GotG and Avengers belongs to Marvel.

This is purely for entertainment.

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Chapter 10: No Sign of Life from Front to Rear

"That one looks like an ice cream cone." Tony pointed at a patch of stars off to the left. "Don't you think so?"

"I wouldn't know."

"It does," he assured her with a sharp nod. "The kind you get from a soft serve machine. You go next."

Nebula scanned the galaxies beyond the windshield and picked out her own handful of stars. "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.

"Okay, my turn. Let's see..." One hand came up to scratch at his scraggly beard as he made a show of picking his next set of stars. The cool blue plate highlighted his labored breathing as his chest rose and fell to an unsteady beat.

"I see a turtle on a skateboard." A small chuckle. "He's headed for the ice cream cone."

It was back to her, and she took her time scanning the field of vision for some imaginary shape in the stars. This game, at least, had some measure of sense behind it, and even a distant sense of familiarity that was, for once, not entirely painful. Nearly all planets had some form of archaic star-charts which relied on relating the cosmos into images of beasts or plants or stories for the natives to use in their travels before the stars themselves became open to them.

She was more accustomed to learning them by numbers and clusters in a more universal mapping system of the galaxies, but when they had been very young, Korath had once taught Gamora and Nebula the ancient names to the constellations of the Kree planet he had grown up on.

He had been not quite an adult, limbs too gangly and with a patchy beard that had refused to grow in with any grace, but much too tall and sharply angled to be considered a youth anymore. Nebula recalled keenly, even now through the haze of time, how he had towered over the sisters as he stared up at the night sky, his breath billowing out like smoke in the frozen air and his dark eyes lit up like diamonds.

They had been set on guard, standing watch over a great doorway which their father had vanished into what seemed like ages before in the remnants of her childish memory. Some sort of meeting or other such mundanity of war that happened to take place on Korath's homeworld, from before he had sworn his allegiance to Thanos and earned himself the title of 'Pursuer.' Their newest older brother had sought to alleviate some of the boredom through reminiscing. It was a strangely soft moment they had all shared under the cosmos who's names she could no longer recall, a brief ebb in the violence that made up their lives. The next morning Korath, nearly twice their size, would fracture two of Gamora's ribs and break Nebula's wrist in a training exercise.

"It is a Class Seven Cannon Vessel." She finally picked her next image, lifting one strangely heavy arm to point at a new set of stars. "The cannon is deployed and ready to fire."

Tony twitched and dragged his eyes open. He must have begun drifting off while she had lost herself in thought. "What's it firing at?" he croaked out, squinting like he was searching for the image he had no way of identifying.

"No," she refused, settling her arm back down across her stomach. "It's your turn. I will find its target next time."

From his seat, the Terran stuck his tongue out at her. "It better not be firing at my ice cream cone," he muttered under his breath, his eyes fluttering closed again. It seemed their newest pastime was over. She was almost sad to see it end, and if she let her eyes drift back to the empty void around them and trace the outline of another imaginary constellation... well, no one would ever know.

-x-

The Terran let out a deep gusty sigh as he dropped down to sit next to her on the short step-down between the common room and flight deck.

"This is it, huh?" In his hand he held the final bag of rations, already half empty from the last time they had eaten. "Last meal."

"Yes," she confirmed needlessly.

He tilted the opening toward himself and took a sniff as though he didn't already know exactly what it was. "Death row inmates get better last meals than this," he grumbled, wrinkling his nose and making a show of his distaste.

Nebula let out a weak breath of laughter at the rather accurate comparison, even as the Terran's reference seemed incongruous with everything else she had learned about his home planet. After all his wistful stories and misty-eyed tales of 'birthday parties' and 'vacations,' it was almost a relief to find that, in truth, Terra was just as dark and tainted as the rest of the universe. It was like a missing piece clicked into place, and reality made sense again.

Beautiful gardens grew from rotten things, and promises were just lies planned a head of time.

It was a rare treat, really, to learn the thing so far beyond her reach was worthless anyways. Some reasonable part of her acknowledged that she was being unfair, and pettiness was a flimsy wall to erect between herself and the greater issues here, but it was a wall nonetheless. And like a coward, she hid behind it.

The crinkle of a bag being shoved against her elbow drew her from her thoughts. The Terran was staring at her expectantly through sunken, bloodstained eyes. The shadows cast from the ever-present glow on his chest exaggerated the hollow valleys under his cheekbones, and gave him the appearance of a corpse already. Wordlessly, she placed her hand on the bag of rations and shoved them back towards the dying man, catching his eye with her own and daring him to argue with her. In a moment of rare and surprising wisdom, he didn't.

