Chapter Six: Homeward Bound
Part one: on the Road.

As it turns out, the crew was pretty good at dealing with combat, insanity, escapes and wacky-races desert vehicles.

Dealing with Nova and the Press… not so much.

Quill set the autopilot and, sighing with relief, made his way down the steps to the ship's common area. Gamora was sitting on the tiny fold-out sofa, one arm in her sling and the other holding an ice-cold vodka-quinine to her tilted-back forehead.

"How's Rocket?" she asked, not opening her eyes.

"Sleeping peacefully," said Quill, slipping off his headphones. "And by sleeping peacefully I mean tranqued out of his gourd. He should be out for a good six hours."

Gamora frowned, and then looked over to the raccoon. He was wrapped around Groot's pot like a furry donut with his tail tucked under his head and all four limbs hugging the pot so tight it was a miracle that the pottery didn't break. She sighed, put down her drink, and slumped over. An extremely tentative lifting of his eyelid (Gamora had seen Quill try to wake Rocket before and she was in no mood to risk losing a finger to reflex-biting) revealed that Rockets pupil was so large she could barely see the edges of his iris. Flashing a light at him had no noticeable affect beyond making Groot wave at her, which caused Rocket to constrict tighter on the pot, if that was possible. She turned back to Quill, angry.

"Peter, you can't just drug someone to shut them up! Do you have any comprehension of just how dangerous and irresponsible that is?"

"Hey, eight hours Gamora. Eight hours of solid blubbering! He didn't cry half that much when Groot got blown up, even! My coat's absorbed so much tears n' snot it's practically doubled in weight, it was that or shoot him out the airlocks if we ever wanted to sleep again!"

"He'd just had Groot talk to him again for the first time since Ronan, this is probably the first closure on it he's had! Given he'd been keeping it all in- about how worried he was about Groot- is it any surprise he went to pieces?"

"No but he didn't have to do it all over me! I was having a real bad day too, you know and-"

At the words "real bad day" Gamora raised her sling meaningfully, and Quill promptly shut up. His little escapade on Arrakis Five hadn't exactly been a walk in the park, but at least he'd not had to stab someone to death with his own protruding ulna.

"At least he's sleeping. Sleeps gotta be good for him," finished Quill, lamely.

Gamora sighed. "Peter, do you have any idea how dangerous that is? We don't even know exactly what drugs his system will and won't take."

"Hey, I got those sleep-aids from Rocket's bag! If you hadn't noticed, it's not like Rocket hasn't been self-medicating pretty heavily."

Gamora had to accept that was true: Rocket seemed to be kept functioning by solely by a careful balance of caffeine, taurine (unsurprising: many nocturnal mammals went blind without large amounts of dietary taurine) lysine supplements, whiskey and spite. But sleep aids were a new one.

"Where did he have them?" she asked, closing his eyelid. Quill shrugged.

"With everything else, hidden in plain sight wired on the wall next to his guns. More surprisingly they're legal. Nova medical corps prescription under his own name along with what looks like Nova fighter-Pilots Go-pills and B n' R's."

"B n' R's?"

"Brown and reds, Xandarian military medicated chewing gum. 400 milligrams each of Benzedrine and Ritalin. Doesn't look like he's touched them, though. Nor the Go's, and he's only had a few of the sleep-aids."

"He's maintaining, then," said Gamora, grudgingly. "But who in their right mind would authorize giving him those?"

Quill tossed Gamora the prescription cylinder. She caught it easily one handed, and read the label with surprise.

"Nova Prime Rael?" she asked.

Quill nodded. "What's weirder is, thinking back about it, when we were all getting checked out by the Nova medical teams to make sure that toughing the infinity stone hadn't given us cancer or extra heads or nothing, I was the last one to leave the sickbay 'cause I held it longest, and at no point I was there did Rocket ask for any of this stuff. He just sat there holding Groot kindling and staring straight ahead, and they just gave him the stuff without any questions."

Gamora looked thoughtful "So either Nova Prime Rael routinely hands this stuff out like candy, or she's up to something. Do you think she knows something about Rocket we don't? She has his rap-sheet and psyche-evaluation on record."

Quill shrugged.

