Memories: part Five; Filtered perceptions

Quill had dealt this a lot of weird shit since he became a Guardian of the Galaxy, but he was pretty sure that whatever he'd been worried about had been run-of-the-mill fears: getting killed horribaly, ending up flat broke and losing the ship, sleepwalking naked and embarrassing himself in front of Gamora… the usual things.

Getting trapped in his own and his friend's memories by a sadistic robotic emulation of Space Liberace until they all lost their marbles wasn't high on the list, he would admit, but at least no-one was naked, with the usual question mark over Groot and whether or not he counted as nude or not.

What he really hadn't been expecting was the sheer overload of looking inside Groots's mind, or Rocket and Gamora being so secretive they were opening themselves to risk to prevent him seeing something they'd said about him.

Or, whatever the fuck is happening now. He thought.

It wasn't a mindfuck like entering Groot's memory it was…. More gradual than that. Not more natural, per say, but easer.

It was dark, but it wasn't black, more tones of muted browns, like trying to see the world thought closed eyelids. Like sight wasn't important.

More than that there was a sense-

Safe. Warm.

-A sense of space. Of security. His sense of hearing was pretty good, he could pick up four heartbeats, his, two like and one big-

Safe. Warm.

-big and comforting, and he and the two others were pressed up close to it. His main senses appeared to be touch and smell, and they were fantastic, to the point where the lack of sight really didn't matter. The could pick up the slight comfortable squirming of the two like forms pressing close to him on either side with his whiskers and feel them in the movement of the guard hairs along his flank and could smell them, so like him as to merge in with him, with his sense of self. And he could feel and smell warmth and milk and comfort and love and-

Safe. Warm.

Rocket frowned. "Who's memory is this?"

Quill and Gamora shared a look, and then glanced over at him. He noticed them looking.

"What?" he asked.

"Can't, can't you tell from the senses?" asked Quill.

Rocket curled a lip, and tried to look around. "What the hell are you talking about Quill? Other that the fact someone's switched the frickin' lights off, the senses seem completely normal. Is this one of yours Gamora?"

"Mine? Rocket, I don't have whiskers." She said.

Rocket, look to the others, and lingered a moment of the sympathetic look Groot was giving him, and then snorted with laughter. "What? You bald bodies think this is one of my frickin' memories? Ha. Nu-hu. Impossible." The said, tapping at the front of his skull, just above his snout. "Memory implant, remember? Eidetic. I'd know if this was one of mine."

"Only if it was a memory from after they put the implant in…" said the Collectors voice.

Rocket froze up, paw still at his head. "I… no. That's not possible, when they put that mod in they… they got something wrong, fried all my memories before that point. Tabula-rasa event, they called it. A blank slate. Sometimes I frickin' I think they did it on purpose. "

"Oh, they did… I've seen the records." Whispered the Tivan-bot. "But they didn't do anywhere near as good job as they thought. It wasn't easy, but there were recoverable fragments. All I had to do was dig."

Safe. Warm.

Rocket opened and closed his mouth a few times, and then just stopped quite still for a long time.

"Is… is that my mother I can feel?" he asked eventually, keeping his voice exactly level and without emotion, and Quill could see what that cost him.

"Oh, yes." Said Tivan mrk2 quite cheerfully.

"And… are those siblings?"

"Yes, two brothers." The Collector-bot said. "What a happy little family."

Quill and Gamora held their breath, because they both knew that there was no way they were getting thought this without it going wrong, and they needed to give Rocket a moment to process that.

"I never knew I had brothers." Said Rocket, the tension and strain of trying to keep his emotions from showing in his voice visible in his face.

"Felling like a little family reunion? I could always leave the lid of my trash open I guess." Said Tivan-bot mockingly. Rocket didn't seem to hear.

"I have brothers." He said, voice creaking. He'd started crying and didn't seem to realize it.

Safe. Warm. Two very simple concepts that the memory kept throwing back. Clearly the only thing that Rocket's mind could process at this stage, Quill thought vaguely. He glanced to Gamora and Groot. They were crying as well. He was pretty sure he was too.

"I…I… never knew my mother. I mean, they told me about her, told me she tried to eat me when I got sick. I was a runt of the litter, they said… they… they said she rejected me…" he said, voice breaking.

"They lied." Said Tivan.

Rocket broke down, hid his face in his paws, and started crying. Groot instinctively moved to comfort him, and there was a swish as the wires took out an inch of his bark as a warning and Groot whimpered and moved back. Quill clenched and unclenched his fists, but knew he couldn't do anything else. Couldn't go to him. No one could. He was alone, with just the memory of past comfort.

Safe. Warm.

Safe. Warm.

There was a change in the texture of the memory, that's the best Quill could describe it.

He became aware of another presence. An additional heartbeat, and a whole spectrum of new scents, all of them so very strong and so unfamiliar that he instinctively disliked them. A blast of cooler air, like when you're in a warm room in winter and someone opens the door, and a sudden increase in the intensity of light and background sound.

Like if someone opened up a box and you were in it. Quill suddenly thought. An ugly thought, but a stubborn one once it got in your head.

Safe? Warm? An uncertainty to those two echoing thoughts now. Quill felt the memory shiver, and try to nuzzle closer to the warm fur that was its world.

There was an answering shudder of uncertainty from the mother and the two siblings, and a high trilling bird-like chitter that resonated on so many levels that Quill found it swamping his mind, and while it sent a wave of fear thought him, it was also reassuring. Momma Racoon is Pissed and you'd best not mess with her. Quill thought.

