!If anyone hasn't seen it, I uploaded another aside, which will be a muti-chapter one, covering the events between her leaving in Ch 11 and return in 13 from Nebula's POV!

Title is from "Unfinished Business" by Mummford and Sons. The lyrics just fit too perfectly to pass up.

I still haven't figured out how to reply to all the comments on here, but know that I read and adore every single one!

Guardians of the Galaxy belongs to Marvel, I own nothing.

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Chapter 14: Unfinished Business

Whether it was due to a stroke of luck, or Nebula's frightening propensity for explosives that made him miss Rocket all the more, no one ever did show up to follow them through the first jump, and they made it to the next point undisturbed.

Gamora was still unconscious, and had been moved to a clear area of the common room. She was propped up against the wall where Peter could clearly see her from where he sat at the table. The medical kit was sitting open next to his elbow, and Drax sat in the seat next to him carefully cutting the ruined cast from his arm. They both wrinkled their noses in disgust at the pale, soggy skin underneath.

"Eugh," Peter let out, reaching his other hand up to probe at the discolored flesh. "No wonder it itched so bad."

"Do not scratch at it." Drax swatted his hand away with a slap that actually stung more than just a bit. "You will only cause it more harm and delay your healing. Go wash it and dry it properly."

"Yeah, yeah," Peter huffed, flexing his had experimentally as he made his way over to the bathroom sink. A tiny part of him had half-expected the finger to explode into pain or just rebrake entirely, but other than a little bit of stiffness from his unused muscles and tendons, his finger actually felt fine.

"I am Groot," Groot offered from his own seat at the far corner from Drax.

"No thanks. I should have everything I need in the kit."

When Peter had finished washing up and returned to the table, patting at his hand with a dry towel and trying his hardest not to scratch at the feeling of a thousand ants crawling across his skin, Drax had packed away the medical kit and was regarding the assassin in the corner with an unreadable expression.

"Do you truly believe it is wise to leave her alive?" he questioned. "I believe that she has made her loyalties clear."

"We're not killing her," Peter said with an edge of warning to his voice, "but, I'm not letting her go again, either." Honestly, Peter was at a bit of a loss here. He had no clue how they were going to keep Gamora subdued for long once she woke up. She wasn't a galaxy-class assassin for nothing, and he'd seen her wriggle her way free of enough tight situations to know that there wasn't much he could do that would keep her for long, but taking more permanent actions was just out of the question.

Peter rubbed at his face with his hands. None of this was making any sense. He had been so certain that Gamora would be just as glad to leave the Titan's rule as she had the first time, so why had she betrayed him? And what was this about her parents being alive? And that creepy Black Order guy? He had a lot of questions for her as soon as she woke up.

"Perhaps Nebula will be able to provide some better means through which to keep her quiet."

At the mention of their latest savior, Peter's eyes flickered over to the hatch that led to the flight deck.

"I am Groot?" Groot asked, noticing Peter's attention wander.

"She's fine, I think. Just tired. We'll give her some time to rest."

"I am Groot?"

"I don't know. I'll go up and check on her in a bit, but for now let's let her be."

-x-

They wound up not needing to check in on her after all. Much sooner that Peter would have expected, Nebula joined them in the common room. She came down unannounced and turned directly for her sister who was still slumped unconscious in the corner. She stood for a moment over the sleeping assassin with a frown pulling at her mouth before drawing her foot back and delivering a sharp kick to Gamora's legs.

To Peter's surprise, Gamora flinched back before Nebula's foot connected and opened her eyes to shoot her sister with a dirty look.

"That's just pathetic." Nebula snorted.

"What's pathetic is you aligning yourself with these mangy little misfits," Gamora sneered up at her sister while she straightened herself into a more comfortable position. "Honestly, sister? Ravagers? and father's old guinea pigs? What could you possibly hope to achieve with them? Not to mention that idiot over there." Dark eyes flickered over to where Peter was sitting at the table for just a moment, and he found himself sitting up just a little straighter under her scrutiny.

"I'm going to do what you are too weak and blinded to do; I'm going to kill our father," She proclaimed.

