Tony Stark is staring at his blood-soaked, ash-covered hands. But the ash isn't just any sort of ash. It's the ash of a sixteen-year-old kid. A kid who was supposed to go back home. But he followed his hero, wanting to help. And now his death is on him. The thing that he had feared ever since the Ferry where he took the kid's suit just because of that same fear.
Nebula, still suffering over her sister's death and the loss of her stupid friends looks at the broken Terran. There will be a lot of suffering in the coming days, but they can't stay here.
"We can't stay here," She says aloud, but the Terran gives no indication of hearing her.
Nebula rolls her eyes, sighs, and goes to leave him behind, to fly the Milano away from her father's home planet on Titan, but she stops. The Terran is just as lost and as broken as she is. She can't just leave him.
Walking towards the man who once was encased in an impressive-looking suit, she places a hand on his shoulder.
"We have to go," She urges the man, but he doesn't move.
Grumbling obscenities and cursing that she cares about this stupid Terran, she grabs him by the left arm and hauls him to his feet. He just seems numb to the world around him and lets himself be dragged towards the idiot Quill's ship. What her sister ever saw in that idiot, she will never know. No, no, she won't ever know, not anymore.
She gets the Terran on the plane and straps him in. Looking at the fuel, she curses. They don't have enough fuel to get…..to get anywhere, really.
"Where should we try to go?" She asks her still mute companion, and he slowly looks up at her, the depth of sorrow and loss in his eyes mirroring her own hidden twin emotions.
"Home," He requests, his voice rough, a fresh tear escaping, the first one he has shed for the kid he lost, and maybe the love of his life too. Who knows how many people were taken away from him in that horrible dusting?
Nebula nods and inputs the coordinates to Terra and pilots the ship into space. A futile try all around, but she doesn't want to die with the dust of the group that she was beginning to call family. And she's sure the Terran doesn't want to be forced to look at what seemed like his son's ash.
"I'm Nebula," She mutters as they go through their first jump. Might as well be on a first-name basis with the man she's going to die with.
Tony looks up when the woman speaks, and he sighs.
"I'm Tony, Tony Stark," He's not Iron Man anymore.
