So I have officialy fallen into the abyss that is Peter/Gamora. I don't even understand. Here is an angsty oneshot full of whump and a pathetic first attempt at the shreds of a romance.

I do not own the beauty that is Guardians of the Galaxy. Enjoy!


The first thing Gamora sees is the blood. Red liquid splattered across the floor, soaking into shirt and hair and dying skin in a hideous mockery of his red jacket. Too much blood. Too much red everywhere and oh god he's not moving-
The scream that rips its way out of her throat is inhuman, a horrible rage-filled shriek of anger that would terrify her if the image of his bleeding, motionless body wasn't seared into her brain right now, along with a pain so great that it implicates things she'd rather not think about. And she doesn't think. She rips into the guards-torturers-with a vicious bloodlust and in seconds there is nothing but a bloody mess where they used to be, all six of them dead, dead like him-

"GAMORA!" Rocket's desperate cry rips her from the haze of rage. "Stop! He needs medical attention NOW you idiot!"

She freezes. Rocket is hovering over Peter's limp form, Groot brushing tender branches over his friend's bloody face as Drax stands nearby over a seventh guard, knife stained with blood. And Peter…Peter is covered in blood, his shirt shredded, the skin below covered in hideous burns and lacerations, blue-black bruises running up his cheek and eye socket, but his chest is rising faintly and he's breathing and he's alive and she can work with that.

She's on the ground next to Rocket in a heartbeat, shaky fingers (why are they shaking her fingers don't shake) pressing into Peter's too-cold neck, the fluttering pulse beneath them flooding her with relief.

"If you've finished mincing the guards can we please go now!" Rocket yells to her and Drax, his tiny hands tightly winding strips of Peter's shredded shirt around the worst of the cuts. "We need to get to the ship A-S-A-P or we're gonna have ourselves a very bled-out Star-lord here!"

She barks out commands she barely hears herself, assuming the role of leader (why is she just now realizing there's a reason Peter is their leader), and in minutes Peter is cradled in Groot's arms and they're sprinting back to the ship. Drax comes up behind her, something clutched in his hands which she does not have time to worry about because Rocket is firing up the Milano and she needs to help Groot stabilize Peter. She's done plenty of first-aid on herself in the past, and bandaging up gashes and stabilizing broken bones with steady fingers is hardly a challenge for her. At least it shouldn't be. Apparently her fingers shake when she's binding up an ashen-faced idiot covered in his own horridly red and gushing blood.

She can do the basics, but as she makes her way through the cuts and burns and bruises she starts to get the sinking feeling that the Milano's medical supplies can only do so much. She ties off the last bandage and tells Groot to watch him, running to the cockpit to inform Rocket in shaky tones (why the hell is her voice shaking so much this is nothing) that they are going to need an actual medic. Rocket swears and sets a course for Xandar, muttering multi-lingual profanities as he does so. Gamora slumps against the ladder, then picks herself and heads for the bathroom.

A hand touches her shoulder and she whirls around, nearly snapping Drax's hand in half. He holds up the hand in surrender, eyes watching her warily. She lets go, pulling her own hand back as if burned, and Drax presses the object from earlier into her hands, patting her on the back as he climbs up the ladder. She looks down at it. In her blood-smeared hands is Peter's music player and headphones, slightly battered but still intact.

"On my planet, we have a legend about people like you."

She throws herself into the bathroom, sinks down onto the floor and cries.


They are halfway to Xandar when he wakes up. According to Rocket that's a good thing, because it means he's not dead, but Gamora cannot help but see it as a bad one. No matter how painful it was to see him lying so still, a stark contrast to his usual constant movement, seeing him white-faced and sweating, eyes lost in a haze of pain as his hands clench and unclench, biting down hard on his lip to keep from crying out, is a thousand times worse.