"Or she just took one look at him and decided that he needed drugs to function."
They both looked at Rocket. Right now, he looked like he needed all the drugs to function. That, or a discarded pajama case. Groot saw them looking and waved. Quill sighed.

"Anyway, I'll add that to the list of stuff to worry about. After that last little debacle, Nova Prime wants us to report to Xandar for de-briefing and a threat recovery assessment."

"A what?" asked Gamora. Quill shrugged.

"A 'Please don't land your spaceship on the guy you're supposed to be surveilling' talk, as far as I can tell. Course is set for Xandar City. With any luck, getting chewed-out won't take too long and we can spend some time in the city, lie low and get some rest. "

"And we're actually going to go? Take responsibility for your actions?" asked Gamora "Who are you, and what have you done with Peter Quill?"

"Oh ha ha," said Quill. "I happen to be growing into my role of a space-ship captain, hero and all-round great guy, I'll have you know."

"Riiiiight. And the fact that we ran into Yondu, and that Nova Prime HQ is the one place you know he wouldn't dare chase you, has nothing to do with it?"

"Nothing less than everything; that guy frightens me," said Quill, cheerfully. "Look on the bright side, we put on the auto-pilot, we cruise there, we get up and visit Nova. All we need to do is get everyone up and into Nova's offices in time. What could go wrong?" said Quill.


Quill stood before the Infinity Stone.

It seemed much larger here, in his dreams. Aware as one sometime is of one's dreaming state but unable to shake it, Quill walked towards the Stone.

Nebulae and planets whorled and spun around him, but he walked on, ignored this, stepping calmly towards his goal. The Stone got bigger as he approached it, but smaller too, like a collapsing star. He knew academically that he had held it in his satchel for several days, and that it could only have weighed a few ounces but here, in this place, it was not ounces but thousands upon thousands of very small tons. As he closed upon it, he felt it without touching it, there in the back of his mind, it's presence so close, calling out to him to reach out and take it up again, reach out and use it, to change the world. Unbidden, his hand stretched out, and somewhere his mother's voice was calling. "Peter!"

"Mom?" he muttered back, reaching for it.

There was a sudden pain as the containment sphere Rocket had taken to using as a ball bounced off his head, and a female voice sharply yelled "Peter!"

Quill woke with a start, hand outstretched at nothing as the sphere bounced off him. He struggled against his sheets briefly, before remembering where he was, back in his own bunk on the Milano. As he blinked dust from his eyes, he noticed someone looming over him.

"Gamora?"

"You're an idiot, Peter!" she snarled.


Peter Jason Quill stood, hands on hips, surrounded by his loyal and now somewhat pissed-off crew. He felt he needed to say something.

"Huh. Okay, let's try that again," he said, nodding to Drax.

Drax leaned in over Rocket with an air-horn. Groot, now used to this, shielded both of his tiny ears with a frond as Drax reached over and placed the horn almost touching Rocket's ear.

ERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR! Sung the horn. Drax and Quill, both expecting a torrent of weapons-grade Rocket.

After a second, Quill opened his eyes. Rocket was still sleeping peacefully. Gods help them; he was even sucking on one of his paws.

Quill checked the clock. They were already docked in Xandar City, and had less than an hour to go until they were supposed to be giving evidence on how they weren't a bunch of total fuck-ups, and Rocket was out of his little furry mind.

"Oh, we have a problem," said Quill.

Gamora laughed, bitterly.

"Oh, really, do we? Who knows? Perhaps drugging a shipmate of unknown biology with pills that you found wired to his wall next to his collection of bottle-caps wasn't the smartest move, Peter!"

"Hey, I made no bones about the fact that smart moves aren't my thing! Let's just focus on the job at hand." Quill looked to Drax, and then nodded to Rocket.

"Pinch him."

"We tried that Peter," said Gamora, crossing her arms. Quill felt he had to act decisively, or foot-tapping would be next.

"Pinch him."

Drax leaned in, and then hesitated. "Given the emotional stress Rocket has been under over his creepy attachment to Groot, perhaps it would be best no to aggravate him further by-"

"Oh for the Love of… I'll do it," said Quill, leaning in and pinching Rocket sharply on the ear.