The presence was total, and so shocking it nearly floored Quill: a sudden grip, tighter and stronger that he could imagine around his ribs, and alien hand of impossible size and strength grabbing where no hand had any right to be.

Safe? Warm? A sudden rising panic, made worse by the lack of any frame of reference to put it in. Safe? Warm? The Memory didn't know what was happening. Quill had a pretty good idea. He heard the hiss and chittering yowl as the mother racoon attacked, felt the grasping hand rock under the force of the attack, but the musty smell of rough leather was one that Quill recognised even if the memory didn't, and no matter how pissed momma racoon was, she wasn't mentally or physically equipped to cope with the ultra-advanced technology of gardening gloves.

Safe? Warm The memory panicked, tried to reach for safety, for warmth and comfort, but the hand was relentless, unstoppable, uncaring. It was dragging him upwards, ripping him away from it and he panicked, paws grasping at fur, and then at air as it lifted him up into the sky, higher than he could imagine and he squeaked with fear and his bladder let go, and Quill heard the noise from Rocket's brothers, and knew then that the Mother racoon had had to make a choice: leap after the baby being taken , or stay put and try and protect the other two.

The chittering continued, but the rock and smack of the attack on the hand stopped. She fought hard, she fought so hard, but she had two others to protect. She made her choice.

Safe? Warm? The memory was primitive, not advanced enough for any more than those two proto-ideas, but before they were facts, as the hand grasped and ripped the tiny body into the cold, sterile light, they become something else, louder and louder and more and more urgent. Pleading, begging, almost a prayer.

Safe? Warm? Louder.

Safe? Warm? They were practically screaming by this point.

SAFE?! WARM?!

SAFE?! WARM?!


The memory ended, and Rocket squatted on the balls or his feat, sobbing silently. "They… they said she rejected me…" he muttered, before crying again. Quill and Gamora shared a terrified glance, afraid they were about to lose him like Drax and he sat and cried hugging his tail to his chest.

It lasted for less than a minute, and then to Quill's surprise, Rocket stopped quite suddenly. He pulled his paws away from the sodden fur, sticking up at all sorts of weird angles now, and then clenching and unclenching his tiny little people-hands straightened himself up, bushed down the front of his vest with one paw, gave one huge snotty snort and glared at both Quill and Gamora as if daring them to say anything, gave a slightly more sympathetic look to Groot, and then turned the corner the Collector-Bot's voice came from.

"Yeah well…" he said, voice husky and broken but still loud and brash as ever. " Now that I know they're liars, I'm going to have to find them and fuck them up, aren't I? I mean: the torture and the enslavement I could forgive, but know I know they fibbed to me about Mom, that's a red line right there hey?" he snarled and spat.

"Newsflash Tin-man: I already knew that the guys that made me were bastards. Telling me that ain't going to break me, numb-nuts. Try harder." he snorted dismissively and shook his head, rubbing at the track the tears had left down his fur distractedly. "Hey Quill, can you believe this weaksause shit?" he said. He sounded close to tears again.

Quill snorted back, playing along for Rocket's sake. "Hell, I'm just surprised you made a Wizard of Oz reference, although given he's hiding from us like a little bitch and trying to scare us from behind a curtain I'd go for calling Tivan-droid here Oz himself."

"Yeah well, be thankful I kept awake thought your stupid terran movies star-bore, and only then 'cause I'd just had a huge pot of caffeine and had nothing better to do, like re-format the software for the head or punch a wall. I mean munchkins, really? Your culture sucks, and you should feel bad about it." said Rocket, and Quill guessed that was a close to a thank you for being here for me he'd ever get from Rocket without breaking him.

He said You're welcome in kind. "Yeah, I guess the film is stupid: no one as short as that could be taken seriously, hey Ranger Rick?"

The racoon snorted, gratefully. "Hey bozo, do you like having kneecaps? If so, I can pick the pieces out of the gunshot wound and keep them in a jar for you." He said, brandishing his gun vaguely. He turned to Gamora, and gave her the tiniest of grateful nodes as he said. "Gammy, Can you believe this guy?"

She raised an eyebrow "Quill or the Collector bot?"

"Either."

Gamora smiled grimly to reassure Rocket. "I think we can handle either."

"Oh really?" asked Tivan-Bot. "Interesting…"


There were chameleon carp in the pond. Even early in the morning when it was easier, like now, you had to be very patient and very quiet and look really closely to even spot one.

Quill looked at the reflection of the young Zen Whoberi in the pond. He was standing right behind her shoulder, but she couldn't see him. She couldn't have been more than seven, younger than him when he lost his mom, and despite the lack cybernetics and a face that had only the slightest resemblance, he would recognise that black and red hair anywhere.

Quill glanced over to Gamora, who had gritted her teeth and was glaring up at the sky, shielding her eyes from the rising sun with one hand.

Quill glanced around. The pond was near the centre of a small square garden hemmed in on all sides by a set of steps and high alabaster colonnades. A complex series of geometric roofs rose beyond the visible colonnade, either verdigris copper or glazed green tiles, he couldn't tell.

"Whoa." Said Rocket looking around with the keen eye of someone who would actually steal dental crowns if given the chance. "Pretty classy. Chameleon carp and trebiini gem-birds. The wildlife in this garden costs more than our ship! Groot, is that an ornamental Nahlwood tree?"

"I am Groot."

