Disclaimer: I own nothing.

A/N: So, I caved xD I've decided to do (or at least try) some origin stories for each of the guardians of the galaxy thanks to some lovely reviews on my other story, Sun, sand and more sand. And for the guest reviewer - are you the same one from AO3 or do people just really want origin stories? xD Either way, I hope you all enjoy!

Peter wasn't used to death.

Now, granted, very few people could even begin to get used to such a thing unless they were in a war zone or had gone through something really, really nasty that Peter didn't even want to spare a thought to, lest it make him sick. It was the deaths of the small things around him that got to him, the things that seemed near natural to any other person still made him flinch like a newborn under a stranger's touch. A struggling worm being impaled on a fishing hook, a deer getting shot down during hunting season, the shot ringing loud and clear through the crisp autumn air followed by a gut churning thump and the exuberant cheers of those that brought it down, the loss of a hair that wasn't cut, the expanding and shrinking chest of a frog pinned down beneath him in science class, its eyes knowing what is to come next yet still holding the frantic fire of, no no no please no, let me go, let me go HOME!

It did little more than make him feel nauseous and separated from the world.

Though death was a thing that Peter had seen all too many times and had never forgotten unlike the others, dying was a process he wasn't familiar with. That is, until it hit home, and hit home it did.

The buttery and affectionate smell of the kitchen all too soon changed from comforting to smothering as he was lead in by his grandpa after an far too sugar-coated sentence of "Your momma, grandma and I wanna have a talk with ye, son." that really didn't fit the gruff and all-man undertones his grandpa had. Any time he had one of these "talks" with his grandpa it was either a scolding for breaking something or a monologue on how not to become like his daddy, who always lead him to the line of, "I know what Meredith says, she's a good girl, she wouldn't lie, but I don' give a rats ass about any man who walks out an' leaves his lady an' baby like that."

Peter only wondered why the butts of rats would be given in the first place.

Making his way into the kitchen, Peter saw his mom and grandma sat on one end and, with a bit of struggling on his part, heaved himself up onto one of the rickety and old, white wooden chairs, flicking a fleck of dried paint of his pant leg before looking back up at the condescending faces of his grandpa to his left and grandma to his left before finally looking at the frail person that was his mom in front of him who gifted him with a wan smile.

"Now, Peter," she started, and took his hand in the clammy and weak grasp of her own, Peter hesitating and about to pull back before thinking better of it and relaxing his own in her grip. She gripped his tighter for a moment, as if anchoring herself, and continued, " As you may know, momma's been sick for a lil' while now and the doctors have found out it's cancer." Peter wondered for a fleeting moment why a disease would be named after a constellation before she spoke again, her voice a little shaky and croaky as it had been after she had first collapsed all those months ago. "The doctors an' I have decided that, jus' for a lil' while, I should stay in the hospital while they treat me so I have a better chance of recovery. Is that alright with you, Peter?"

And Peter, not realising that he was agreeing for his mother to slowly die in that sterile, white husk of a building nodded, unsure as to why she'd need his permission to do such a thing. She gave him her usual bright smile before she stood up and enveloped him in a hug, the bright smile no longer as usual as it used to be and Peter, unknowingly hugging her for the last time, hugged her with the same fervent as she did to him.

However, as the days dragged on at school and at home with his grandparents it slowly shifted to more time at the hospital than anywhere else and Peter soon realised that the promise the doctors gave to him of "She'll be better soon" or "The cancer isn't quite as big now" were filthy lies. He'd seen things die, so had they, so why were they so oblivious?

His mom may not be dead yet, but he knew it was coming. He saw how her skin stretched out to cover her bones, paper thin and too pale, displaying the blue veins beneath like sea glass washed ashore, hollowed out and strung up into a wind chime, broadcasting her suffering with the clinking and beeping of machinery. How saw how her hair fell out, initially one strand at a time, then in clumps and then none at all. But most of all, he saw how she was slowly giving up, how she was slowly accepting that, yeah, she was probably going to die here and would never walk with Peter through the woodland again or sing him to sleep with the songs on their Sony walk man or even just get to be her own person in her own home again instead of some patient rotting away in a hospital bed from cancer. And that hurt more than anything else.

It was only when he was pulled away from their walk man that night when it all came crashing down. His grandpa crouched down to his level and gave him a pleading look. Only then did Peter swallow the dread in his throat and leave it to fester in his stomach as his headphones were taken off of him and their walk man was stopped.