Drax is up in the cockpit with Rocket, helping him pilot as smoothly and quickly as possible to Xandar, scanning ahead for other ships to avoid. That has left her down with Groot to take care of Peter, and frankly, it is hell. There is a distinct lack of painkillers on board the Milano, a fact for which she has already yelled at Peter for (then apologizing because his face is too white and his eyes are too dark), so there is not much they can do but sit next to him and make sure he does not die. And attempt to make him feel better about the whole unbearable pain situation. Groot is doing a better job at it then her, which is saying something sad about Gamora's comforting skills given the fact that he can only say three words. But she cannot bring herself to do anything except sit next to him, mouth dry and eyes assessing him every few minutes, a small, sinful part of her desperately wanting to take his clenching hand.

But she doesn't, because Gamora is Gamora and she does not do comfort. Her childhood was hardly a comfort-learning environment and the only real sympathy she's ever been shown has come from the people on this ship with her, primarily the man lying injured in front of her. It is her turn to return the favor and all she can do is sit beside him and try not to fall apart.

The ship jolts and Peter lets out a tiny cry of pain, strangling it as he squeezes his eyes closed and throws his head back on the bed. Groot growls out something as Rocket's swearing reaches them from the cockpit, Drax's muttered apology barely audible behind the yelling. She just watches Peter's pained face and hates herself.


It was a routine mission. A simple, ordinary, grab-the-goods-and-go heist, only this particular time the goods they were grabbing were illegal weapon plans, and the people they were stealing from had decidedly less than altruistic motives for them. They would also be handing them over to the Nova Corps for pay instead of being handed over themselves to the Kyln, so it seemed like a fairly good deal.

The mission had gone fairly well too, right up until she realized they were stealing from Ronan-sympathizers and the sympathizers realized who was stealing from them. Despite the few months' passing since the defeat of the madman, the hatred of his sympathizers for his "accursed murderers", as they put it, had yet to die down. So as soon as they figured out said murderers were in the middle of stealing from them, it was only a matter of time before everything went to hell.

And to hell did it go, as Gamora found herself cut off from the others as the enraged sympathizers descended on them. It was only through her years of training and honed reflexes that she made it to the Milano alive, just in time to see half the compound explode as Rocket blew the power circuitry. It was only after having powered up the ship and blasted several of the sympathizers flooding out of the compound at them that she realized that they were one idiot short. She should not have panicked at that. She definitely should not have screamed bitterly at Rocket as he piloted away, the raccoon screaming back that they'd be caught if they didn't leave now and they could help Peter better alive than dead. But she did.

They found him, of course. They were the freaking Guardians of the Galaxy, they always find their own. But not until after six days. Six hellish days of endless searching and sleepless nights. One day short a week of Peter tortured.

And she knew he's lucky to be alive, but that is hardly a comfort, she thinks as she sits next to his hospital bed, the nighttime lights of Xandar casting an eerie glow on Peter's ashen skin.

"This sucks," Rocket says harshly. It is a testament to how somber their mood is that Drax does not even question what the situation sucks. They are sprawled out in various positions around the room, Rocket perched on the window seat, Groot (now half his regular size) curled up beside him, playing Awesome Mix Volume II softly, and Drax standing near the door, terrifying half the Xandarian medical staff away but his guarding stance a comfort to those in the room.

She herself has been given the chair by Peter's bed almost subconsciously. What that means she is not sure she wants to think about.

"Moron needs to go ahead and wake up," Rocket continues. "Human's ain't that susceptible to poison."

"Poison can harm anyone," Drax rumbles.

"That's the damned point of poison." Gamora adds, harsher than she meant to. The faces of everyone she's seen die by poison coursing through her mind on re-run is not exactly helping her mood right now.

"Whatever. He needs to wake up, the blasted idiot."

Gamora agrees. Peter is loud and obnoxious, always humming traces of a song or shuffling around, trying to rope one of them into dancing, always moving, always filling the room with playful banter and ridiculous conversation. He does not lay still and pale and dead to the world in hospital beds. He leaves the rest of the team ungrounded and lost when he does that.


