"Stay close."

Gamora inched forward, Rocket and Peter flanking her, and Drax trailing behind with knives out. Knowhere simmered with silence, absent the near-constant cacophony of shouting, smashing bottles, and drunken guffawing. Even the inhabitants of the Collector's prized exhibits appeared only to watch and wait.

"You think he's been here?" Rocket asked, nose scenting the air.

She hesitated for only a second. "No."

Peter tapped a glass case to provoke what should have been a nude alien female, shapely orange legs opening to him like any number of strippers Peter had seen in his life. Her protruding snout like a wild stallion ruined the image. "How are you so sure?" he asked, raising an eyebrow at the display.

Gamora pulled him forward, harder than necessary. "Because nothing's on fire."

They inched around the oddities and into an office of sorts. Empty of life, but bursting with chaos. The bureau was torn open, data sheets, broken machinery, smashed trinkets littering every surface. Scorch marks trailed along the door and scattered across the wall like poorly aimed blaster shots. Peter threw his hands on his hips. "Well, someone's been here. Maybe the Prince of Turds? Kind of feels like a wild goose chase to distract us."

Drax clamped a paw on Peter's shoulder. "Quill, this goose you speak of is native to your home world. If the handsome vampire wanted us to chase a goose, we would not be here."

Gamora almost smiled, but sobered at a sound outside the door. "Did you hear that?" she whispered, dropping into a defensive stance. Rocket hit the ground and crawled on all fours back into the gallery, following the sound of something metallic scaping along the ground. Whatever was out there wasn't trying to stay hidden.

The others followed after Rocket, weapons at the ready, boots silent until they found the source of the noise. Gamora's numb fingers dropped her sword.

"Nebula?!"

The hunched figure straightened and snapped toward the group. Only the slight clench of her jaw gave away her irritation as she dropped a long, black sack and reached for the two guns on her belt.

"Don't even think about it, sis. I got more firepower and fewer reasons to hesitate."

Rocket stood behind her on the raised edge of a decorative fountain, large gun held against the base of her skull, safety off. Nebula's hands froze inches from her weapons. In that second, Gamora forgot her sword and ran to her sister, arms circling her shoulders and pulling her into an embrace.

"I thought you were dead," she whispered.

Nebula tensed at the contact. "You never had any faith in me."

"It's not about faith. You went after him and didn't send word. What else was I supposed to think?"

The fist that pushed Gamora away left a bruise.

"That I don't ever want to see you again."

"Stop," Gamora ordered, already feeling the age-old sibling frustration and anger start to override her relief at seeing Nebula alive. "Just stop. I don't want to fight. We've been trying to find you."

Nebula crossed her arms and looked to the sack at her feet. "I don't need you."

"I don't care!" Gamora shouted, her words echoing off the vaulted ceiling and drawing the eyes within every exhibit. "I don't care what you need. I need my sister back, and we can stop Thanos together before he rips the universe apart."

Nebula's intent eyes darted to Quill then Drax, her head turning only an inch to check Rocket in her periphery. His gun dug into her neck in response.

"Stop him from what?"

Deep creases sprang across Gamora's forehead. "From what? Are you serious? From gathering the Infinity Stones! He already…" She faltered as Nebula watched her, eyes probing, waiting. She had never seen that expression on her sister's face. Gamora backpedaled. "He might already have them."

"And how do you expect us to stop him?"

Nebula's quiet words struck another chord in Gamora, fleeting but laced with caution. What was different about her? Her posture? Her eyes? What was it? Gamora chose her answer with care. "We are not the only ones Thanos has wronged."

Nebula nodded once. "Then you have allies. Who?"

Again, a tattoo of warning beat in Gamora's stomach. Her sister was curious, such a rare quality in the reckless soul the group knew so well. She hadn't tried to disarm Rocket or escape or kill them. That was different. Wrong somehow. Nebula's crossed arms weren't even tensed.

She was…relaxed.

Gamora glanced at Rocket, but he was intent on his target. Peter's stance was deceptively casual, but his gun remained at the ready. Drax had wondered back to the horse woman's exhibit, ignoring all of them and staring at the creature with an intensity usually reserved for Groot's video games.

