Their arrival back on Xandar is quiet, the common people probably not even knowing that anything happened (After all, how do you explain the fall of a hero?), and Peter is thankful for that.
They overfly the port area (Ego's ship is nothing more than a smoking crater, with a slightly smaller one right next to it, so yeah, maybe the people of Xandar did know that something happened but not exactly what…) and head right for Nova Central Command.
There are more Corpsmen waiting for them, for him, and once upon a time Peter would have felt flattered, but now he's just exhausted and mostly numb.
He also feels a bit woozy, all of sudden.
Peter's bundled into the big meeting room as quickly as they can and the doors have barely sealed behind them that the questions start: Apparently the journey back from Ego has given Nova Prime and his friends enough time to get over their initial horror and to descend right into rage and despair.
He can barely pay attention, because the floor seems to waver under his feet.
Peter lets the flood of questions and demands wash over him without reaction, hoping that if he just keeps his mouth shut for once they will simply give up and let him rest.
He wants nothing more than some dark corner to curl up in and weep a bit.
Maybe then the thick lump that's been forming in his chest since they left Ego's corpse behind will let up a bit.
His vision is blurry and there's a steady ringing in his ears and a lump in his chest and billions of stars in his mind and Peter has forgotten one very, very important thing:
Parasites always find a way.
They hide deep inside of you, where nobody will ever look, where nobody will ever see, until the moment they feel safe and circumstances change and they can be assured that they can take over completely and spread!
Circumstances like an inhabitable atmosphere and a new stable planet under their feet…
One moment Peter's still grieving and in the next he screams.
There's light bursting in his chest, searing through his lungs and setting his nerves alight.
It floods his cells and drowns his mind and seeps though his skin in thousand little filaments that slowly, oh so slowly, form a shape.
Nerves come first, weaving a net of glowing blue into the air, then bones, cradling the brain he'd thought he'd destroyed, then muscles bulging, skin, hair and cloth at last.
Peter's father turns around and tuts at him.
Then he sets his body aflame with light again.
…
When Peter comes back to himself he's suspended in midair with what he first thinks are chains of light.
On a closer look they seem more like tentacles instead, spearing through his body – becoming part of it, really – without any blood but inescapable all the same.
He takes a few hasty swallows to keep himself from throwing up at the sight of it.
Unfortunately it doesn't help a bit against the feeling…
The once pristine room around him has become a battlefield.
Corpsmen are lying next to soot-covered walls like broken tin-soldiers, the big table in the middle has been smashed to smithereens and his friends – his brave, so severely outclassed friends, who stood against Ronan and an Infinity Stone and won – are among those caught up in more tentacles, pressed against the walls and forced to listen to Ego monologueing.
(If Peter wouldn't feel so sick he would almost laugh at it.
Supervillain 101: The Big Reveal.
Just another reason why he really wishes he wasn't related to that man…)
Peter's father is wandering around the room with a swagger that looks all too familiar for Peter's taste and explaining with grand gestures about his great expansion.
He's really into it, too, by the look of his face, and the little kid inside of Peter cries a bit at the sight of it. (He loves his dad still, and it isn't fair. Shouldn't you stop loving somebody once you realize they're a monster?)
Ego's talking about the millennia spent alone and the countless worlds he visited and Peter can see the dioramas flashing by before his mind's eye and what really scares him is that he honestly can't say if they are his own memories or Ego's doing.
Countless worlds and countless children and countless bones that Ego pointedly does not mention but Peter can see them, small and fragile, a whole mountain of them, and here's the point where he starts to struggle.
He strains against his bonds and tries to cut their light right out of him but all he achieves is getting Ego's attention.
And pain.
A long, long surge of it, that just doesn't seem to end and yet, when Peter's vision clears again, all that seems to have passed are a few seconds.
Ego's looking at him, shaking his head.
Disappointed.
Disapproving.
Almost despairing.
No rage, no anger, just a father bemoaning the disobedience of his toddler, a master the stupidity of his pet, a craftsman the unpreparedness of the tool he wants to use…
Peter feels thoroughly sick of it.
(The least Ego could do is take him seriously…)
His father steps closer to pat his cheek, promising him that he will learn in time and Peter feels a cold shiver run down his spine.
And eternity alone with Ego – he had a lot of nightmares going like this.
