Set between Chapters 11 and 13. This story will focus on what Nebula did after leaving the Eclector and before rescuing Peter, Drax, and Groot from the Oasis.
My goal is to aim for a sort of 'Zuko Alone' type of vibe, in that we get to see some internal conflicts and growth without any of the regular supporting cast or influences. It's kind of taken a life of its own, so I decided to go ahead and post it as a multi-chapter fic so I can take breaks and still work on the main fic's regular updates, but it's probably only going to be 3 or 4 chapters, and I'm trying not to dwell too much on it, so the editing is pretty quick and dirty here.
Song is 'Feet Don't Fail Me Now' by the Foxes. I love this song, and felt it matched Nebula since long before I started the Astronautical project, so I'm happy to give her her own aside story under it.
I do not own Marvel or GotG characters, this is purely a fanwork made for entertainment.
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Chapter 1:
Nothing Left Here to Say
Nebula huffed out a breath at the approaching planet. The window fogged under her breath where she was leaning against it, arms crossed tightly, and the side of her forehead pressed against the cool glass.
"We'll be enterin' the atmosphere soon." The first mate's voice rang out from where he was addressing the crew in the cargo hold. "Now the air here's breathable, but it's a touch acidic, so keep your indicators close."
The mildly corrosive atmosphere would be no problem for her enhanced body, and she had no need to sit in on their safety meeting of sorts, so she was manning the guidance system, or more accurately, watching the planet slowly grow larger as the autopilot guided them in. It was a meager little planet, which had been overpopulated and over-industrialized for so long that from up here its features were all lost to the heavy blanket of smog that clung to it like a second skin that couldn't shed and was rotting from underneath. It was the kind of place where anyone could vanish with ease, and the real trick was not reappearing some cycles later, rotting in a ditch or pile of trash.
Gamora would no doubt be furious when she realized that she had lost the Infinity Stone, and Nebula intended to be long since vanished by the time her sister or anyone else came sniffing around.
The descent was quick and relatively painless as the atmospheric pressure here was only a small cry from that on the Ravager's main ship, so the pain in her joints as the air pressure shifted was minuscule and easily ignored. The dark discomfort writhing underneath her ribcage was harder to shake off.
By the time the ship pulled into an empty lot and the engines cut she was in a particularly foul mood, and the burning pain in her side as her nanobots worked furiously to repair the damage and regrow the nerves that the idiot's blaster had fried, was doing nothing to help. She had been stupid. She had let her sister get under her skin and had let her guard down. Worst of all, she hadn't expected the idiot to turn his weapon on her, and that had ultimately been her downfall. It was the oldest lesson Thanos had taught her, and one life seemed to enjoy repeating whenever the opportunity presented its self; Trust no one.
She had broken that rule, and this was a fitting punishment. An invisible shudder ran over her body as the next row of nerves were brought online, like thousands of red hot needles threading through her skin. Actually, it was practically getting away scott free by Thanos's standards.
"You ready to start unloadin' this junk?" A voice dragged her back into the present, back into her burning body and roiling mind that she wanted nothing to do with right now, and she resisted the urge to lash out at its source. She was not some mindless wounded animal who needed to curl up and lick her wounds in a dark, filthy cave. She was a daughter of Thanos, a galaxy class assassin, and she still had a job to do. She could not rest until her task was accomplished, and the first step to accomplishing that task was to finish transacting these wares and the items she'd stolen from half-world and to vanish as soon as she'd collected her portion.
Some distant, bitter voice, which sounded a bit like Korath if she thought too hard, insisted that she shouldn't have a portion. She should take all of the profits, it was the more honorable thing to do here as a child of Thanos. While she held no doubt in her mind that she could dispose of this motley band of ravagers with ease, it would be counterproductive. She needed to slip away quietly.
It was not because of any hesitancy to kill the people who took her in. She would never hesitate to kill them if she needed to, she assured herself of this as she steps onto the planet, a small, but heavy crate balanced in her arms, held awkwardly away from her side as she follows the ravagers to their meet-point. She just has a bigger goal and doesn't need any distractions. This was easier.
