Memories.
Part one: two bounty hunters, a cop and a maniac walk into a bar….
There are times when it's best to just keep your head down and try to work out what you're doing with your life, Quill thought, and the best time for that, he reasoned, was just after you'd got the snot beaten out of you by a bunch of mind-control drones and couldn't do much else anyway. Not that he was naturally given to introspection, this he would freely admit. But something he was given to was sleeping for three days straight after a big fight and refusing to move more than utterly necessary until his leg healed. If he could get paid perplexingly well for it by Nova, then better and better.
The team spend a full month on Altair four after the fight with the controller getting de-briefed by first nova, who they answered truthfully, and then the local authorities, who as per Nova instructions they answered mostly truthfully because no one would sleep any better form learning about infinity stones, and Quill wasn't about to lay all that down on someone unless he could see it helping them somehow. Gamora, being the only crewmember not injured and the least likely to insult, confuse, baffle or strait up-assault members of the press bore the brunt of public interviews, while Drax was shepherded away on Nova prime's express instructions and had to go through a series of interviews with Denarian Dey and a series of other officers and fill them in on literally every fact, no matter how minor, about Isha, who had got away clean but who Quill noted now had a bounty on her head so obscenely huge that you couldn't talk about it around Rocket without him subconsciously drooling at the thought of all those zeros.
As for Rocket himself the racoon seemed weirdly quiet, spending more time than normal flat-out sulking and surly, speaking only when forced to and building more and more bombs, to the point where they were stating to run out of cardboard boxes. Quill wasn't sure what was up with him, and didn't particularly like it. On the other hand it did mean that Rocket had quit tormenting him to relive his own boredom so Quill took the increased tension phlegmatically so long as it went hand-in-hand with a proportional decrease in pepper-sprayed boxers hidden in his underwear draw. If pressed Rocket said his ribs hurt, and maybe there was some truth in that, but according to Gamora he'd vanished for a few hours after the fight, and in that time the Collectors ship had had a main plasma buffer fail and burn out most of the interior, destroying any evidence of what might have been on board, and Quill would have been far faster to see those events as unconnected were it not for the dead drone and the new computer core wired to Rocket's wall o' junk. There was also that conversation Rocket and Drax had had before Rocket had drugged him, and while neither would talk about it and Quill's memory on exactly what was said was patchy because hard tranquilisers will do that to you, he was pretty sure something had gone down and he and Gamora had missed it.
That said, the guy completely lost his shit if you de-alphabetized his collection of firearms filmys or left him alone in the presence of marshmallows, so perhaps he was reading too much into this.
As it was, by the time his leg was finally fixed up, and his shoulder was merely painful rather than agonising to use, they were still in the process of finishing off interviews and sorting the remarkably large amount of paperwork that saving the world seem to entail. He and Gamora met up on their way walking back from separate de-briefs and decided to make their way back to the Milano in the weird perma-dawn than this planet had today.
The topic of what to do about Rocket came up.
"Well, I'm pretty sure he's hiding something. I just don't know what it might be or what to do about it." Said Quill, hands in pockets against the dawn chill and listlessly kicking at random bits of gravel that had escaped from the manicured and raked scallop pattern outside this planet's Palace of the Revolution and onto the footpath. What revolution and whose palace he was hazy on, these being the sort of things that all blurred into one after your hundredth small planet in a year, but it was amongst the fancier buildings he'd been debriefed in so far, and he took that to mean they were getting somewhere.
"I mean, yeah, he's the poster-boy for violent evil-minded asshole, but Rocket's still one of us and I wish he'd open up and not close us out like this all the time. I want to know what's going though his head, and if we can help him out at all and shit like that."
Gamora, who had perhaps a better idea of the sorts of things that might come to light if Rocket started being totally honest with his feelings, frowned slightly.
"Quill, that you want to help him does you credit, but have you considered that maybe the reason he doesn't go into his past is because it's still too painful for him? He's still clearly pretty traumatised about being an artificial life-form in a time and a place where that's not common, and that's just the start of it. We know so little about him, and given that none of what we do know is good, is stirring this up at I time like this, when we're all so beat from the last round of constant fighting, going to do more harm than good?" She asked.
