Fleeing is hard. Fleeing is easy.
Peter has no plan. Peter has a dozen plans.
In the end it's both parts of him, the child and the grown-up, who come up with something that works.
It's simple, really. It's the hardest thing he has ever done.
He whines.
He's lonely. He wants somebody to play with.
There are no siblings and will never be, he understands that.
He doesn't want friends either, where would he find any that would be worthy of him after all?
(He's a Celestial after all. He has the light.)
He wants a pet.
Ego is a Celestial. He gets whatever he wants.
Peter is a Celestial. He should also get whatever he wants.
Peter is also a child. He knows how to whine and to beg and to be annoying and pitiful.
Ego is a parent. He never stands a chance.
So Ego leaves and Peter is all alone on the planet that's at once the body of his sole surviving parent and the tomb of his countless siblings.
He calls Yondu.
Just in case, Yondu had said. Had insisted. Had he known? Had he guessed? Thousands of fragile little skulls and bones and where did they come from? Peter wants to ask, he never wants to know, and when Yondu comes, without a delay, without asking first for compensation or a reason why now, after two years, Peter just stands and stares.
Yondu comes and plays a game.
Peter waits and is ready for it.
When Yondu asks why Peter needs a way off-planet, Peter thinks back on years of unkind words, he thinks of bullies, he thinks of Ego and everything out there that's not a part of the Celestial.
His lips wobble, he sniffs, his eyes are shiny and moist; it's obvious that Peter's trying to be strong after everything Ego said to him, how he was weak and useless, a savage, a Terran, a backwater-hick that lost its fascination two seasons ago. Even the memory of Peter's mother wasn't enough to sway Ego.
Peter has to go.
Yondu isn't convinced but he doesn't have to be. It's just a game after all.
It's just important that it is played at all.
Peter has lived all his life on Earth on hope and dreams. He told of absent fathers making TV shows, exploring the stars, having the time of their lives and thinking fondly of him. He dreamed of healthy moms and bright futures ahead. He believed in justice and fairness and protecting the weak. He's a bullshitter, always was. He knows another one of his kind when he sees one and Yondu does too. There's a certain comfort on being in good company for once.
Yondu asks why he should take Peter in and this answer is even easier. Yondu gave it to him word for word once, when he was speaking with Kraglin about the little Terran they picked up and his possible uses for thievery. He wasn't aware the little "ankle-biter" had been hiding in a nearby vent after one of the more eventful run-ins with the rest of the crew. (Yondu totally was aware. Peter knows it, too, but, alas, the game…)
Yondu humpfs and haahs and grumbles. He threatens a bit.
Then they are off and the planet Ego vanishes behind them like a bad dream you never quite wake up from (Peter liked shiny blue Terra better. It looked innocent and fresh, with more secrets of the pleasant kind.).
Peter was successful, he has gotten away.
He knows he can never stop running again.
…
Settling into life as a Ravager is hard.
There are still screams and threats and tunnel chases, teeth and claws and blaster fire, but Peter grits his teeth and bears it, because the true nightmare (or at least most of it) he left behind.
Gone are the soft beds and delicious food; it's hard mattresses and unrecognizable grub instead.
No more games, no more running free. He does chores and cleans stuff, he gets scolded for every single mistake and sometimes he gets cuffed around the head even if he did everything correctly and sometimes, once in a blue moon, somebody actually teaches him something useful.
Peter-the-child wants to cry and rage at the unfairness of it all.
Peter-the-grown-up reminds him that it could be so much worse and so they endure.
They endure – Peter endures – and he slowly learns to see the silver lining to everything.
It creeps some of the other Ravagers out (Yondu thinks it is down-right unhealthy.) but what do they know?
(It could be So. Much. Worse…)
So Peter grows, Peter works and Peter listens and learns.
And it turns out that there's so much to learn.
There's a whole universe out there and every star in it shines on something new.
Peter's father once took a look at that and was appalled. Peter's reaction is more like "Woah!"
Dozens of species on the Eclector alone. Hundreds in the first trade post they stop at.
And there's no end in sight.
It's wild and utter chaos, colorful and loud, scary and exhilarating and Peter wants to see it all.