The voice that sounds like Korath stayed silent, but she could feel its eyes boring into her, and it maked her skin crawl. She needed to leave.
The second mate was mercifully swift in his business transactions, and soon Nebula was pocketing her units and leaving them in the dust and smog. A voice that sounded like it belonged to the first mate -Kraglin- called out a farewell, and she pretended not to hear it. This had all been a mistake, and it was long past time to move on.
-x-
The planet's name was Kezzmet. She doesn't care, but her enhanced brain supplies the information, regardless. She's never been here before, but she's studied maps of this quadrant, this and thousands of others, and she knows the population size, the main exports, a rough layout of the cities, although her information was likely outdated at this point.
The dried up husk of a planet boasted a large number of shipping ports and heavy traffic. Yudi-7 was a particularly shady and particularly infamous port here. Nebula could certainly understand the urge to leave this place as she paced around the edges of one of the larger ports, looking for a suitable ride off of this planet.
A pair of half-breeds had been shadowing her for some time now, she'd picked them up at the last port and they'd follower her all the way here, but they hadn't made any moves yet, so Nebula ignored them for now. Likely they would grow bored and go find an easier target soon enough.
A docket was posted up with this cycle's schedule of incoming and outgoing ships and where they were heading. Much like the last port, none of the destinations immediately stuck out as a good next stop. There were several here that weren't terrible, at least, and she filed those away in her mind along with the departure time and ship's names, in case nothing better should appear.
Her shadows followed her all the way across the sizable dockyard and by the time she left the crowded port and stepped into the greasy city they were still in tow. This was growing old.
The assassin slipped into a heavily crowded street, following along with the flow a ways before ducking down a series of dark alleys that let out onto another well-populated route. Neon lights and scrolling electronic signs provided the bulk of the light here. The planet's sun was next to useless through the heavy smog, and puffs of steam distorted what little light there was, giving the city the effect of a never ending night in the most seedy of districts.
Nebula repeated her trick several times before taking a wrong turn and finding the alleyway in front of her blocked off by a twisted iron fence. The word for 'caution' printed and scrawled in several dozen languages across the bars and onto the nearby walls. Frustrated by the roadblock, she took in a deep breath and blew it out her nose.
The sound of footsteps echoing off brickwork drew closer as her shadows grew bold and joined her in the empty alley, covering the exit.
"Well lookit that!" A high pitched and scratchy voice giggled out from behind. "Trapped like a rat."
"Yeah." Answered a second voice, just an octave lower. "Or more like a dog, wouldn't you say?"
Nebula finally turned to regard them and peeled the corner of her lip back in disgust at what she saw up close. Peter would have called them children, although by their age Nebula was already a full-fledged assassin with over a hundred targets successfully eliminated, not counting collateral damage or the lives she'd taken in her training.
The raggedy pair of street urchins before her didn't look like they had ever even wet their blades.
"Leave." She warned them. "You have no idea who you're messing with."
You mustn't leave loose ends, a voice that sounded like hollow, shining eyes, and the darkest parts of her childhood reminds her. They're good for nothing but making nooses to hang yourself with later.
"I think we do." The first voice belonged to the slightly taller, slightly thinner of the two, his motley grey and purple scales shimmered like oil under the distorted light as he straightened himself to his full, and not very impressive, height.
"You're a dog of Thanos!" Jeered the second one. He was just a touch thicker than his companion, and about a growth spurt behind in height. They might be siblings, judging by their matching scales and yellow eyes.
"Yeah." The first one took another step forward, a laughably small knife brandished in one hand. "And the bounty on your head is enough to get us off this flarking planet!"
It was enough to buy them a brand new ship and their own d'asted planet to park it on, but she didn't bother telling them that.
"Leave," She repeated, still watching them from over her shoulder, "while you still can."
"You're in no position to be making demands!" A long reptilian tale whipped back and forth as the first one balanced on the balls of his feet. His form was sloppy and his weight was completely off-balance.
In a rookie move, he rushed straight at her, alone, leaving his partner to scramble after him.