Quill shrugged.
"Bottling it in sure as hell won't help him or us any. Besides: we've just had a figure from Drax's past come and try to kill us, and before that Yondu. Thanos and Nebula are still out there and dangerous as fuck, and we've pissed of a string of vindictive billionaires: from a purely tactical point of view if Rocket's got any skeletons in the closet, I'd like to make sure they're the sort that's going to stay buried. I for one am fed up of getting injured by mysterious figured from my past who try and kill me, so if there's anyone in Rocket's past who, for example, might want to murder us all messily, I'd kinda like to know before I sit next to them on a bus."
"Given Rocket's personality, it could be a long list." Admitted Gamora. "Well, he's not associated with Thanos or Ronan like I am, and unlike Drax if he's killed three-dozen people it's in way that never wound up on the front page, so it seems less likely we'd be running into anyone who has an ideological or political grudge against him. That just leaves personal grudges and anyone he might have ripped off in the past, and I doubt any career criminal will want to sit down and talk openly about that, no matter how much sense it makes on filmy."
"I guess." Said Quill, kicking more stray gravel and sending a chunk pinging off a three-hundred year old dwarf conifer as he hunched his shoulders and blew on his hands to warm them, wincing slightly and rotating his right shoulder in little circles to loosen it. "I just worry about the little dude, is all. He's… he's my friend and I hate to think that something eating him and we're all just ignoring it because were afraid if we ask how he's felling he'll kneecap us in our sleep."
"Well, he will if he hears you call him little dude to his face." said Gamora lightly. "But I see your point. What do you propose?" she asked.
Quill shrugged. "I know you and him…" he paused, aware that there were now two killers he could be upsetting. "I know that you and him sometimes … hang out. No, wait…er…" he kicked some more gravel. "Aww shoot…. Look I wasn't eavesdropping but..."
"Peter, its fine. We both know you overheard that first night on the Milano, after Xandar. It's us, you really think we wouldn't notice?" Yes, Rocket and I are occasionally both…. Both inconveniently awake at the same time. We have an arrangement, that when that happens, we each give the other the space they need and not mention anything we see of hear. And no, I will not use it to pry."
"Fair enough." Said Quill. "But … I don't know. You're both… yannoo… er.."
"Cyborgs?"
"Yeah and so if you could…err… have a talk with him? Cyborg to cyborg and… oh gosh. Did this get racist?"
"Just a little."
"Sorry." said Quill Gamora signed.
"Look, I'll talk with him, but I don't think it will help any. I'm Zen Whoberi: I might have been modified against my will, but at least I know what I was like before that. I know who I am and what I am. Rocket… Rocket's had to work that out as he goes along, in a galaxy where people are cruel more often than not. That can't have been easy."
"Tell me about it." Muttered Quill, as they left the park around the palace and walked the short distance to where they'd parked the Milano. "I'd just like to talk to him about it some time when he's not either drunk, about to shoot me or both." He said. He paused.
"Where is he by the way? Bounty work?" asked Quill. It wasn't that Nova and the local government hadn't wanted to interview Rocket about the fight with the Controller, it was just that he was a tight-lipped little sod when he wanted to be, and he'd kept to the official version of events verbatim each time he was asked, so the local government had given up on trying to get him to talk and let him off appearing again, so he was spending a lot of him time in his natural environment: ambushing low-level bounties in dank alleyways and getting Groot to stuff them in a sack and haul their sorry ass back to court.
Gamora shook her head. "No." she said. "He said something about him and Drax going out, Officer Co' wanted to show him the city, or some such. I think the mayor's office wanted to take him to launch, or out drinking or something, some thank you meal. Or something like that: he was a little vauge."
"Huh." Said Quill, standing on the corner as a fire-engine hurtled past, sirens blazing. He waited for it to pass and then crossed over to the side of the street where the Milano was parked.
"Did they leave a number? " he asked. Gamora nodded, and dialed it on her com. Quill synced to it and took out his projector, dialing the mayor's office and getting a big ole' 3D OZ the great and powerful head in seconds. A few moments questioning got the truth.
