A/N: I know I shouldn't start another fic, but I missed writing Yondad and Star Son. I wanted to continue that series a while back until I was caught up in other stuff, so I'm rectifying it, I guess. Enjoy.
"Kick!" Peter laughed, bouncing in place. "Kick higher this time!"
Kraglin winced as his feet were mercilessly smushed beneath Peter's ratty boots. It was a good thing the younger boy was small for his age and relatively scrawny – though no one could match Kraglin himself when it came to seeing your ribs poke through soiled skin on a daily.
"Don' move so much, then! You keep fallin' off and you're gonna get hit righ' in the family jewels!" The Xandarian scolded while grabbing Peter's hands and keeping him locked into position. The attempt at control did nothing to quell the assault on Kraglin's feet, and he blustered with frustration.
"If they even dropped yet…"
Peter frowned minutely. "Just do it! Come'on!"
The boy swayed on his roost (located on Kraglin's shoes) in anticipation, and with a lack of bodily coordination, before Kraglin propelled one of his long, long legs and squared a kick out at the open air. As he did, the young man took Peter's legs with him and ended up lifting the child into the air while gripping his wrists. It looked ridiculous, but the Terran child was laughing and cheering over how he was 'fighting' like a kung-fu action star. Conceivably, it was only because the kid's back was turned, but Kraglin didn't hide the goofy smile that bloomed on his dirty face at Peter's enthusiasm.
Yondu – standing in front of the viewfinder and leaning on the back of the main pilot's chair – shook his head at the sight. He refrained from barking at them, as the Ravagers were going to enter the planet's atmosphere shortly, and this spectacle of nonsense was at least keeping Peter out of trouble. It was also one of the few times where Kraglin truly indulged the little brat, and because of that both boys were getting along.
He did laugh when they passed through the first atmospheric layer of their destination, as he watched Kraglin and Peter tumble sideways and fall flat on the floor in a heap of hair and tattered clothes.
"Y'all 'r gonna be walkin' on Carach bare-ass naked if ya don' stop messin' around."
The captain eyeballed the seams that had unraveled from Kraglin's jacket and along the side of Peter's pantleg. He could see pale Terran skin from the crevices that had formed out of the rips and tears there, and Kraglin's entire sleeve was hanging on by a literal thread.
Seeing the damage was just as well, as it reminded the captain of why he was making headway into the glorified mass market planet of Carach in the first place. Ordinarily, the task of retrieving a mess of cloth, leather, and metallic fixtures to keep the crew dressed didn't belong to Yondu. As leader, it was a given that Yondu would have more important things to do than pick up garb. Nonetheless, the Centaurian had been less interstellar wanderlust as of late, and had wanted a short retreat all to himself after spending the last six months aboard his ship. Retrieving material for their tailor had been just the ticket for such a retreat, being that it wouldn't cost Yondu more than a day's worth of ordering his bunch around.
Kraglin was the first to get up off the floor of the M-ship, which was roomy enough that he could stretch his spidery limbs while rising. The not-quite-a-man needed all the help he could get when it came to avoiding bruises as he bumped and banged into anything low-hanging or obstructing in the slightest constantly.
"Are we headed for port, cap'n?" He asked, slightly out of breath.
Peter, on the other hand, didn't feel like giving the older boy a break, as he clung to one of those spindly legs and let Kraglin lift him again, this time unwittingly. He made the Xandarian limp while he traveled by leg to the place where Yondu leaned and let the autopilot steer them through another three ether layers.
"Jus' about. Now remember, we're goin' to one dealer and one dealer only, 'less I say otherwise. Ya got it?" Yondu demanded.
"Yessir." Both boys exclaimed dutifully.
Peter unwound his arms from around Kraglin's thighs, much to the older boy's relief, only to race over to the co-pilot seat and climb up the back until he could rest his head at the top.
"Only one though? Aww, I wanted ta see if they had an arcade here too!" Peter whined. He kicked at the chair, even harder when Kraglin sat down and was pummeled forward by the impact.
"It's a market, squirt. Not a Xandarian play-park." Kraglin snapped testily while strapping himself in, trying to ignore the little pain in the ass.
He didn't need to ignore him for long, as Yondu gripped Peter by the scruff of his neck and set him back down onto the ship floor with a stern, fiery-red look. Pete didn't look too put out until he got a quick cuff to the ear and flinched before folding his arms across his chest and sitting on the floor.
