Chapter 7: We Can Hide the Bodies on the Ride Home

"What'cha doing there, Space-Girl?"

Nebula glanced up from where she was wading knee-deep in wires and scrap pulled from what was most likely the Fox's stash. She wasn't sure what she was looking for exactly, but she knew she hadn't found it yet.

Tony was leaning against the entrance to the cockpit, looking disheveled and still half-asleep. A large clump of his greasy hair stuck out in all directions.

"Searching the trash for anything of use the fox may have had hidden away."

"Oh." He took a long look around the room. "Does it seem a little colder in here to you?"

"Another fuse blew on the atmosphere control unit some time this morning cycle."

"Oh," he repeated. "That's great. I was worried my fever was coming back."

Her lips tugged into a deep frown and she took a better look at his face. He did seem a bit paler than before, but it could just as easily be the thin rations he was on making him appear so sickly. Certainly, he'd lost a significant measure of weight since Titan. The room echoed with the rattle and clank of metal as she kicked her way free of the pile of tech, crossing the distance in several quick strides so she could press her hand against his forehead once more.

The Terran's eyes nearly crossed as he stared up at her hand, clearly baffled by her sudden action, but he didn't challenge her.

"You are fine," she informed him, drawing her hand away and returning to her work, satisfied that he was not in any more immediate danger than they had already been in.

"You can feel temperature with that hand? With such detail?"

Nebula was confused by the question for a moment before she realized she had used her left hand to feel his forehead.

"That's some pretty advanced tech. I don't think even Bucky's arm can do that."

"Yes. Temperature, pressure, pain. Just like real nerves. It was important to my father I could still feel all these things. In all of my augmentations." She rolled her fingers and allowed the plates and panels in her right arm to shift, the light from the wiring and circuitry underneath leaking through. A sadistic part of her almost enjoyed the way she had caught him so off-guard and he failed to completely conceal his surprise and faint horror at the realization.

It took a moment for him to recollect himself and find his voice again. "How, um- If you don't mind me asking-" He clearly knew he was tiptoeing through a minefield, but his doe-eyed, terrified persistence and her own enjoyment at watching him as he visibly struggled to regain his balance was keeping her more bemused than angry. For now.

"How far do they run?" she asked for him. "All of me. I've lost track of how many times my father had me 'upgraded.'" That was a blatant lie. She knew exactly how many times, but she had never shared the number with anyone. Not even Gamora had known anymore how many times their father had cut her apart.

The Terran fell silent after that, his gaze drifting to something beyond the walls of the vessel as he lost himself in a deep thought.

Her amusement fizzled away at his reaction. Horror she could take, was accustomed to really, it was better than pity or being looked down upon, anger and even bias was predictable enough in the back alleys of space she was used to wandering, but the look he wore, like he had just discovered a new tool and was thinking up ways to use it sent all sorts of shudders crawling across her skin.

"What?" she demanded, sharply.

The Terran blinked and started as though he hadn't realized that he had drifted off. The action left him wobbling and he had to grab the nearby frame to stay upright. "Sorry. Sorry. I was just... thinking about a friend of mine. He has a... spinal injury and Earth medical technology can only do so much. If your tech out here in space is so advanced, though. If you can reconnect nerves with such skill then... I hadn't really considered the differences in our medical tech is all. It's not usually my area of focus..."

The ship fell into a silence then in which the Terran was visibly struggling. When he couldn't seem to take it anymore he tried awkwardly, "I made myself a heart once though."

Here he let go of the frame with one hand to tap the glowing plate on his chest.

"That's your heart?" she asked without realizing it.

"Well, no, not anymore," he admitted. "It's more a reminder. I was in a blast, and I used to have a machine that kept some shrapnel from moving around and cutting into my heart. Years later I finally had the surgery to remove the pieces, and it healed. I don't need it anymore."

"Ah." She returned to her pile of scrap, wading her way back to where she had left off. "Mine cannot be removed. Or healed."

"Fair enough," he said, taking her cue that their conversation had ended and leaving the doorway to make his slow way over to her pile of scrap. "Would you like some help?"