Quill turned to Gamora "Is this where you grew up?" he asked.

She nodded. "Yes, but not where we lived: The royal place, both my parents worked here." she squinted into the sun. "Peter, this is about to get ugly."

"Yeah: I'm starting to figure out how this works. How ugly are we talking about?" he asked, as Groot talked to a bonsai and Rocket industriously tried to steel non-existent fish from the memory of a pond.

It was about them that there was a loud whistle and all the birds in the ornamental garden took wing, mingling with the clatter of pigeon wings and the rising scream of what was clearly some sort of alarm siren.

Young Gamora looked around, startled, and then ran back inside up one of the sets of steps. The viewpoint changed to follow her and the Guardians were dragged along weirdly in her wake as she ran down a long echoing corridor between the high columns on either side, cloak billowing behind her .

She came out into a far larger corridor, an impossibly high ceilinged indoor boulevard lined with gilded steel trees that hissed faintly as clusters of tiny gaslights burnt with pink flames, creating clusters of glowing blossom on every branch. Quill glanced up: the room was roofed with a gilded vault of some honey coloured stone he didn't recognise, but right now he was far more interested in the holo projectors using it as a giant screen. One by one, the panels drifting across it were turning from a slideshow of pretty landscapes and abstract art into a tactical display showing multiple warships on a landing vector, coming out of the sun to hide their heat-signal.

"Is this…" asked Rocket. Gamora cut him off.

"Yes: this is the day my species got wiped out."

The younger Gamora ran up to a group of adult Zen Whoberi gathering in the corridor as armed guards of both sexes begun to sprint down the corridors with swords and laser rifles. "Dad!" she yelled.

A male Zen Whoberi in an ornate robe that looked about equal parts kimono, toga and Ming the Merciless's offering to goodwill spotted her and ran over, kneeling to hug her briefly and then grabbing her by the face and yelling "Gammy! Stay with your sister, daddy needs to deal with this."

"But dad what's going on-"

"Gamora, I need to deal with this! Stay with your sister and do what she says!" He said, pulling an older, teenaged, girl over and pushing the two together. He took the moment to look into both of their eyes. "I love you both, stay put until you hear from me or your mother!" he said, hugging them both briefly and them getting up and jogging over to where two even more ornately dressed men who were arguing with a woman with a sword who could have been Gamora's grandma for all Quill knew: they certainly shopped at the same swords–knives-and-leather store.

It was only then that Quill noticed Gamora's sister had a similar sword, hidden under the cloak that all the children seemed to be wearing, as the two of them where quietly shepherded over into a small knot with the other children and the adults ran around trying not to panic, and Quill got the strangest sense of Deja-vu from dealing with his grandpa and his friends when his mom had been ill: the sense of hurried conversations just above your head and the tiny fragments of conversation caught by young ears not meant to hear them.

"How the hell did they get through the outer sensor net? We-"

"-of the charts, the readings are insane. Whatever this is it's something older more powerful that we've ever-"

"- the high refuge: we need to retreat to a more defensible location. The old national redoubt, in the valley: we'll be safe there."

"And put our entire population in one location, are you mad?" yelled Gamora's dad, to the older woman with the sword. "Who the hell even is it?" he asked.

She shrugged. "The solar radiation is scrambling he signal, can't get a good look at the ships: I'd guess either the Church of Universal Truth or the Badoon-"

"-drop pods in the outer precincts, and teleportation's into the lower ward of the citadel. We need to evacuate the city now, get the civilians to the valley!"

"-heavy casualties already, medi-vac units are getting targeted by-"

"The peacekeepers can't cope, we're mobilizing the old hereditary warrior caste-"

"Yes because a bunch of ornamental swords will make so much difference against plasma fire! Where the hell is the Spartori fleet and the Nova Corps, we had a treaty-"

"Oh my god the library's on fire. "

"-expositions in the-"

"Why didn't we have any warning? We-"

"-can't get a message out to the Nova Corps, something's blocking the signal-"

"The Spartori ambassador has fled: J'son is ignoring our mutual defence treaty, we need to get a message out to Nova!"

"-heavy casualties-"

"How can they cut our communications, they can't block the signal its quantum locked, they'd need to know the kea, only the high command and our defence partners have-"

"-fighting in the lower ward, and on the winding stair-"

"-we are betrayed."

We are betrayed.

Quill looked over to Gamora: She was ignoring her younger self and watching her father as he tried to cope and the Brownian motion of the crowd pushed him farther and farther from both versions of her, and as he heard those words you could see his face sag.

We are betrayed.

There was a loud thump somewhere in the building, and the fLames on the trees flickered and thin trickle of dust seeped down from the seams between the slabs of alabaster in the ceiling.

Quill Noticed Gamora's sister grab younger Gamora's shoulder, and subconsciously grasp the haft of her sword with the other hand. He noticed adult Gamora was mirroring the gesture.

He was about to speak, when the tall bronze double doors at the end of the corridor burst open, and a squad of troopers dressed like rejected Wonder Woman/ Hercules concept art started double-timing it along the corridor in two files, left hands on sheathed swords and right hands holding far more modern looking lightweight mazer carbines. A signal female trooper in the centre of the two lines ran ahead, shepherding along a pair of older Zen Whoberi who looked like they had just been dragged out of bed. You could tell at a glance they were married. The wife had a small baby clutched to her breast, and a boy of no more than six was practically clinging to the leg of the husband as a train of various maids and flunkies trailed after them like a comet's tail.