Peter felt a tiny twinge of trepidation at that. Yes, he'd promised to help her kill Thanos if -and only if!- they failed to find a way to right the timelines, but he still had no intentions of toeing off with that mad Titan with this half-formed version of his guardians. The mental image of them all being smushed like bugs under a giant purple thumb was a little too vivid for his liking.

Gamora actually threw her head back and laughed here, and it took a good minute for her to get her breath back enough to continue the conversation.

"Well, that is an ambitious goal," she chuckled. "Please, sister, there are far less brutal ways to die than whatever our father will have done to you for this. You may still have a chance to redeem yourself. You have the Star-lord in your possession. Return him to father as a gift and perhaps he will show you mercy."

"You know exactly the kind of mercies Thanos has always shown me. I am sick of them. I would rather die."

Gamora's face fell back into a frown.

"Honestly, Gamora, you must be feeling desperate if you're resorting to begging."

"I do not beg," She snarled back. Nebula just rolled one shoulder into a lazy shrug.

"It doesn't matter. You aren't going anywhere, so get comfortable." Nebula took a step towards the flight deck, but paused suddenly and turned back to bend down and remove her sister's boots.

"Hey!" Gamora yelped and kicked at her sister, but Nebula managed to wrestle the shoes off.

"What are you doing?" Peter asked from his seat at the table, confused by the sudden action. Maybe she knew her sister was hiding weapons or something? But Nebula didn't bother to so much as give the boots a cursory inspection before tossing them to the far side of the room.

"Nothing," She told him without looking back. The look of unbridled fury on her sister's face told him it wasn't nothing, but not much more than that. "Get comfortable," Nebula repeated with an flash of teeth before turning again and climbing back up into the flight deck.

With one last glance at Gamora, who pointedly refused to return his gaze, he stood and followed the blue assassin up.

"We're making another jump," she warned him as he got close. Peter quickly took a seat next to her, but didn't bother strapping in.

"Did you come down there just to gloat?" he asked, as the engines hummed a little louder, and a jump point shimmered into life in front of them. "And what was that thing with her boots about?"

"She knows what it's about, and that's all that matters," Nebula answered cryptically.

"Oookay." Obviously he wasn't going to be getting any answers there, and he had more important things on his mind. "Well, anyways, now that you're clearly feeling good enough to talk, can we?"

"What could you possibly want to talk about now?" she huffed, eyes straight ahead as the entered the tiny wormhole, but her grip on the controls was loose. It was probably more of a token protest than anything else at this point. "I didn't kill your friend, and I won't as long as she doesn't become a threat."

"And I'm really grateful for that. Thank you. But, I gotta ask, why did you take her? Why not just knock her out and leave her there?"

"She knows too much. We can't let her get back to Thanos with the information she has. I don't know how you managed to get her on your side long enough to use the Infinity Stone in your universe, but I doubt she'll be turning on him any time soon here. We'll just have to find a way to use the stone without her."

"Her parents." The thing Gamora had told him back on his first day aboard the Oasis had never really stopped bugging him, always clawing at the back of his mind like a cat scratching at the bottom of a door they wanted opened. "Back on the ship, the Oasis or whatever, she said that Thanos saved her parents. What do you know about that?"

The wormhole ended abruptly and in the silence that followed Peter watched with a knot squirming in his gut as she stared out the window, jaw clenched and unblinking.

"Nebula?" he probed when she had been silent for so long that she might have just been flat out refusing to answer his question. There as a faint beep, and the navigation panels read out; The Lorideh Systems. A small blue and green map displayed several inhabited planets nearby. Their current rout avoided all of them.

"Not much," she finally breathed. "I was hardly more than an infant when Thanos acquired her, so I only know what little came up later. She claims her home world was laid to waste by The Inquisitors-"

"-The who?" Peter couldn't help but interrupt. Nebula rebuked him with a glare, but continued anyways.

"An order of religious fanatics. They are long since disbanded. She told me once, when we were children, that Thanos appeared in time to save both her and her parents, but her home world was lost. She claims that he wiped out the Inquisitors and reclaimed her old planet into a refuge, a great city where others like them thrive under his protection, and has sworn her loyalty to him and his cause. She told me 'I will make sure that others do not suffer as I have suffered." There was a heavy note of disgust in her voice.