"Peter, yer momma wants to talk with ye." His grandpa said, voice firm yet sympathetic like sweetener that didn't quite settle right on your tongue. Reluctantly, oh so reluctantly, he moved away from the uncomfortable hospital seat in the all too sterile corridor into the room where his mother had been wasting away these past couple of months until there would be nothing left.

Approaching her, Peter didn't see much left.

And yet, in spite of every breath that rattled her paper thin lungs, in spite of the weariness that was present in her eyes, her smile, her every movement, in spite of the fact that she was... was dying, her first instinct was to jump to his aid, instantly noticing the darkening bruise on his face.

"Why have you been fightin' with the other boys again, baby?" She asked, her voice too full of emotions that Peter couldn't recognise, couldn't handle, he looked down at his feet and managed a half - hearted shrug.

"Peter..." she implored once more, her tone slightly chastising and yet forgiving as well. Finally, Peter relented, sucking in a small breath before answering,

"They killed a little frog that ain't done nothin'," he took another breath, still refusing to meet her eyes in fear of disapproval in her gaze though there was none, "Smooshed it with a stick."

For a moment his words were met by nothing but the sound of the heart monitor in the background and the breathing of his relatives around him before a breath escaped her, the sound akin to awe.

"You're so like your daddy," she took a small and pitiful breath, her eyes with the sheen of tears, "And you even look like him."

At that Peter looked up at her, eyes dubious and not so certain that he'd want to look like a man that had left his momma to suffer such an illness.

Taking his glance as agreement Meredith smiled, adding, "An' he was an angel,"she paused, breathing in as if revelling in and re-living the moment as she turned her head away, "Composed out of pure light-"

"Meredith," Her father cut her off, all too aware of the road that she'd go down once she started talking about the boy's father. And that was not what he needed, not now. "You've got a... present there for Peter, don't ya?" His voice caught on the word "present", as if knowing all too well how unwelcome such a gift would be at this time.

She seemed forlorn for a moment, cut off from her past and of memories when she was better before seemingly remembering that Peter was there and that she soon wouldn't be, replying with a simple, "'Course," fingers trying yet failing to pick up the brightly packaged present, "there..." before her father picked both up and placed them in Peter's backpack with, "Gotcha covered, Pete."

Meredith looked at Peter once more, watching him as if he was the one dying and not her. "You open it up when I'm gone, okay?" she said, smiling despite the tears in her eyes.

When.

When, not if, when, not if, when, not if. She was going, she was really well and truly going. But going wasn't the right word, now was it? Dying, the same thing she'd been doing the past few months except this time there was an end in sight, an end she was certain about and even seemed happy about. Who would be happy about dying and being put in a hole in the ground? Cold, dark, and oh so alone. No, no... Peter couldn't let this happen to his mom.

His lip wobbled and he looked down once more as he sniffled, at first thinking that seeing her waste away was the worst part but knowing that she wouldn't be doing anything ever again in all but a couple of moments was too much to bear.

"Your grandpa is gonna take such good care of you..." Gregg bowed his head and gave a small smile to his daughter, acknowledging her efforts to cheer up Peter whilst also trying to paint bravado upon his own faltering face, "At least until your daddy comes back to get'cha..."

She seemed to hesitate for a moment after that, looking as if she was about to cry then thinking better of such a thing in her final moments. "Take my hand..." she said, turning it palm upwards so Peter could better reach it, the smile of a person promised great and glorious things upon her face, the smile of a person ready to die.

It wasn't a face Peter could bear to see.

He turned then, looking at the off white hospital walls, thinking, hoping, praying to any and all things out there that if he didn't take her hand, if he didn't look at her face, if he wasn't there to watch something die then maybe, just maybe, they wouldn't die for once. Then she'd wait for him. And if doing such a thing kept her alive, even for a moment longer, he was willing to go through the agonising pain of hearing her voice and heart break at his rejection.

"Peter." She said almost frantically, as if a bit surprised that he turned, reaching herself out to him even further as he shook his head and cried.

"Pete, c'mon." his grandpa added, his voice surprised as well if not a bit more stern.

"Take my hand." Panic was clear in her voice now as it broke, as if even speaking above a near volume whisper was too much for her. In a way it was.