The female trooper gestured for everyone to get out of her way with the carbine as she ran. "Make way for the royal family! Prep the salvation pods! We need to evacuate the family!"

"Mom!" yelled Gamora's sister at the female trooper. "What's happening?" and it was only then that Quill caught the familial resemblance.

The trooper didn't even slow down, but did answered her. "Betora, get your sister and run to the transit pad!" she said before raising her voice "We need to evacuate the royal family and the diplomats' children! All civilians pull back to the inner ward!"

"I am not fleeing to Xandar or Spartax to live out the rest of my life as some kingdomless exile while my people get slaughtered." said the just-woken man jogging alongside her, very calmly. "Commander Alphora, commence with the evacuation of the children, my wife and the Queen Dowager: I'm staying right here. Separate pods for the Crown Price and his mother, we need to retain a line of succession if one pod is lost, the same with the prime-minster and his deputy, I want a functional government in exile."

"Ancestor's sakes, he's six, you can't separate him from me I'm his mother-"

"Helena, I love you but I need you to take the baby and get out safely. No arguments." He said to his wife.

Gamora's mother looked visibly pained "Sire the situation here is-"

"That was an order commander." He said, not unkindly. "Get the children and my family out of here; I'm staying. We'll evacuate to the valley with the rest of the civilians, they need to know I stand with them. " He glanced at the old lady with the sword. "I believe I made my orders clear your highness, do I need a written decree?"

The woman snorted, and slapped a power cell into a carbine with practiced ease. "You can order the guards around as much as you like sonny, but if you think marring my daughter will let you take the moral high-ground over me, you're quite mistaken: the Queen Dowager will stay right here holding the defences she designed, your majesty."

Gamora's mother ran over and hugged her children, looking to her husband as she did. "Our com's are down, do you have any chance with your diplomatic channels?"

He shook his head. "We can't reach Nova and the Spartori won't move without J'son's order, and given we don't even know who we're fighting he won't commit, not until he knows who he might piss off. I'm trying lower-level Nova commanders with the old emergency broadcast system, individual centurions in nearby systems: if I can't reach Nova Prime Valt, perhaps one of the forwards commanders, Keer, Masseen, or Rael might be in range, but it's a long shot- "

There was a second thud that shook the ceiling and made the walls groan under the weight of the impact, and the sound of weapons fire started to become audible from the direction Gamora's mom and the royal family had fled from. Gamora's mother stood up quickly, and in that instant her eyes were off her children and on the bronze doors.

"Honey, Take the children and go. Your majesty, if you wish to join the civilians in the valley, second squad will escort you." said Gamora's mother, as she, half her troops and the Queen dowager took up position on either side of the aisle of columns. Quill noticed she turned a valve, shutting off the gas-light blossom trees, and then both her and the old Queen half drew the swords from their scabbards, to loosened them, and that all the troops on the right hand side of the aisle, the Dowager included, switched their rifles to their left hand so they could poke out from behind the pillars exposing as little of themselves as possible. Rocket nodded approvingly in the half-light.

Younger Gamora reached for her mother, and her older sister clearly looked half tempted to draw her sword and join the troopers, but then Gamora's father swept her up into his arms, and they were running, Gamora's sister and two young troopers holding the back of the group and hurrying the royal family along as the king gave his wife's hand one last Squeeze and peeled off with the rest of the troops down a side corridor.

There was the distinctive crump of a micro-fusion detonation from behind Past Gamora, and the oven-hot blast of air washed over her smelling of singed hair and hot metal, and suddenly the corridor erupted into gunfire. Younger Gamora glanced back, and the viewpoint of the memory shifted to follow.

The first power-armoured Black Knight thought the molten wreckage of the bronze doors took a dozen maser rounds to the face, searing the devotion tattoos of the bone and sending him falling to the slag, but in seconds two others who'd sensibly supplemented faith with helmets had pushed through, guns blazing. Plasma rounds ricocheted and sparked of the cream coloured walls, and each time one hit one of the alabaster columns it would light up the translucent stone from inside, leaving the silhouette of the Zen Whoberi solder behind it clearly visible, and with the strobeing weapons fire and ceiling projectors still mindlessly churning out ink-drop abstract art mixed with tactical reports, Quill had the weirdest feeling he was trapped in a Albert E. Broccoli sequence.

Gamora's father grabbed her sister by the arm, and began to pull her forwards, trying to get her though another set of doors and turning Gamora away from what was happening, so the memory was unclear as to what happened next, young Gamora focused on her father as she was, but there was a long, grinding crunch and an alabaster column flew down the centre of the corridor trailing silica dust. It looked like it had been thrown. The sound of weapons fire more than doubled and there were Zen Whoberi curses and screams where before there had been focused taught silence.

Gamora looked up.

Striding thought the clouds of dust and weapons smoke, was a huge shadowy figure, half hidden in the murk, only the faintest gleam of golden armour defining the hulking silhouette that towered above the armoured attackers. Mazer fire pattered ineffectively off both the large individual and the smaller Black Knights as they advanced relentlessly down the corridor. The Queen dowager leapt from behind a column and swung her sword at the back of the figure's head with a tennis-volley grunt. The almost comical look of surprise on her face as the monofilament blade shattered lasted only moments before he sent her smashing bonelessly off the nearest wall with the flick of a wrist.

The figure glanced up at the royal party, eyes gleaming in the half-dark, and grinned a gleaming Cheshire cat grin through the dark.