"Hah well mister star-king, the justice department just wanted to offer your crew a drink on us as a courtesy, for all you've done to save out city, that was all."
"Very fair and generous and… it's starlord by the way… and kind." He said, without a pause. "And this offer would have taken the form of?"
"Why, one drink on us per member of your crew." Said the mayor. He hesitated. "We were somewhat surprised at the size of your crew, but as your first officer explained, you soon pick up ancillary and support staff in an organisation like yours… and he did have pay-roll information for all members of your ship's crew…"
"Well, the numbers soon build up." said Quill, with the unique combined calmness and sinking feeling of someone who had pulled a particular con in the past and was now seeing it rearing up ugly in front of them. "I myself struggle to keep up with staff turnover… Tell me exactly how many crew members did my first officer claim expenses for?"
The mayor blinked. "Why, all three-hundred and twelve crewmen on your roster. And all eighteen officers."
Quill facepalmed. "I see. Did he per chance try to claim the money for the drinks in cash?"
"Well, now that you mention it, he did. But I explained we no longer did that, as it encourages people to inflate the numbers of their crew."
"Uh, so what did you do? Refuse to pay?" asked Quill, as a second fire truck and a police speeder hurtled past.
"Oh no, that would have been terribly impolite. We just offered him one-days credit good for three-hundred and twelve drinks and eighteen bottles of wine at the bar of your choice, and he answered on your behalf…. Didn't he?"
"I'm sure he did." Muttered Quill. "Thank you kindly, I think I'll go join all three-hundred odd of my crew for that drink now." He muttered, hanging up.
"Christ, Yondu got pissed at me when I pulled that one on him after the Shoggoth incident… I never thought that particular scam would come back to bite me in the ass." He said turning to Gamora. "Somewhere in the city, that little bastard is running up the bar tab of the century and, if he's anything like me, using the drinks as his stake in bets to scam drunks: you win the bet, you take the drunks cash or watch or wallet, you lose, they drink on you and it's not a drink you paid for anyway. Little fucker."
"You upset you didn't think of it first?" asked Gamora, half joking, as she dodged a police speeder and crossed the street to the Milano with him.
"Yeah, just a little." He admitted. "Wished he'd have told me first. Okay, we get this stuff sorted, and we head to Knowhere, lie low and plan out next move in relative comfort. Hell: we've got a little cash, about time we furnish that base we've got there and actually move in."
"Or at least pay to have it professionally cleaned." Said Gamora darkly, looking over to the column of smoke rising: it looked like something had caught fire in the city vice district. "First we need to find Rocket and Drax. They are somewhere out there scamming drunks."
Quill snorted with amusement at the idea. "Assuming Drax and Rocket and Quill and Co' didn't just decide to take the tab and go on a massive bender…"
He paused. "They wouldn't, would they? I mean, Drax is an awful drink and Rocket…" he didn't want to think about that. That was too awful. "I mean Groot doesn't drink, so that would be over a hundred drinks each, they'd die. Surely even as a joke, conspicuous consumption type thing, they wouldn't..."
Gamroa hesitated, pulling a horrified face.
"They do have Co' with them: she got back from trying to find a sheltered home for Gil, somewhere nice and quiet and completely treeless… she'll look after them."
"Gamora, have you ever actually been on a bender with a junior cop? "
"Yeah."
"And?"
"I'd sooner take liquored up colonial marines on shore-leave: they at least tip." She paused. "But come on, they've only been gone less than a day, how much trouble could two bounty hunters, a maniac and a cop with unlimited booze cause in eighteen hours?" she said.
They both considered this, and then turned to the smoke. It looked like a lot of the city's vice district was on fire.
"You don't think?" she asked, suspicion creaking into her voice. Surely not.
Another five fire-engines zoomed past, accompanied by seven riot units.
Quill and Gamora turned to each other and both yelled at the exact same time. "You fetch them, I'll call Nova!"
There was brief glaring contest which Quill lost, and they both sprinted towards the Milano and up the steps to the lower airlock.
