Lost in translation: Incommunicado
Peter Jason Quill stood massively hungover in his own kitchen… kitchenette… galley… whatever... as the most dangerous woman he had ever met, the most interesting, enthralling, beautiful and above all deadly woman he had met, stood in front of him and asked him a simple question.
And he didn't have a clue as to what she had just said.
This was not, for a man, necessarily that unusual but in his case he had an excuse: His translator unit had fallen off his HUD about sixty seconds before, and the bits of it that hadn't shattered or pinged off behind the fridge were currently being poked and prodded at by Rocket who, typically, seemed to be finding all this hilarious and was watching him hands-folded with an expression that indicated if the popcorn wasn't out now then it was still a distinct possibility in the near future, and Gamora was somehow still standing in front of him expecting a reply to whatever she had just asked him.
And all this would have been considerably less awkward if Rocket hadn't told him about thirty seconds before the translator had broken that he had apparently slept with Gamora the night before, something he had absolutely zero memory off and was not starting to suspect he'd come to regret big time.
"Uh…." Said Quill. "Um….. so, I broke my translator. How about that?"
Gamora paused, and then turned to Rocket and let out a brief, rapid, machine gun burst of Xandarian that Quill couldn't follow. It was weird: the tone, sound and cadence of her voice was exactly the same, it was a voice he recognised, even the way she said certain words, but he couldn't tell what the hell she was talking about. Rocket snorted back laughter and switched languages from whatever it was he was talking before to the rapid, tonal twittering of High Xandarian. Quill strained to work out what was being said, but was hampered by the fact that Yondu had given him this translator within a day of kidnapping him, and he only spoke ten words of Xandarian, seven of them obscene. He was pretty sure he could spot the Xandarian word for "idiot" however, and unsurprisingly Rocket shot it out a few times while explaining the situation to Gamora.
God, what I wouldn't give for a babelfish right now Thought Quill. Or failing that just a towel to hide under 'till this blows over. He realised that he had to try and get Rocket to fix the translator for him, and in the meantime, buy some time with Gamora, who had gone from looking confused, to amused, to annoyed to angry looking as she spoke to Rocket. Clearly Rocket telling her that it would take several hours before she could speak to Quill wasn't what she wanted to hear, and she and Rocket were now having a full on finger pointing, poking and gesticulating argument like something out of a 1920's New York Italian stereotype. He couldn't follow what was going on, but it seemed like Gamora was blaming Rocket for the situation, and Rocket was being evasive and trying to deflect the blame back onto Quill. To be fair, given Rocket's love of practical jokes that ranged from the mild annoying to the genuinely life-endangering, he could see why Gamora might think that this was the racoon's doing.
Rocket held up both paws defensively and tried to laugh of whatever it was Gamora had just said, and that was a bad move because Gamora gave Roc' the hands on hips, foot tapping oh no you did NOT just do that! look that Quill had already learnt could pierce bulkheads and Quill felt that he should intervene before things got violent.
That said, the only reason things don't get violent is because the team dynamic works… and I might have just sabotaged that by sleeping with a crewmate and shifting the dynamic dramatically. He thought grimly, stepping forwards between Gammy and Rocket. Welcome to the new normal.
"Whoah whoah whoah, time out! Time out! Everybody chill! Now, I know you can't understand a word that I'm saying, but given the pop-culture references that's hardly unusual, so if everyone would just calm down a moment, stop bearing teeth, you especially Gamora, and chill." He said.
To his surprise it worked, with both Rocket and Gamora freezing mid-rant, staring at him with identical confused heads-on side looks, Rocket only slightly breaking the symmetry by scratching himself briefly with the soldering iron he was holding.
Then again, if someone waded into the middle of one of my arguments spouting complete gibberish, I'd probably stop out of sheer confusion too.