So many smells, so many sounds, so many sights…
Ego's fishbowl of a planet, full of curiosities an indulgent father placed in his offspring's path , seems like nothing in comparison.
Peter doesn't understand how anybody could ever wish to destroy that.
The other Ravagers notice his enthusiasm and are amused. They answer his every question.
The other Ravagers get sick of his enthusiasm and are annoyed. They throw things at him.
Peter doesn't care (Sometimes they throw new things. Things they just picked up in the port and so Peter has something new to poke and prod.). He takes his enthusiasm and curiosity and optimism and uses them to recreate himself.
Peter-of-Earth was angry, sad and miserable. His only home was gone and he didn't even hold her hand in the end.
Peter-of-Ego was happy, thoughtless and doomed. He dreamed of stars even when wide awake without ever waking up at all. Until he did (Waking up hurt!) and then he couldn't get away fast enough.
Peter-the grown-up knows nothing but survival. He's a quiet and mistrustful thing that's always watching hidden behind little Peter's eyes. He knows that they are far from safe and that they are done for the moment they stop long enough for Ego to find them.
Peter-Starlord is going to be better than them all. He's going to be happy but careful, curious but guarded, optimistic but clever. He will have his mother's cheerful smile and his father's charming wit and both their (oh-so-different) thirst for life. Peter-Starlord is going to see the universe and he will love every minute of it.
Unfortunately Peter-Starlord will need a spaceship in order to see the universe.
A blaster may be useful, too.
And training how to fly a spaceship. And how to navigate. And how to shoot said blaster.
Fortunately, Yondu is ready to help.
It's strange, actually.
Peter's father played ball with him and chased him through tall, reddish grass. He hugged him and laughed and told him that he was proud of him almost daily. Peter's father gave him a planet to play on and laid the universe down before his feet.
Yondu slaps him upside the head and yells at him for messing up which switch is which. He's far more likely to trip Peter than to hug him and he cheats at absolutely every game ever. He takes whatever he wants and makes Peter do punishment detail when he dares to protest and then dangles Peter's Walkman in front of his face until Peter successfully steals it back. And then punishes him for that.
But he's also making sure that Peter gets fed at the end of every day and that nobody else picks on him to the degree that Yondu himself does. He looks proud when Peter hits the bulls-eye, even when he doesn't say it out loud. Yondu gives him his first ship and his first blaster and teaches him everything he needs to know, even if his teaching methods leave something to be desired.
Yondu gets Peter out of every trouble Peter gets himself into (And laughs afterwards, and points out every single thing he did wrong. In front of the entire crew.).
It's strange actually, but while Ego will always be Peter's father, Yondu is his actual dad…
(Peter will never tell him that.)
(Ever.)
…
So Peter-Starlord gets older and taller and adds daring and dashing and dreamy to his idea of himself.
He learns how to think fast and talk faster and wishes sometimes it were the other way around.
He learns how to shoot and how to fly and how to steal and how to flirt and he makes good use of all of his numerous talents (Particularly the flirting. Flirting is fun.).
And he learns how to use the light.
(Not right away, of course.
For a long time after his flight, he's too afraid to call his sparks, too disgusted by what it means.
Perhaps Ego can track him through it, he reasons, he would put everybody in danger, he tell himself, it's not fair to have this kind of power, he insists, but in the end, it's mostly fear keeping his hands dark and hollow.
But the universe is a vast and harsh place and it turns out that even minor gods need every advantage they can get in the face of its everyday casual cruelty.
Strangely enough, this makes Peter feel better.)
Calling the light is harder this far away from Ego, but Peter manages it after a while (Besides, the harder it is, the farther away Ego is, and that means Peter is safe here, on the Eclector, always in transit and never in the same place twice in a few months at least.).
Sparks turn into mist turn into streaming starlight just like his father had shown him half a lifetime ago. It's pretty and beautiful and like out of a dream (or a nightmare).
Peter has no idea what to do with it.
(Back on Ego, he wanted, he willed and it happened.
Here, he scrunches his nose, he bites his lips, he thinks really hard – and nothing.
Just his inbuilt nightlight of liquid starshine, showing him the grimy walls of his quarters in all their non-existent glory.)
