Chapter 4: Together Sharpening a Knife
To her surprise, the Terran survived the night. She didn't say anything out loud, but she was certain she saw her own disbelief echoed in his watery eyes the next morning.
Again, she had the thought he seemed to more accept the fact that he was somehow still alive than welcome it.
"I'd sell my entire company for a cheeseburger right now," he wheezed out as he sat hunched over the table, leaning his weight on his elbows and holding a bag of Zarg Nuts with the words 'ROCKET'S; DON'T TOUCH UNLESS YOU WANT YOUR OWN NUTS BLOWN OFF!' scribbled across the packaging. A threat that was most likely null and void now. Not that the Terran could read it, anyways. "What about you, Space-Girl?"
"I don't have anything to sell," she told him from where she sat across the table, idly repairing a minor misalignment in her left wrist.
"Okay, now you're just being deliberately difficult," he griped, shoving another bite into his mouth and chewing as though his jaw weighed a thousand pounds. "What's your favorite food? They must have some good stuff in space."
"I don't have a favorite food."
"Liar."
She paused to regard the Terran who was staring back at her expectantly, then turned back to her arm. "You wouldn't know what it was, anyways," she mumbled, so quietly he might not hear.
"Do you know what a cheeseburger is?" he shot back, apparently regaining some of his earlier attitude. She couldn't decide if this was a good or bad thing. He slapped a hand against the table's surface. "That's it. When we get back to Earth, I am ordering us both the biggest, greasiest, cheesiest burgers the planet has to offer. You're going to love it."
The lack of food, sparse for her since even before the crash on Titan -her father not being one to afford more than the barest minimum to survive to his prisoners- must have been affecting her more than she thought, because her stomach twisted in a violent pang of hunger at the thought. The Terran must have read something in the surprise on her face, because a moment later he was stretching across the table, tipping the bag of stolen snack-food towards her. "Zarg Nut?"
"No, I ate while you were sleeping." Her enhancements meant she wasn't quite as reliant on such things. Her upbringing meant she was accustomed to going without. The Terran was sick, and needed it to heal.
Tony's mouth pulled into a frown as she refused the food. "Do you think I can't count?" he asked, managing to look affronted even through the exhaustion and sickness. "We have very finite supplies. I'll know if you're lying to me."
"I don't have the same requirements you do."
He dumped a handful of the nuts out onto the table in front of her, then sat back in his own seat and returned to eating in sullen silence.
-x-
"You should leave it uncovered now. Just keep it clean and let it breath."
Tony lay on his good side across the table, the blanket balled up under his head for a pillow and his shirt tugged out of the way while she ran the Suturim slowly across the flesh which was stubbornly refusing to heal with any sort of speed. The blackened veins, at least, appeared to have stopped growing, and the Terran had regained a more normal temperature. His violent shudders, too, had reduced to just occasional tremors.
It was progress. Slow and tedious progress.
"Probably for the best," he mumbled back, voice tight with pain. "I think those wraps were chaffing me anyways. I'm told I have great skin, but it's a little sensitive to cheap fabrics. I don't think those were organic."
She tucked the remaining medical supplies back into the kit, including the remaining salt, though now they had no way to warm the water, and cleared away the dirty bandages and saltwater. With that done, she returned to help him up and off the table.
"Are all you Terrans so annoying?" Her sister's Terran had also babbled relentlessly from what she could recall.
Tony blinked back at her, his face uncomfortably close as he leaned on her shoulder so she could guide him to the co-pilot's chair. Suddenly, his lips quirked into a smile and his eyes seemed to brighten up with something other than a fever sheen. "Oh good. It's been a few days since a woman called me that. I was starting to think I was losing my touch. I must be getting better already."
"I'm sure."
-x-
"I never had any siblings." Tony was huddled up in the co-pilot's chair, his legs drawn up under the blanket so that only his head stuck out of the pile of cloth. His chin was lit up a soft blue from the glowing plate on his chest. "My dad kind of always wanted a daughter, I think, but my mom said one kid was enough. It's probably for the best, I would have been a terrible older brother."
Nebula was reclined in the pilot's seat, her feet thrown up on the lifeless controls as she watched the stars drift by and considered the likeliness of anyone traveling close enough to pick them up on their radar.
"Were you the older sister or younger?"
"I was the youngest of Thanos's children."
"Wait, there are more of you guys? Where are the rest?"
"Dead. Or else content licking the Titan's boots." Maybe they were in the garden with her father now. Another shudder ran up her spine at the thought and she was again grateful that Thanos had never thought to come back for her. He probably never would have brought her along anyways. Even if she hadn't betrayed him.
"Did he kidnap them, too?"
"No. The others came to him willingly. From what I understand they were already adults when they took the title of Children of Thanos."
"Children of-? Wait, were those wierdos who came to Earth after the Magic Man's Eye of Garbanzo your siblings?"
Nebula wrinkled her nose. "In name only."
"Well, I'm not entirely sure what happened to the big guy beyond being dropped through a portal, but the Maw, if I'm saying that right, is dead."