"Now, Gammy, I know you can't understand me, but you know me, right? Look at the guilty, shifty and slightly apologetic 'hand caught in cookie jar' expression of regret on my ruggedly handsome face, and my general body language and air of apologetic incapableness. Ask yourself, what's more likely? Rocket sabotaged my translator to mess with you, or the idea that I'm in fact a big enough moronic klutz to break it myself at the least convenient moment possible? Hanlon's razor; never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by Starlord being a complete and utter doofus. And Rocket, seriously man, does the word de-escalate mean anything to you other than the plan you go to when escalate a though c fails? We are all having a really, really bad day, particularly after the shit that went down yesterday: the horror, the torture, the endless, endless dad puns the collector made, having to hug you, and I think you have fleas, by the way…. Can you just for once not provoke the deadly assassin before breackfast! Now, can either of you just look at my non-confrontational body lingo, take a leaf out of my book, and I never got that, by the way, who the hell keeps leaves in their books, and calm the fuck down! Jesus!" he said, holding both palms up in a calming manner.
"Now, can we all just work on getting the translator do-hickey fixed so I can get on with apologizing to Gamora about the fact we drunkenly had 'Glad to be alive sex' and she can murder me when I screw up talking it through with her, thank you!"
Rocket and Gamora gave him a look of utter bafflement for a full second, before Gamora rounded on Rocket with renewed vitriol, jabbing a finger into his chest fur angrily, right between his collarbone implants, just above the neck of his armoured body glove (he was wearing the blue one: given how rarely he changed clothes that was another good sign that he was felling stressed) and the raccoon responded by waving the soldering iron aggressively at her face. Quill sighed, and recognising a lost cause at least one tenth of the time he stepped back and just let them bicker.
He noticed that Groot and Drax had both come to watched the street theatre, Groot appearing at his shoulder with his usual eerie quietness for someone who was over seven foot tall and made of wood, and Quill shrugged and turned to him. "Well, so much for the mythical post coital glow, Eh Groot? Good to see that Gamora's getting herself into a forgiving mood for when I have to talk to her in a bit. Any advice Treebeard?"
Groot appeared to consider this with the same seriousness he took everything and then nodded sagely.
"I am Groot." He said.
"Yeah, that's what I thought and… wait, what? How come you sound exactly the same without the translator? Are you just saying the words I am Groot in English or what?"
Groot paused, awkwardly. "I am Groot." He eventually said, by way of explanation.
"Oh, okay, that makes everything make far more sense." Muttered Quill, sarcastically.
Quill looked back to Rocket and Gamora. The argument did not seem to be showing any signs of slowing down.
Cautiously, experimentally, he took Rocket's infoglass and tried booting it up, hoping that maybe he could still type. He groaned: no such luck; because the translator worked directly on the language centre of his brain, with it removed he couldn't even recognise Xandarian letters.
Quill gave up, and went and had a shower: Rocket said he could fix it in four hours. He was pretty sure he could survive an afternoon with his crew without talking to them.
After all, how hard could it be?
Twenty minutes later.
"Oh my god, I have never been so bored in my entire life! Somebody talk to me!" said Peter, sat at his own sofa, watching his own holo and having no idea what was going on.
"Behoeftige teef." Muttered Rocket, sat on the edge of the sofa, fiddling with the broken translator unit. "As jy minder van 'n feeks was, sou ek net gaan haal een van die vrye vertaler eenhede uit die stoor, in plaas van voorgee om hierdie een te herstel." He muttered, scratching himself thoughtfully with a screwdriver; whatever repairs he was doing, they looked pretty involved and complex to Quill.
"Yeah, because the weird alien mumbling was just as easy for me to understand as it was ten minutes ago!" said Quill, increasingly frustrated. He'd still not been able to make any headway with his inability to speak to anyone, and it was starting to get him down.
Maybe I'm going about this the wrong way. He thought. I mean, sure, this is awful and I can't understand them, sure, but perhaps I could looks at this as an opportunity: I mean, they can't understand me either. So I can vent, or bitch or moan or just use this as a chance to practice and say all those things that I just don't have the balls to say to them the rest of the time.
After all, when will I next get the opportunity to be his honest with them without getting shot or stabbed?
"You smell weird." He said to Rocket, without preamble. "I mean not bad, not exactly, but weird. I don't know, like a wet cat. And your pee smells weird, no one wants to go into the bathroom after you." said Quill, testing how it felt to be brutally honest without fear of retaliation, he paused, to see if Rocket was going to react, but other than glace one at him he didn't seem to be able to make any more sense of this than Quill could make of him. Reassured, lay back on the sofa, got comfortable, and pressed on.