Without waking or showing any sign of higher brain functions, Rocket bit down on Quill's wrist to the bone.

There was a moment of perfect tranquility as Quill impassively regarded this, and then his brain caught up, and he leapt up screaming and flailing, trying to shake Rocket off. Unfortunately, Rocket had clamped down pretty good, and all that happened was that he ended up dangling off Quill's wrist as he ran around the ship, screaming. Drax looked startled, and Gamora stood tapping her foot sourly as Quill ran to the head and tried to run Rocket under the faucet as if the water would somehow dislodge him. There was a series of unlovely noises as Quill attempted to slam Rocket's head between the metal toilet bowl and the seat and just ended up smacking his own arm into the pipes of the head, and then Gamora sighed, and walked up and pushed Groot's pot back into Rockets hands. Instantly he let go of Quill and latched onto the pot. Trying to stem the bleeding with a hand-towel, Quill leaned over.

Rocket was snoring gently, whiskers twitching in his sleep as he dreamt small dreams.

"Tenacious little motherfucker," said Quill, eventually. "He didn't even wake a little?"

"Not even when bounced of a bulkhead," said Gamora, holding up her good arm to show the fresh bandages to her wrist and wiggling her fingers. "Seeing as he's got muscular control, he must be stuck in REM sleep, but he won't wake up. How much did you give him?"

"I dunno. Four? He was in a bad state, and the standard dose was two so I figured-"

"The standard dose for an adult is two, Peter. He weighs as much as a toddler-"

"And fights like a bear… Groot, you know Rocket best. How many sleep aids does he take?"

Groot seemed to consider this.

"I am Groooooot." He eventually squeaked, sagely.

"See?" yelled Quill and Gamora vindictively, each convinced that he'd agreed with them, before realizing how ridiculous this was. Gamora tutted and stalked off to the med bay to read up on accidental poisoning, as Quill negotiated with Groot.

"I mean, two is his usual, right? Say your name again if it is!"

Silence.

Quill bit his lip. "So more than two?" he asked hopefully, guilt edging his words.

Nothing.

"Less than two?" said Quill, strangulated.

"Grooot!"

"One?" Groot didn't reply. Quill felt a tingle of genuine fear, and looked down. The med-aids were pre-formed in a peanut shape, with a scored divide down the center of each one.

"It's half, isn't it? He takes half."

"Grooooot!"

"…And often? I mean, he must take these all the time, have built up quite a resistance" silence.

"Once a week?" he hesitated. How often in the short time he'd know Rocket had his nightmares or insomnia been really bad? "One a month?"

"Groooot!"

Swell. "Gamora! Get the tiny stomach pump!" yelled Quill, picking Rocket up and hauling him vaguely upright. So long has he wasn't pinched and no one removed Groot he seemed pretty non-responsive. Okay, do I know the recovery position, and if I give him mouth to mouth will he think I'm trying to French him and bite of my tongue? thought Quill, panicking slightly.

He was instantly relived to see Gamora approaching, less so when he saw what she was carrying

"Gamora, I said a stomach pump, that's a rectal thermometer. I don't know how it is with Zen Whoberi, but I'm pretty sure the stomach is higher up in the fucking digestive system!" Quill paused. "Why do we even have that?"

"Badoon med bay standard issue! And you gave him the dose more than seven hours ago. What's a stomach pump going to do? It's in his system by now, Quill. We've got to check his core temperature and heart rate, which would be easer if we had any idea what his healthy scores were. I'm checking the test results Nova took on him…. okay resting 39 Celsius and 200 per min, if he tops 41 or 260 we need to get him to critical care. Other than that, just wait until the sedatives wear off," said Gamora, booting up the digital read-out on the steel thermometer and testing it by wrapping her palm around it. She then grabbed the tub of medical-grade petroleum jelly.

"We have ear thermometers," pointed out Drax. Gamora considered this.

"True, but he did bite my hand. And besides… this thing is freezing! If this doesn't wake him up, nothing will," said Gamora, grabbing him by the tail.

After a few moments the thermometer pinged. They all craned in to look.

