Hi everyone! Sorry for the delay in updating, but I'm finally back, and this week, I have two chapters for you. (I originally made one long one, but then I reread it and decided I should split it in half.) The first contains scenes from the end of Guardians of the Galaxy—sorry if I made any mistakes dialogue-wise, but I'm pretty sure I got everything right. (For the sake of accuracy, I had to rewatch the movie again. :))

In the second chapter, Quill will explain his idea for how the Guardians can make some money. (Future chapters will show that it's not really a great idea.) Thanks for reading and reviewing, and I'll see you again in two weeks!

Disclaimer: I own no part of the Marvel Universe—just feels and merch and fanart and feels, and did I mention feels? :)

Quill

The next day, Quill met Gamora outside her room for a change. She was wearing another dress, black this time, and he stared at her until he realized he was staring.

"Hi," he said, glancing out the nearest window and hoping he looked casual and cool instead of as awkward as he felt. When he looked back at her, she was smiling.

"I'm choosing to interpret your staring as a compliment, so thank you," Gamora said.

"You're welcome," he said quickly, wondering if he could actually be friends with the coolest, toughest, most beautiful woman he'd ever met and not think about kissing her every five seconds.

"So, which way?" she asked.

"The attendant said it's down this hall, then out the main entrance and into the next building. Then we take the elevator to the top floor," Quill said, leading the way. "I guess Drax and Rocket are gonna meet us there."

"And you have the orb," Gamora said, giving him a look that clearly said she didn't put it past him to forget it somewhere.

"Yes, I have the orb," he said patiently. "I only have to hold onto it for a few more minutes, so I'm not about to lose it."

"You dropped it once," Gamora pointed out.

"Yeah, but that's—"

"And I stole it from you a few times," she said.

"Yeah, but between the two of us, I think we can keep it safe for the next five minutes," Quill said, opening the door that led outside. Suddenly, he realized that as weird as it had been living in a hospital, life was suddenly even weirder: with the Milano gone, they were now officially homeless.

"So, if you could live anywhere in the entire galaxy, where would you live?" Quill asked.

Gamora considered the question. "Probably somewhere like Xandar, or even my own planet—not the way it is now, but the way it used to be. Then again, I've never lived in one place for very long, so I'm not convinced I'd enjoy it. What about you?"

"Xandar is pretty nice, but I don't know about living here," Quill said with a shrug. "I doubt that I'd like living on just one planet either, so I guess we're gonna need a new ship."

"Maybe Nova Prime will mention that today," Gamora said as they passed through the lobby of Nova Corp headquarters and boarded an elevator.

Quill sighed. "Let's hope so. I'd kinda prefer not to have to hitchhike out of here."

"What about earth?" Gamora said. "Don't you ever want to go back there, even to visit?"

"Yeah, maybe to visit, but not to live there," Quill said. "I mean, I've been gone so long, when I finally go back, I bet I'll hardly recognize the place. Plus, when I lived there, we'd been to our moon, and that was kind of it for space travel. I think showing up in a spaceship alone would make me too weird to live on earth."

"It's hard to picture any planet where you wouldn't be considered weird," Gamora said with a smile, and Quill grinned.

"You too. So I guess we've just gotta find our own place."

The elevator doors opened to reveal a long hallway. "This way, please," an attendant said, motioning them toward a doorway. She was cute, and gave Quill a wide smile, but Quill was still distracted by the fact that he and Gamora and Drax and Rocket and Groot really would be weird on any planet, so what he needed now was either a new ship or enough units to buy one. He was glad that they hadn't actually succeeded in selling the orb, but damn, they really could have used four billion units…

All of a sudden, there was Nova Prime, standing beside a projection of the city and examining the repairs being undertaken. She sort of reminded Quill of his third grade teacher, at least until she looked at him, and then he saw the kind of steeliness in her eyes that Gamora had too, that maybe anyone who had to make life and death decisions had.

"Peter Quill," she said, nodding at him, "and Lady Gamora. I'm glad that you've recovered and that I can finally meet you both in person."

