"Hold on, everyone!" Peter yelled, pulling the steering column of the Milano hard. The ship spun to the right, narrowly avoiding an asteroid that was hurdling towards them.
"Let me drive, Quill!" Rocket pressed down on one of the flaps while engaging the thrusters, causing the ship to shoot forward.
Peter eased off, allowing Rocket more control, plotting a course through the small asteroid belt ahead of them. He could almost see the wheels in his co-pilots head turning as he mapped out basically the only available way through. "That way," he said, pushing the steering column the way he was indicating.
"Yeah, I see," Rocket said shortly. Together, they steered the Milano through to other side of the rocky obstacle course.
The comm next to them crackled and Gamora's voice came through. "Are we safe?" she asked.
"Yup," Peter answered, ignoring Rocket asking when they were ever safe in the seat next to him. "Made it through without a scratch."
"Good," Gamora said, sounding faintly amused.
Beside Rocket there was a small rattling noise as Groot established himself beside the raccoon. "I am Groot," the small tree said, looking out the window intently.
"Yeah? What is it?" Rocket asked. He listened for a minute and then turned to Peter. "Quill, Groot says there's a wormhole coming up here."
"A wormhole?" Peter asked doubtfully. "Aren't those things just stories?"
Rocket rolled his eyes. "So are Infinity stones."
Peter's stomach rolled, remembering the awful minutes when he had grabbed the stone from Ronan's staff, feeling like his mind and body were coming apart from holding onto the purple gem, and yet being unable and unwilling to simply drop it to the planet's surface. "Where is it?" he asked instead, pulling up a star map on the display next to him.
"Out to starboard," Rocket said in unison with Gamora over the comm.
Peter looked out the window as Rocket started steering the other way. Just ahead of them, a mass of roiling green waited. It looked like what Peter figured smoke might look like if it had a solid form, reaching out wispy tendrils that evaporated as they got too far from the centre of the mass.
"There's a star jump just a few klicks from here," Rocket said, tapping his own star map. "Won't take long before we're in another system from this thing."
"Sounds good," Peter said.
"I am Groot!"
"What?" Rocket yanked hard on the steering column, and Peter cursed as he was thrown against the side of the ship.
"What the hell?" he gasped, sitting upright again.
Rocket didn't respond, instead manoeuvring the Milano around the sudden shower of space debris that had come out of nowhere. There was some quick discussion between Groot and Gamora over the comm and then the little tree was nowhere to be found in the cockpit.
"Come on, Quill, I can't do this alone!" Rocket snapped, pulling the ship almost onto its side to avoid a white-hot chunk of metal speeding past.
Peter bit back a snarky reply, instead buckling in and grabbing his own steering column. What looked like pieces of a spaceship flew past, battering their hull but not damaging anything serious yet.
"How much more of this?" Peter shouted over the din.
"No idea!" Rocket yelled back.
Whatever slammed into them was big, that was all either of them knew later. The Milano engine sputtered for a moment and then started up again but by that point it was too late and they were too far out of their path. One of the smoky green tendrils sucked them a little too close to the wormhole and suddenly they were falling.
It felt to Peter like they fell forever, but at the same time like they weren't moving. It was a weird sort of vertigo, feeling like gravity had utterly failed and yet like everything was stationary. It could have been minutes or hours or longer, none of them of knew. All there was around them was the wormhole, stretching out forever.
Eventually, a pinprick of something appeared. It grew closer and closer until it swallowed them and suddenly they were falling for real. There was a city skyline, light against the darkness of a night sky. Activating the thrusters, Peter fought to stabilize the Milano.
Finally, with a loud roar, they kicked in and the skip hovered over the planet where the wormhole had spit them out.
"Ow, son of a bitch, that hurt," Rocket groaned, rubbing his head where he had smacked it on the central console.
"Do you know where we are?" Peter asked.
"No idea," Rocket shrugged. "Doesn't look like there's any docking platform either," he added, looking up at the atmosphere.
There was a crackle as the comm link came back on. "What was that?" Gamora demanded, Kraglin cursing in the background.
"Wormhole," Peter said, staring down at the city below them.
"Where are we?" Drax asked, his voice fainter than Gamora's.
Peter shook his head. "I don't know," he said, still looking down at the planet's surface. "Could be just about anywhere."
Just as he finished talking, the comm system cut out and was replaced by someone speaking in English. "Hey, you and your performing monkey there better follow me right now or there's going to be trouble."
"What?" Peter ignored Rocket's squawk of outrage and looked out the window to see a red and gold figure hovering in the air. Nodding once, it gestured for the Milano to follow before flying over the city towards one of the taller buildings in the skyline.
o0o
Tony looked over his shoulder as he guided the strange spaceship towards the top of Stark Tower. It hadn't started shooting yet, so that was good, but it was still an alien spacecraft barely three months after the last invasion, so, not great. Hopefully, there weren't any S.H.I.E.L.D scientists that had seen the alien energy signatures before they'd been wiped from everywhere he could get his hands on.
The ship landed itself neatly on the roof, and Tony hovered slightly above it. "So," he said, without lifting his mask, "what are you guys doing here?"
A/N: So this is basically my headcanon for how the Guardians and the Avengers could meet. Keep in mind, nothing for the Avengers is canon past The Avengers, but GotG Vol. 2 has happened. I tried to come up with a decent explanation, but I'm not sure it wasn't just hand-waving.