"And you act weird, like, a lot. Scary weird sometimes but… but I get that a lot more now. Now that I know some of the shit you've be through man. I mean, I knew you'd had it rough, but holy shit little guy. Your life really does suck, doesn't it? And I mean, I guess since you moved onto my ship, like, within the first week, I started to really make friends with you because unlike Drax you have some sorta understanding of how people should behave, even if in your case it's just so you can do the opposite out of spite, and unlike Gamora I don't have the hots for you, and… hell… and I was always kinda sad that I was an only child, and seeing as Drax is more fatherly and Gamora a potential romantic interest on my part, I guess I started to project my longing for a brother on you, like I did with Kraglin back when I was with the Ravengers. Stupid, eh? I mean, you're an awful, awful person in a lot of ways… practically all of them in fact: you lie, steal, cheat, drink, fight, you're mean, hurtful to people when they try to get close to you, kinda basically unsanitary despite all the paw washing, and on that note you've got enough obsessive behaviours to keep a psychiatric hospital in full time employment, I mean, the mess you've made of your sleeping area alone is practically full on clinical hording… and I'm never sure, second to second if I want to run and hide out of fear, give you a hug and tell you it's okay you don't need to act all tough like that around me, or give you a well-deserved kick up the ass. You're one scary, messed up little son-of-a-bitch… and I kinda love you for it, you psychotic little fuzzball. And I know that if you could understand me you'd bite me for even saying this, but I'm really glad I met you, because if I hadn't I think we'd both be dead by now, inside if not out Ranger Rick. Also you introduced be to Groot, who is, like, forty times cooler than you'll ever be, so there's that."
Rocket, glanced sideways at him once, as if wondering why he was still making noise, but kept working as if the noise was meaningless.
"Cooler as ek, nê? Ruik vreemd? Wel, jy moet net verdien jouself 'n besoek van die 'Iemand wat net urineer op my kussing' fee, Moron jou." He muttered, not looking up from his work. "Tog, kan nie wag om te sien wat gebeur wanneer jy dit probeer op Gamora, ster-meester. Wat pret moet wees."
Quill smiled, and got up. This should be fun.
After Rocket, Quill decided to talk to Drax: given that the man took everything you said totally literally he wasn't the best person to have rhetorical or introspective conversations with, so being able to chat with him and get some things of his chest while Drax couldn't understand him was probably a good idea. He found him in the galley, his back to him, making a sandwich with a level of care and precision that was so exacting it was actually kind of painful to watch: he was the only person Quill knew who could cut bread perfectly symmetrically.
"Hey Drax, what's up?" asked Quill, taking advantage of the fact that for once Drax wouldn't reply by actually looking up.
Drax straitened up from the kitchen work surface and turned to Quill, bread in one hand and knife in the other. There was an awkward moment where the two men just stared at each other before Quill remembered why he was there, and launched into his spiel.
"So, Drax, my translator is broken and given that no-one can understand a word I say I thought I'd take advantage of this to speak frankly to people without feeling self-conscious."
Drax just stood there looking at Quill in a vaguely baffled way, so Quill continued.
"So, you're feeling grateful to me for getting you out of that memory cell the Collector had built, and were promising to go and rip spines out and stuff for me and stuff, and frankly, I said no, go get me a glass of water because I was too cowardly to say to your face that that sort of shit creeps me the fuck out. Not the sipping out spines, I mean, yeah of course that does creep me the fuck out, it's horrifying but we're a bunch of dangerous people, I shoot a lot of people, so I can't really complain about violence, but the sense that you're somehow under my obligation. The idea of me putting someone else under that level of obligation creeps me out because it's not something I'd ever feel comfortable or okay being under myself, so I can't feel comfortable putting anyone else under that obligation either. And besides, that whole sort of "life debt", if you save someone then you're bound to them stuff comes with a whole bunch of colonialist, "Man Friday" sort of overtones back where I'm from and they make me feel deeply, deeply uncomfortable. But I'm also aware that if it's part of your culture, then I don't wanna be shitting all over that by strait up telling you to piss off."