She pointed at the corner near where he stood which she had yet to look through. "You can start there."

-x-

As predicted, there was nothing useful to be found in the fox's scrap heap, but the Terran had found a small armload of pieces that had interested him. These were now piled up on the table next to him while they ate. For every three or four bites he took, he would slide the ration pack over to her side of the table and refused to take it back until she had at least one bite as well. He was a persistent companion, obnoxious really, and had refused to accept any lesser deal on her part.

"You have a lot of friends," she told him, rolling a piece of his chosen tech between her hands.

"Can't help it. I'm a people person."

"You are, evidently, considered very skilled and well-off among your people."

"You can just say it; you think they only like me for my fame and fortune."

She spared him a glance, surprised he had picked up her underhanded accusation so quickly.

"You're not the first one to think that," he told her, sliding the bag in his hands over across the table once more. "And oh boy would I be lying if I said it wasn't true. Everyone wants to be your friend when you're the golden goose, ever since I was a kid, but it just makes the real ones all the more special. And I do have plenty of real ones nowadays. The fake ones can be pretty fun sometimes, too, just between you and me. It's easy to get lost in it, but Pepper looks out for me. I'd be pretty lost without her."

Nebula chose a small piece of the jerky-like rations they were working on and shoved the bag back towards the Terran. "What is a 'golden goose'?"

Rather than take another bite, Tony began resealing the bag. She pursed her lips, a little annoyed that he had tricked her into that last bite when he clearly had no intention of continuing with the meal, but he ignored her disapproval and answered her question. "It's just an old term from a fairy tale, meaning people treated me like I was going to lay golden eggs."

"So... you were a favorite?"

"I think People Magazine said that once, yeah."

"Like my sister. She was Thanos's favorite, of all of his children. She had things given to her, subtle allowances such as finer equipment or overlooking minor mistakes, afforded to her in deference to my father's favor."

Tony had been in the middle of reaching for a piece of the tech himself but paused. "I thought he killed her?"

"Yes. He cared enough to mourn her, though." It still surprised her a bit that he had, but Mantis wouldn't lie about such a thing, and Nebula had known her long enough to respect the empath's impressive powers. The Titan would not have mourned his youngest daughter. A spark of jealousy, disgusting in more than one way, writhed within her and she squashed it mercilessly, grinding it into dust. The tech in her hands was placed down on the table and she began to pull it apart, careful to keep the individual parts intact for the Terran to study later. Again she wished her sister had listened and let her die in lieu of giving up the secret of the last Infinity Stone.

"That's..." His eyes didn't leave her as he finished reaching for the circuit board he had been aiming for and dragged it close. "That's not how-... I'm sorry."

She didn't ask what, exactly, he was sorry for. It didn't matter. Favorite children couldn't understand what it was like to be worth so little as to be jealous of the very dead they mourned. She had always envied her sister the life she had lived of unrealized ease, and now she envied her sister's death and escape from this endless torment. Even their father's attention, which, as bitter and painful as it was, was so often offered to her as a second-hand matter. All of these things now stood behind doors which had been slammed closed in her face.

-x-

"My sister was sick one time."

The Terran looked up from the mess of circuitry and stripped wires on the table in front of him.

She didn't know what had brought on this memory so suddenly. It was faded and muddled, having been rewritten through several modifications to her brain, but it crept through the silence around them as she worked on reassembling a long-since disabled Pylian Bomb and made itself at home in the front of her mind.

"It was before we had graduated into solo work, and she was supposed to accompany our father on a trip to the planet Arturax. When it became obvious she was unfit for travel, he allowed me to accompany him instead." She lowered the corner of casing she had been lining up and ran her thumb across it to wipe some imaginary spec of dust off. "I was so proud to stand at my father's side. Gamora was indisposed and the Black Order was busy elsewhere. I was his right hand, with no one to share him. No one to stand between us."

Something was squeezing her chest, constricting her heart and lungs so that it burned to breath.