"Yeah, you too," Quill said, and immediately pulled the orb out of his pocket. "And I'm glad I can finally give you this."

Nova Prime raised her eyebrows slightly, but accepted the orb. "Your reputations precede you both. I was under the impression that you might want to bargain some terms before delivering this to me."

"You patched us up, and I assume you're not arresting again," Quill said hopefully. When Nova Prime nodded, he smiled and shrugged. "That seems like a pretty good bargain to us. Honestly, right now I'm just glad to have that thing out of my pocket," he said, glancing at Gamora, who nodded.

"We're grateful that you'll be able to contain it, and to make sure it isn't used again."

Nova Prime nodded, her expression serious. "As long as Xandar exists, it's my hope that this object will never see the light of day again. And as long as I am Nova Prime, I can promise you that it won't."

"There's no way to just destroy it, is there?" Quill wondered. "I mean, shoot it into a sun or something?"

"That would likely destroy the sun in question, and the resulting supernova would decimate much of the galaxy," Nova Prime said, staring grimly at the silver orb in her hand.

Quill nodded. "Yeah, I figured. Never mind."

"I can assure you that we will keep this infinity stone contained, and on behalf of everyone on Xandar, I want to thank you for saving our lives. We owe you a great debt, one I fear that we can barely begin to repay."

Quill shrugged. "Well, all the free food I've eaten since I've been here was a pretty good start. And, we'll appreciate however else you might want to repay us."

Gamora rolled her eyes. "As you can see, we don't exactly excel at negotiation, Nova Prime. But we are grateful for your hospitality, and your clemency."

Nova Prime smiled. "Well, we've had some ideas about how we might show our appreciation, and one of them is waiting outside. But first, we have some information you might be interested in."

The view of the city disappeared then, and another, human-shaped projection appeared. "What's that?" Quill wondered.

"You," Nova Prime explained, nodding at the strange lights at the center of the image. "We're not quite sure what to make of it."

Dey stepped forward then. "See those lights? Normal humans don't have those. You've got something else going on with your genetic makeup, Quill. Something's there that isn't from Terra."

Quill stared at the projection of himself. "Why would you even know this?" he said.

"When we arrested you, we noticed an anomaly in your nervous system, so we had it checked out," Dey explained.

Quill gaped at the 3-D image of himself. "I'm not Terran?"

"You're half Terran," Nova Prime explained. "Your mother was of earth. Your father…well, he's something very ancient we've never seen here before."

"That could be why you were able to hold the stone for as long as you did," Gamora mused.

Quill tried to process this new information and found he couldn't—after all, for more than thirty years, he'd thought of himself as a pretty ordinary human, minus the whole getting abducted by aliens as a kid thing. The knowledge that he was half something else entirely would take more than a few seconds to adjust to. Just then, another door opened.

"Your friends have arrived," Nova Prime announced, then turned to face all of them, smiling. "On behalf of the Nova Corps, I would like to express our profound gratitude for your help in saving Xandar. If you will follow Denarian Dey, he has something to show you."

Quill nodded. "Thank you, Nova Prime."

As he followed Dey out the door, he noticed Gamora hanging back to say something to Drax, and as he nodded at Rocket, who was walking beside him, it occurred to him that this was actually going to work. They were really going to stick together. Now all they needed was a place to live or a way to get there…

And then they stepped out into the sunshine, and Quill saw the Milano. It looked bigger than he remembered—maybe Nova Corps had added some cabin space or something, but there was the paint job he'd picked out as a teenager, the familiar silhouette of the only thing Yondu had ever given him that he actually loved. He'd had to earn it, to make it really his, but the first time he'd ever flown the thing, and in all the years since then, it had always seemed like a gift—because once he had the Milano, he'd known that the galaxy was way bigger than Yondu or the Ravagers. And Quill had a feeling that someday, this was the ship he'd be flying when he finally went back to visit earth.

"We tried to keep it as close to the original as possible," Dey explained. "Salvaged as much as we could."

Quill stared up at his ship, not knowing what to say. "Wow. I…" Then he turned to Dey. "Thank you."