He forms a ball from it (He can still do this much at least.) and throws it around a bit, remembering sand and grass and silvery ponds. The memory of deep, delighted laughter morphs into the bright, bell-like giggles of his mother and the dusty-sweet smell of Ego's plains turns into the smoke of a campfire once upon a warm summer-night.
They'd made s'mores, he remembers; back when everything had been still alright and his mother healthy and full of life.
They'd made s'mores and counted the stars and Mum had told him about all the constellations and the gods tied to their stories (Maybe having a simple god as a parent would have been better than a Celestial, who knows?).
He misses her so much. He misses everything. The summer-heat and Missouri and the smoke biting in his eyes and the stories and the music and the chocolaty goodness of s'mores under a sky full of distant stars.
It's been quite some time since Peter last cried, but in this moment, hidden safely away in his quarters with nobody the wiser, he does. He closes his eyes and pretends that he's home, his real home, and that his mum is just out of sight, getting a drink or something.
He shoves his headphones over his ears to drown out the sounds of the ship and buries his nose in one of his t-shirts that slightly caught fire last week (Don't ask!) and hugs his troll-doll to his chest like it's one of the neighbor's new kittens over for a cuddle.
The only thing missing is taste.
He still remembers the taste, even if others have long since faded from his mind.
Ask him what an apple tasted like and Peter would come up blank, but chocolate?
He remembers sweetness and smoothness and stickiness and how hard and cold bars splintered and broke into pieces and how they finally melted on fingers and tongue alike. How it seemed to brighten everything up somehow and chased the sadness away and if only for a little while. Peter remembers chocolate bars and hot chocolate in winter and his Mum laughing at him when he denied stealing the last cookie with the evidence smeared all over his face.
Light blooms, silver swirls.
The chocolate bar forming in his hands is almost not a surprise.
(The key to repeating the feat is, though.
There's a certain trick to it, more instinct than thought, like when Yondu taught him how to whistle.
How strange, that in the end all his parents help him to learn how to shape the energies of the universe…)
(He gets too exhausted before he manages to make himself sick on newly created chocolate bars.
Shaping the energies of the universe is hard…)
…
He's almost an adult (Yondu disagrees.) when he's finally allowed off the Eclector unsupervised and for a longer period of time.
Peter almost bursts with excitement because FREEDOM! and so much to see, so much to do in such a short time.
He's young, he's charming, he's good-looking and he's figured out by now that flirting is just the tip of the iceberg.
This world is his for the taking. Its inhabitants won't know what will hit them!
It… kind of doesn't work out this way.
Peter is young and charming and good-looking.
He's also Terran and apparently that's not just a derogatory term in Ravager-circles. It really means backwater-hick and savage. Exotic, if somebody tries to be nice about it.
In the best case, people simply look at him and don't care. But if somebody sniffs out just where he's from, their looks turn into either disgust or pity. Oh, they are also fascinated by him, all right, but then a train wreck's also fascinating – a colorful insect is fascinating – as long as you don't have to actually touch it.
(Peter could tell them about the universe full of a billion stars he still senses sometimes in the back of his mind. He could tell them about being Superman and about his father-the-planet, his father-the-god. He could tell them of his light and how it's even better than the Force sometimes.
He doesn't.
Peter has been a lot of things in his life and he plans on being even more, but one thing he will never be is a bully. Exotic and savage may be bad, but they are vastly preferable to actual fear.)
Peter learns to work with it instead.
He was always a loud child, a mouthy child, he never knew when to shut up.
Where others would try to curb this bad habit, he decides to actually turn it up a few degrees.
He boasts and he jokes and he laughs louder than everybody else. He demands attention left, right and center. He flirts outrageously with everyone and everything, he tells tall tales, he lets out his natural bullshitter whenever and wherever he can. He put his foot in his mouth and plows right on as if nothing happened. And he gets away with it.
Because naturally he doesn't know any better. He's just a Terran, after all.
(Peter is exotic and a savage and he has a fool's sacred freedom. Some things are apparently the same everywhere.)
It would be funny if it weren't so sad. It would be sad if it weren't so funny.
But well, at least it's useful.
He's constantly underestimated this way and while everybody is busy staring at the walking, talking joke running around (Look at me, don't look at me.), nobody is paying attention to anything else (See what I did there? Of course, you didn't…).