"39.4 C, healthy resting range. His heart-rate and BP seem good too," said Gamora, relief mixing with disappointment. "He's not hurt, but he's not appearing before any Nova board on inquiry any time soon," said Gamora, absent-mindedly thrusting the thermometer to Quill, who took it automatically and then realized what it was, and flailed ineffectively before slamming it into the kitchen trash-can.

"Shit," said Quill. "We're all supposed to turn up. Dey seemed okay with us killing Ker, seeing as he turned out to be a scumbag, but Nova Prime gave the impression of wanting to mount my head to her desk as a warning to others when we spoke over the comms. Can't we… I dunno, take him and just sit him at the back? It worked in class."

"The back of four people and a potted plant? Yes, Peter, because that will work out just fine!" sighed Gamora. "Perhaps writing out what went wrong for the full Xandarian board of enquiry in crayon would also help, or using him as a ventriloquist dummy could be nice."

"Doubtful. The meeting is less than an hour away and I do not thing we have enough wax," said Drax. Peter and Gamora ignored him. Quill stepped back, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.

"I dunno…. If I remember from drunk dudes passed out at the Ravagers, painting eyes on the back of someone eyelids works pretty well. I got real good at it too…."

"His eyes appear too heavily furred," Gamora pointed out, refusing to take part in this insanity, began to pack up the medical equipment, dropping the thermometer in the dishwasher and setting the heat setting to autoclave.

"We could wax them?" Quill suggested. "I mean, there is a slight risk it might just pull off his eyelid, but hey, at least then he's got a good excuse not to go to this inquiry."

"Leg wax could work," agreed Drax eagerly. Not having any sense of metaphor severely limited the types of jokes you could enjoy, and as a result his culture had a fine appreciation of schadenfreude and slapstick, and seeing Rocket before a full Nova Board of Inquiry freshly shorn would mitigate the dullness somewhat. Both Drax and Quill looked to Gamora. Her return glare would have melted tungsten.

"Firstly, there is no way in the nine hells I would let you even consider doing that to someone you drugged! And secondly, I don't wax." Gamora frowned as both Drax and Quill automatically glanced down at her legs. "Hey Morons, I'm up here." She sighed, and forestalled the annoying questions before they could start.

"I have the Zen Whoberi spacer gene. I don't lose bone density in zero g, I don't lose muscle mass in microgravity, I can keep my balance from visual as well as inner-ear cues, and because small hairs can drift off in low grav and clog filters or short out ships systems, I'm modified so my eye and scalp hair don't shed and I don't have any extraneous body hair. "

Quill paused, clearly torn between the desire to make the crude joke and the fear of getting gutted like a clam "Don't even think about asking what the gene designers thought was extraneous or not, or I'll take your extraneous follicles off with a blowtorch."

"Fair enough." Said Quill. He then got back on track, such as it was. "We could draw some on paper and glue them on. I used to be able to draw some pretty good anime eyes…"

"This is retarded and I'm going to go and change for the meeting: at least one of our team should be able to look like Nova could trust us with anything sharper that safety scissors and glitter."

"Well we can't leave him behind or just rock up with him still asleep!" Yelled Quill, struggling to open a jar from his grade-school art supplies, levering the top off, spraying himself in the face.

"Ahhhhh! Stupid glitter!"

Gamora changed quickly, hoping that Quill was joking, but when she came back, he and Drax were admiring their handwork. Two huge, disgustingly cure eyes of at least twice Rocket's natural eyeball size and been crudely taped to his head, giving him a freakish and awful countenance not helped by the fact he was snoring loudly, sending a string of drool up and down that Groot seemed to think was some sort of yoyo or tetherball and kept trying to bat with his leaves.

"Well?" asked Quill, with, gods help him, genuine pride. Gamora stared, and as she did, one of the eyes fell off taking a clump of fur with it. He hastily stuck it back on.

"Yeah. Great," said Gamora, with all the blackest sarcasm she could muster. "Just stick some sunglasses on him and they'll be none the wiser!"


Quill leaned over the glass desktop, trying to ignore the pic-casters. He didn't realize that they would be filming this. He licked his lips. "Could you repeat the question?" he asked.