"You don't sound like you believe much of this?"

"My father does not have havens, or refugees. Only prisoners and corpses."

"So is it true? Are her parents alive?"

Nebula just shrugged stiffly, not seeming to be enjoying this conversation so far. "She believes they are, so does it matter?"

"Yeah, it does." He thought about his own Gamora, about the pain that she couldn't entirely hide whenever the subject of her parents came up, about the raw hatred she still aimed squarely at Thanos who had killed them right in front of her. A trauma that had left a scar inside of her which she would never truly heal from. "It matters a lot."

Her mouth was pressed into a thin line and the corner twitched down as though she doubted that. Sensing that her patience here was wearing out, and honestly she'd already given him more than he would have usually hoped for, he decided to change the subject.

"That's not why I came up here, anyways." Nebula's frown loosened and she turned a questioning look on him. "I wanted to apologize – again- for... what I said. And for not listening to you. And nearly getting us all thrown back to where we started, or worse. And to thank you, for saving us."

"Don't make me do it again." That was as close to a 'you're welcome' as he was going to get.

"So what made you come back?"

Another pause, but a much less uncomfortable one.

"It's okay, you don't have to say it, I know that you missed u-"

"Thanos has taken another three galaxies in the time since we parted."

Peter nearly choked on his own words. Three galaxies? In what, nine cycles? How was that even possible?

"Something has changed." Her eyes were narrowed slightly, as though asking him something, but he had no clue what. "Something has made him more bold, or more desperate."

Peter swallowed thickly. Was it because he'd been caught? That seemed to be what Nebula was implying here. What in all the known universe did the Titan have planned for him?

"I don't have time for a new plan, anymore," she continued, "and whatever he intends to do once he has you, I don't think it will be doing the galaxies any favors."

"Okay. So-"

"So keep your eyes open, and don't get caught again."

"I'll do my best," he promised.

Nebula snorted derisively. "I would suggest you do better than that."

Peter's laugh was cut short by a scream followed by a sharp bang from below. Peter and Nebula were both sprinting for the ladder before the echo had stopped ringing from the walls.

"WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON DOWN HERE?!" he shouted, landing hard.

Drax was standing with his back turned towards Peter, muscles bulging as he struggled against Groot who appeared to be holding him back, just barely, his wide-eyed look of terror landing squarely on Peter as though asking for help.

"Hey, calm down!" Drax just shook him off when Peter placed his arm on the giant man's shoulder. Peering over the maniac's shoulder, he could see Gamora, still sitting in the corner they'd left her in, but on the floor next to her Peter was alarmed to see the backrest of one of the seats from the table. A small dent in the wall over her head painted the not so surprising picture of Drax flinging the hunk of metal at her after ripping it from the base.

"What did you do?! My ship! Come on -we just fixed it!"

"That whore speaks lies!" Drax roared.

" Your family was selfish and weak-minded!" Gamora hurdled back.

"My family was strong and honorable!"

"I am Groot!" Groot's branches were creaking under the strain of holding back the ex-gladiator who's face was turning dark.

"They stood against my father! Against the peace his rule will bring! On their own it was only a matter of time before some race with greater technology came and slaughtered them all. Ronan's hand was no-doubt merciful compared to what could have been." Gamora was leaning forward now, a wild desperate light in her eyes that actually scared Peter a little bit.

"Shut up!" he screamed at her, doing his best to shove himself in front of Drax and block their eye contact. "You are not helping your case, here!"

"I have no case!" she spat back, turning her venom on him now. "I will never join you, so either kill me or let me go! I must return to my father!" Gamora suddenly dropped her head, shaking it like she had something stuck in her ear. "I have to go back," she repeated, in a quieter tone so Peter had to lean in slightly to hear it.

"You're not going back, sister," Nebula cut in, moving around the table to stand at her other side. "You're never going back."

"You're a traitor, Nebula."

"No, Gamora. You are a fool."

"She is a miserable wretched whore," Drax grumbled from where he was still entangled in Groot's branches. "Infinity Stone be damned! I say we throw her out the the cargo door and be done with it."