" I… uggg…. You know, even when you can't understand me this is hard…. Look, we're a team, a family, and you don't stay in a family because you're under some debt of honour to do so, you stay because you're a family, period. And I wanna tell you to knock all that debt of honour stuff off because it's not how this is going to work with us as a team, but I don't want to raise the issue of family with you given you've lost yours and it feels disrespectful to your loss to describe a bunch of weirdos and fuck ups like me and Rocket in the same terms as you're wife and daughter, even thought you were the first person out of us to start describing the team in those terms, so I've been avoiding the issue. I… look… I understand if you have rules of honour and you feel you owe me somehow then that's your business and not mine and my opinions of the issue don't matter, but we're about to be going to a bad pace to collect another damn Infinity Stone I'd still prefer to think that you're watching my back because it's the right call tactically, and not that you're going to get yourself killed trying to protect me out of some perceived debt or obligation that I don't even want. I… look, were friends, right? Let's all just be friends for the moment, okay?" said Quill, glancing over the tattooed warrior's shoulder to where he could see Gamora sitting in the cockpit and checking one of the ships control panels.
"… because when we start acting like something other than just friends, that's when things can go really, really wrong." He said, trailing off. He shook his head, patted Drax on the shoulder, and walked off to try and talk to Gamora, if only to get in some practice before he got his communicator back. He got as far as the steps, and then suddenly realised he had no idea what to say even in practice mode, chickened out, and veered off sideways and down the steps to the lower part of the ship, to find Groot.
Drax watched him go, paused for a few moments and then shrugged, and went back to making his sandwich.
After a moment Quill popped his head back up over the stairs.
"you know, it's just as well I've finally started to develop some maturity after all these years: as a kid I'd have loved the idea of having my very own huge, muscled killer! I'd have been really snotty about it too, all like, Drax, stand on one leg with it!" He joked, before disappearing down the stairs again.
Drax paused for a moment, looked at his own leg and then shrugged. He then resumed making his sandwich, while standing on one leg.
Quill found Groot napping in the sunlight in the viewing blister at the side of the ship, and realising that he was resting was about to back off and come back later, when the Flora Colossi heard him and opened one eye.
"I am Groot?"
"Whoa, sorry dude, didn't mean to disturb you. You okay?"
"I am Groot?"
"Huh. Interesting…. I have no idea if you can still understand me or not. I mean… how does your language even work? I've felt your memories, and even I can't tell. Well, the point is that since everyone has lost the ability to understand what I'm saying… with the possible exception of you… anyway, I'm taking the opportunity to get some stuff of my chest without it being embarrassing. You know what I mean? Dish the dirt a bit, but also bear all without fear of getting laughed at. So I'm going around and telling everyone… everyone the things can't just bring myself to say, yanno? "
"I am Groot?"
"Yeah… I took advantage of the communication problem and just told Rocket to his face how I feel about him without getting shot, so that's a win, but now I have a real problem with you, because there's nothing particularly I can say to you know that I couldn't anyway, because you are so god-dammed nice that I have nothing really to get off my chest, or that I couldn't say to you anyway so there it is."
"I am Groot?"
"Yep. So instead, I'm taking the opportunity to goof around, safe in the knowledge that no one can overhear or judge, so I'm going to regale you with one of the traditional songs of my homeland, a song that tells the story or an epic band of warriors dedicated to fighting evil and injustice, much like us, really."
"I am Groot?"
"Yes Groot, a band of mighty heroes dedicated to a single cause, a legendary origination known only as the Mobile Armored Strike Kommand… this, Groot, is the legend of M.A.S.K!"
And then Quill started singing a selection of 80's cartoon themes and doing a little dance because, frankly, one you get exposed to those dam jingles they'll never ever leave you brain.
Awesome Mix Vol 2: "Theme from M.A.S.K", Shuki Levy and Haim Saban.
Groot sat and watched, looking confused for a moment, but eventually getting into it and dancing along with Quill for a moment. Quill smiled wanly, and patted Groot on the shoulder.
"Nice one Groot, next chance I get to intercept some TV signals from deep space, remind me to record some Gummi Bears or Duck-tales for you: now those are some catchy themes." He said, suddenly realising that his heart wasn't really in it.