The five-person board of inquiry stared in utter horror. Well, four of them did. Nova prime Rael was sitting on the far end of the dais, and hadn't stopped glaring sourly or tapping her fingers since they walked in and, as tactfully as possible, propped Rocket up using Groot's pot as a bookend to keep him in the chair. Quill tried not to look, but the sound of the snoring had gotten louder, and he was pretty sure one of the anime eyes had fallen out from behind the pair of aviators. On guard behind the desk, Quill could see Dey trying his best to keep his expression neutral, but the man was ghosting and Quill was amazed he'd not cracked up yet.

The delegate next to Nova prime realized that Quill had spoken, and tore his eyes away from the spectacle long enough to nudge the woman next to him with his elbow. She then realized what was happening and nudged the person next to her, who coughed politely. When this failed to get a response he checked the pic-casters weren't pointed at him, and of course the reporters attention was elsewhere, and then poked the Xandarian member of parliament next to him sharply in the ribs. He jolted with a start and then said, "I'm sorry?"

"Could you repeat the question, please?" asked Quill. It never hurt to be polite. Especially when both Nova Prime and Gamora were giving him the weapons-grade stink-eye and Groot had picked up the fallen anime eye and was trying to wear it as a hat.

"What the Right honorable representative of Xandar City was trying to say," said Nova prime in a voice that promised eventual pain to no-one in specific and everyone in general, "was who exactly decided to facilitate an escape using this." She held up a picture of Rocket's jet powered sleigh. "A dangerous, untested vehicle powered with banned fossil fuels, and steered, as far as we can discern from the reconstruction of the debris field, entirely by bullets. What the representative would like to know is," she purred "What monumentally deranged mind could have had the spectacularly poor judgment to not only have conceived this... this plumber's abortion, and then actually have built the damn thing!"

Quill reached for the glass of water, to buy some time. Nova prime watched impassively as he finished the full glass. He then reached for the jug again, but Gamora reached out and took it away from him.

"That, that would be my chief engineer, Rocket."

"You have a chief rocket engineer?" asked one of the politicians, in voice off horrified disbelief.

"In…in a manner of speaking," said Quill. "but you have to realize, we were in dire risk, held at the whim of a madman, and decisions made in real-time are never perfect. Rocket did what he could with the parts he had to hand, and given the extreme circumstances he was under, I think the… the escape engine was as fair and proportional a response as he could muster." Quill considered this. "In fact I feel I can say with total honesty, that I'm a little surprised that he didn't build something altogether more inimical to life." 'Use big words, politicians love that!' he thought. 'They'll help drown out the snoring,' he thought bitterly, as Rocket begun to kick and snarl in his sleep.

"And you are… are happy for such an individual to take a place on your crew?" asked the parliamentarian, aghast.

Right, I've seen enough legal dramas and Star Trek to know how this goes, thought Quill. He stood up, rested his hands on the desk, and fearlessly stared the man down.

"Absolutely. This is a dangerous line of work, for dangerous people. They may look a little rough around the edges, but their hearts are in the right place, and I have utter faith in the absolute competence and professionalism of everyone on my ship," said Quill.

And with that, Rocket fell off his chair.


Clink, clink, clink went Nova Prime's spoon in her teacup as she sat behind her desk, drawing out the tension like poison from a wound. Behind the desk, Quill, Gamora and Drax stood looking awkward. In deference to the fact he was still out cold, Rocket had been allowed to keep his seat, and Groot sad cradled in his lap, occasionally pulling at Quills coat because he couldn't see what was happening. The board of inquiry had retired an hour ago to "consider their findings", and Dey had made it perfectly clear that these boards were deliberately composed of two pairs of politicians who would vote predictably against each other, and Nova Prime who would then consider the matter and cast the deciding vote. Given that one of the politicians had been practically prepared to pin a medal on Drax for squashing Ker into a flesh-pancake and one of the others had questioned both the sanity and the legality of pardoning them after the incident with Roman and recommended sending them all back to the Kyln, before they re-established it's life-support, Quill had to say he was somewhat invested in what Nova prime was going to say next.

He just wished she would stop showing the holo of Rocket falling off his chair on a loop from her desk-projector.

Clink, clink, clin…..