Gamora's father fled down a side corridor with the royal family, and Gamora and the rest of the Guardians got a momentary glimpse of Gamora's mother kicking the gas valve fully open before putting a mazer round thought the steel tree nearest the giant.

The whump of the gas going off threw Gamora and the rest of the party to the floor, her father throwing an arm over her protectively as they slid across the polished floor of the room. Quill looked around. The columns in this room were the tall trunks of stone trees, with jade vines climbing them and a floor of petrified wood, and a small stone tree-stump in the centre of the room that looked like some sort of throne or shrine or altar. He guessed this was meant to represent summer, the last room spring, based on the décor: an assessment confirmed by reading a handy tourist information sign by the door recommending the Amber leaves of the autumn room as the ideal spot to pay for a competitive holo, collectable from the gift shop.

Gamora's sister leapt up first, trying to swing the huge bronze doors shut and fumbling with her sword, weeping with terror as after only the briefest moment of silence, a heavy set of footsteps started to ring out, getting closer to the door, step after step, footfall after footfall. Gamora's dad and the Queen scrambled up and put their shoulders to the door and it started to swing shut painfully slowly. The whole had the sense of a nightmare, its own surreal logic, where the monster approached agonisingly slowly, and yet there was nothing you could do about it. Quill watched Gamora, his Gamora, as she watched her younger self, silently urging her to get up and do something.

The door was just, just about to inch closed when a powerful green hand snaked though, and pulled it open a foot as Gamora's sister screamed, and tried to swing her sword before the hand smacked it away, and Gamora's mother practically dived thought the door, maser in one hand.

"For Pity's sakes Betora! What have I told you about that!" she yelled, grabbing the sword off her eldest daughter as she slammed the door shut with her shoulder and wedged the sword thought the big ring-handles to block it, shooting the electronic lock out with the maser as she did so.

Gamora, present Gamora, reached out a hand to her mother, Quill realised she was crying and clenching and unclenching the grip of her sword compulsively.

Gamora's mother shoved her husband and the Queen away from her and grabbed Betora by the shoulder. "A sword is not a toy! You're going to get yourself killed messing around like that!" she glanced up at her Husband and Younger Gamora, completely unaware of older Gamora, inches from her, reaching out, trying to touch her.

"Well, what are you lot waiting for?" she snapped, in what Quill recognised as the DEFCON four motherhood voice. "Get the kids to the salvation pods! Run you fools, before-"

The micro-fusion charge went off right behind the door, and even as a memory, not actual being there, the searing actinic tang of light was physically painful, forcing him to shut his eyes, at which point he remembered that this was a memory and eyes shut or not, it seemed he saw whatever the memory included. You had no choice but to see.

He saw Gamora's mother and sister outlined against that light for just a moment, and then they were gone.

Younger Gamora screamed, but her father threw a hand over her mouth, and bundled her behind one of the pillars as the Knights of the Church of Universal Truth poured in, running around and right through the present Gamora as she stood, hand held out to where her mother and sister had been seconds before. There was the briefest of struggles as the Royal family were seized and dragged out, and Quill was if anything slightly glad that he was shackled to the younger Gamora's viewpoint, because it meant that he could hear but didn't have to see as the wailing of the baby at the Queens breast got louder and suddenly stopped with a hollow thud.

Gamora's father, his back badly flash-burnt from the blast at the door, shushed her and wiggled back away from her across the floor: she was well hidden behind the column, and his lying there could only attract attention to her. Far enough away from her that he wasn't attracting attention to her location, he pulled himself upright on the jade ivy, and grabbed a maser carbine and ran out, leading them away from her, Quill thought.

"Hey! Over here you-" he managed before there was a pulse of colourless energy, and he was flung across the floor, sliding along squeakily and leaving a trail of blood until he slammed up against the stone tree-stump.

The heavy footfalls got louder, and past Gamora bit her finger to stop herself crying out, and present Gamora lowered her hand and watched with a carefully blank expression as Thanos walked out of the smoke and into the room, finger raised and pointing at Gamora's father.

"Enough." he said, and Quill recoiled slightly at that impossibly deep voice. "Holy fuck, Barry White is a castrati compared to this dude." Quill muttered under his breath. Rocket glared momentarily, letting him know that that wasn't in keeping with the tone of the memory, but given Groot was apparently trying to heal the petrified wood of the floor, Quill felt he was being unfairly singled out there. He also felt like a complete heal for saying it, but he'd juts seem Gamora's mom get vaporised, and, yeah, he knew her parents had died, but given she'd never said how he was a little shocked and tended to say stupid stuff when stressed.

Thanos strode thought the room, not even looking at the opulent fittings as topaz and emeralds shaken loose from the ceiling and fallen jade leaves crunched underfoot like last-nights back-alley beer-bottles.

"Enough, Emissary TṢādē." Said Thanos, walking right past both Gamora's without looking as he advanced on her father, who coughed blood weekly and scrabbled against the stump, trying to pull himself up and reach the carbine. Thanos paused before the man, watching blankly for a moment before striding over to the weapon and, taking care to look him in the eye, stamping the power-core flat with a shower of sparks and a grin.

"Enough. Where is it?" asked Thanos. The man's eyes flickered momentarily, and Quill wasn't sure if he was trying to indicate something or just focusing on not looking at Gamora and drawing attention to her. Then, to Quill's surprise, he laughed.