Nebula glanced up, considering their enraged teammate for just a moment before she rolled her eyes and stepped forward. One boot came down on Gamora's arm, pinning it against her side, and she stooped down to wrestle something from her sister's hands. When she stood back up, she held out a sharp, disfigured piece of metal that appeared to have broken off of the piece of chair Drax had tried to smash her head in with.

"She is just trying to rile you up so she can manipulate you." There was a tiny ringing bang as she slapped the little shard down on the table for all to see. It wasn't big at all, hardly even the length of Peter's palm, but it was wickedly sharp, and in the hands of Gamora, plenty lethal. "Don't let her."

-x-

After the chair incident, Peter did his best to ensure that Drax and Gamora weren't left alone, ever. Keeping them apart wasn't much of an option on the tiny ship, but the rest of the group would take turns watching her to make sure she stayed out of trouble. For her own part, Gamora was pretty quiet. After her initial attempt to escape was thwarted, she didn't make any further tries at riling up Drax or do much of anything, really.

At the moment, she was stuck to one of the standing handles in the flight deck, the chain of the handcuffs ran through the little leather-like loop that was meant for crew members to grab onto in case they were caught standing during unexpected turbulence. When Peter was still very new to space, Kraglin had once introduced them as the 'oh shit handles' and the name had always stuck in his brain.

It was Peter's turn to watch her, and it happened to overlap with his shift as navigator. With the ship on autopilot, it was a mostly uneventful job, largely consisting of monitoring the engines to ensure they were properly cooled between each jump. The reborn Milano that the Nova Corps had gifted him and his crew mates with had been equipped with a more modern engine that could handle jumps with relative ease, and even take multiple jumps without risking overheating or damaging the engines. This old version, however, was designed to be used as an accessory ship, and jumps had to be spaced far between, making the going slow and tedious.

On the up side, it gave him plenty of time to talk to Gamora. On the down side, he had no clue how to do that. All attempts at conversation so far had earned him a halfhearted glare at best, and were more often than not just completely ignored. The last half hour or so had just been spent in silence. Typically he'd be listening to the Redbones' singing along to 'Come and Get Your Love' on his Walkman by now. Instead he was fiddling with the broken hinge and a piece of scrap wiring, trying to hash together enough of a functional cover to trick it into playing.

For the umpteenth time the little wire slipped from the hinge and jabbed him in his thumb which was starting to turn red from all the abuse. A low groan escaped his lips as he slumped even further down in his chair. Deciding he should take a break for a while, before he lost his temper or broke down into tears of frustration, it was a fair bet either way right now, Peter tore his eyes from the cracked case and looked around for something else to distract himself with.

All the charts were normal, though, and the engines were cooling at a decent pace. He would probably have to check the coolant lines after all this, but those were best to mess with when they were docked. The engine room was always uncomfortably hot during flight. He could probably cook an egg down there right now, or an entire Gallorian hen. Finally, his eyes landed on Gamora, standing on the other side of the co-pilot's chair and gazing absently out at the distant stars. A tiny huff of laughter escaped before he could catch himself.

"What?" she asked with a sharp note of warning in her voice.

"Nothing. This just reminds me of a time back in my universe. Only there, you were piloting the ship with me and Nebula was the one handcuffed to the ship and pouting about it."

"Why was she handcuffed to the ship?" Gamora asked, graciously ignoring the pouting comment.

"Oh, it was before you guys were almost getting along. The Sovereign caught her trying to steal some of their batteries and gave her to us in exchange for taking out some huge gooey tentacle monster. She only had one of her hands, though, so handcuffing her was kind of awkward."

"Why would she only have one hand?" This was the most words Gamora had said in hours, so Peter went ahead and kept answering her questions.

"She lost her mechanical one on Xandar I guess. When you guys were fighting on the Dark Aster. She got it stuck on some wire or something sticking out of the ship. You offered to help her then, but she ripped her hand off and ran away instead."

"And even after all of this, you would have her as a teammate? Why?"

"Didn't you already ask me this?"

"I asked you how you convinced my sister to work with you. Now I want to know why you would trust her."

"She's really not a bad person once you give her a chance... Or a few. I mean, she came back and saved our butts when she didn't have to, and she's been looking out for me pretty much ever since she decided to help me back on Ronan's ship. Yeah, she's done some bad things, but so have I. So have you. Hell, no one here is innocent, not even Groot, and he's basically goodness personified."