Groot Cocked his head on one side, and looked and Peter sadly. "I am Groot?" he asked.
"Huh? Oh, sorry dude just… just thinking that I should go and try to talk to Gamora, and given last night… yeah even with her not able to understand me, with me effectively getting a mulligan, not sure what to say, yanno? I mean, what do you even say in that sort of situation? Sorry I slept with you then forgot it? By the way were heading into combat soon so can this please in no way effect our team dynamic in awkward ways? I mean, what would you say to her?"
"I am Groot."
"Yeah, stupid Question really." Said Quill, patting Groot on the shoulder and walking away. "Wish me luck." He said, jokingly.
"I am Groot!" said Groot, waving.
Quill took a deep breath, and decided to bite the bullet as he turned into the main area of the ship, failing to notice Drax still stood on one leg and ignoring Rocket's catcalls ("Dooie man loop! Ag dit Ek het om te sien!") as he walked up the stairs, and went and found Gamora.
She was sitting on one of the seats in the cockpit, and staring out across the bustle of Knowhere at the blazing sun just viable through one of the big eyes, and seemed unaware of him, although he knew that with her enhanced hearing she wasn't. But he knocked on the bulkhead anyway, to announce his presence before entering the cockpit.
"Hi, is it okay if we talk? Err… Well, if I talk at you… vaguely ramble and gibber at you in a language you can't understand, I suppose is closer to the sort of thing….. okay look." He said sitting down in the seat next to her.
"Look, Gamora, this isn't that way I wanted to do this, and I'm not just talking about the fact that I'm probably speaking in tongues as far as you're concerned. I never wanted it to happen like this. We are a team, a family and we stay alive and keep moving and keep beating the bad guys by the skin of our teeth because of that: because we work so well together. We're gonna beat Thanos one day, because we work well together, avenge Drax's family and stick a boot in the balls of those sick fucks who made Rocket, because we're a team… and I threated that last night: I got drunk and emotional and needy, and I let my junk do the thinking, as always, and something happened that could endanger our team dynamic, and that's all it is. Whether I was good or bad or indifferent…. And if it was the last two them I'm gonna have to blame the drink, by the way, whether it was me coming on you, or you to me or A Bit of Both, but whatever it was that happened, it happened, and it will affect the way we work as a team and we need to be the sober grownups now, and deal with it and put it behind us like it never happened, because we're going into some heavy shit right about now, and we can't let our feelings get in the way with this now."
Quill took a deep breath, hands shaking, and pressed on. "and that's not the worst of it. The worst of it is, we'll never get another fist-go at this, and I blew it. I'll never get to take you on a classy first date now, or talk to you about how we feel about if we were to… to push the beds together, to use an image from sitcoms of my youth, or to flirt not knowing what it would be like if we did hook up. Old Starlord, of pelvic sorcery flame, and his latest drunken hook up… and that's tragic because that's not what I wanted out of this, Gammy, not at all. You're the most dangerous, weird and goddammed scary woman I've ever met, but you're also the most intelligent, moral, driven and enthralling one as well, and I don' feel like I've scored with you, I feel like I've blown it, because you are so much more than that, and I feel that now I can never try to date you and get to know you and hell, fall in love with you, like I wanted. I feel like I've disrespected you and disrespected myself and , I dunno… cheapened everything. I was looking forward to us, one day, maybe if you were up for it getting to know each other as more than friends… not as less, and I fell that's what I've done now."
Said Quill, starting to tear up a little, to his own surprise. "Uggg, waterworks, really? Wow, I must look a mess, the gibbering, nonsense speaking crying guy. Well, if you're going to blow your chance you might as well blow it hard. I'm sorry Gamora, is what I'm trying to say. You are far, far too important to me for me to rush in like an idiot, but if that's what happened, then I have to respect you enough to take the blame for any negative effect this has on us as a team, and put your feelings and the effectiveness of the team first, ahead of how I feel about this, no matter how it tears me up inside."
Quill wiped away a few stray tears, and held out a hand to Gamora "Friends?" he asked, more in hope than expectation.