"Heh, where do you hide a needle? In a stack full of needles. Where do you hide a pebble…"

"On the beach." Rumbled Thanos, frowning. "Hidden in plain sight." He said, looking around the room for the first time. Quill watched his eyes. He wasn't looking for a person. He was scanning the architecture. Examining the gems embedded in the walls and ceiling. After a second he frowned, and glanced at the tree-stump carved from creamy brown stone next to his foot. He grinned, and brushing Gamora's father off it, punched a hole the size of a hubcap in the top with no sign of effort. He glanced just once at the Kiss-me-Deadly glow of the containment field inside, and then sighed. One of the Black Knights of the Church peered over, and then cursed. "It's not there!"

"Got you stumped?" asked Gamora's father, because even when bleeding internally, a dad is still a dad when it comes to puns. Thanos quite calmly placed a huge hand around Gamora's father's head, cupping it, and asked.

"Where is it?" Gamora's father didn't answer, and the Black Knight levelled a plasma gun at his face "Infidel! It was prophesised that this item can re-awaken our lord and saviour Magus, to defeat the anti-life, the anti-purpose! Where is it! Tell the inquisitor?"

Gamora's father coughed weekly, and smiled. "Defeat the anti-life? Inquisitor? Do you know who walks with you?" he asked, before Squinting at Thanos. "Ah, a perception filter. Cheap trick. You see a lot of them in diplomatic circles. Surely the illusion can't be that good?"

Thanos shrugged. "He sees that which he wishes to see. Fanatics always do. Tell me where it is, old man, and I'll ensure your death is painless and gladly destroy these fools before they slaughter your civilians in that valley."

Gamora's father coughed again. "You used the Church of Magus, your adversary, to do your dirty work? I'm impressed, Titan. How did you manage that?" Gamora's father turned to the Black Knight. "Look with your eyes, you fool! This man serves only one god, and her name is death!"

"What… what is he talking about inquisitor?" asked the Knight, lowering his weapon and squinting at Thanos, as if seeing him for the first time. Thanos sighed, and backhanded the man across the room without looking at him. His armour clattered of the stonework like an accident in a bell foundry, but it didn't even take a dent as the suit spun on the floor, spraying liquid and little strips of meat out of the joints. The other Knights instantly raised their guns, but there was a flicker in the air, and they all lowered them again, uncertain, and then turned away and resumed looting as if they had no recollection of what they had just seen. Thanos grinned, and raised Gamora's father's head close to his.

"Something more than your average perception filter. Where is it?" Whispered Thanos, dangerously softly.

Gamora's father grinned, and whispered back "Where is entirely the wrong question. Tempus fugit … you're too late!"

Thanos looked surprised, just for an instant, and then begun to laugh. Gamora's father coughed weekly, and begun to laugh along with him, his thin ready wheezing a counterpoint to Thanos's deep, hearty chuckle. And boy, could Thanos laugh.

He was still laughing as he took Gamora's father's head in both hands like an apple, and dug his thumbs into the mans' eye sockets. Kept laughing as the man screamed and flailed, his feet pattering helplessly against the floor and his fingernails breaking as he clawed impotently at the titan's armour. Kept laughing even as the screams peaked, and he pushed his thumbs down thought his skull with a crunch and pulled his head apart like a bread roll and rested, leaning with his huge hands on his thighs, staining his armour with tacky blood as he laughed and laughed and laughed like he'd just seen the joke at last while both Gamora's and all the Guardians watched with horror.

And then he stopped.

"Fine." he said coldly. "There will be other chances. The one thing I do not lack is time." He turned to the Knights, but they had already left: weapons fire from elsewhere in the complex indicated that they'd caught up with the rest of the stragglers. Sighing, he stood up and looked around, almost bored.

Young Gamora staggered back behind her pillar, horrified, and hid facing the wall, eyes wide and sweat staining her clothing as she stared dead ahead, her thoughts so loud Quill and the rest of the guardians could hear them.

It's just a bad dream. Don't look and it's not there. Don't look and it's not there. Don't look and it's not there… if you don't look, then it's not real….

Gamora scrunched her eyes up tight, and held her breath, just a child hiding from a purple bogyman.

There was a quiet grunt from Thanos, and then heavy footsteps, walking away.

Gamora opened her eyes.

Is he gone? She didn't know.

Young Gamora peered around the corner of the pillar.

The room was empty.

Sighing with relief, she slid down the pillar to her knees, and shuddering with fear an exhaustion, she turned back to face the wall.

Thanos stood about a yard in front of her. He frowned, and cocked his head on one side.

"What are you hiding from child?" he asked.

Gamora screamed. This man killed my father! The thought loud enough to echo.

Thanos paused, and looked from her to her father's mangled body. "Ah." He said.

He reached out, hesitating when Gamora shut her eyes and recoiled back against the pillar, but then she felt the fingers, huge and sticky on her face, gently turning her chin so she faced him.

"Open your eyes child. I will not harm you."

"Not harm me?" yelled Gamora, eyes snapping open. "You killed them all!" she wailed.

Thanos stared coolly into her eyes, and the power of the perception filter hit her, backed by the full force of Thanos's personality.

"Did I?" he asked, and Gamora opened her mouth to scream, and then stopped. The memory was still there, but now there were two versions. One where Thanos was there, and one where it was a crimson-armoured Grand Inquisitor of the Church of the Universal truth striding thought the smoke that had been her mother and sister a second before and crushing her father's skull, and she whimpered, for she could no longer tell what was real.