They fell back into silence for a while after that. Gamora stared sightlessly out the windshield and Peter slouched back down in his seat while he took another swing at threading the wire through the plastic hinge. He had given up and set it aside again and was tapping his toe along to an imaginary beat while he counted passing stars when Gamora broke the silence.

"You have terrible judgment."

"What?" Peter struggled to drag his consciousness back onto the ship.

"You have terrible judgment, Peter Quill. You are surrounded with maniacs and traitors, and you have kept me alive, even after I betrayed and stabbed you. You thought I could be trusted, and look how that ended for you."

"Are you talking about that little pinprick? Oh, come on, that's not even the worst stabbing I've ever had by a woman scorned. Turns out, scorned women are very stabby, by the way." Peter lifted his shirt to reveal a big ugly scar over his ribs. "See this? That's the top of the list. She stabbed me with a fork. And that?" He moved his finger to indicate a small dark spot a little further down that could almost be mistaken for a freckle. "That's from your little toothpick. It's already healed, and almost faded. I'm pretty sure you got me much worse when we met on Xandar."

"Please do not count me alongside your... conquests."

"I'm not. I swear," he promised, dropping his shirt to hold his hands up. "I just meant, if I stopped talking to everyone who ever tried to kill me, I'd be out of friends pretty quickly."

Gamora's brows knit together and her nose wrinkled as she stared down at him.

"But I guess that kind of supports your whole theory about my bad judgment... My point is, I get that I can't trust you yet- believe me I get it-, but I know you, Gamora, you're a good person. You can't just sit back and watch Thanos murder all these innocent people-"

"It's for the greater good," she said stiffly.

"What greater good could possibly come out of this?"

"He's going to bring balance to the universe. An end to the wars and suffering." That weird frantic light that had scared him back in the common room was creeping its way into her eyes again, and she shifted slightly, like she was suddenly uncomfortable where she had been standing quietly for the past hour or so.

"He's waging war," Peter pressed carefully. "He wiped out Xandar. All of it. Even the children. Just turned them all to dust."

"Stop it." She wasn't looking directly at him now, eyes shifting restlessly and not quite focusing on anything in particular in the tiny cockpit, and she shook her head slightly like she was trying to shake off a bad thought that wouldn't come loose. "You just don't get it. Peace has to be obtained at a high price."

Peter's brows scrunched together as he recognized Ebony Maw's words from that strange breakfast on the Oasis. He thought back to the irresistible pull in the man's voice, the way his words sounded so reasonable and so right that Peter had almost desperately wanted him to be right. If he had stayed with the man for longer, or if he had tried harder to persuade Peter, would this be him? A shudder of revulsion raced down his back as he realized he wasn't sure. It could very well have been. And he was suddenly even more grateful that they had been rescued before Ebony could arrange another visit.

A hard lump had formed in his throat and Peter didn't know what else to say here.

Eventually his shift ended, and Nebula appeared to take over. He'd been so lost in his thought he hadn't realized she was there until she cleared her throat right behind him. He felt a little guilty at how relieved he was to get away from Gamora for a little while, not enough to make him linger in the cockpit, but it was just barely enough to stop him from bolting straight for the exit.

Down below he made a straight line for the bathroom. He could really use a hot shower. He suddenly felt incredibly filthy and wanted to scrub every atom of that place off.

-x-

Peter entered his room still steaming a bit from his shower, dressed in clean clothes and feeling significantly better. A white fluffy towel obscured his vision as he buffed his damp hair with it. Between the flapping ends darting across his face, he caught sight of something sitting on his bed. Pausing what he was doing, he dropped the towel over his shoulders and bit the inside of his lip as he stared at the orb containing the Infinity Stone sitting just below his pillow, like an unwelcome pet that had crawled its way into his bed and made its self at home.

Nebula must have left it there to keep it away from Gamora, but it was no less unwelcome in his room. Picking it up with the tips of his fingers, he shoved it into the drawer on his end table and slammed it shut, wiping his fingers off on his pants before crawling into bed and tugging the covers over himself. The soft mattress felt wonderful after so many nights spent on the freezing cold floor of his cell on the Oasis, and he found himself quickly slipping off to sleep despite the Infinity Stone sealed away so close to his head.

