Chapter 2: The Littlest Partisan Chapter Text

Peter's mama was sick a lot. She couldn't work the filed anymore by the time the war came and German soldiers entered their village. Really, they were surviving off of the neighbors' rapidly dwindling pity and the small cool storage with a few left over jars of pickled vegetables. There hasn't been meat on the table in months.

Granpa was called off in mobilization, granma died a long time ago, and nobody ever bothered telling Peter who his father was, beyond an occasional sneer from a passing villager as they took in the boy's red hair and bright eyes, so completely unlike his mother's blond locks and brown gaze. Bastard, coocoo's child, unwanted, pitiful... All words young Pete learned from young age. Never mind how many times his mama told him otherwise, the idea tht he was less then others festered in the back of his mind like a grub in a pile of fertile manure.

Never the less, as useless as his mama was on the field's she knew the forests around the village like the back of her hand, and when the hush went around about creating a partisan troop, she was quickly asked to lend in her expertise. Of course nobody predicted that the sickly balding woman would pitch a fit and demand her offspring be taken along. Eventually, after grumbling for a while, he was allowed to come with, on the condition that he wouldn't make any trouble and help out as a scout. Expendable really... But he was happy and excited.

A real partisan! Finally, he wouldn't have to just sit in the hut and try to think of ways to trap some frogs in the pond, or finally master up the art of setting traps for the bunnies around the outskirts of the trees. He was gonna be with mama, and he was gonna be useful! He was gonna kill Germans, and win the war, and make mama better, because he would take her to the best doctors up in Moscow, and Tovarish Stalin himself would give him a medal!

Those dreams went fast. Very fast. As soon as the first cold from September hit, and the fall of 1942 turned deadly. Now just fro the shrinking Partisan troop, but for a particular little boy as well. Peter's mama was getting worse and worse as the weather spoiled, and there was no warm shelter to calm her bones in, no medicine to soothe her cough, and no hearty pork soup to stop the rattling of her body when the fevers hit.

In the end, Merridith Quil died not from her unfound cancer, but a simple cold, that found it's way into her lungs and worsened the already weak immune system. Leaving Peter Quil a full orphan at 8 years old.

He found out very quickly that the partisans that would sometimes joke with him, and give him extra rations to make him go play somewhere while they talked to his mama in her tent for an hour or so, turned out rather cold once she was gone.

His food supply went down to nothing, and nobody was generous enough to spare the boy a piece of bread or even an extra potato. Peter despaired, and looked at the sneering faces, being cautious of approaching them. And even more cautious of those that leered at him from the other side of the evening fires, all too friendly and willing to lend a shirt, a tent, a blanket. If only they wee in it as well.

It was no wonder that he resorted back to trying to catch small animals, dig out some of the crops, or steal some food from the near by villages. It was after he came back from an unsuccessful raid on the vegetable gardens around the area, having found a half rotten potato and some thin squishy carrots, that he saw his entire troop dead. Shot and scattered around by the machine gun fire from a Luftwaffe plane, a Messerschmidt that had apparently been staking them for a while. Ex-villagers really didn't make the best partisans with the amount of fires and trampled bush that they left behind every time the self-made resistance group walked around.

Sighing, all Peter was left to do was gather up a small bag and put in whatever food he could find, along with a thin coat that was the least messy of them all. Partisans didn't carry a lot of clothes changes with them after all, and all were shot down, leaving their coats bloody and full of holes. The boy suspected the only reason the drab coat he found was still safe was because somebody was mending it in their tent, and it only had a few bullet holes, but no blood stains.

The young boy wasn't far off the camp sight when he heard the approaching rattle in the sky and cursed as best as he could. Dropping the sack, blinded by panic, and not knowing what to do, Peter ran for the cover of thicker trees, shaking like a leaf and hiding under frozen fir trees, hoping fervently that he wasn't spotted by the Germans.

He wasn't, but in his fright, the kid lost the sack with food, and managed to loose a shoe as well. His boots were ratty, and too big for his feet, so it was no wonder one slipped off in his run.

Tired, exhausted really, hungry, cold, and weak, Peter resolved to just walk as far as his eye could see. He didn't and wouldn't later, remember walking all the way to the front lines, couldn't recall the way that he was almost blow up by friendly mines. All his mind grasped was the sudden warmth form large hands that grabbed him into an embrace, and the smell of cheap tobacco, sweat, and shoe polish.