"Quit that sulkin'. We don' have time to waste 'fore we's due back at the Eclector, and b'sides, Carach ain't just borin', it's a good place for traffickers lookin' ta pick up gullible folk, so you both better stay close." The captain said.
Peter tilted his head. "The whole time, right?"
"The whole time." Yondu rolled his eyes. "Ya lil' smartass."
Yondu was more leisurely in hunkering down. He trusted Kraglin's ability to fly enough that letting the young man take control of the entire console in his wake wasn't that different from leaving it on autopilot. The scrawny kid had gotten his first M-Ship at 11 years-old and had had plenty of time to learn how to land a skybird smoothly since then. So, when Peter got out of his funk, as he was wont to do (being Peter), and took to climbing rolling down from the farthest side of the ship floor to the cockpit, Yondu barely batted an eye. Such a kiddie distraction shouldn't have made for much of a difference to their esteemed Ravager cadet by now.
Kraglin landed the ship in a parking structure, amplified in person by the solar panel that shone like a white-hot star for all to see. It wasn't covert, but this also wasn't Xandar and Yondu planned to return to his M-Class by sundown, which he figured was the worst time to leave a ship unattended no matter where you landed.
The trio didn't have to get ready once they'd docked, as aside from Yondu and Kraglin's weapons of choice, they had nothing but the loosening clothes on their backs to bring with them. The Xandarian was the first to hop out of the ship, and it wasn't much of a hop for him at all; but Yondu stopped before he could straighten his coat and follow suit.
"Wait! Dad!" Peter ran over to his father's side with a firearm jumping in his clumsy grip. "This would be a good time ta bring my blaster, right dad? For extra protection from traffickers?"
It was a small thing, the blaster that Peter regarded carefully with his open palms. It also wasn't like most weaponry that the crew toted around, since it was sleek and shiny and brand new with a thin barrel for pistol-like shooting. The added flare and the crudely drawn arrow on either side had been grafted onto it after Peter's insistence – but at least the welder, Gef, was too spineless to make a fuss over the extra-special treatment.
"Good thinkin', Pete." Yondu grinned at the boy, ruffled his hair, and departed out of the ship in wait for his son before they headed off.
Peter lacked a utility belt with a holster, or inner pockets in his already damaged coat, so he pocketed the blaster on his right hip and skipped to the door, where he watchfully kneeled so that Yondu could lift him out and onto ground level.
There were no Terran trees aboard the ship, nor any in space save for Terra itself to mark the yearly occasion, and yet Yondu had memorized Peter Quill's birthday long ago. Peter was born in mid-September – a life brought into the world just as the season brought upon the death of plants and wildlife all around with its chilled winds and morning frosts.
It had been 10 years since he'd been able to walk around and feel September against his skin, but Yondu swore the memory of it grew stronger with every birthday his son had. The crew had dressed the party up as half in celebration of Peter turning 10 and half in celebration over getting to drink as much booze as they pleased, but the little boy was oblivious.
Peter gleefully spun his rainbow topper – a toy that spun and spun while dazzling one with unique patterns and colors until you physically stopped it, in the mess hall. Around him, drunken Ravagers swung here and there, dancing while out of their minds, laughing at walls, taking bets on who could chug the most brew, etc. But the human boy couldn't have been happier, with a circle of stolen birthday trinkets around him and Yondu sitting at his side, being brazenly affectionate for once with his arm around the kid. As Peter watched the pattern of his latest fixation change from smiling faces to swirling stars, Yondu leaned in close to him while digging around in his coat.
"Here ya go, boy." Yondu brought out his own gift to Peter: a sleek and shiny handgun, capable of purple fusion blaster-fire.
The mint-conditioned model, never-before-used and in proper, warrant-guaranteed order hadn't cost more than 4500 units from where Yondu had picked it up on Xandar. He had originally looked for one in the usual haunts – black markets and the vagabond-riddled streets of Knowhere, but the Ravager captain gave up on that idea. It wasn't long after he'd decided to give his son a weapon of his own that Yondu had had to compromise to that unforgiving itch that attacked his brain whenever he knowingly let Peter near anything dangerous.