Twenty-four hours in the Xandarian hospital and there is no still no movement from Peter. The doctor explains that while the poison is mostly (mostly?) out of his system, the trauma from the various injuries and sheer exhaustion Peter is suffering is keeping him under. He'll wake up when he is ready, the doctor says. But for the most part, he is out of harm's way.

It is news that should make her happy. The rest of the team certainly seems to take it well, Drax running a hand over his face and Rocket nearly crumpling with relief. But she is still on edge, still infuriatingly scared.

Because he might be out of harm's way but Peter is still to pale. He is still too motionless, too quiet. And she is still too hung up over it and she hates it that he does this to her.

The scariest thing is that she cannot leave. Not so long ago a reaction like this would have signified attachment, and attachment leads to nothing but pain and being used. The idea that she is attached to the idiotic half-human is ridiculous, but the fact that he is causing her such pain is even more absurd. Therefore, she should depart from him. But every time she tries to leave her heart constricts and all she sees is him bleeding out on the floor, skin pale and those bright, joy-filled eyes that she has come to depend on so much closed forever, and she is sprinting back to his hospital room like Thanos himself is on her heels.

The facts line themselves up, and Gamora comes to realize she is screwed.


She is dozing in the room alone while the others' are catching up on sleep, and "Ooh Child" is playing for the fifth time when a hand shakes her wrist softly.

"Hey. Hey. G'mora." She groans, shifting her shoulders as she sits up, blinking blearily as she stares into warm hazel eyes. Eyes that are open and devoid of the haze of pain for the first time in days.

"Peter!" she gasps, heart soaring as she leans over him. "Oh my god-oh my god -are you- you're awake- are you-"

Peter laughs, a wonderful, uplifting sounds that make her heart feel as if it's been filled with helium and is currently trying to escape her body.

" 'm fine." He slurs out, pain absent from his voice but not drowsiness. "Are you guys- did everyone make it out okay?"

Gamora resists the insane urge to smack him.

"That's what you're going to worry about now? How about the fact you were captured for days?! How about the fact you almost di-" she takes a deep breath. She is Gamora. She does not explode. "Yes, Peter. We're all fine. Unlike you."

"Told you, 'm fine, G'mora," Peter protests sleepily. "Jus' a bit…drugged up." He offers her a crooked smile, that one idiotic grin she lov-has developed a fondness for. "But fine, really. Really fine. And 'm not dead. Takes more'n that to kill me."

Gamora glares at him. "It had better not." She turns away, reaching vainly for the composure she wears so well as the waves of emotion bring a threatening burn to her eyes. They were so close, so close to losing him, and all she could do was nothing.

"Hey. Hey, G'mora, wha's wrong?" Peter is grasping her hand now, the warmth of the contact shooting chills down her spine as his concerned tone cuts through her misery. "Oh shi-are you crying?"

"No!" she snaps out, whirling back to glare him. Her gaze softens as he flinches back, regret seeping through her almost instantly. But his hand remains on hers. "I'm just…" she exhales wearily. "I'm just very relieved you're alright."

" 'm pretty relieved myself," Peter grins back at her. "But seriously, i's okay, G'mora."

"I know, you idiot," she huffs, rolling her eyes. They dissolve into comfortable silence, Peter's mother's music playing softly in the background, their hands still linked together. It's warm and it's comfortable, and for the first time in days she feels at peace, her eyes slowly drifting closed as Peter's do the same next to her.

She is almost asleep when Peter's soft voice pulls her up.

"Thanks, G'mora," he slurs out, barely dancing the edges of consciousness. "Love you."

She freezes, her heart stilling where it beats in her chest. Love

"Love you too, idiot," she says softly, tightening her grasp on his hand as they both drift off.

Yes, she is beyond screwed. But if she is to be beyond screwed, at least it is with Peter.