"Why do I have to fetch them?" asked Quill, forehead sweating and cursing his luck. Gamora effortlessly kept pace with him.
"Because you wanted to talk it over with Rocket, now's your chance. Because you're the captain and it's your responsibility and most importantly because if I can Nova I can smooth this over it might go well, whereas if you call we'll probably end up hung from Nova HQ as a warning to others." She said, booting up the com as Quill hastily grabbed blasters, rocket-boosters and RCS belt, cursing constantly for going soft and not wearing them to the de-briefing.
"Not if we run away fast enough…" he said, running for the door as Gamora booted up the engines just in case. "Let's hope it doesn't come to that." She muttered, but by then Quill was out the door and gone.
The police were remarkably helpful, but Quill guessed that having just saved their planet would do that, and as far as they could tell no-one had any security footage of exactly how the club had caught fire, which was a godsend as far as Quill was concerned. All anyone seemed to know was that a pair of bounty hunters had bushwhacked someone earlier that week, and their victim's brother had been less than happy about that and made it a point to find them with his gang. They had located said pair of bounty hunters drinking with a large tattooed alien and a small, petite woman sitting in the basement bar of what was either a really lax lodging house or a really strict bordello and drinking there on the basis that it was exactly half way between the bar they had been in, and the bar they were going to, a whole forty yards away. They'd been on their second round there when the gang had rushed them. Quill pieced the rest together bit by bit.
In their defence, according to witnesses the gang had waited until the large tattooed man had gone to the bathroom leaving the bounty hunters, a small furry creature and a tree alone with the woman, before they struck. It may had even have worked had they not been fully visible in the mirror behind the bar when they decided to charge. This had turned out to be a particularly lousy plan for the gang, particularly when the small petite Kylarian had turned on them and hit one with a barstool with the full fury of both a woman scorned and a cop who was having their one weekend a month off-duty intruded upon when she was trying to have a quiet drink.
A far worse plan was deciding that as one of the bounty hunters was a tree, and therefore flammable, that a flare-gun was a good weapon in a confined space. At which point the thug discovered the living wood is far from flammable, but that the interior of a room finished entirely in velvet sure as hell is, particularly when the flare deflects of the back of the tree's head and nether him not his partner even bother to turn and acknowledges you but just keep chatting casually as your gang is chased out the bar by a combination of an irate off-duty cop and fire. Worse still if you get chased into the waiting arms of the huge armed dude who has just come out of the bathroom and is now between you and the door.
Awesome Mix tape Vol 2: Deep purple, Smoke over water (for real this time)
At which point they must have done something to get Rocket's attention, like spill his drink, Quill thought, judging by the drifts of spent less-lethal rounds in the street crunching underfoot like dead Beatles. The rounds embedded in the walls of the building opposite probably weren't a good sign either.
As far as the fire-chief and police sergeant there told it, Co' had at that point flashed her badge, given statements to the first responders, got the gang arrested and hauled off and, having given a full statement and dealt with the scene as well as she could, she'd moved onto the important business; finding where Rocket Drax and Groot had wandered off to in the interim. Quill wasn't sure if this was to check if they were okay, or to stop them happening to anyone else, or just to resume drinking with them for all he knew, but they weren't in the bar across the street, possibly because the fire brigade had evacuated that too, so Quill followed in Co's footsteps and headed down the block to try and find them.
He found an utter utter dive called Mac's diner a few blocks away, a place that looked like a space truckers' and bounty hunters place if ever there was one, and judging by the gang-members hogtied to a lamp outside and covered in tazer burns Rocket had entered his melancholy drunk stage, although the guy swearing with his head embedded in a vending-machine and being recused with the jaws of life was probably Drax's work.
What was less usual was the two squads of police in full riot armour who were gearing up outside: apparently Co' had followed Rocket Drax and Groot in some time ago, and gunshots were heard shortly after that, and given they couldn't reach Co' on her com they'd assumed the worse and were preparing to go in in force to rescue her. Quill, not prepared to let poor unsuspecting cops stumble onto his crew, decided to go in first and check the place out.