Dey was silent for a moment. "I have a family. They're alive because of you."

Quill smiled at that, and beside him, he could feel Drax and the others standing there, as glad as he was that their insane plan had actually worked.

"Your criminal records have also been expunged. However, I have to warn you against breaking any laws in the future."

"Question," Rocket said. "What if I see something I wanna take and it belongs to someone else?"

Dey stared at him. "You will be arrested."

"But what if I want it more than the person who has it?"

Dey blinked. "Still illegal."

"That doesn't follow—no, I want it more, sir. You understand?" Rocket said, glancing up at Gamora, who was smiling beside him as she started to pull him away. "What are you laughing at? What, I can't have a conversation with this gentleman?"

"What if someone does something irksome and I decide to remove his spine?" Drax asked.

Dey glanced at Quill to see if Drax was really serious. "That's...that's...actually...murder. One of the worst...crimes of all. So...also illegal."

Drax considered this. "Hm," he said, then followed Gamora and Rocket.

"They'll be fine, Dey," Quill said. "I'm gonna keep an eye on them."

"You?" Dey said, his tone amused.

Quill watched the others head toward his ship—their ship too, now—and nodded, as incredulous as Dey was. "Yeah. Me."

On board the Milano, a few things had changed. Nova Corps hadn't been able to salvage everything, but at a glance, the only things he noticed missing were the stickers and trading cards he'd stuck on and around the stereo. The stereo itself was there though, and Nova Corps had added cabins too, so there was actual living (and sleeping) space for four people.

Quill didn't care which cabin he got, so while the others checked out the rest of the ship, he went looking for the box. Amazingly, there it was in a storage bin: like his walkman and the Awesome Mix, it seemed like something that, logically, shouldn't have survived two crash landings. But it had.

Quill had never opened it. Somehow, the time had never seemed right. When he was a kid, he'd really almost believed that as long as he didn't open it, his mom wasn't really gone—that if he ever got back to earth, she would have miraculously recovered that night he ran out of the hospital. Or maybe he felt like he didn't deserve to open it—he'd had one chance to say goodbye to his mom, and he'd screwed it up.

But then there had been that moment on Xandar when he'd seen her. He knew that it had really been Gamora calling to him, her hand that he'd taken, and yet his mom had been there, maybe only as a hallucination, or maybe in spirit. And now he felt like he could finally open the gift she'd left for him, all those years ago.

He'd read the letter she'd written him probably hundreds of times before—that was something else that had miraculously survived the battle with Ronan—but he read it one more time before he finally untied the ribbon and pulled the paper off the box. Then he opened it, and inside was what he should have known would be in it all along, yet somehow he'd never guessed: a second Awesome Mix. He put it in the stereo, which worked, amazingly, and he listened. And it felt like his mom was sending him a message from over twenty years ago, like she was saying that things really would be okay. Then he noticed Gamora, and when he met her eyes, she smiled at him.

Gamora

Here was another pleasant melody. Gamora could tell by the expression on Quill's face that this was far more than just a song, but it made her want to dance, and when he saw her start to sway to the music, he stood up and took her hand. And they danced.

Gamora hadn't danced since she was a child. They moved slowly together at first—he put his hands on her hips, and she held his shoulders, and they swayed together, looking into each other's eyes. Gamora understood what this song meant: it was a love song, but she was certain that it could be about different kinds of love. It was a song from Peter's mother, after all—it was about more than just romantic love.

As the song progressed, Gamora worried less about looking foolish, or stepping on his feet, and then Quill was really smiling. They held hands and spun around, then he pulled her close before twirling her around, and she laughed and twirled him too, and then the song was over. So he rewound the tape, and they listened to it again.

"So, what should we do next?" Quill wondered. "Something good? Something bad? Bit of both?"

Gamora glanced around at the others, who were watching Quill expectantly—a very tiny Groot included. "We'll follow your lead—Star-Lord."

She smiled at his pleased expression—silly as it was, it was clear that he really liked to be called that. "Bit of both," he declared, and started the engines.