After a while, people even forget that he's Terran, too blinded by the sheer force of his personality to care. He learns (and steals) lots of interesting things this way and finally earns enough to wheedle a real ship out of Yondu.
The first night on his own in the Milano, he lays awake and stares into the darkness of his new bunk. It's quiet in a way that has become utterly foreign and the knowledge that he's all alone out here threatens to crush his chest in. Everybody is light-years away…
He's really Peter Pan now, a real Lost Boy, all on his own, his parents dead or far, far away.
But as awesome as the Milano is, she makes a rather poor Tinkerbell.
He wishes he had a K.I.T.T. instead. K.I.T.T. at least could speak…
…
(Does that make Yondu Captain Hook?)
…
Peter continues to grow (not to grow up, he's already grown up, he's never going to grow up) and he continues to run.
It's easier now on his own.
He never stays anywhere longer than for a few days, hopping from planet to planet to space station to Eclector and back again. Sometimes he follows orders, sometimes he does missions and other times he follows the stars his father once kindled in his mind.
That's how he finds the spores.
They are everywhere, it seems, on every planet he visits.
He doesn't always sense them right away but they are all creatures of Ego, in a way, and like calls to like.
They are pretty, in a way, colorfully luminous and deceptively fragile. They remind Peter of jellyfish in all their poisonous glory.
They look tiny and innocent and one day, if Ego catches up to Peter, they will swallow the worlds whole and reshape them in Ego's image.
It takes some work but in the end Peter manages to rip them out of the ground, roots and all, and they melt into his light as if they had never even existed. And every time, one of the stars he still sometimes faintly sees in his mind vanishes.
(It gets easier to call his light afterwards and it seems stronger. Not a lot, but…
Maybe, Peter thinks. Maybe, one day, I'll be strong enough to stop my father once and for all.)
Peter continues to run.
He follows orders, does missions and enjoys himself on hundreds of planets his father would rather see wiped out.
And whenever he finds one, he absorbs a spore into his skin and grows just a tiny bit stronger.
(Later, much later, he will be too exhausted to appreciate the irony that one of the first worlds he saved from death-by-Ego was Hala…)
…
He follows the spores to Xandar.
When he first sees the bright sphere in front of his ship, he actually hesitates for a moment. He's been on a lot of planets by now, but from all the stories he's heard, Xandar is actually the closest to Earth so far. Sure, they are ruled by some weird mix of military and police in a way that would probably give most Terrans the creeps (At least he thinks so. It's been a while since he last thought about Earth and strangely enough he's better at remembering fiction than facts.) and its people are a melting pot of lots of species (The half-remembered American in him should feel right at home.) but the vegetation is mostly green, the water blue, the cities clean and made of glass and metal and the Nova Corps are the more or less grudgingly acknowledged "Good Guys" in this part of the galaxy.
For a moment, he wonders what Xandar-the-Celestial would look like. At first he envisions a silver-haired general, stern-faced, distant and unapproachable. But then the vision fuses with the hazy memories of his grandfather and the general gains exhausted lines around his mouth and warmth hiding deep in his eyes. Suddenly, Xandar doesn't seem so scary anymore.
(Sometimes he thinks guiltily of Earth, of laughing, bright-haired Terra. He knows there's a spore there and he knows he should do something about it. But… he can't! He just can't, and it's not even because his father would suspect him to go there first. It's just… not possible for him to return. Maybe one day, but not right now. Not anytime soon, in fact.)
(Terra's light would be golden, he thinks. Golden and warm like the first sun in spring.)
Xandar is a lot like Earth, but it helps that Peter grew up in the country and is more familiar with sprawling farmland and woods than true cities.
Xandar is nothing like Earth and is new and exciting instead, all clean lines and clean streets and clean people running around and not caring a bit about the gawking Terran in their midst.
Peter loves it, because this is how life should be, this is what every science fiction comic ever promised him. It also leaves him feeling more lost than ever because after years in Ravager-care he has no idea anymore what to do with so much civilization.