Raising both blasters and setting them to stun, Quill edged carefully from the police cordon down to the bar, and upon reaching the swing doors edged them open with his toe trying to ignore the wave of BO and stale beer that hit him as he did.
The first thing that struck him, other than the smell and impression of general awfulness, was popcorn.
Flinching back, Quill closed the door for a second and then edged it open again.
Co' threw another handful of popcorn at him, and having got his attention, gestured silence with a finger to her lips, and glanced over to the bar. The one member of staff was standing stock still with both hands flat on the bar the way you do when John Wayne tells you to keep 'em where he can see 'em, and judging by the sweat beading his forehead and soaking his already Jackson-Pollock-with-gravy shirt, he was not too happy about this and had been there for some time. Drax was slumped in the corner, happily hugging a bottle of Masterhunter schnapps and snoring to himself as Groot cradled his head and I-am-Groot'd, and every single other person in the bar was either hiding behind tables like Co' or trying not to breathe as Rocket sat on his barstool, drinking and snorting back tears as he monologued to the terrified ganger handcuffed to the bar next to him.
Live quantum grenades would to that to a room, Quill thought. He glanced rapidly from the broken, cheap black-market gun on the bar at the center of a triangle of he ganger, the complimentary bowls of popcorn, and Rocket, holding he grenade. He noticed the man's broken fingers and winced to himself. That explained the gunshots: some gang member had seen Rocket walk away from the first attempt of the gang to get even and followed him here to finish the job and, predictably, failed.
"-I mean, yeah I get what you're saying about how you joined the gang 'caus your childhood was unhappy, but I'm a bounty hunter, I was just doing my job, nothing personal and buddy, don't you talk to me about frickin' family tragedies! My mother had an IQ of three and ate her young if the developed minor flu symptoms! So don't you-"
"Hey Rocket, buddy, it's me." Said Quill, edging into Rocket's peripheral vision and raising both hands in a non-threatening manner.
"Oh hey Quill, what's up?" asked Rocket listlessly, not looking away from the grenade. "Me and Alex here were just discussing how we got into crime. Alex's parents were junkies and his big sister used to beat him, bad. I thought that was some pretty weaksause shit right there, and so we've been having a little talk about crime as a lifestyle."
"Sounds great." Said Quill, nervously licking lips, forehead sweating. "But you're right, Alex here looks like he's kinda softcore. Not that into it are you pal?" he asked.
Alex, a seven foot tall reptiloid with razor sharp teeth, looked to him pleadingly and nodded vigorously in agreement.
"The rest too... what is this, some sort of Lah-dee-dah wine bar?" asked Quill, desperately trying to ignore the old bloodstains and the clear evidence that at least someone here had had the genius idea that a pool-table and a urinal need not be two separate things. "Why don't you let Co' here take Alex and the rest of these guys outside and you and me sit and talk about it, you know, one professional criminal to another." He said, trying to ignore the dozen or some heavily tattooed hoverbikers and space-truckers hiding under tables.
"You? Pah." Rocket waved a hand filled with grenade vaguely, dismissing that prospect. He was utterly drunk Quill realised, with a wave of fear, worse than that time in Knowhere. "Sure thing… Starlord." he sneered, tossing Quill the key for the cuffs. "Why not?" he slurred. "s'not like this conversation could get stupider."
Quill caught the key and gestured frantically behind his back for everyone else to get out. They fled without much hesitation, except Co' who edged forwards to help with the cuffs. Quill decided to keep Rocket talking, while wondering if Rocket had drunk enough for his reflexes to be lowed enough for him to snatch the grenade. Probably not, he thought grimly. Rocket's tiny body mass and fast metabolism meant that he got very drunk very fast, but just as he was getting to the uncoordinated stage his chemical warfare mod kicked in to stabilize his system, meaning that he could be at the stage of mostly capable physically but incapable of good decision making more or less indefinably. At least until the cybernetic parts decided he was going to kill the organic parts and knocked him out in self-defence,and Quill wasn't sure if Rocket had been joking when he said that or not.
"So Quill." Rocket asked, addressing his own reflection in the grenade alas poor Yorick style. "How did you decide on a life of crime? What's your excuse?"