"If we had any inkling of the danger he had posed, I would not have sent you in to investigate Ker as you did. I would have gathered evidence of his wrongdoing, yes, and when we had enough, I would have sent you, in a very un-official capacity, to let him know what we knew, and to impress upon him the consequences of his actions in the eyes of the law and why working for us, pro bono, and setting up deals to lure in and find evidence of wrongdoing in other suspected embargo-breakers might have been a heather option for him. I underestimated the level of corruption the man had fallen to, and in doing so I put your lives in danger and for that I apologize categorically."

Quill exhaled nosily, flushing with relief. "Oh god you have no idea how happy I am to hear th-"

"But." Said Rael, dangerously quietly. "Although you had every right to kill the man in self-defence, as all of our undercover operatives do, absolutely nothing gives you the right to be CAUGHT DOING IT!" yelled Rael. All the Guardians, bar Rocket, flinched back. Even Dey, standing at attention behind her, looked a little pained. She was pissed.

"The middle of the desert, no witnesses, and the body mangled beyond recognition and then you call in on an unsecured channel to request immediate medical aid to our peacekeeping ship in orbit and, with every faction on that miserable monitoring the coms of the big-ass ship that turned up with all the humanitarian air, you openly state, not only that Ker is dead, but by saying, and I quote, 'that dick is dead, forget him', Imply that you were the ones who killed him? I'll admit you were all in a state of considerable shock when you turned up at the medi-ship, but dear gods, didn't anyone have the common sense to call it in to me first and get a cover-story sorted, rather than rock-up at the hospital ship landing site, the one area every single member of the press would naturally coverage on, in your very recognizable ship, which you are flying erratically, clearly combat injured in front of the news-networks, and when the paramedic runs out and asks if there was any one else on the ship, say and again I quote, 'Yeah, Bention Ker. He's on the ship all right.' And point at the mess Drax is HOSEING OF THE FUCKING PAINTWORK!" yelled Nova prime, panting slightly. Groot was at this point trying to hide under the trailing fold of Quill's coat, and Quill had, with years of long practice from Yondu, leaned back out of spittle range to the extent he resembled a palm before a might typhoon. She waved her hands in frustration.

"I mean for pity's sakes, what part about deniable operation didn't you get into your tiny little criminal minds? It's only because of your reputation as rouge adventures that I've been able to cover up the fact you were there on my express orders. If anything, Ker's death at the hands of his own bodyguards far outside the reach of Xandarian law gives up a decent excuse to be poking into his affairs, but dear gods… I have a nephew about your age, Quill, and the last time he managed to embarrass me like this, was when he took a dump in my purse. He was two at the time, and the past thirty-odd years have been free off similar infractions. Damn well learn from him!" Nova prime pinched the bridge of her nose, and leaned down.

"That's it. Go. Get out of my office. Stay in town for at least twenty hours, it will make you look guilty if you leave before we release our findings. You acted in brave but foolish self-defence when Ker tried to fake his own kidnapping. You are being extensively de-briefed on the experience to try and shed light on preventing this sort of thing in the first place, and any contact between you and Nova is, officially, for this purpose only. And for the love of all that is good and holy, get someplace better to hide out from Yondu than on my hospital ships; he trailed that one half-way across the quadrant before he realised you were headed here." She held out her palm. "And don't tell me where it is. If I don't know, then it's not my responsibility when you somehow blow it up or something equally ridiculous. Also, if you foul up the next job I give you that badly, you'll need somewhere you can hide from me… so you'd better make it good." She threatened; putting the spoon she'd been jabbing at Quill like a sword back in its cup.

Clink.

Rocket woke with a start. "WZAFF?!" he looked around, fighting to get a strange paper thing off his left eye, an realizing that he was wearing a pair of Quill's old sunglasses. He looked around at the team and Nova prime's shocked and confused faces, trying to take in his surroundings.

"Where the fuck am I?" asked Rocket. "Please say no-one did anything sexual while I was asleep."

Quill, however, had gotten the slack-jawed expression of utter bewilderment that generally meant that he was thinking deep.

Somewhere to lie low…. Yeah… we need a secret base!

Awesome Mix Tape Volume Two:
Willie Nelson; On the Road Again