Sure, he has been on officially civilized planets before, but mostly to the seedier parts. (On the first glance, Xandar seems to be seriously lacking on those. Not that he believes it. Give him some time and he will find them. There's always a darker side to anything, he learned that the hard way.) But even on his few forays in the nicer parts of every planet that came before, there always seemed to be something lacking. Maybe it's their uniformity, the prevalence of one single species above all others and how the members of the minorities seemed just the slightest bit tense, instinctively aware that they were foreign, alien in a way that could have serious consequences should something go wrong.
Here, he doesn't get that feeling, everybody seems to feel perfectly at home and it throws him for a loop.
He covers it up with an extra swagger in his steps and a grin so bright it should be blinding (Peter wonders for a moment. Could he do that? An idle thought to follow up on later…).
He wanders around and plays the tourist, collecting information along the way.
Naturally Yondu gave him a crash-course on every major player around and any planet of possible interest, so he has at least an idea of the dos and don'ts of Xandarian law. But like with everything there's a trick to dealing with every society, so he keeps his eyes and ears open and learns.
(It's either that or messing up somewhere along the way and if Peter messes up, Yondu's sure to explain to him just what he did do wrong.
At length. In front of the entire crew.
Again…)
A few days and Peter knows how to blend in, just like all the better Ravagers do. Move a certain way, have no care in the world, don't act as if you have anything to hide and there you go:
Just another guy going for a stroll.
Ravager-gear? No sir, just junker-fashion.
A bit on the wild side, true, but harmless fun.
To impress the ladies, nothing more.
A wink, a grin, and he walks on, conducting his shady business right then and there in bright daylight, with no one the wiser.
Apparently that's the way it goes on Xandar, at least as long as you're at least a middle class criminal and not too stupid to pull it off. The Nova Corps is too busy keeping the general peace and fighting a millenia-long war to care much about everything but outright murder. As long as you keep your head down and don't force the Corps to actually pay attention, you can pull off practically everything you want.
(And if you don't, you tend to… vanish. The Kyln, some people whisper.
Peter doesn't want to find out more.
Welcome to the darker side.
Peter's sure, if he were to truly look for it, he would find more.)
Mission accomplished he turns to his more personal goals.
And runs into a snag. Naturally.
Here's the thing:
Usually the spores are well away from whatever passes as civilization on their planets. Not too far off, but out of the way, hard to find.
Wouldn't do for somebody to accidentally step on them or something, after all (Peter had amused himself with some visions about somebody drenching one in weed-killer before.).
Here's the other thing, or more like things, plural:
One, Xandarians are thorough.
Peter would call some members of their society even anal-retentive.
So naturally they mapped their Whole. Fucking. Planet.
Over the course of doing that they stumbled over the spore and squealed in glee.
Alien contact, how fascinating! (That was quite some time ago. Before they rose to one of the major powers of the galaxy.)
They poked a bit, they prodded a bit, they noticed that the spore wilted when they threatened to actually take some samples and almost lost their collective minds in panic (Don't kill the alien! Ahhh!).
End of the story, they left it alone.
Two, some time after that the newly minted Nova Empire decided they needed a new capital.
Something planned and plotted and orderly (Anal-retentive…). Something to show everybody else the glory of their new way of life.
And apparently the best place for that was right next to the little plot of land the spore was situated on.
Given that they were still unwilling to harm the alien (Ahh!) existing peacefully on their planet for all these years (If only they knew.), they marked a large space surrounding it as taboo for urbanization and finally declared the whole area a nature reserve and walled it in.
Three, centuries later the whole area was covered by a giant skydome and well protected, open only to scientists and special guests of the Empire who wanted to admire the beauty of Xandar in all its natural glory and see the famous little alien plant for themselves. (Apparently the spore still valiantly resisted any attempt to analyze it by… aggressive preemptive wilting or something. Peter wasn't quite sure on the details, but it still fascinated biologist and xenobiologists even now and made it a national treasure.)
All that meant that Peter's first attempt at getting to the spore to get rid of it once and for all ended before it really began.
(Fortunately he had had maybe one or three little drinks before he'd tried his luck. Just for courage.
Thankfully Xandar's charitableness towards fragile little aliens also applied to misplaced Terrans and once the Corpsman who'd caught him got a whiff of the smell of alcohol on his breath, he decided to err on the side of caution and let him off with an admonishment not to do something like this again.)