"Kidnaped by hillbilly space pirates who threatened to eat me. You know: the usual. Tale as old as time, really. You know that dude, you know my back-story." He said, frantically getting the cuff of and more of less shoving the ganger into Co's arms as she took him and fled the bar, reading him his rights as she went. Half-drunk she's still got it the part of his brain not pissing itself with fear thought. "You?" He asked Rocket.
"Heh. S'what else can you do?" he said, lowering the grade and reaching for his drink with the other tiny hand. Quill realised he was crying.
"Huh?" asked Quill. "Oh come on man, you've done semi-legit work before. You could..." Rocket interrupted him.
"So what else can you do? huh? Live within the law…. You know what Quill? You know what? Every single thing they did to me was completely legal on the planet they were on at the time. Oh, it would have been illegal on a nova world, Xandar or some place but back there? Every single thing… except let me live: as soon as I got out, then it became a legal issue, but if I had died there, then even if everyone had known afterwards the shit they put me through, it would have been legal. Fun fact, a lot of places artificial life forms don't legally count as a life-form in the lab that created them, only once you out and wandering about in the wild that you're an issue for lawmakers. Until then you're just proprietary data" He snorted. "And the guys who did it are still making money from the tech. legally." He said, pulling a fragment of controller-drone out of his pocket and glaring at it before snarling and tossing it away.
"So what else can ya do? Get a job? Pay taxes? Live in the 'real world', where people don't commit armed robbery for a living? Work your entire life to make the people who run stuff, the people who make the worlds worse, who make your life worse, richer? Everything ya can do, every possible thing will, you know. The system is rigged so that whatever happens you make them richer. You've got to give them that, hell, admire them for that" said Rocket, spilling drink. Gesturing wildly.
"They got it pretty much sorted out. They hurt you, and you give them money to do it. You buy, you sell, you sweat, you toil, they earn. So long as you're part of their system, you're just rewarding them for keeping you down. Even if you work in charity, you help them worse off than you, helps them up top 'cause they know they can grind people down to dust, someone else will save them, everyone wants someone to save'em! At best you're an enabler, at worse you're a willing victim of your own abuse. And that's easy… that's so… so easy." Rocket looked vacantly at his empty glass. Reached for the bottle.
"I ain't doing that again." He said, biting out the cork. He poured, drank, looked. Poured again. "sist's easy. Helping someone hurt you, when they've power over you. Easy being a victim. Being abused. You'd think the person who made you, the people who made you, would want you. You want them to want you to… to…" Rocket knocked back his drink. It was that or say love. "And then they take you apart. They can do that so, so easily. And the worst part, they don't have the common decency to just do it physically. You think vivisection leaves you scarred? Try being told it's for your own good. Try being told they want to help you. You believe it, like a shmuck, because you want it to be true. You'd never think they just tell you that because they want you to be a... be a nice compliant docile little lab project. 'Be nice to the freak, it's easier to bolt down if it thinks you like it.' Or 'hey, we've stuck enough needles in its skull its smart enough for us to mess with it brain the simple way. Tell it it's been a bad little monster, it'll blame itself for the next round of electrostatic relay tests."
Quill edged around awkwardly. Rocket was staring into space, and tears were rolling down his face without his noticing. If anything that was scarier than the paw that had strayed to the quantum grenades.
"I wanted to make them happy. I wanted to make them happy so badly it hurt. Not because I thought they'd stop if I did, but because when that happens to you, you genuinely do. You'll do anything other than see the truth, because the truth is awful. All the suffering, all the pain… it's meaningless. You gain nothing: you want to believe they lov- like you and have your best interests at heart, because if the truth is you're nothing to them, you're a pre-alpha model, a test bed for possible product-lines, what then? Admit you're just a blue sky project that will be terminated when it's yielded enough data, when you've never even seen a blue sky? You want to believe anything but that, so you rationalise it all by telling yourself they wouldn't have made you if they didn't lov… didn't like you. I wanted… I wanted so hard…" Rocket sniffed, and took another pull of his drink
"The world's a meat grinder with a punchline, kid. People go in, and meat comes out Quill. And the punchline? You put them in, and they turn the handle themselves, because it's that or see the grinder for what it is. Same guy you work for steals your pension plan and gets you into debt. Same guy you pay taxes to sells your civil rights to the first guy and sends you to jail if you complain. The 'real world' is a bad joke. It's an abusive relationship, get out of it. Rob banks, get in fights, fly spaceships, re-wire the lab's fire suppression systems to cover your escape and cook'em all in their sleep. Earn your happy ending." He grinned, turning and raising his glass in a toast. "Like me."