When the last bite had been swallowed, he carefully folded the wrapper into a triangle.

"One more round?" he offered, holding the familiar shape up. "I'm feeling lucky."

-x-

"Hey Space-girl," Tony's voice, muffled with exhaustion and hunger woke her from her half-slumber in the pilot's chair. "Can I ask you a favor?"

One eye cracked open in silent answer. The Terran was leaning against the co-pilot's chair, his blanket drawn tight and bunched up in nervous fingers. A strangely serious look had settled across his face, so she roused herself a little more and blinked open both eyes. "What is it?"

It had been nearly a complete cycle since his last meal, and he swayed a bit where he stood, even with the backrest for support. Under one of his arms, peeking out from underneath the blanket was the mangled face of his helmet. "If I-" he started, then stopped, dropping his eyes to the floor as though searching the dirty panels for the words he wanted. She was fairly certain what he was going to ask, but she said nothing, waiting him out. "If help comes and it's... too late for me, would you make sure this gets to Pepper?"

With some wobbling, he managed to produce the helmet from under the folds of his blanket and hold it up for Nebula to see, his head still ducked towards the floor, in desperation or defeat she didn't know.

"No," she said flatly, closing her eyes and returning to the rest he'd disturbed.

"No?" The Terran echoed, his voice suddenly stronger than it had been a moment before and laced with something between anger and disbelief. "What do you mean 'no'?"

"No one is coming to save us." She kept her eyes closed, but her traitorous mind summoned up the image of what he must look like -hurt, shocked, betrayed, angry- for her to see anyways. "I can't do that."

She could hear the sharp intake of his breath, and the rustling of his clothes as he drew the helmet closer again. If she opened her eyes, she would probably see his knuckles going white from gripping it so hard. As she had predicted, he didn't like her answer. He was upset, she was certain, but she didn't care. She could handle him, even in her weakened state.

"You don't know that," he said slowly, his voice growing quiet again. He must be looking down at the helmet.

The breath she took next was long, and she made a show of her exasperation as she heaved it back out through her nose. She had accepted her fate a long time ago. Before they'd run out of food and water. Before the batteries on this hunk of scrap gave out. Before even Titan. But every time she had made some measure of peace with it, the Terran seemed hell-bent on dangling the notion of survival in her face all over again. It was painful, and cruel, and she was tired of enabling his nonsense.

"Come on," he tried. He sounded disappointed. She ignored the stirring of guilt in her chest. That was just what he was counting on. Did he think she was that stupid? If she opened her eyes, she would surely see the anger he couldn't hide from his eyes. "I'm not asking for anything big here, just a promise to try."

"No."

A rustling and soft thunk filled the cabin as he dropped heavily into the chair next to her. "Can I at least know why?"

To be honest, she wasn't entirely sure. It wasn't like she hadn't made promises she never intended to keep before. So many of them, in fact, she didn't even bother to keep tract. Promises of mercy, or survival, leverage to get the information she needed, broken as easily as they had been made. So why she was suddenly so unwilling to do the same for the Terran eluded her.

It was the Terran's turn to draw in a long breath when it became apparent she had nothing more to say. In the silence that followed her skin crawled in anticipation of what was to follow. Her eyes were still closed, and she reclined on her chosen chair with carefully feigned nonchalance, even as she listened for any signs of the retaliation to come her way. Surely, he wouldn't be stupid enough to think he could take her on in a physical brawl, even with the supposed element of surprise. At the least he would shout, though, perhaps try to cut her with some sharp word. He knew enough about her to think himself dangerous at this point. More than perhaps anyone else ever had known about her, and it did make him dangerous. She had only her own stupid self to blame for that.

When the silence stretched for too long, she cracked one suspicious eye open. Instead of glaring at her, though, or doing any of the dozen or so things she may have been expecting, the Terran was hunched miserably in his seat, staring down at the mask cradled in his lap, and turned somewhat away from her. The image in her mind of the anger on his face and hidden behind his voice crumbled away, like a rug yanked out from under her feet, and she was left momentarily off-balanced. All of her own fury which she had gathered in defense against whatever punishment he was going to send her way suddenly had no target to meet, and like a violent wave with nothing to crash against, it rolled on aimlessly until it ran out of steam and simply dispersed back into the silent sea, leaving her hollow and lost, and strangely unharmed.

-x-

"What are you doing?"

The Terran paused, the pen held mid-stroke over the upturned helmet he had placed on the table. His hollow eyes rose to watch her where she leaned with her arms crossed on the archway between the common room and flight deck for a quiet moment before returning to his work.