Her hand outstretched to his one last time, hovering above the bed meekly before it fell back down, limp as the piercing shrill of the heart monitor rang throughout the room and the green line flat lined.

"Mom?!" Peter cried out, making a move to touch her but then thought better of it, as if doing so would mean that she was really dead, that she wouldn't ever be coming back. "No..! No! No!" He gave up on whatever self restraint he had, lunging at his mother, at the corpse that lay in her place, grabbed onto her shoulders and shook, cried, prayed, anything to get her to wake up, to stop the damned machine screeching, to see her eyes full of love upon him once more.

The broken scream of "MOM!" echoed throughout the corridor, loud enough to warrant a doctor to run into the room where his mother had recently perished as he was carried out of the room kicking and screaming by his grandpa.

His grandpa placed him down on the ground and had a firm grip on his shoulders to prevent him from running back into the room.

"-with me-" Gregg was cut off.

"No!"

"Peter-" He began once more and was cut off again.

"No!"

"You've got to stay here," his grandpa pleaded, looking less and less like the no-nonsense man he was as he slowly broke down over the fact that his daughter was dead in a room less and three metres away from him, "Please."

"No..." Peter choked out, the fight gone from him and only the understanding that she was dead, she was really, well and truly dead and was never coming back.

"Okay?" his grandfather asked, more of a command than a question as he walked backwards slowly, eyes watering as he turned from facing Peter to his daughter, his baby girl dead in a hospital bed as the broken sobs of relatives echoed from the room.

And Peter was alone, oh so alone.

His mother had left him, his grandfather as well, none of the relatives held him in a warm, comforting embrace, none of the nurses stopped to take a look at his face or ask him if he was alright. Everybody was by the bed, everybody was beside a corpse. A corpse of a body that once belonged to his mother. He could have stepped back in there, could have taken her cold hand and held it in his. But instead he fled. He fled from the hospital, he fled from his mother's death, he fled from the bad and all that was bad that had happened to him until the cool, low fog of the night, the early dew of the grass and the eerie and melancholic sheen of the moon were all that was around him.

And he wept.

Peter wasn't sure how long he stayed there, knelt in the cold and damp grass as his hands grew wet with warm and salty tears that just wouldn't stop falling onto them. It couldn't have been long, though, if his ragged breathing was anything to go by.

And then, unexpectedly, Peter was surrounded by blinding light. He looked up as he openly wept, thinking that if this was his father made out of light, the father that left them, the father that let his mom die, he wanted nothing to do with him. And so as the beam expanded and slowly picked him up, Peter looked into the light...

And screamed.

Peter would argue that he lived a life worth living. He visited exotic places, got to know some very exotic women quite well (and he was good at doing so too if you asked him, thank you very much) and saw and experienced many things that nobody back on earth (or Terra as they called it, for some dumb reason they liked its Latin form) could have ever even hoped of dreaming of experiencing.

The Kyln just happened to be a place that wasn't quite on his bucket list.

Yet, like many things in Peter's life, the element of surprise really seemed to be intimate with him and not always in the right ways. A walking, talking tree and talking raccoon were certainly things he had not expected yet rolled with none the less (not that he had a choice, mind you). It was only after some jackass had stolen and had started listening to the music on his Sony walk man (and nearly beat the literal shit out of him for trying to take it back) did Peter have the feeling that this place wasn't going to be very nice (okay yeah, he had a clue way before then, but not all prisons are terrible, right?).

However, it was only when walking in line with the tree, raccoon and the green lady that he saw the acceptance in the woman's eyes, how her talk of betrayal and acts leading towards it had failed. And as those in the prison sneered and jeered at her, some even throwing objects as she tried her hardest not to flinch, that was when dread made itself at home in Peter's stomach once more.

Because those weren't the eyes of just a defeated person, those were the eyes of a dead person.

And hell, she'd probably done all sorts of crazy shit as an assassin. She'd probably murdered hundreds of people, started all sorts of wars, done so many horrible things for a person she was all too willing to betray in a heartbeat. Yet despite it being a great risk to even get close to her, the sheer and utter acceptance of what was to come (because who was he kidding, the inmates would get to her before she could even think of getting to herself)... he couldn't just stand by and do nothing. Because contrary to what Peter always said, he does learn. He wasn't going to make the same mistake again.

He wasn't going to let her die here.

A/N: Aka, how Peter decided he didn't want Gamora to die metaphorically and actually ended up stopping her from dying literally.