Gamora looked at him for a long moment, stood up making no move to take his hand, and then to his utter utter surprise leaned forwards and kissed him gently on the forehead. It was a brief, sisterly gesture and not at all how he'd imaged his first kiss form Gamora would go, but he was so stunned by it his brain stopped working and his mouth opened and closed like a landed fish.
Gamora stood back up, gave him a brief, reassuring squeeze of his hand and a matching smile, and walked down the steps to the main body of the ship.
Peter just sat stunned for a moment, watching her go, and then smiled.
"Huh, guess there is a universal language of love: for a moment there it was exactly like you could understand what I was saying."
Gamora paused on the last stair, looked back to him, and rolled her eyes. She then turned down to the main area of the ship and let out a brief but intense flurry of swearing, Quill couldn't tell the language but he still knew swearing when he heard it, and after a moment Rocket popped his head up into the cockpit with groundhog-like curiosity, an then Quill slumped down the stairs to the main body of the ship and took a seat next to the raccoon, who had taken the translator apart into its smallest possible bits and spread it out over the table like an unfamiliar constellation.
"How's the coming along, ranger?" he said, dropping into the seat so close to Rocket he could feel the intense animal heat coming off his tiny body.
"Gamora just kissed me, so no rush, the not-talking seems to be working out for me."
Rocket pulled a disgusted face, muttered once, "Oral standaarde daal", and then held up his info glass to Quill, with a line of Xandarian text typed neatly up on it. Quill sighed.
"Nah, I tired that myself and it doesn't work: the translator unit works off my brain, not my ears, I can't read Xandarian without it either.
Rocket sighed, muttered again "Jy kan lees? Wel, ek sal moer in!" but then tapped a claw on the corner of the screen. Quill squinted, and looked again. Right in the far corner, over the alien Xandarian script, was a button, and it was labelled quite clearly in English: Translate.
Once Quill's eyes had widened visibly letting Rocket know that Quill had seen it, he tapped the button with a claw, once, and then sat there smugly holding out the pad, which now spelt out in four inch high capital letters the following words: YOU DO KNOW THAT OUR TRANSITIONS CIRCUITS *AREN'T* BROKEN, RIGHT?
Quill froze up, for at least a minuet. "What."
Rocket briefly typed with one paw, and then held out the pad again. OH NO, WE CAN UNDERSTAND YOU JUST FINE. LIKED THE SINGING, BY THE WAY.
"You... you four have translators?"
Rocket frowned, and then typed. OH NO JUST YOU. BECAUSE IF YOU'RE BUILDING A CYBORG OR GOING ON AN INTERPLANETARY QUEST FOR REVENGE, YOU RELY ON FRICKIN' CHARADES. DUMMY.
Quill sat there some more. "And you just let me wander around the ship bearing my soul to everyone for over an hour?!"
Rocket shrugged and grinned evilly, the curve of his shoulders spelling out I was bored and it was funny more clearly that letters could. After a moment he did type. GAMMY SAID I SHOULD TELL YOU, THAT'S WHAT WE WERE FIGHTING ABOUT, BTW.
"Right, right thank you there, Davey Crocket. Anything else you think I should know?" he said, sarcastically. Rocket shook his head, dismissively, before freezing up and typing, almost as an afterthought.
YOU AND GAMORA DIDN'T ACTUALLY HAVE SEX, BTW.
Quill ran through a whole lot of horrified faces in close succession "What."
He considered this some more. "What!? Dude you said-" but the typing was already up.
I SAID YOU SLEPT TOGETHER. SLEPT: GAMMY STAYED UP TO COMFORT YOU AND YOU ENDED UP SLEEPING IN THE SAME BED. I NEVER SAID YOU BUMPED INTERSPECIES UGLYS. YOU'RE THE ONE READ THAT PARTICULAR HORRIFYING INTERPRETATION INTO IT. I CAN'T HELP IT IF YOU'VE GOT A DIRTY MIND.
"Right, right. So... Anything else that you feel I should know about?" he said, griping the arms of the sofa to keep himself from throttling the racoon as he ground his teeth in anger. Just as Rocket was about to answer, his infoglass beeped.