"We had come there to deal with an insurgence in his army. Some radical group which was causing trouble among the ranks. It was a trap. The radicals had arranged a pair of their own to assassinate my father. He could have dealt with it on his own, but I was so desperate to prove my worth I dove forward to engage them myself without his orders."

"How old were you?" Tony took advantage of a small lull in her voice as she lost herself in her recollection to ask a question.

Without meeting his eyes she released the tech with one hand to indicate a height about two-thirds of the height she stood now.

"I won," she whispered, a note of pride rearing its head in her proclamation. "But I was severely damaged. My father had me suffer my injuries untreated for one cycle as he dealt with his army, as punishment for acting without waiting for his orders. While my father worked over me the next night, however, he praised my savagery in how I had met my enemies, and my devotion to him. It was the only time he ever praised me like that. I was so happy to hear those words, spoken to me, just to me. That was my favorite memory as a child."

A tremor was running through her arms, making it nearly impossible to line up the casing properly to fit it back into place. The harder she tried to will it away, the stronger it became.

The Terran's hand slid slowly across the table and into her strangely tunneled vision, hesitating just next to her own hand like it had once before. She pretended not to see it and tried again to force the panel back into place. Again it failed, and again after that. Visions of the cell she had spent the night in, bleeding out and so certain she would not survive long enough to be fixed, but desperate not to disappoint her father twice in one cycle, darted across her mind like startled orlani, intermingled with her father's rumbling voice as he soothed the pain away. The pain he had left her in to begin with.

The casing slipped from her hand when she gave it an especially violent twist and it clattered across the table, out of her reach. She stared down at her trembling fingers, and the Terran's hand, steady and calm and waiting patiently in stark contrast to her own. Slowly, she slid her empty hand over, and he rolled his hand so his empty palm lay upright. Her hand hovered over his for several painful breaths, half expecting that as soon as she took it he would snatch his hand away and mock her for her weakness. It was only right, she shouldn't be so weak, she was stronger than this. If she wasn't, then she didn't deserve this kindness. She hadn't earned it. It wasn't hers to accept.

Her chest burned with each slow and shallow breath, making each moment stretch a thousand times its length until the waiting became worse than whatever reality had in store. Accepting whatever pain was to come from this, she lowered her hand into his. He didn't jerk away, nor did he open his mouth to mock her weak decision. His hand curled around hers softly, and his other hand slid across the table to rest against her forearm. His grip was warm and reassuring against the skin of her right arm, but loose enough that she was certain she could change her mind and take her hand back at any time.

They sat in silence after that. No words came from the Terran's mouth. He just held her arm steady until the trembling stopped and she took it back.

End Chapter 7

Chapter 8 Preview: "...You have only made one point so far," she informed him. "I only need one more to win. It is not likely you will succeed."

She flicked the triangle, perhaps a little too quickly, and it fell short before his hands. "You could try though."

The corners of his lips twitched upwards as he gathered the piece of trash..."

.

I don't actually have a clue if her left had feels temperature or not. It's just my head canon, since really all of her is so tech'ed out it seemed reasonable enough she could to some degree at least. Her other arm appears more real, being still covered in skin, but I'm not even that sure if she has enough real flesh left would bleed to a significant degree if she suffered a severe injury at this point. The poor girl. This chapter in general spiraled a little more down than I was planning. I was trying to make Gamora come up since someone had asked about her. I kind of failed in that intent. xD They don't listen to me too well.

And I should probably stop bouncing back and forth between my stories so much. Nebula is so much further along in her growth in the other one it's harder to keep them separated. lol.

Anyways, probably just a handful of chapters more in space and I can get them back to Earth. I do intend to continue on to the final battle(To the person who asked about Morgan, yes, there will be some Aunt Nebula moments. Definitely.). Lately I've been toying with the idea of making a sort of sequal to this once I've caught up with Canon, an 'alternate ending' and continuation from there with Tony surviving the end. I'd make it as a separate document so one can remain canon compliant.

Thank you for the support and continuing to read!

-OMaM