Her fingers scrambled against the cool, smooth stone of the pillar, and griped onto a tiny leaf of jade, just because she needed to hold something she was sure was really there.

"What's happening?" she whimpered, tears rolling down her cheeks.

Thanos reached out and gently rubbed away the tears with a huge, callused thumb, and with the perception filter, she no-longer noticed it smelt of wet meat.

"The church of universal truth. Worshipers of Magus, I tried to stop them, but I was too late…" Rumbled Thanos. He sounded sad, she realised. There was something nagging her, at the back of her mind, but she could no longer remember what it was...

Quill looked to his Gamora: she was standing six inches from her younger self's ear, and screaming "Remember this! he'll push it down, but it will come back one day, once you're not in his presence so often, but I need you to remember this for me!" older Gamora reached into her pocket, and pulled out what looked like a kea chain and ID, with her credit slip attached to one side, and a small jade leaf on the other.

"Gamora, you'll forget this for a long time, but I need you to remember this for me. You'll keep this as a memento, but you won't remember why for the longest time, but don't worry, it'll be alight…"

Younger Gamora looked around the room, freighted, as if she'd never seen it before.

"What, what happened here?" she asked Thanos.

He placed a palm on the back of her head, and gently lowered her forehead to his shoulder as he picked her up, not noticing as the fragile jade leaf she was holding came away in her hands.

"The Church of universal truth, the Magus, attacked. I tried, but he killed your family. Your planet, your race. I'm so sorry. There was nothing I could do." said Thanos, standing to his full height and striding out of the room without even a backwards glance at the men he had killed. Gamora stared back in horror.

"The Magus did this?" she asked stupidly, not quite sure what the voice in her head was trying to say, and too tired and frightened to listen to it as it screamed.

"Yes." Said Thanos. "How does that make you feel?"

Gamora clenched her fists tight against his armour as he walked her out of her old life and into something else. "I hate him! I want him to die! I want to kill him!" she screamed, sudden and shrill as only a child could.

Thanos turned his face to hers for just a second, almost surprised.

Then he grinned.

"That's my girl." He said, bouncing her like a toddler on his shoulder as he walked out into the garden and teleported to ship, just as the first of the fusion bombs lit up the valley to the west of the city.

The last thing of her homeworld Gamora saw was the Chameleon carp in the pond. They were dead.


The memory ended, and Gamora stood there for a moment grinding her teeth with the small jade leaf still in her hands. Quill wanted to go and comfort her, but I also didn't want to die, and she seemed preeeety pissed with what had just happened and was still clutching at her sword pretty tight.

He glanced over too Rocket and Groot, wondering who should speak first.

To his surprise, it was Gamora.

"I… I'm sorry you had to see that Peter. "

"Whoa, wait, you're apologising to me? Gamora: You've got nothing to apologise for! That was all Thanos! You can't blame yourself for having a shitty past Gamora! And even if you wanted to, It's the Collector–bot doing this to us, not you! We just gotta stay strong and beat him!"

Gamora looked up, and nodded.

"Who, who wants to try taking the next step?" she asked, clutching at the sword grimly and straightening herself with visible effort.

"Looks like we've got a volunteer." Muttered Rocket from around waist height, as Quill and Gamora craned over to see Groot take another step forwards.

"Oh cock, I literally just recovered from the last one of these, Easy Rider." muttered Quill, bracing himself for more tripy craziness.


Groot trudged across the ashen wasteland towards where he'd seen the creature.

It was huge, and smooth sided and Groot didn't recognise it: he wondered if it could help.

He hoped he could find it again.

Perhaps, just perhaps there were other survivors, and it could find them.

"Woah." Muttered Quill. Without he second person multiple viewpoint Groot's senses were a lot less of a mindfuck, but still odd: his vision seemed to extend into some greenish-purple colour beyond purple, and vison was overlaid with another set of colours, like he could see the texture of objects at a distance. Rough things were greens and browns, dark colours depending on the type of roughness, smooth hard things pale, so perfectly smooth things were white and very fine grained things black. It was really weird, and only seemed to have a limited range. What was stranger was the range was a complete 360, he could 'see' his footprints the soft, rough ash behind him as variations in the dark-blue-grey.

"Is this some sort of echolocation?" asked Gamora, after a moment. Rocket shrugged. "I guess. it's more a density based thing, I think. It's detected from some vibration-sensor in his feet. Look, the falling ash has no second colour, only stuff that touches the ground get picked-up by whatever-the-frick' this sense is. Like those damn monofiliment wires, he knows there there because he can feel when they touch the wall and the floor an' change the texture of the air and shit, but he's no frickin' use spotting them mid-air till they cut him."

Past Groot pushed forwards toward the creature, wanting to ask it's help. Present Groot looked on sadly, and as he came over a small rise in the landscape and there it was. He had found the creature, sitting there in the valley.

Rocket facepalmed and swore. Quill and Gamora just stared.

"Is that a…" started Quill.

"Yup." Said Gamora.

"Oh." Said Quill.

Groot ran down the hill towards the creature, waving his arms happily and I-am-Groot ing.

The creature was huge, smooth sided and, if you focused on the actual visual colour under the texture assessment, a light metallic blue. It looked to Groot a bit like a fish: it was the same basic tapered shape. He'd seen it flying earlier. He wondered how it did that.

It seemed to have its own helper creatures around it, like the arbour's maintenance mammals. He ignored them: they were a little bigger than the squirrels he was used to as maintenance mammals, but he detected instantly that they were hot-fast-wet creatures, short lived, no doubt of limited intelligence. He ran up to what he assumed was the head: it seemed to have an open mouth at least.