Her eyes returned to Nebula. "Trusted friends."

"Pfft." Peter snorted a laugh. "Well, I wouldn't exactly say trusted. Or friends. Come on, Gamora, the-"

Gamora tensed. "Peter, stop."

He jerked back as though punched and looked at her, confusion evident. Nebula's eyes had focused like lasers on Peter during his rant, waiting for his words with an arrogant raise of her chin that felt familiar, but not on Nebula. Alarms whined in the back of her mind, and she reached blindly for Peter's hand, eyes never leaving her sister.

"No," she said quietly.

"Hey! What's going on?" Rocket shouted, the echo as sharp as a cymbal crash.

"This man is dead."

They all turned to Drax, Rocket craning his neck to see around Nebula.

"Uh, Drax," Peter said, giving Gamora another worried glance before jogging toward the horse woman's glass case. "Buddy, we might need to review boy parts versus girl parts again. Horse face, sure, but definitely a…" his voice trailed off as he stared, "woman?"

Gamora saw it too. A second of static, like a burst of lightning across a black sky. A man had floated in the horse woman's place, strung up like a broken marionette, white hair hanging limp toward the ground. But another blink and the woman reappeared, bare legs shifting toward Peter once more, large nostrils flaring and blowing droplets onto the glass.

"Can we forget about the weirdo horse person? Jesus," Rocket said. "We're in a bit of a time crunch here."

Nebula turned her head fully to Rocket and let the barrel of his gun kiss her chin. "Why are you in a hurry?"

Realization hit Gamora like an elbow to the nose. The questions! It was all these questions.

Like a fox, she jerked forward and rolled toward her fallen sword, ending a foot from her sister with the blade raised in shaking hands. Rocket's eyes widened, and he gripped his gun tighter, baring his teeth.

Nebula only tilted her head at him before unworriedly turning back to Gamora. "What gave me away?"

Gamora's arms shook as she raised the sword higher. "My sister acts first, asks questions later."

Nebula chuckled, nodding. "Yes, she is rash by nature. Unlike you," she let a proud, oily smile stretch her face, "daughter."

A haze of blood red split the room, opening like a paper fan to reveal a world of flames and rubble. The fountain where Rocket stood dissolved into a torn mess of burst pipes and rancid wastewater that he slid into, losing his aim and dropping his gun. The roof no longer existed, allowing tendrils of thick smoke to reach to the stars from the burning holes that were once the Collector's exhibits. The man himself appeared in the case Drax and Peter still watched. A crucifix of broken metal and charred wood jutted from the foundation of the glass case, spearing the stomach of the Collector and displaying him as an opened umbrella, chest lifted to the sky and arms, legs, and hair dangling down, dripping clumps of black blood like spilled ink.

And Nebula. Her smiling face disappeared, her stature grew and grew, and the armor and gauntlet and calm jaw of the Mad Titan was revealed to them. Three gleaming stones twinkled from his fist as it hung toward the forgotten black sack at his feet.

"Remarkable, isn't it? To alter reality with a single thought." He waved a hand toward Drax, and the muck under his feet rose up and twisted into a tornado around him, solidifying and sealing him into a prison of mud and blood.

"The Reality Stone is fickle, though. Not whole. The illusions cannot yet be perfect, the damage not permanent, until I find the rest and take it." His teeth gleamed from a feral smile. "And the stone has shown me the face of she who holds my prize."

Peter flanked Gamora once more with shaking hands and tensed jaw. Rocket was on his feet, inching toward his gun with eyes darting from Drax's prison to their position.

Tears closed her throat. A gun, her sword. None of it would do any good. Peter, Rocket, Drax – they were as good as dead, and there was no time to warn Mantis and Groot back on the ship without Thanos discovering them and Thor. If he found Thor, he would know Loki was alive, and right now, as Gamora looked at her deranged father, she knew Loki was the last hope for the universe.

A single tear rolled down her cheek. "Where is Nebula?" she asked, needing to hear him say it.