When he woke, the room was dark and quiet, almost too quiet. With how hard they were working the engines, he should be able to hear them cooling through his bedroom walls. Maybe they had decided to dock somewhere to give the ship a break.

Peter slid the blankets off and stood, taking a good stretch and popping his back before reaching for the control on his door. The door slid open with a tiny whish to reveal the common room which was just as quiet and dark as his room had been. That was definitely odd. Even if they were docked, the main lights should still be on. Instead it was almost as dark as when the Warbird had disabled the ship entirely.

"Hello?" he called out, feeling an uncomfortable crawling sensation work its way up his spine when no one answered. The access ramp was closed, and there was clearly no one here in the common room with him, so he made his way around the table and up the ladder into the cockpit.

There were no lights on up here, either, but outside of the window the stars looked huge and dazzling, colorful galaxies swirled together and the room was flooded with starlight bright enough that he could make out all the details of Gamora who was leaning over the controls with her back turned to him.

He should have been terrified, some part of him knew that -had Gamora somehow got the jump on his crew and taken his ship again?- but instead he only felt a hollow, cold, curiosity as he joined her at the controls. Up close, the ends of her hair, which he had thought were reflecting the starlight, seemed instead to be made of it, giving out the same eerie glow and leaving trails of sparkling dust where it bounced over her shoulders as she turned to face him.

"Peter," her voice was strange, muffled and distorted as though she were speaking to him from a great distance. "Peter, why are you running from me?"

"I-I'm not," Peter stuttered. Her eyes were boring into him like drills, reflecting the icy light so that they looked like chips of ice or frozen diamonds set into her face.

A hand that he knew was green, but appeared a dazzling silver here, lifted from the controls and reached for him, stopping just inches away from brushing his face.

"I can't reach you." Her voice seemed to echo around him as he spoke and she leaned her body forward until he could make out the fine designs traced across her brows and feel her frozen breath across his skin. "Yet."

The last word was accompanied by the sound of breaking glass, and the windshield above him shattered. Tens of thousands of shards rained down, and more after that, sparkling and shining like all the stars from the sky outside were pooling into his ship and burying him in their frozen light. With a gasp Peter screwed his eyes shut and threw his arm over his face, but the light found its way in through the cracks of his eyelids and burned through his eyes and into his skull, filling him with its icy emptiness until he woke thrashing under his covers, the end of a horrid strangled gasp dieing on his lips.

His heart was hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird and his throat hurt like someone had been strangling him as he clawed his way out from his sheets and stumbled out his bedroom door. Out in the common room, he was relieved to find the lights on, and Drax and Groot sitting at the table, a set of playing cards arrayed in some sort of fashion between them.

"What is wrong?" Drax asked, noticing Peter's disheveled state. His voice came from where he sat at the end of the table, and there was no echo bouncing around them.

"No-nothing," Peter managed, feeling the anxiety melt away under the warm lights. "Just a bad dream. Sorry."

End

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Chapter 15 Preview: "...They'd hardly made it out of sight of the docks when a pair of armed guards, a pale pink Krylorian and something with fins that Peter didn't immediately recognize, both dressed in matching grey and black uniforms with no helmets, materialized out of the crowd and blocked the path in front of them.

"Halt!" One commanded, holding their sizable palm out..."

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The end of this chapter was really fun to write, I hope it didn't feel like I was trying to trick you with that last dream sequence, I was just basing it off of some dreams of my own where I'll wake up in my bed and it takes a while for me to figure out that this is a dream. It always adds a new layer of creep to it for me. Mine don't end quite as nicely as Peter's did though. lol.

So we get to clear up a few things from the last chapter, and set up for some reveals in the next one, although the big reveal at the end you've probably all guessed by now to some extent, but it should still be fun. Nebula's main arc has more-or-less come to the downswing(obviously, she still has growing to do, but her main crisis is passed, she's made her decision and now she lives with the consequences of it.) and Gamora's is winding up into its full swing. I also get to introduce some more characters and extended plot points. Yay! Moving on to the next portion of the story where we get to move on to wider parts of the universe.

-OMaM