She finally turned her head to face him. The white's of his eyes looked especially large, and the dark sparkled with dozens of stars reflecting in them. She was certain she saw a hint of either fear or pity, maybe both. "Good," she grunted out, returning her gaze to the stars outside and settling more comfortably into her chair. "I always hated him."
-x-
"Need some help?" The Terran's voice interrupted Nebula's concentration and the wire she'd been carefully realigning slipped, a shock running through her nerves and up her spine where it made contact against the wrong port.
"I thought you were sleeping," she growled, letting her annoyance announce itself plainly in her tone as she tried to wrangle the loose wire in her left shoulder back into position. Her right arm was growing tired, doing such delicate work at such an awkward angle, but the discomfort of the damaged cybernetics was beginning to grow unbearable with nothing else to distract her.
"I was. I think I bored myself awake, though."
"You need rest to heal." And to preserve oxygen and calories.
"If I rest any more, I'll legally be in a coma." His footsteps left the entrance to the cockpit, and a moment later he was at the table, flopping down into the chair next to her. "Come on, let me see."
One pale hand began to reach for her injured shoulder and she flashed him a dark look of warning. "I don't need you're help!" she snarled.
He yanked his hand back as though suddenly afraid she might bite it, his brows rocketing up towards his hairline, obviously startled by her response. She returned to what she had been doing without apology. Clearly, she had been too soft on him in his injured state, and the Terran was growing way too comfortable around her.
In the resulting silence, she could feel his gaze boring into her. His surprise morphed into a deeply thoughtful expression while she watched him from the corner of her eye.
Eventually he straightened up in his seat, pulling his hand back under the blanket and bundling the covers tightly around himself, as though making it clear he had no intention of using his hands in any sudden movements.
"I'm sorry." His voice was different now, missing his usual sarcastic tone. "I didn't think that through. Can I start over?"
She curled her lip into another warning snarl, but was too busy trying not to lose the wire again to spare him a reply. Apparently, he took her silence as an invitation to do just that.
"Would you like some help?"
"No."
"I promise, I know what I'm doing. I won't mess it up. And look, my hands aren't even shaking anymore." Here he shoved one hand back out from under his blanket, holding it off to the side in a transparently non-threatening gesture than only made her frown deepen. She did not need to be treated as the invalid here. "That's thanks to you. I'm not doing you any favors here, just repaying my debt."
"No." The wire slipped again and she flinched as her arm spasmed.
The Terran watched her through narrowed eyes and pressed his lips into a thin line as she struggled to regain her grip with her aching arm. "Let me fix it. Just give me five seconds," he bartered, "and then I swear I'll go back to sleep and leave you alone for the rest of the night."
She bit and bruised her lip as the wire danced out of her failing grip once more. Her arm twitched as another shock ran up her nerves.
"It's got to be easier than dislocating your other shoulder... Two seconds?"
"Fine!" Her good arm dropped, not entirely on her own command, as she gave up. "Two seconds. And then you go away, whether you fix it or not."
Tony brightened at his victory, but didn't immediately spring up. Instead, he slowly removed his blanket and draped it over the back of his chair, then held his hands up in invitation. With another low growl of warning, Nebula forced herself to turn around and show him the opened panel on the back of her left shoulder. "The green wire needs to connect to the same port."
"Okay. Here I go." There was a slight tug, and a spark of feeling as the wire was finally returned to its intended place, and then the Terran was up and gathering his blanket. As promised, he vanished without another word, and she was left to unwind her frozen muscles and test her hand in peace and silence.
End Chapter 4
Chapter 5 Preview: "...Supposedly, they were seeing if anything could be salvaged from it to be worked into some other part of the engine. Mostly, though, Tony was studying how it had been built in the first place while she occasionally offered the names to pieces he didn't recognize or offered explanations for how they would have interacted with the pieces that were now missing..."
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Okay, so I was a little meaner than I intended to be to Nebula in this chapter. She's been getting off easy in my main fic lately, so I guess I'm getting a few minor kicks in here to kill the time until her next big gut punch. lol. I'm a mean author, I guess. I believe in making them suffer through growth the hard way. Hopefully it'll make for a natural sashay into her growing to trust him in turn.
I'll be honest, I'm still not 100% sure who exactly the 'of all of our siblings' line refers to in Vol 1. In a lot of the comics, the Black Order (Corvus, the Maw, and them) are referred to as the Children of Thanos, so I'm just kinda going with that along with Korath who was treated like Gamora and Nebula's brother of sorts in the cartoons (though he joined voluntarily I'm pretty sure). *shrugs helplessly*
Anyways, THANK YOU SO MUCH for the comments!
Seriously, they all left me grinning like a fool and practically dancing all day. I always get nervous and never know if it's appropriate to message back. Most people seem to prefer not, but I just want you to know I love them! You guys rock, and it means so much to me that you took the time to not only read this little fic, but to leave your support!
Love, love, love!
-OMaM