"I'm writing a message, so if someone finds this they might return it to Earth."

Nebula stepped closer to the table, leaning over it to glance at the markings he had made. "No one will be able to read that," she informed him. "And no junker is going to bother translating it."

Tony frowned and tugged the helmet closer to himself. "What am I supposed to do?" he asked crossly. "Write it in binary?"

With a small sigh, she uncrossed her arms and dropped down into the seat across from him, holding her hand out for the pen. "I can show you how to write it in common," she elaborated, when he just stared at her hand and gripped his items tighter, as though afraid she might take them from him.

At her explanation, the hesitation dropped from his face and he quickly shoved the pen into her open hand. The helmet made a soft scraping noise as he shoved that over as well, and leaned in. The heavy exhaustion was replaced with curiosity and more life than she had seen in his eyes for cycles.

"If found, return to Pepper Potts of the planet Earth- Terra, I guess you call it- and maybe some mention of reward couldn't hurt..."

The likelihood of anyone caring enough to find the message in the helmet, let alone following through with the vague request, was practically nonexistant, but she kept that to herself as she added a translation of his words in neat and precise common under the scribbled mess he had already made.

"Thanks," he murmured as he took the piece of half-melted tech back, studying the foreign letters through narrowed eyes as though hoping to discern their meaning for a long moment before turning back to her. "Did you want to leave a message for anyone?"

"I have no one to leave a message for."

The Terran bit the corner of his lip and looked down. "Oh," he muttered. "Right. Sorry, about your friends here."

"They weren't mine," she reminded him idly as she capped the pen they'd been using. A small spot of greasy ink smeared onto her finger and she frowned as she rubbed at it. Her having no one to leave a message for had nothing to do with Thanos's most recent list of mortalities, but there was no need to waste their precious oxygen on telling him that.

The resulting silence went unbroken while she worked to clean the ink from her hand. The more she wiped at it, though, the more it seemed to smear into her skin until she surrendered her attempts, dropping her hands back to the table with the clink of fingernails and metal against metal.

The Terran, who had been staring intently at the eyes of his helmet jumped as though startled from sleep.

"Well," Tony said, rolling the helmet back over so she could see the inside and pointing at where a long bubbling crack ran through a series of switches and buttons. At least half of them appeared to be beyond function. "If you change your mind, this button here is how you record. Just press it once to start, and a blue light will come on. Then press it again to end the recording." He moved his finger, trembling faintly as though the effort of simply being awake for so long was growing to be too much. "And this one here, that's how you play back old messages. It sticks a little, so you have to try a few times, but it works, I promise."

With that said, he stood, tugging the blanket tight around his shoulders and hobbled off towards the flight deck, likely to take another nap underneath the stars, leaving the helmet behind to stare at her with its cold, empty eyes.

"Just in case you miss the sound of my voice."

End

Chapter 11 Preview: "...she turned her attention to find Tony slumped into one of the chairs by the table. One arm was slung over the backrest, as though it was the only thing holding him up, and it almost looked like he was panting. His usual blanket was conspicuously absent, and the worry drifted through the muddle of thoughts filling her addled brain that his fever had returned.

When he caught her eyes, his face twisted into a guilty frown..."

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*Raises up from the grave of exhaustion that is working 7 days a week* I LIIIIIIIIVE!

Hey there! Sorry about the extra long hiatus! Things have been... busy and exhausting. But they're settling back down now. I'm almost completely done with the first job, and I'm getting into the swing of my new one, and getting into better shape so I'm not so beat when I get home. I'm loving it so far!

The next chapter should not take nearly as long as this one did. I don't really have a regular writing routine back yet, but I'm getting there, and I have a pretty clear idea of what's happening, just need to write it. I've been playing a little intentionally vague with the passage of time in the last few chapters just so I could mosey on to other things. I am planning to have Carol show up in the next chapter, and then I can get into some heavy return to Earth stuff and all there is to unbox there.

Sorry if the writing's a little rough in some places as I get back into the habit, and I really hope the conversation about the promise came out okay. It was meant to be that Nebula was assuming he'd be mad, and was basically projecting her past experiences and expectations onto his part of the conversation, but when she finally actually looked at him she realized that the reality was different, and she didn't know what to do in an argument that didn't end in blows. It was a risk I took, and I hope I didn't totally butcher it at least. It's a thing I find I do a lot, and a weird feeling, but hard to explain.

Thank you for reading, and for the reviews!

And a special thanks for the patience!

-OMaM