Chapter 9: It's Getting Dark and the Highway's Clear

"I miss my bed," Tony sighed. The co-pilot's chair creaked and groaned as he wriggled around again, as if there was any position he hadn't tried yet. "Are you sure this thing doesn't recline any further?"

Nebula didn't bother answering him as he tugged for the thousandth time at the lever that controlled the angle of the backrest. He already knew it didn't go any further. And her suggestions to go find a more suitable sleeping place were always met with the same half-hearted excuses about enjoying the stars. She had the sense he didn't like the tight dark sleeping pods that were common to save space on smaller vessels. Those more accustomed to planetary life often equated them to coffins or being buried alive.

Eventually he gave up and collapsed back onto his chair with a deep huff. "How is your back not killing you? Because my spine is about ready to crawl right out and abandon ship."

She pursed her lips at the crude description. "My enhancements keep everything in alignment. It doesn't matter where I sleep."

"Oh really?" His eyebrows raised up as he turned his head to stare at her with renewed interest. "What's the weirdest place you've ever slept?" Here he rolled over and settled as comfortably as he could onto his side, tucking one arm under his head as a pillow. "You're some sort of assassin right, you must have slept in some strange places. I've found Natasha and Clint asleep in the vents of our building plenty of times. Clint dragged an entire inflatable mattress and minifridge in there. I told him if he blocked the air system or made the building smell like grilled cheese again I'd call Pest Control and let them deal with it.

"I'll even go first," he offered. "Let's see... I probably have a list a mile long, including a giant doughnut and the catwalk backstage of a terrible play, and now a spaceship drifting the empty cosmos, but the worst wierd place I ever fell asleep would probably be on a steel support beam of Stark Towers while it was under repairs. I went up there to hide from Happy while I patched up some damage to my suit- I didn't want another lecture if he ratted me out to Pepper- and just kinda... nodded off in the middle of fixing it. I got in trouble anyways. Some idiot with a telescopic camera took a couple of photos and it was in the news by the time I woke up. There was even speculation in a bad tabloid that I was dead. The Fire department was called on me, too. It was their sirens that woke me up. I didn't just get a lecture. Pepper, well, she had enough time to prepare an entire powerpoint for me."

His eyes were getting misty again and his words were growing slower. She hoped he might nod off while recounting these tales and forget he had asked her a question.

"So? Your turn."

No such luck it seemed.

Things lapsed into silence for a long beat, as she searched for a memory that might satisfy the Terran's curiosity. One that she was willing to share, at least.

"In the air vents of a freight cruiser while it was traveling through its rout. I was waiting for a target to board so I could extract information."

"Okay, you're just cheating and copying off my homework here. You must have fallen asleep somewhere worse than that."

She blew out a huff of breath through her nose, and started over with a new story. An older one. "On the ice fields of a planet called Yavneet. Gamora, Korath and I were in pursuit of a lead for the location of one of the Infinity Stones. These missions were more of a race for our father's favor than... collaborative efforts. Korath managed to entrap Gamora and I in a cave-in. During the collapse I was damaged. A block of ice struck my skull hard enough to affect my brain and even the enhancement within it. I fell asleep shortly after while the nanobots in my blood worked to repair the damage. By the time I woke up, Gamora had dug her way to freedom, but when she left she had taken my boots with her."

"She took your shoes?"

"Yes. So I couldn't pursue her or continue with the mission. She could cut her competition in half. The ice fields weren't just a solid desert of ice, it was filled with broken shards and jagged pathways. My modifications might prevent me from freezing, and protect my feet from the worst of the ice's effects long enough to return to extraction, but the ice would slice them to ribbons. There was a good chance I would bleed out and die before I made it back, and it would be agony until then."

The starlight and the plate in his chest cast strange shadows and made it hard to read his expression as he watched her raptly from his chair. "Did she come back for you?" he asked.

