[Peter]

Okay, I lied.

I lied to Drax and yeah, he's going to kill me when he finds out. But oh, God, how could I tell him?

~Eleven years ago~

I wake up in the middle of the night with debilitating stomach cramps. I know I'm going to throw up—it hurts so bad!—but I'm so weak I don't know if I can stand. I manage it, just barely, and make it to the bathroom just in time. I vomit twice, barely expelling anything the second time, and when I'm through I realize I can't even get up. Oh, God, it hurts so bad, make it stop, make it stop! I cry out, but I don't know if Justin can hear me.

He does, eventually, and bursts into the bathroom. By this time the bleeding has started. He kneels beside me and asks what's wrong. "I can't stand up," I whisper. I can't even move by this point. It hurts too bad, and the blood, oh God, there's blood coming out of me and I don't know why, I need it to stop, please, make it stop—

Somehow he figures out how to fly the Milano, somehow he gets me home. Yondu is not exactly overjoyed to see me, and I know this is a fact because the first words out of his mouth when the hatch opens are "Where the hell have you been! I've had two jobs come in that you could've done if you weren't—" Then he sees me, limp and bloody in Justin's arms, and he immediately turns on my boyfriend. "What did you do to him?" he demands.

"He didn't do anything," I choke out. "It wasn't his fault—please, it hurts—I don't know what's wrong, I can't make it stop—please—"

"Get him into the medical bay," Yondu orders, and Justin obediently hands me off to a nearby crewmember. I scream when I am taken away—the pain is so intense—I want him with me, I want Justin, don't take him away, please—but someone puts a needle in my arm and I black out, gratefully taking the release from the unbearable pain.

When I come to Justin is there, holding my hand, and Yondu is waiting to tell me what happened. "Am I dying?" I ask. This is the worst-case scenario. I briefly wonder if I've somehow poisoned myself.

"No." Yondu looks vaguely amused at the question. "Trust me, I'd tell you if you were."

"Well, thank God for that," I say sarcastically. "What's wrong with me, then?"

"Well." Yondu sighs. "I guess we know you aren't really Terran now, because guess what? You were pregnant."

No way. "How in the fuck could that happen?" I demand.

"You've got something other than Terran in you, kid. That's all there is to it. 'Cause you had a baby inside you, but now…" For the first time, Yondu looks mildly uncomfortable. "Well, now you don't. Let's just leave it at that."

I have no idea what to say to this. I turn to Justin, who I picked up on Xandar, and ask, "Do you have any idea what he's talking about?"

Justin looks about as awful as I feel. "It's my fault," he says softly. "I…I didn't know. We were unprotected…I got you pregnant, and then we must've done something wrong, because you…we lost the baby. You miscarried."

Oh, God. Now I understand. I don't even know how to feel. Can you really mourn something if you never knew it was there? "I'm sorry," I say, because I can think of nothing else.

Justin shakes his head. I feel his hand tighten around mine. "I'm sorry. I won't let this happen to you again."

But he does, and we do, over and over. Our relationship lasts six months. In that time, I miscarry two more times. And each time I feel worse. It's not that I'm desperate to have a child—really, that's the last thing I need right now—but the way he looks at me. Every time. It's like he's just figured out that I'm defective. I'm malfunctioning. Something is wrong with me and I have no idea how to fix it.

After miscarriage #3, I give up. How can I keep doing this to someone I care about? Maybe he doesn't want a kid right now either-but if we stay together he will eventually, and it's clear by now that I can't make that happen for him. So I take him back to Xandar and tell him we're over. He's surprised—actually surprised, like he actually thought there was a chance in hell this could work. But I tell him to go, and he goes, and I decide then and there that I will have to do two things to keep this from happening: I will never date a male of any species, ever again. And just in case that doesn't work, I will never commit to anyone. It's too dangerous. If I don't commit, I reason, they will never find out.

Because no one can know. No one will ever know again how defective I really am.

Drax is unbearably sweet. He treats me as though I'm made of blown glass as he undresses me, cleans the blood off of me, wraps me up in a towel, and carries me back to our room. I know I don't deserve this, but I accept it anyway, because I know that, for some unknown, Godforsaken reason, he actually loves me and he really is only trying to help. So when he lays me out on our bed (made from pushing two bunks together, it's not exactly glamorous but it's good enough) and redresses me in clean clothes, as if I couldn't do it myself, I thank him. And when he lies down beside me and takes me into his arms, I rest my head against his chest and let him stroke my hair until I relax enough to sleep.

I don't deserve it. I don't deserve him. I could have at least told him the truth. That we can never have the family he craves, because I am broken, I am a malfunctioning machine. I can't carry his child, or any child. But I can't tell him, I can't take away that last hope that he has. Because maybe, if I hope for it enough, it can happen. Maybe if I just do it right…

Who am I kidding. I'm useless. Whatever's going on inside my body, it won't fix itself because I wish on enough stars. I'm never going to be able to give him what he wants.

Three weeks later I wake up far too early in the morning, waves of nausea rolling over me. Oh, no. Not again.

I drag myself out of bed and into the bathroom. I lean over the toilet, bracing myself with one hand against the wall, and—here we go—empty my stomach, losing what little dinner I was able to get down last night. For several days now Drax has been pressuring me to eat, but I don't want normal things, I want random, weird foods I'd have to fly back to Terra to get. Besides I throw it all up anyway, and nothing smells good to me anymore, or looks good for that matter. Just the sight of most of the food on the Milano makes me gag—

Oh, fuck.

I could lie to myself. I could say this is the stomach flu. But why bother?

This is happening again.

It would figure that in the first few months of finally, finally sucking it up and telling Drax I wanted to be with him, I'd get knocked up. For someone as stupid as me, well, that's just par for the course. I'm used to pregnancy scares…it's just that they're usually coming from my partner, not me. So no, getting pregnant within a couple of months, that's not a shock. Unpleasant, yes, but not a shock.

But miscarrying, being utterly humiliated, and then going through it again just weeks later? I want to cry. Is this what I get for lying to him? Is this my punishment for not saying something that I knew would make him leave me? Should I have told him?

I don't know. All I know is that I won't tell him this time. He will never, ever know again that I have lost his child. He doesn't deserve that. Ronan killed his family, for God's sake. How can I possibly tell him that I'm essentially doing the same thing? Every time we lose a baby, he will have to relive that. He'll remember what happened to his real daughter, the one who actually survived past the pregnancy stage. And what kind of monster would I be if I forced him to relive that every time my stupid body can't get its shit together and carry a kid past the first six weeks? He might have pretended it didn't affect him—but I saw the look on his face when I told him I'd lost his baby. It hurt him, I know it hurt him, and I know he won't tell me it hurt him,

So I don't tell him about this one. And when I lose the baby, as I knew I would, this time I hide my cries of pain by blasting music while I lie bleeding on the floor in the shower, and I'm careful to clean every drop of blood from my body before I let him see me. What he doesn't know can't hurt him. It can hurt me. But not him. I will die before I hurt him like that again.