Nebula finally turned to face them, reaching up to grab her batons as the half-breed siblings closeed the distance between them. The first one met her with a slash of the blade. It was a vicious swing, but he was overzealous, and timed it much too early. Nebula sidestepped it with ease and brought the butt of her baton down on the base of his skull as he stumbled past. The half-breed crumpled like a rag-doll and the second one let out a screech of rage as he reached her. This one is much more cautious, but Nebula caught his leg with her own and used his momentum to flip him over, his skull hit the pavement with a bang, and she pinned him down with the electric end of her batons until he stopped screaming and went limp as well.
The batons disengaged with a click and were returned to their holsters. She pulled the remaining half of her dual knife set from where it had been attached at her hip.
Loose ends make nooses, the cold voice sang in the back of her mind. If they wake, they will be witnesses. Gamora will find them, or perhaps even Korath. She could slit their throats now, and they would bleed out without ever waking. They would not suffer.
She stood over them for a long while in the dark alleyway, watching their chests rise and fall.
She thought to herself, in a voice laced with Gamora's cold and unwavering certainty, that this was necessary, and, in its own way a mercy. Better to die now, than wait for what the other assassins would do once they found them. They had all been trained to cover their tracks.
There was a tug at the corner of her lip at that, because at the end of it they really were all just trained dogs. She was nothing but a particularly mean-spirited stray that Thanos had found and whipped and beat into submission. Only now, she had bit the hand that fed her.
She had slipped her chains only to find the outside world just as cruel and unwelcoming as anything else she had ever known. The wickedness inside her would never leave. Her training, half programming at this stage, really, was all she had left. The last pieces of rubble from the shipwreck of her life, and she clung to it like a drowning person.
The knife in her hand weighed nothing as she stepped over the shorter of the half-breeds and bent down to grab him by the collar, steadying his body as she raised her blade to the corner of his neck, and hesitated, because there was a new voice these days. One that had weaseled its way into her mind without her even realizing, and sprouted like a weed. It was tiny, and quiet, but where her other thoughts came to her, slipping from the deepest dredges of her mind, cold to the touch and always in shades of blue and black, like the hallways of her childhood, this one was red, and gold, and warm, and so obnoxiously annoying that the other thoughts seemed to flee its presence, leaving her empty and lost.
They're just kids,This thought is quiet and shuddering. She half-expects Thanos to materialize out of the greasy, damp shadows to punish her for it then and there. She can practically feel the weight of his hand across her shoulders, his thumb against the back of her neck. The knife presses a little harder against the scales that line the half-breed's neck.
They're harmless. What could they do? They don't even know where she's going.
No one is harmless. Kindness has never done anything for her but blow up in her face and rip her body and her mind apart. Her hip burns with a renewed fire, and some well-trained part of her writhes and squirms like a trapped animal. This could kill her.
She could kill them first.
She could survive. That's the only thing she's good at. Surviving.
They're just kids. So what? She was just a kid once, and nobody had cared then.
The knife loosened just a bit in her grip. Because she had never been 'just a kid.' Her earliest memories are of Thanos and the darkness. Of struggling to survive, pitted against her other siblings for everything. There is nothing before that. There is no one before that.
The knife pulled away, and it might have trembled if not for her enhancements which typically prevented such things, barring traumatic damage to their circuits. To her circuits.
She stood, hesitated for a moment, then turned and left the alley with long strides and didn't look back.
Out in the city she stalked, stiff-legged, towards the next dock and tried to ignore the hammering of her heart. Citizens seemed to sense the danger and parted around her like fish. The impossibly large hand on her shoulders was heavy, and tightened around her throat a little more with each step she took away from the witnesses she let live.
End
-x-
Hopefully I did her character some justice so far. I'm 70+k words into the other fic, but it's all been from Peter's mind. This is my first try at writing from someone else's perspective, minus the tiny prologues on a couple chapters. I hope I managed to give her her own voice without it becoming too much. We kind of start with her in a terrible place so we're basically just thrown off the deep end of her emotional spectrum. Hopefully I can keep working on it and find her voice by the end of this short project. A lot of it still feels pretty rough to me, but I can't spend all my time on this if I still want to keep up with my regular updates, so it'll do for now. I might go back and tweak it more later.