Thanos studied her. "She is here."

"Where?!" she gritted out. She wanted to slice off his tongue just to stop the slow, calm drawl of the voice that haunted her.

He tipped his giant chin down, and her gaze fell to the sack at his feet.

"No," she whispered, dropping to her knees, ripping open the sack and sorting through wires and parts and pieces. A hand, a chest plate. "My god." She held back the vomit that rose in her throat.

His shadow suffocated as he took a knee beside her. "She came very close, daughter. I was almost proud. But she no longer holds any use for me." His gauntleted fist tipped Gamora's chin up. "But you do."

She pushed down the hopelessness bubbling under her skin. There was still a way to stop him. Somewhere. She had to believe that. It was the only thing that held her together. That gave her the courage to make the only decision she could make to save her friends.

She lifted her unfocused eyes over Thanos' shoulder. Rocket held her eye for several seconds. Then, his jaw tightened and his ears lowered as his shoulders hunched under her silent meaning. He would explain to the others later, just as they discussed. A backup plan neither wanted to consider but that couldn't involve the others, especially Peter. He would never have agreed. Never allowed her to go through with it, no matter if the choice didn't belong to him.

When she looked back to Thanos, she pushed her sorrow forward to mask her deception. "What do you require of me?"

Indulgence shined in his leathered face, and she closed her eyes once more as he stood to his full height.

"You do not need to ask."

She ran numb fingers over the abandoned wires and metal that were her sister. "No, I don't," she whispered, and she stood, turning her body to her father. Her sword remained on the ground at her feet.

"Gamora?"

Peter. Always Peter. She faltered as the shuffle of boots rushed toward them.

Thanos held out his hand to her. "Come with me, daughter, and I will let them live."

"What?! Gamora! What are you doing!?"

She turned to Peter, and as if she held her own magic, Peter halted sharply at her look, disbelief and murder and helplessness in his shining eyes. And something else. Something he only said when he thought her asleep.

"Peter. I have to go."

And he was there, gloved palms cupping her cheeks and pulling her into him, gun and Thanos and the entire universe completely forgotten.

"No no no. No! You don't."

She nuzzled into the rough material of his gloves, enjoying the smell of engine oil, scorched leather, and the cloying cologne he insisted on wearing even into battle. She watched a thick tear cut a path through the dirt on his cheek, and she remembered her dream. The family and the peace and the love and the future. With him. And she soaked in the sunlight of that beautiful fantasy one, final time.

Her words barely made a sound. "I do."

His hands shook as a debate raged in the clenching and unclenching of his jaw. "But we can fight," he whispered, trying to give her strength, to hold back the raw emotion radiating from his face.

"And you will die."

Thanos' words thrust Peter Quill back to reality, and he pulled Gamora behind him with a false bravado he had mastered long ago as a small boy in a vast universe. He reached for the gun in his holster and found it empty, then raised two clenched fists and sank into his knees.

"You know how many arrogant A-holes have said that to me over the years? Yeah, me either, but here I am. Still kickin'. So, I like my odds, you giant, fart-scented, douche circus."

Thanos looked back to Gamora, unimpressed, his hand still outstretched. It mocked her with its illusion of choice.

She pressed her forehead to the worn leather against Peter's back. "I'm sorry," she whispered as she slipped a small disc from her belt and placed it under his ear. His knees wobbled and his body slumped. She knelt and cushioned his head on her thigh, watching his eyes dart toward her, his body completely immobilized by the pulse disc Rocket had given her, but his mind horrifyingly aware of everything around him.

"Peter," she said, running a hand through his hair as her tears fell against his cheek. "No matter what happens, you can't follow me." She memorized his face, recounted every argument and eye roll and flirtation and sexy dance to that terrible music. She savored all of it, knowing without a doubt that their time was up. She kissed the corner of his mouth and lingered, three words burning in her throat but too unfair to say aloud. Not now. Not at the end. So, she said nothing, pushed away, and straightened her spine. She nodded to Rocket a final time, ignoring the wet fur around his eyes, raised her chin, and took Thanos' hand.