"Thanos makes no allowances for those who cannot take care of themselves. He expected as much from us. I remained in the cave for nearly three cycles, but when no other option presented itself, I tore part of my suit into strips and forced my way back to the extraction point where I could summon a flight. It was little protection, but the strips soaked the blood and froze and I did not bleed out before I made my destination. Still, my father was greatly disturbed by my show of weakness. It took me three cycles to return, so I spent three cycles on the table in pieces while he remedied issue. It was his idea of poetic justice. Our punishments were always fit to our crimes."

The Terran was frowning now, his eyebrows melting into the dark shadows of his sunken eyes in an expression she didn't think she had seen before. It was something dark and almost dangerous, the undercurrent of humor conspicuously absent. "Yeah, no," he said suddenly. He was still frowning, but it was like the layer of darkness had been shaken and he was back to his ceaselessly happy self. "That doesn't count. You were clearly knocked unconscious when we were talking about like, taking a nap with some poor timing or bad decision making involved. If we were talking about injuries or kidnapping I'd have to change my answer."

She watched his rambling through lowered brows of her own, not sure what to make of the sudden shift and back again of his mood. He was covering for something besides fear or pity this time. Whatever it was, if he wasn't going to bring it up, she wouldn't either.

"We'll go again if you're up for it. I'll tell you about the time I fell asleep on a park bench and woke up covered in bird seed and pigeons."

-x-

"This is the last time," she announced as she set the Suturim aside. "The infection has receded. You can take care of it from here."

Tony sat up on the table and prodded at the wound which was finally healing properly, the dark veins and blooming red all but vanished without a trace.

"Well that's good news for a change."

If he wanted to consider it good news that he would live long enough to die of dehydration or oxygen deprivation. Whichever supply gave out first.

"I don't think it's even going to scar that bad," he mused out loud as she tucked away the supplies for the last time. "Kind of a shame. Pepper's going to wring my neck when I get back, I could use a bit of pity to buy me some time. She usually waits until I'm back on my feet to kick my ass... If she has to wait long enough, I can get out of the worst of it."

Nebula just rolled her eyes at his cowardice.

"I feel like we should celebrate," he continued as he tugged his shirt back down and pushed himself off the table. He miscalculated his strength and immediately had to grab a nearby chair for support, but his somewhat crooked smile remained fixed in place.

"Usually when I get out hospitals I go out for cheeseburgers, but we can break from tradition here." He stumbled over to the small shelf where they had been storing the remaining and swiftly dwindling supplies. "How does... mysterious, suspiciously off-colored, some-sort-of-jerky sound? I was saving it for last, but life is short, right?"

"It'll be shorter if we use up supplies needlessly," she warned.

"It'll be dinner time in like an hour anyways," he countered, a sadness misting over his eyes even as his lips smiled on at the bag held in one slightly shaking hand. "Come on. An early dinner. No real waste, and just this once."

"Just this once?" she pressed, not sure she believed him.

He stared at the shelf that was nearly empty for a long moment, the corners of his lips wavering as the sadness bled from his eyes and spread into his smile. "Just this once."

-x-

The last fuse to the Atmosphere Control Unit blew the next cycle. With its death came another dimming of the emergency lights. It was like a tortuously slow descent into death, one reluctant dragging step at a time.

"Hey Space-girl?" Tony asked from where he lay across several chairs, staring up at the shadows on the ceiling. "I have another question for you."

"Just one?" Nebula was laying on her back on the table, her arm covering her eyes from the last faint light, and facing the other direction so that her head was nearer his boots. Their bodies were both adjusting again to the lowered oxygen. It was a grueling process, and not growing easier with each time.

"Why did you wait three days before going back?"

That made her lift her arm blink her eyes open, though she couldn't see the Terran's face from where she was right then. "What?"

"On that planet; the frozen one. You said no one would ever come to save you, but you still waited three days to leave that cave, when you could have left the first day and been stronger. I was just wondering why."

She closed her eyes again and draped her arm back over her eyes. That wasn't what she wanted to think about right now. "I was just delaying the inevitable. Like a coward."