All the attention that had been reserved for the topper melted away when Peter saw the gun and gasped. His look of surprise was comical as well as endearing, and it was a miracle that Yondu's son had the presence of mind to reach for the weapon cautiously. He beheld it reverently, as if it were the most beautiful thing in the world and perhaps to Peter, it was.
The child was so overjoyed that he laid the gun on the tabletop and turned fully to Yondu, arms already out as he made to hug the Centaurian.
Yondu made a face, one that Peter recognized in and instant and that made the boy drop his hands. The pup tended to forget that they were training that desire for open affection out of him, although Peter had agreed that he was getting too old for hugs in public, or being carried everywhere. Even though Yondu had made concessions for the kid's birthday, he'd stopped it at anything beyond a one-armed embrace.
Being ten standard years of age didn't hold a variety of different responsibilities cross-planet-wise, but Yondu had decided that it was old enough for Peter to stop being coddled like he was. Two years of that was enough.
The swell of pride and emotion that Yondu often kept buried didn't change, no matter how old his boy became, and that was especially true for the man as he took in the sight of Peter smiling happily because of his father.
"Thanks, Dad!"
The entirety of Carach was comprised of outdoor brokers, peddlers, street vendors and salespeople in beneath an unending train of huts and tents that contained mostly junk. What was left of the livable terrain was jam-packed with hotels, refueling stations for planetary cruisers, and trick things like petting zoos or cheap as dirt eateries. Performers of all trades loitered in the corners and other just as tight spaces to squeeze money out of every sucker unfortunate to come waltzing into their webs. The latter was one of the few reasons any Ravager worth their salt would venture into the veritable trainwreck. You could pickpocket on a planet notorious for its issues with pickpocketing and stealing, and the scuzzy authorities, already so lax about security, didn't bother to check your identification, if they even caught you.
Yondu winced despite that fact, as whenever he thought about the operation of the little world, as he found the distinctive decorum that Carach boasted about to be… distasteful. They paraded an environment that was exploiting stereotypes relative to outer rim worlds where tribes and ritualistic communities lingered. Tradition and spiritual significance had been imported into the market economy and turned into a profitable shill for vacationer amusement. Maybe it had all been true to the planet and a culture that had existed long ago, but not anymore.
In his youth, Yondu had found the never-ending displays there to be a source of wonder. But overexposure to it had left the man cold and resentful. And there was always the fact that setting foot on the planet inevitably led to him experiencing the memory of a memory; of seeing men and women who looked like him running for their lives, crushing basins and smattering dye and blood upon the fern-covered earth.
Beside him, Peter walked while spinning in circles, shifting between hurrying to match the men's long strides and slowing to watch every new performer they met before entering the core chain of vendors.
At best, Peter could relate his surroundings to those on Knowhere, which he'd visited twice only to learn that it was always dark and grimy. Here, he saw men and women with barely any clothes and tattooed with vibrant swirls of black and white from head to shoe, banging on see-through drums and making a racket with their oversized flutes. Figures dripping from their thin, murky fingers manipulated multicolored sand into different kinds of animals, shapes, and symbols – like how clowns made shapes with balloons. There were men as tall as Peter growing flowers from their heads and out of their ears to sell, and women with faces that had no features at all until, like clay, they formed lips and beaks and four eyes or ten. Peter jumped out of his skin when he saw a ginormous yellow jacket-looking bug tower over the rest of the crowd, staring at everyone with deep, black eyes while stirring a steaming pot of what might've been orange honey. Then, a chorus of little girls with bodies covered in astoundingly beautiful, hummingbird feathers buzzed around Peter, stopping him dead. They giggled and giggled before Peter became dizzied and swayed right into Yondu's legs.
"Do you ever listen, boy? I've been callin' an' callin' you –"
Peter shook the daze from his eyes and looked up, seeing the familiar face of his father, only upside down. "Did'ja see that, Dad? Did'ja see? There was a giant bee over in tha' tent!"
The boy pointed back the way they came, but Yondu didn't spare a backward glance. He clamped a hand over the child's shoulder and steered him in the right direction.
He scowled. "Don' point at people, ya lil' rat. 'Specially not at hibispii, they'll stab ya if ya look at 'em funny. Quit makin' a scene!"