"Download complete, all major Terran languages complete with English language regional accents pack, please install into appropriate translation circuit." It said, in a cool female voice. Rocket dropped off the sofa, walked over to his midden of a sleeping area, and taking care not to mess up the pattern of the junk pulled out a box. He then flipped it open to revel at least a dozen off the shelf translation circuits identical to the one Quill had broken earlier, held one to the infoglass to load the software, and walked over and none to gently slammed it into the empty slot in Quill's neck-mount.
"Just the fact that I could have fixed your translator in, oh, a whole of ten bloody seconds if I'd wanted too." He said, before looking him clearly in the eye. "You're a fucking idiot Quill." he said, and Quill was so shocked by the fact that the new software had apparently given Rocket a thick cockney accent that he didn't even retaliate as the racoon waked away.
He then immediately tried to get the software back to its old settings, and was making a mess of it when a cool green hand reached in, took it, and un Dick-van Dyke'd Rocket, much to everyone's relief. He looked up, and immediately panicked, wondering what to say.
"Gamora I-" She kissed him again, this time on the cheek.
"-were very, very mature and respectful of my feelings." She said, pulling back. "And yes, while I agree that right before going on our most dangerous mission yet isn't the best time to start a relationship, the fact that you were so… well. Un Quill like and grown up about it is a good sign."
Quill paused, practically nailed to his seat with indecision. "So… where are we now? As two people?" Gamora shrugged. "A little closer than we were before, but not anywhere so close it's going to skew our teamwork. Somewhere that we can enjoy finding out how we feel, like you said, enjoy finding out if we work well on dates, if that's what we both want."
"I'm free at seven. Xandarian food okay? I know this great little intimate humanitarian aid station just around the corner." Said Quill, only half joking.
Gamora laughed, and squeezed his hand. "Oh, is that the one with the pickpocket kids? That one always looked so Romanic." She joked. "But not, like you said, a good idea before we run off after infinity stones. Agreed?" she squeezed the hand again.
"But maybe when we get back, okay?" Quill smiled. "It's a date." He said, and Gamora laughed, and waked off.
"Oh and Quill…" Quill looked up. Gamora was leaning on the doorway casually in a pose that was so seductive she manged to be sashaying even when standing still.
"If I had slept with you, drunk or sober, you would have remembered because you'd be walking sideways." She said, and then turned her back on him, and walked down the stairs.
Quill stayed sat there for a long time, jaw hanging open from sheer shock. "Damn!" he said, after some time.
"Can I stand on two legs again?" called out Drax, killing the moment.
"What? Oh god, Drax, I meant that as a joke, seriously dude, we need to work on you language skills man!" said Quill, running to help, but glad in his heart as he did so. So he hadn't got it on with Gamora, and I a way that as a pity, but he hadn't broken the team dynamic either, and that was more importantly, because if there is one thing you don't want to do, it's cause or get involved in some sort of family spat.
The Nova officer manning the sensor sweeps for the fleet in orbit over knowhere logged the contact and it's vector, and called his superior over.
"Denarian, Ma'am, we have an older model Badoon fighter craft in Ravengers colours approaching Knowhere, landing vector, main docks."
"That's just the Milano, let it pass."
"No ma'am, I'm still reading the Milano as docked inside their private berth. And it's not one of the vessels the Ravengers left with when our peacekeeping force arrived; the ID number is different and it's not broadcasting on Ravenger IFF systems. I'm picking up a recent repair to the cockpit blister. Running the tail number…. Ma'am, this vessel was reported missing in the battle of Xandar. According to its registration, it was salvaged by a … by a Viderdoom vehicle repo, salvage and recovery. Never heard of them, but it is armed."
"Hail it. Unidentified vessel, please give your ship ID and registered owner."
There was a brief crackle of coms.
"XR5 Barracuda out of fortress Viderdoom bail-bond recovery. Registered to Count Bligh, my employer."
The Denarian frowned. "A bounty hunter eh? What brings you to Knowhere, stranger? Business or pleasure?"
In the blue half-light of the armoured cockpit Nebula focused her bionics on the screens and made a minute adjustment as she brought her ship in running on instruments only to mask it's power signature. "Both." She said.
Awesome Mix tape Vol 2: Heart; Barracuda.