(Who knew how much alcohol a Terran could actually tolerate, after all? Wouldn't do if somebody actually dared the poor inebriated thing to do something it probably didn't even realize was wrong…)
The second time didn't work out much better.
(He got caught by the same Corpsman.
Thankfully Peter had learned from the first time and had made sure to be slightly tipsy. After a bit of hesitation he was let go.
Sometimes he wondered if Yondu was the only one immune to his "sad-pathetic-Terran"-routine…)
(It turned out he wasn't.)
The third time, Peter somehow ended up without pants and in the custody of not only the by now familiar Corpsman Dey but also a decidedly unimpressed, unfamiliar Millenian who took one look at the sorry sight in front of his eyes and decided that he was done with the night in general and Peter in particular.
(Peter still got away with a black eye.
Instead of making him do time, Corpsman Dey sat him down, pushed the local equivalent of a coffee and something to eat in his hands and told him sternly about the dangers of alcohol, the dangers of peer pressure, the dangers of breaking the law and the collective danger of Peter's bad life-choices so far.)
(Dey was good at this, Peter had to admit. All earnest and worried and "think about your future".
He didn't even seem all that angry. More like disappointed.
Peter hadn't felt this small in quite some time.)
(It didn't stop Peter for long though.)
The fourth time, Peter took another route to get into the reserve.
This time, Peter got creative.
The less said about it, the better.
(This time the Nova Corps didn't catch him. Not really.
The Gramosians kind of held a grudge, though. And had weird, unfair laws that applied even when visiting other planets.)
After that debacle, Peter decided that it would be prudent to postpone his attempts at saving Xandar until a future better time and to return to the Eclector to make sure that no Ravagers ever learned about what exactly happened.
(They still did. Surprisingly enough, Yondu got over his newest little escapade rather quickly.
Kraglin on the other hand was known to still cackle about it even years later…)
…
Years pass and Peter is happy.
Space is vast and harsh and wonderful, still full of new things just waiting to be discovered.
He sees new sights and meets new people and he just can't get enough of it.
Years pass and Peter is content.
Life as a Ravager is violent and harsh but Peter has his own ship and can come and go whenever he wants.
He's free and unfettered and nobody relies on him just as he doesn't have to rely on anybody else.
Years pass and Peter is… beginning to realize that there might be something wrong with him.
(Grow up, they tell him.
Why don't you finally grow up?
Grow up, will you?
Why can't you behave like an adult for once?)
Peter meets hundreds of new people but they all tire of him quickly.
He's fun, he's games, he's a quick mouth and a quick wit, an easy smile and easy looks, he's great to have around – for a day or night or two.
But for more than that?
Even those willing to look past Peter being "Terran" get annoyed over time.
(Can't you take anything serious, they ask.
This is not a game!
This isn't the time for one of your jokes!
Why do you have to be so immature?)
They look at him and want to see an adult.
They look at him and see a child instead.
A fool.
An idiot.
And Peter smiles and laughs, he jokes and he is the joke, because he is the child that never grew up and the grown-up remembering bones and stars and a thousand reflections and deep down he hurts because he can't and he is and he has no idea how to explain how torn in two, in three, in four pieces he feels sometimes.
He's Peter-Starlord, he's Peter-the-grown-up, and that should be more than enough and still too much – but he's also still Peter-of-Earth, mourning his mother, and Peter-of-Ego, yearning for his father, and sometimes it all clashes and crashes and all comes tumbling down and the fool's mask (cherished and despised in equal measure) is all that he can cling to by his fingertips.
(It doesn't matter anyway, he tells himself.
It doesn't matter if he sometimes wishes that he could change things, grow up, leave the fool's mask behind and recreate himself again, maybe in a fully functional adult this time. Somebody responsible. Somebody other people respect and want to keep around.
In the end, Peter is also Peter-the-Celestial.
And Peter-the-Celestial has to keep running. Has to keep leaving.
Has to keep leaving people behind, because staying and stability and predictability would mean Ego finally catching up to him and the end of all those he would love to love.)
So Peter smiles and laughs, he jokes and he is the joke, and sometimes, when he lies alone at night in the Milano, he plays around with the light coming out of his fingertips and wonders if this (Wrongness, loneliness, uniqueness?) is the reason why his father decided to eradicate all other life.