With that, Rocket slid backwards off his barstool without unstiffening a single muscle, and was unconscious before he could touchdown in the lake of broken glass and assorted fluids that accumulates in fine establishments of this nature. The grenade rolled along and bumped up against Quill's boot, where it fizzed and died sadly in a puddle of almost-beer.
"Okay." Said Quill. " Now I realise this isn't exactly the sort of bar where people get all supportive and caring and shit, but after that little speech I'm just about ready to take a spacewalk with no suit so if anyone has any Hallmark-card, inspirational-comfort crap, now would be a really good time."
…
"I am Groot."
"Well thanks. Thanks a bunch." Said Quill, grunting as he hauled Rocket of the carpet, which fought back. "Anytime you'd like to lend a hand dealing with your buddy's emotional baggage that'd be just swell."
"I am Groot." Said Groot, holding up an unconscious Drax by way of explanation.
"So that makes Ranger Rick my sole preserve?! He drank the entire bar! By weight he's mostly booze right now! Tell you what Treebeard, when we get them back to the ship, we'll swap over. I'll put sir knives-a-lot there to bed and get some caffeine into him, you take Davy Crocket here to the particle shower and try to get the popcorn and vomit out of his fur. Sound good to ya?" Asked Quill dragging Rocket up by his tail and the scruff of the neck before shouldering him like the galaxy's worse stole. He was surprisingly heavy.
"I am Groot."
"Great! I knew you'd agree. That or you said you're about to kill me. At this stage in the night I'd take either as an improvement." Muttered Quill, walking off into the night. Dawn, Night-dawn. Dawn night? Perma-dawn... fuck I hate this planet. he thought.
They needed some time away from Nova and all this shit, he decided. They'd head back to Knowhere. Things should have calmed down there with that Nova peacekeeping force.
They couldn't have made it any worse, he thought.
In Knowhere, everything bustled, it heaved, but in a far more productive way that before. There was still pain, suffering, crime, poverty, but with a new purpose filling the air. Things were different. If felt like hope.
At least in the streets.
There were dark places here, places people never went. Tiny fissures amongst the Wormian bones of the great skull. Cracks where light never shone. Places between places. Secrets that smelt of the underside of things. Amid coiling lightless mazes rodents made love and waged vendettas, far from the sun and all knowledge. In the ruins of the Watt's brothers lair, a small collection of childhood things, carefully gathered up by Wade, memories of a time before he was a rapist and a killer, broken marbles, hag stones, shining wire, a little boy's treasure-trove hidden beneath a loose floorboard, soon to be plastered over in Quill's renovations and lost forever, like Wade's fragile innocence. In the back of the Drum Bar a priceless autographed Holograph slips behind the back of a sofa cushion, and will one day be thrown out and with it and all memory of the people it depicts will pass from the world. In the Collectors museum, empty display cases swing on their chains. Not all were broken open by the infinity stone, and in one the body of a god rots, the broken fingernails and scratches on the glass his last testament, one the declares only thirst thirst thirst in a language older than even gods. Things slither in the darkness, a broken cocoon speaks mute testament to a great power….
And somewhere in orbit of it all, a well-meaning nova officer of the peace keeping force fixes the com-link for Knowhere, and high-speed outer net service is returned to the collectors central computer.
A red light in the museum blinks on.
Nothing else happens for quite some time. It does, after all, take quite a while for a full computer emulation of a mind to wake up. Especially a mind like this one.
The one thing you always do if you're a serious Collector is have back-ups of you best pieces, just in case
Tivan mrk II started to read the news. And, after a while, he begun to laugh.