A short bought of coughing came from the row of chairs below.

"Nah," he rasped out when he finally caught his breath again, "I don't think that was it. You're not a coward."

Nebula let out a long breath and focused on regulating her own breathing. "You don't know what I am."

"I could hazard a guess. When you're trapped in a box drifting through empty space with someone, you get to know them pretty well, and I think I figured you out, Space-girl."

She would have rolled her eyes had she had the energy.

"You're a dreamer, Nebula."

"The low oxygen is affecting your brain. Go to sleep."

"No, I'm sure of it."

She could hear the smile in his voice now.

"That's why you waited three days to see if anyone would come. That's why you came back for me on Titan even though I was just a dying stranger, and you've worked so hard to take care of me, when you could have left me behind or let me die and kept the supplies for yourself."

"You have no idea who I've been or what I've done," she growled, dropping her arm down to the table so she could glare in his direction.

The chairs creaked as he likely shrugged against them. "I don't need to. I know who you are and what you do now. People like you and me, no matter how bad or hopeless it gets, we just keep going, just in case it gets better. We can't help ourselves."

"I keep going because there is no other option."

"Not for us." A hand reached up onto the table and patted at her ankle. "...That's your leg isn't it?" He sighed and dropped his hand back down out of sight. "So how long do you think we have?"

She closed her eyes again and pretended to think about it. Like she didn't know the calculations by heart by now.

"You have four, maybe five cycles before your body won't be able to maintain consciousness anymore."

"What about you?" His voice was hushed.

"My modifications will buy me more time," she told him, squeezing her eyes further as though she could block out the image of the inevitable. "They will keep me conscious and functioning for as long as they can, shutting off one non-vital function at a time, and then moving on to more permanent losses." Unlike the Terran she would not be allowed to simply fall asleep. And through the worst of it, she would have only a corpse for company.

The chairs clanked and rattled as the Terran gracelessly dragged himself up and turned around so that they were both laying the same direction. Once he had settled back down, a hand reappeared over the edge of the table, tapping the surface and waving at her until she shoved her arm over, allowing it to hang over the edge so that the Terran could intertwine his fingers with hers. His pulse was frantic and shallow as his lungs struggled to draw in enough oxygen.

"Thanks," he whispered. "for saving me."

"No one has been saved." There was nowhere left to go from here but down.

He gave her hand a weak squeeze.

"Hey, we can dream, right? There's still tomorrow, and a few more days after that."

End

Chapter 10 Preview: "...Those seven. With the dwarf star in the center. I suppose they vaguely resemble an Arvian Field Hound, mid-track."

The Terran nodded knowingly, though she doubted he had any knowledge of what such a thing was..."

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Last update before I go on vacation! Finished most of my packing and thought I'd celebrate by finishing this up real quick and posting it before I went.

Full disclosure, the memory from the ice fields has some ulterior motives behind it. Those of you who are here from my main fic may remember a scene from "Unfinished Business" in which Nebula takes Gamora's shoes. I was planning to circle back to this memory (and a couple other minor points involving Korath) to explain it in the next couple of chapters, it was just a kind of sibling inside joke among the two and Korath like 'I've won and you're going nowhere', but when I wound up changing my mind about and completely redoing the next arc the explanation kind of got lost in the shuffle. I still intend to bring it up eventually, but in the mean time it's like this half a joke that never got finished. Just haunting me. My only real rule when I started writing Astro was that I couldn't go back and change things that were already posted (besides spelling and grammar.) to keep myself from spending all my time going back, and it just seemed mean to the readers to do that. Someone I was talking to asked about it the other day, though, so I figured I'd sneak it in here for the time being.

Thank you for continuing to read and thank you for the comments!

For the person who mentioned Tony throwing a birthday party for Nebula, I have plans. Don't you worry! And also some drawings on my art tumblr of such a thing. xD [ Caffeineandconceptart]

Not too far away now from their rescue and return to Earth!

Sorry for the rambling, have a great week everyone!

-OMaM