To fit in, to be right, to just be without having to explain himself, without having to think about possible explanations for himself.
Peter smiles and laughs, he jokes and he is the joke, and sometimes, when he lies alone at night in the Milano, he plays around with the light coming out of his fingertips and wonders if it wouldn't be easier if he could just create somebody capable of understanding him and his situation…
It's a nice dream, but a dream nonetheless.
Years have passed and Peter had more than enough time to learn the possibilities and limits of his gift.
He's a Celestial, a god – but a minor one, and while some things are merely hard, other things have proven to be downright impossible.
…
It was the chocolate of all things that first made him think.
Perfect, tasty chocolate.
Sweet and smooth and sticky. Hard and cold turning into warm, melted goodness.
Always shaped the exact same way. Always looking, feeling, smelling, tasting like the perfect memory of what chocolate should be like.
One bar the exact copy of the other.
It got Peter thinking. If it looks like chocolate, feels like chocolate, smells and tastes like it – but you have absolutely no idea what its actual molecular structure looks like – is it still chocolate in the end?
(He has never quite found the courage to test what it actually is he's creating.
So far eating it hasn't killed Peter yet and that is good enough for him.)
(He's been refraining from freely sharing it around since his little enlightenment, though…)
(Just to be sure.)
Once he started thinking, he just couldn't stop: What could he actually do with the light?
What followed was a long and (very) exhausting period full of trial and error.
Peter found out that the easiest thing to affect was actual energy.
Kinetic or potential, electric or radiant, whatever form it took, energy wanted to change, to make things happen and only needed a nudge, a thought in the right direction to do whatever he wanted it to do. Influencing it didn't take much strength and just some creativity and will, then it just bend to Peter's whims and stayed that way.
Unfortunately, energy usually was tied into (surrounded and restrained by) matter.
And to influence matter was a lot harder.
Creating not-quite-things (or more like recreating things like he remembered they should appear) was actually the easiest part.
Take some atoms (or maybe even protons, neutrons and electrons, Peter wasn't quite sure) from your surroundings, add some of his light and tadaa, instant not-quite-what-he-wanted-but-close-enough-thing.
Correctness of molecular composition notwithstanding.
(But unfortunately molecular composition was kind of important, because things that appeared right but were fundamentally wrong on such a deep level tended to break at inopportune moments, to behave in ways they really, really shouldn't or to poison people other than Peter himself.)
But to create something like it should be and not how it superficially appeared?
Pretty much impossible.
You had to know a thing inside out down to the molecular level for that, to have the patience and strength to methodically build it up starting from its smallest parts and Peter just couldn't do that.
He lacked the knowledge, he lacked the concentration, he lacked the overreaching consciousness and planning skills he would need to keep track of so many things happening at once and affecting each other and even if he had all these things and even the slightest idea how to even start, he also lacked the pure power for it. He would probably sap himself dry long before he had created even the basic structure of an apple slice.
To influence or change already existing matter actually fell somewhere in the middle.
It had been easy as long as the matter had been part of Ego (but then again, everything had seemed easy on Ego), but in the rest of the universe it got harder the more complex the structure of whatever he wanted to affect was.
Changing the color of his jacket?
Doable if inadvisable because it simply took to too much of Peter's strength, at least if done in one go.
Changing the material?
Once again limited by Peter's understanding of the molecular composition.
Fixing any holes or tears that cropped up from time to time?
No problem at all as long as Peter could either convince the material to simply… reconnect where needed or some of the surrounding atoms (Neutrons, electrons, protons?) to mimic the cloth or at least something close to it.
(It didn't always work, though. Fortunately people out here had found their own ways to make stuff durable. Otherwise Peter's walkman and cassette would have been nothing but useless mementos a long time ago.)
So Peter, the Celestial, the minor god isn't quite as all-powerful as he believed himself to be.
He's surprisingly alright with that.
Peter's far from stupid and great at improvising and making things work.
He adds an extra oomph or two to his weapons and equipment, sneaks some hidden surprises into his gear, improves things and keeps the repair costs low wherever he can and pays a pretty penny at the most respectable illegal medical center he can find to get the most accurate idea of his overall biology he can.
