that Gamora had followed her out here. A spark of rage, hot and acidic, burst to life in her chest, and her hand reached for a weapon that wasn't there. Before she had decided whether to try her luck vanishing, or to just find herself a makeshift weapon and take her stand here, the noise drew closer, and it became apparent it wasn't her sister after all.
The rage cooled, but she remained alert. Forest terrain was his specialty, and she was sure he had some grudges to settle.
Through the trees up ahead was a small clearing, the grass glowing in unfiltered moonlight, and she moved to wait in the center for Experiment 89P13 to catch up. It wasn't a long wait.
"What do you want?" she asked the trees when the rustling fell silent. "I'm not in the mood to be followed all night, and you may have the advantage in the trees, but the Nova Corps didn't take all of my weapons." The silver of her cybernetic arm flashed under the moonlight as she flexed it.
A pair of red eyes flashed through the darkness from between the limbs of a sturdy tree. A moment later, a shadow dropped down the trunk and the Uplift stepped out into the moonlight, pausing close enough to the treeline to make a fast exit if he wanted to. "I want to know what scam you're pulling here," he growled.
Nebula narrowed her eyes at that. "I don't have scams," she spat.
"Right," the Uplift huffed, "I forgot. You're all about helpin' people outta the goodness of your heart. Cut the crap. Whatever game your playing with this Star-lord idiot, I don't want any part of it."
"No games." Nebula pursed her lips into a deep frown. "Peter is the one who wanted you. I don't care if you help or not. I helped him retrieve you, because it was part of our deal, and if what this Celestial said is true, we won't need you after this."
The Uplift's lips peeled into an answering sneer. "Why are you so keen on helping him?"
"I'm using him."
"You use a lot of people, but I ain't never seen you take a hit for anyone before. What's so special about this idiot?"
"I believe he is a weapon that can defeat my father. If he dies, I'm back where I started, and Thanos wins."
"How do you know? Thanos wants him alive. If you ask me, you're better off killing the Star-lord if you really want to piss him off."
"Is that why you took a lethal shot against orders?"
White teeth flashed in the moonlight when his sneer morphed into a twisted smile. "I saw my chance to screw over the Titan and I took it," he proclaimed proudly enough.
"Are you planning to kill him now that you're free?" she asked, her eyes narrowing.
"Why? Are you worried about him?" the Uplift snickered.
Nebula's lips twitched again. Her nostrils flared as she took a deep breath and glowered at the figure before her. He was too far away to reach before he vanished and he knew it, so he was pushing at her buttons and dancing on her nerves. "I need him alive," she repeated in a slow growl. "If anything becomes a threat to my revenge against my father, I will eliminate it. That includes you."
"That's it?" he snorted. "That sorry little excuse is all you got? What do you care so much about killing Thanos, anyways? I thought you were free now."
"I'll never be free so long as the Mad Titan lives."
The glowing red eyes narrowed into slits and the Uplift crossed his arms tightly. "So you'll just waste your opportunity to run?" he asked, with obvious disbelief. "I heard that cockamamie story he told about his 'happy little universe' where we're all some big stupid family. From the sounds of it, you're no better off there. In fact, I'd say your even worse off in his universe than here, and that's a low bar to crawl under. Clearly, he's plenty happy to condemn you back to your fate to save himself, so why do you wanna help him get back home and go back to being some wayward beggar?"
"What happens to me at the end of this doesn't matter." Nebula looked away from those glowing eyes, staring into the shadows behind the trees instead. "I would gladly die a thousand times to see him pay for what he's done to me."
"So you'll give up everything?" The tips of his ears glowed like little crescent moons when he pulled them back, looking at her like he couldn't make sense of what she was saying. His time under her father had been cruel, but relatively brief and unimaginative. She doubted he could understand the hatred she felt towards the Titan. His very existence was like a blade of hot iron twisting through her spine and ribs. It would continue to haunt her, tearing her apart from the inside out until he was dead. "Just like that. Even if it kills you?"
"Even if it kills me," she promised. "I'll pay any price."
"And if it kills the Star-lord?"
Nebula was silent for a moment, unwilling to dignify that with a response.
The uplift tilted his head. "You've changed Nebula," he said slowly. "You're different now."
A spark of something uncomfortable flared in her chest, but before she could draw breath for a stinging retort the uplift had melted back into the shadows and was gone.
She glared into the shadows for a while after that. Part of her was hoping he would come back so she could take out some of the emotions swirling inside of her with some physical aggression. Emotions had never been something she was skilled with handling. For countless years she had honed the art of shoving them down and burying everything so far beneath the emptiness inside of her that they never saw the light of day. Lately, it seemed they had grown harder to ignore, and more difficult to bury. Often, she would believe she had won the battle, only have some remaining spark claw its way back up to the surface where it would squirm around at the back of her skull.
It didn't matter. She reminded herself of this with a harsh shake of her head and a swift kick to the nearest rock, sending it flying off into the treeline in the direction Experiment 89P13 had vanished, before continuing on towards the flatlands again. None of this mattered. She would see it through to its end and her father's death, and then she would accept whatever fate was coming. Thanos had taken her life from her long ago. There was nothing for her anymore but revenge and death.
End
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Next chapter for Luciferous will probably be another week. I was making great progress, and it's about 2/3rds or more done, buuuuut then I finally got the internet fixed. It's been out all summer. I may have been a little distracted playing Overwatch again. xD I'm still writing, but mostly I've been picking at the rehaul of book 1, writing this, and planning the epilogue.
This is mostly a study in Nebula's current state of mind, some foreshadowing for some later internal conflicts, and a chance for me to dip my toes in the water to write for Rocket, since he'll start pulling into the main story pretty soon here.
Thanks for reading!
-OMaM