He stopped about ten feet in front of the mouth and addressed it politely asking for help and explaining the situation, specifically the Kree attack on his homeworld and his need for help in finding other survivors.

So some reason the creature did not respond. Odd. Perhaps it had limited hearing apparatus.

Groot tried to explain again.

Still no response. Groot wondered why: he was making himself perfectly clear.

One of the helper creatures wondered over to him, and begun to make noise. Groot ignored it; it was important he explain the situation to the main creature.

Still no response. Several of the maintenance mammals had now gathered around him, making more noise. He was surprised to see some come out of the creatures mouth, but then again, he reasoned, he had seen the birds that cleaned the inside of lizard-lion's mouths, and gastric brooding frogs before, so perhaps it was not unusual that the helper creatures had some sort of symbiotic relationship with it. he focused his senses. He was detecting temperate temperatures and good oxygen levels inside the creature. Perhaps it was some form of gastric brooding being.

More of the helper creatures gathered around him, one tried to touch him, apparently curious, Groot, politely, shrugged it off. He was starting to worry that they might be some sort of parasite.

Groot had had enough.

Groot laid out quite eloquently and in serious detail the events of the Kree attack on his planet.

He laid out his pain at seeming his family and the Arbour masters destroyed.

He laid out his fear, in not having seen any other survivors.

He laid out his fear that the Kree might come back.

He laid out the trauma and pain in being severed from the green, the web of shared senses, and the implication that there was no on out there listening.

He laid out his fear in not having seen any other plants or animals, not a single shoot or helper creature, and what it meant for the delicate web of the biosphere his people relied on.

He laid out the worry that even if any of the Arbour masters roots had survived, their regeneration rate was so much slower, it could be thousands of years, far longer than the average lifespan he could expect, before they re-grew, and he felt so alone and lost without their wisdom.

He laid out his fear, that even if he wasn't the very last, he would still be alone for an almost unimaginably long time.

And finally, he laid out his fear that if he didn't have a decent conversation with someone right now he'd go stark raving mad.

The creature, for whatever reason, did not answer.

Groot slumped to his knees before it, and begun to cry. It was quite clearly a cruel creature, distant and cold.

As he wept, he became aware of a comforting tendril on his shoulders. He looked over.

One of the maintenance mammals had placed a paw on him, and was making comforting noises. He frowned. How could they be trying to comfort him when their master was not?

A creeping realisation slunk into his mind, he looked again, focusing his senses.

The creature was largely metallic, but the brain looked silicon, and indeed his race had encountered silicone based life before, but the processes in its brain were, now he looked, limited. Complicated, but not complex: lots of little computations, and no grand plan. Horrified, he turned his focus to the helper creatures.

They were almost entirely furless, entirely in some cases, and he found it very odd then that they had artificial wrappings around them to retain body heat. Surely tweaking a gene here or there for more fur would be simpler? He focused on the one touching him and began to analyse the noises it was making. He'd be taught about the existence of sapient hot-fat-wet races, but he'd always imaged they be… taller. More impressive.

He wondered how you'd even test if they were sapient or not.

He decided to keep it simple to start with.

He pointed at himself.

"I am Groot." He said.

The creature pointed to him too. "Groot." It repeated, before mirroring his gesture and pointing at itself. "Kasha. Nova." It said.

Groot looked up, disbelieving.

The thing he had run to was clearly dead, he realised. No large powerful creatures were coming o safe him. Nothing as strong or wise as the Arbour masters, just these strange furless almost-squirrels. That shocked him even more that the realisation that they were clearly intelligent enough to build a space-faring vessel.

Groot climbed into the open crew hatch of the Nova cutter, and it soon took off in a spray of bitter, alkali ash.

He'd have to teach them to talk, or at least to understand him, he reasoned.

Well, how hard could that be? Groot thought. He'd just start at the beginning.

Awesome Mix Vol 2: Absolute Beginners: the jam


The memory ended, and Groot looked around sheepishly.

"I am Groot." he said by way of explanation.

"Uh, well I'd be embarrassed too, if I ran all that way there and ignored the crew in order to spend half an hour talking to the frickin' spaceship." Muttered Rocket, looking again at the open wall panel and the coupling there he could use to blow his way out of this memory cell. It was so close, and no one seemed to be making any progress towards the actual door…

"Well, my go I guess." Muttered Quill, looking nauseated as he was about to take the step forward. Rocket looked from him, to the door, to the coupling. If he really stretched himself, he could make it in three steps. Quill had at least six to go, Groot five, Gamora and him were still seven or more steps from the door.

Rocket looked from the door, to Quill to the coupling. How much could three memories hurt?

Not a question you want to ask Roc'. A voice in his head replied. Trust me.

Then again, when did you ever listen to your own voice of reason?

"Fuck it." declared Rocket

Rocket stepped forwards, and everything went black.

"Ah, time to see your mother again Rocket." said the Collector's voice cheerfully, as Groot and Gamora and Quill looked around, trying to work out what the fuck had just happed.

"Wait, Rocket's mom? Didn't we just see that memory?" asked Quill. Rocket, froze up, and turned to him quite slowly, visibly bristling with fear as the collector grinned, and if anyone could be smug enough to make grining a purely auditory phenomenon, it was the collector-bot.

"That was his biological parent. This… let's call her the other mother. And 89P13? Mummy is very upset…"