Yondu shoved Peter in front of him – realistically, it was less of a shove and more a gentle push – but the boy sighed and kept walking, stuck amongst Kraglin leading the way and Yondu behind them. Both walked so fast that the blitz of vendors and salespeople, shouting with shiny, noisy junk over one another to get their pitch across the expanse of travelers, passed by in a blur. Soon enough, their tight-knit group were passing through the sliding doors painted in brown and aged yellow for character and scuttling inside a room with baskets full of cloth, where Yondu took the lead.
The dealer here was visited regularly by all 99 factions of Ravagers across the galaxy, and by Yondu's crew too. Peter had only ever heard about the place where they got all their material for making new clothes from the ancient tailor on board the Eclector. Alchazil was of a species unknown to most of the other ravagers, and Peter had a hunch that that was because Al had been around for way, way longer than any of them – even Peter's dad. Their tailor had the whitest of hair in wispy patches on his creased, green scalp, and tiny glasses perched on his hawkish nose that looked useless to the Terran boy. He also moved at a snail's pace, with bundles of leathers all over his hovel that he climbed on a regular basis, scaring Peter half to death more than once.
At least, Al was nice and had interesting stories to tell, as well as roly-poly orange and black candies that he snuck Peter back when Peter had spent his days in the tailor's workroom. When they entered this Carach clothes dealer's shop, they came face to face with a shriveled crone with a large square chin and who looked like she'd been sucking on a lemon for years. Her greenish-yellow eyes scrutinized Yondu directly, and Peter, who knew that old people forgot their manners, felt defensive over the way she sneered.
"Ah, ravagers." Her voice was feeble and shaky, with a scratchy quality that made her sound closer to a yowling cat then a person. "Come to scam me out of my exquisite fabrics, I'm sure."
Maybe Kraglin would like her and get on her good side then, if she sounded like a cat. Peter turned to look at Kraglin's expression, but couldn't get a good read on the man's expression. Kraglin's Adam's apple bobbed in his throat, but that was it.
"Now, now, let's not be hasty." Yondu admonished steadily. He kept his hands where the woman could see them, as a show of honesty in good faith. "You may 'ave been conned by some what look like me 'n my associates here in the past, but they abso-tively weren't us, Ma'am."
The cat lady's lowered into an even more shapeless mass when Peter didn't think she could do it, and her eyes narrowed to slits as she simmered at the captain's smooth tone.
The sound of their heckling was drowned out by Peter's on-set of boredom and keen eyes. It was hard to breath normally in the shop, which Peter managed to read the name of as he peered from one sparkling fabric to the next. They were in a shop called Talon, if Peter's Xandarian was correct, and the incense in the place was so thick that the boy's eyes began to burn after a couple minutes. He didn't know what it was about clothing people, but Talon had baskets overflowing with rags and fabric, and which towered above all their heads before it reached the musty ceiling and everything disappeared. Peter craned his neck upward, but short of being able to climb the towers (because he knew his dad would throw a fit if Peter even dared), he couldn't see how high the clothing piles reached. Everything else was dark and drab, and looked like it would make old people very intrigued. Peter hadn't reached that stage of mind-numbingly boring in his life, however, and he soon wandered back to the entrance of Talon.
Outside, Peter's eye immediately caught on the flash of beautiful colors to one side. One of the hummingbird girls that they'd passed in the market place was twirling anxiously on her feet, sweet, heart-shaped face marred by worry. When she caught sight of him, Peter realized that she had the deepest, blackest eyes he'd ever seen.
"Oh!" She squeaked. "Hello!"
"Uh, hi." Peter raised a hand and waved hesitantly. "Are you… okay?"
The bird girl wasn't as jolly as when he'd last seen her, and she wasn't in a group of eight or twelve either. In fact, looking around them led Peter to realizing that, in the mesh of people that milled among them, there were no other little girls like this one. And she was fidgeting wildly, looking increasingly frightened and like she wanted to cry as she danced in place. Her worried glances from side to side reminded Peter of when he'd been little and had gotten lost at the grocery store. He must've looked the same way, afraid of everyone without his grandpa to protect him.
Her pink lips quavered. "I'm scared."
"Why? What's the matter?" Peter took a step toward her, then another when the birdie didn't run away from him.
"I – I…" Tears formed in her black pools for eyes. "There was a bad man, and I got away from him b-b-but my sisters are still trapped."