(Even if he didn't have plans, it's only prudent to do so. Peter's the only Terran around. He needs to know how he works, what parts do what, what he should avoid doing and what can kill him. And Peter needs to know where others can find this information should anything ever happen to him and he needs help.)
Peter may not be Superman any longer, not so far from Ego, but after long, long study sessions he works out how to give himself an extra edge against all those species far stronger and faster than him. He learns and tries and trains and in the end he figures out how to give himself some speed, some strength when he really needs it, how to improve his muscles and tendons and nerves just the slightest bit for the short time that may decide between life and death, how to stop heavy bleeding and knit bones long enough to get to medical help, how to convince his cells to do what he needs them to do even if not always the way they actually should… (And how to undo the mess in the end, how to set everything back to its natural default state. Very important that.)
It's the hardest thing Peter ever had to learn. It's probably also one of the most important.
(He also thinks that he never will quite finish learning. Not before the day arrives that he hasn't quite learned enough and dies as a result.)
It also proves one thing to him:
Creating life, especially sentient life, is nothing but a dream.
A nice dream, but a dream nonetheless.
Far too complex.
Far too many parts and nuances he just doesn't understand.
Far too many things to take into consideration and working in concert.
Peter's pretty sure not even Ego can create actual life.
Maybe it's not just the complexity of it all.
Maybe there's more to life than molecules and electric impulses.
More than energy and matter.
And maybe it takes a major God for that.
Peter thinks back to red fields and pond weeds and glowing jellyfish-spores and how all those things are nothing but parts of Ego in the end. Nothing truly independent. Noting truly, separately alive.
Just offshoots of Ego in a different shape.
For anything more, even Ego needed the true and tried method.
Maybe this inability to create life, to understand life completely is what has truly driven Ego to his plans of destruction.
He simply doesn't want to waste the time or effort to understand something so deeply complicated, yet at the same time he can't accept his own shortcomings.
Maybe one of the biggest differences between Peter and his father is that Peter doesn't have to understand something to enjoy it.
He just does and his own life is so much richer for it.
…
Years pass and Peter fails at growing up all the way, the proper way.
He flits from place to place.
He never stays anywhere longer than for a few days, hopping from planet to planet to space station to Eclector and back again.
Sometimes he follows orders, sometimes he does missions and other times he follows the stars his father once kindled in his mind.
He has faint acquaintances in every port, meaningless one-night-stands on every planet, stable roots exactly nowhere, not really, not in any way that matters.
And whenever it gets too much, when the universe seems to large and empty and full at the same time, if he yearns for a stop and a familiar voice not yelling orders in his ear, if his womanizing and planet-hopping threatens to remind him too badly of his father, he finds a bar and settles down and drinks as much of the worst swill he can find as the bartender will let him.
(It's impressive what a Terran can survive, the witnesses think.
Peter wonders sometimes, when he's really down and done with the universe, if he's surviving it because he's a Celestial and can take it or because he's a Celestial and his father will never ever let him die…)
(Peter never actively tries to find out, though.
He's got his thirst for life from both sides of the family and there's still too much to see, to discover, to experience to try and call it quits.)
Later on he will never quite be able to recall just what caused the memory to resurface, if it was a Shiar's feathery head, neon lights throwing a halo around another drinker or just the right kind of music when he felt especially maudlin and nostalgic.
But suddenly, from one moment to the next, he half-remembers the rich sound of church bells and the scent of his mother's best dress and he hears again the old, solemn stories about a favorite son, full of light and more powerful than any other, rebelling against his father and suffering for it.
He remembers forbidden fruits and good and evil and why sometimes wanting to know leads you right out of paradise and down into hell.
Peter sets his empty drink down, stares at his light-less, hollow hands, and then he laughs and laughs and laughs until he cries and gets thrown out of the bar on his ass.
Even lying in the gutter he's still laughing, still crying until he's hiccupping so hard he almost knocks himself out.
Once he calms down again he will pick himself up, wander over into the better part of the city and chat a girl up.
They will smile and laugh and have fun and Peter will make himself forget. He will be so successful at forgetting, he won't even remember that she's there the next morning, let alone her name (It will be awkward, but Peter's an expert at awkward, he's had practice enough…).
But for now Peter is content to huddle into the gutter and laugh/cry so hard it hurts.