Another surge of pain, of light, stealing Peter's mind away, and when his brain fights free of the haze this time, Ego's back to entertaining his audience: River Lilies and Ravagers and finally a son capable of using the light –
And how didn't Peter notice the blue gelatinous mass the floor has turned into before?
He can see it now (maybe because he has trouble lifting his head again), darkly marbled and pulsating and looking like a weird mix of jelly and concrete.
He can feel it now, like an extension of himself, already swallowing half of Nova Central Command and straining for the planet's surface. People running, people screaming, people half-assimilated by Ego's version of primordial ooze.
It consumes everything in its path, storing its molecules away for later use, for when it has reached and converted Xandar's core into another brain for Ego.
Another bout of pain and light and the bluish mass grows again and Peter understands now that the tentacles impaling him are sapping his strength away to speed up the recovery of his father.
Peter failed.
Sailors and seas and tears running down Peter's cheeks and he can't even remember the last time he's been crying.
It stings when the salt hits the patches of skin where the light burns the parts of him that are mortal right out of him, but it's a welcome distraction from the drain he's now aware of deep inside his core.
Another surge, a loss of time, and when he's aware again there are familiar fingers on his skin, tenderly wiping the tear tracks away.
Sentiment.
Ephemeral.
Eternity.
Gods shouldn't feel this way, should rejoice in the Expansion, in fulfilling their purpose.
Yes, Ego knows this hurts, this trap of mortality, he almost succumbed to it himself once upon a time.
Three times he visited his River Lilly knowing all the words to every song on the radio, three times and then he left her, with a baby in her belly and a tumor in her head.
The world stops.
Not me, a tiny voice whispers deep inside his head. It wasn't me.
The relief he feels only pales in comparison to the horror, the hate!
Then the world roars into motion again.
Light explodes and blue surges upwards – but Ego stops it all with a wave of his hand and more tentacles spearing through Peter like his father waited for this. (And he did, the bastard, didn't he? More emotion means more light and Peter's playing right into his hands without any hope of escaping it.)
Grow up, Peter's told, like so often before, and he's so, so seriously sick of it!
(Hell, he tried growing up and look what that got him.)
Then his walkman cracks in uncaring hands and he barely hears the words his father – no, Ego – speaks because blinding white fills his vision and he feels his consciousness expanding in time with the ooze greedily flooding over the planet's surface.
Billions of stars sing in the back of his mind, pulsating with his heart-beat, waiting for their chance to shine, to consume, once Xandar's been converted.
Billions of spores, waiting their turn, all connected to Peter as their lynchpin, their conduit, shackled to him – through him – to Ego and his light.
Peter's the sailor and Peter's the sea, a Flying Dutchman haunting a dead ocean without life inside, but Peter's also mortal, a backwater Terran from the more remote parts of the universe, and if there's one thing Terrans have going for them, it's pure unadulterated spite.
Terrans adapt.
Terrans survive.
They aren't strong or fast or have any special powers, but they are stubborn as hell and never give up without a fight.
This Terran part of Peter is now going to save, well, maybe not his life, but at least the rest of the universe.
And if only to spite the asshole who has the audacity to call himself his father.
A billion stars, a billion spores, but only one sun, bright and purple, calling to Peter just as he calls to the Stone.
Blue crumbles and parts like water on his order, bright tentacles fall apart like shapeless snow, and Peter lifts one hand, sneering at his father, and catches the orb the light delivers to him.
(He risks one last glance to his friends, before he ends it, not sure if it's a goodbye or simply for reassurance.
Maybe he would say some words, had he more time, but the only thing he can think of is to mouth a desperate "Catch!" to Gamora and hope she understands before it's too late.)
Blinding purple fills his vision and he feels his consciousness writhing in time with the ooze crumbling to ash on the planet's surface.
Billions of stars scream in the back of his mind, stuttering with his heart-beat, losing their shine, consumed, burned to cinders by a power so much greater than anybody could ever comprehend.
Billions of spores, snuffed out long before their time, all connected to Peter as their lynchpin, their conduit, shackled to him – through him – to Ego and his light.
And to the Infinity Stone he just turned against himself…
…
Peter didn't expect to wake up again.
He turned the Stone against himself, against the light at the center of him, in the full knowledge that he probably wouldn't survive and he was alright with that, as long as he just took Ego with him.
And yet, here he lies, curled up in ash and dust, surrounded by friends murmuring reassurance.
Weeping.
The stars in the back of his mind are gone.
And he's never before felt so alone...