Peter felt the blood drain from his face. In an instant, his mind went to the warning that dad had given him and Kraglin before they'd landed in Carach. Traffickers – it figured they liked to pick on little, defenseless kids. Looking back at this girl, Peter realized how delicate she was and how there had been more of her running around in the marketplace entrance not too long ago. Anybody could've picked them up off the street and done something terrible, like killed them to make a coat like Cruella De Vile, only with feathers instead of puppy fur.
It would be a bad idea to go save the other kids by himself, but the bird girl looked so horrified, and for her sisters. For her family.
Peter inched a hand down and felt the gun in his pocket. He squared his shoulders and stood up straighter. "Show me where they are. We can help 'em, together."
No time was wasted, aside from the birdie offering him a tearful, close-lipped smile, before she took Peter's hand and they galloped through a poorly-lit side alley between Talon and the candy bark sellers next door. Peter had the wind knocked out of him while they dodged banners, tent poles, and people much, much bigger than they were.
"Were you only one who got loose?" Peter asked as they sped down a gravel path, swerving this way and that until Peter couldn't remember whether the market was a straight line or a winding road.
He could barely hear her tinny voice against the wind roaring in his ears. "Yes! Hurry!"
The Terran saw the blinding top of the docking bay that he, Yondu, and Kraglin had landed in before the bird girl took him beneath the curtains of a booth and they slid on their bellies behind it. When he pried himself out after her with the help of a hand, Peter was surprised to see not a dozen tearful bird-like children locked in cages but a hulking, pale blue man instead.
It was Kree man, holding Peter up by his arm and not letting him go.
Behind the Kree, a flash of extraordinary color went by and Peter twisted in the man's grip to see the same birdie getting away from them.
"Hey!" Peter shouted at her, swinging in the air until the Kree maneuvered so that he'd hoisted Peter up by his abdomen. "Hey!"
The little girl turned, all traces of tears and worry completely gone in favor of a wide, eager smile, revealing sharp fangs for teeth that had Peter shrieking. The Kree capture shook the boy violently through the air until he couldn't scream anymore. Peter wanted to throw up and the man gave him a nasty look for it.
"Don't you get sick all over me, or you'll be hanging by your thumbs once we lift off from this dump." He growled.
There were no cages full of crying children, but the musty, dark tent that Peter had been thrown into felt as cramped and terrifying as a kennel for no good dogs. Peter shook in a corner next to a half-broken bench and what appeared to be garden tools hanging from sturdy, blue ropes made of light.
Under different circumstances, Peter would've been curious to see if touching the ropes burned you, but he was busy sobbing into his arms. He'd already vomited all the contents of his stomach on the other side of the room, near the closed-off exit. Peter tried his best to stave off peeing himself in fear as well, but the only trick for that was worrying that he might never see his father or the ravagers ever again.
Peter cried until it hurt, until his eyes couldn't produce anymore tears and his throat felt as if it were full of glass. He wondered where his dad and Kraglin were – if they were still bartering with the cat lady or if they'd noticed he was gone and were searching for him. Carach was an entire planet of peddlers and street salespeople, as Peter had heard, and they hadn't gotten even a quarter of the way through all of them before reaching Talon. How were Kraglin and Yondu going to find him through that? How would they spot him if he was being kept and smothered in a creepy tent with a huge Kree and little feathered gremlins standing guard?
How, when the Kree had said that they would lift off from Carach?
The Kree are meaner than most species in the galaxy, Pete.
His father had warned him one night, after they'd witnessed a Kree woman and her baby seek asylum on Xandar, just to be ordered away while hundreds of Xandarian innocents were evacuated into their homes. It had been a precaution, for when Kree soldiers threatened to annex the planet, and it happened far more often than it should've.
Ain't no sense in appealin' to their better nature, nor tryin' ta reason wit' 'em neither. The second they see your weak spot, they'll go right for ya throat wit' no remorse.
The Terran dry-heaved, but prayed that he didn't throw up again. There was nothing left to upchuck and it only hurt his wounded throat. He tried to remember how to help an upset stomach without medicine, and Peter remembered his mother telling him to hold his head between his knees.
It may have been for a headache instead, but Peter did it anyway, being huddled as he was. Peter whimpered into his lap, wanting his father and Kraglin to burst in and save him, hoping his mom and dad would forgive him for being so stupid.