Trigger warning with this chapter : contains some surgical procedure without anesthesia and what can be seen as suicidal thoughts. If you're triggered by any of this, proceed with caution. And take care.

I also would like to thank the anonymous guests for their reviews, since I couldn't reply to them personnaly. You and the registered reviewers are the best, sending you love!

Anyway, here's the new chapter, hope you'll enjoy it even if it has a darker feeling than the others.

11-Bedside manners

They went in, closed the door to the main area, where Groot laid a barely conscious Peter on the table.

"What is making our friend ailing?" Drax asked.

"I'm not sure," said Gamora while trying to remove Quill's glove. "He complained about his wrist." She kept struggling but the glove didn't move an inch. "His hand is too swollen; I'll have to cut it."

Peter opened his eyes and raised his head suddenly. "What!?"

Gamora smiled and gently helped him lie down again. "The glove. I will have to cut the glove off to examine your hand."

"Tell that to Doctor Frankenstein here."

Gamora watched Drax returning from the back of the room with a laser saw in his hands.

"Is that a nickname?" While he had made progress with metaphors, The Destroyer was still failing to grasp the concept of nicknames.

"If you try and cut my hand, it will be." Peter groaned.

"Help me remove his glove, jacket and shirt." Gamora ordered.

"And no removing hands for now." Quill added feebly.

Once free of the obstructing clothes, they could assess the damage and it wasn't pretty. Peter's hand and arm were badly swollen, purplish lines starting from a dark, puffy spot on his wrist and spreading through his hand and arm, almost reaching his shoulder.

"Definitively not an electrical burn." Peter stated, feeling nauseous.

"It is more likely that one of those bugs bit or stung you. We need to stop the venom from spreading."

"I could make a tourniquet, but it could result in him losing his arm." Drax said.

"Better his arm than his life." Gamora answered somberly.

"You really need to work on your bedside manners." Peter groaned.

"HA HA HA, YEEEESSS!" Rocket's voice rang out from the engines room.

"I told you he'd love it."

Gamora smiled in return. "Since I still don't know what it is, forgive me for not being overjoyed at the moment." She prodded around the puncture wound. "I think we should drain the wound and try to extract most of the toxin."

"Good idea."

"I'll need a number 15 lancet, a kidney dish and sterilized gauze."

Drax nodded and started rummaging through the medicine cabinet. He found what they needed and came back to their improvised operating table.

Gamora gently stroke Peter's hair in a soothing gesture. "I can't give you anything for the pain as it might react badly with the venom."

"Yay, lucky me!"

She made a sympathetic smile and asked Groot and Drax to keep him steady while she made a small incision at the base of the weird looking wound. Peter tensed and black blood started to ooze sluggishly into the kidney dish. "Breathe in slowly through your nose and exhale by the mouth, I'm almost finished. You're doing well." Gamora said in a sweet and soothing voice as she started to put in the dressing to drain out the infected blood.

"THIS IS FLARKING GOLD!"

"There, it's over. How are you feeling?"

"Just… peachy." Peter answered while trying to control his breathing. His arm was on fire and all he wanted was to curl up in a corner of the room and being left alone to cry, but it wasn't going to happen.

"Why would you be tasting of peach?" Drax asked as he was putting some towel-covered ice packs all around his friend's arm to numb the pain.

"Because I'm a sweet guy?" Peter joked, laughing feebly at Drax' confused face. Then he sighed contentedly when the cold started to work its magic. "Thanks, dude."

"F.T.L TECH ALL THE WAY, BABY!"

Drax and Gamora paused for a short moment to take in what they had just heard.

"F.T.L, as in faster than light technology?" asked a dumbfounded Gamora.

Peter grinned widely. "Yeah, isn't that the greatest thing ever?"

"Is that compatible with a ship like ours?"

"Should be. And with Rocket in charge, no need to worry."

"What does that mean for us?" Drax asked. He was less tech-savvy than his friends and was curious about their excitement.

"It's new, incredibly expensive and only a few can master it for now," Gamora told him. "If it works, we would be faster than almost any ship in the Galaxy. This is..."

"Awesome!" Peter cut her short, grinning like a kid. "I can't wait to tell Rocket that we found it on a terran ship. He's going to jump out of his fur." He tried to sit up again and was hit by a wave of dizziness.

"And what are you trying to do exactly?" Gamora asked as she held him back. "You have to stay still and rest. We don't know what this is doing to you."

"I just wanted to get comfortable," Quill almost whined. "Lying on a flat hard table is not in my definition of relaxing, and I think my lower back is falling asleep."

The green woman reflected on his request. "I guess we could move you to the bench here. It's close enough from the medical supplies."

"Oh yes, please and thank you."

They cautiously helped him settle on the bench, his back resting against the wall as he insisted on sitting, and Gamora crouched next to him to look at his arm.

"I think the swelling has stopped."

Peter nodded. "Yeah, my skin feels less like it's about to crack. Thanks." He paused and looked at his arm. It was still an ugly sight and the purplish lines seemed to slowly progress toward his torso. Truth be told, he wasn't feeling better, but he knew there wasn't much they could do to fix him and he didn't see the point in upsetting his team more. "Well, since I'm not a medical emergency anymore… Groot, you should go and see if Rocket needs help fixing the ship and Drax, would you mind going to the cockpit and monitor the area? We have not been attacked by monsters for the past ten minutes and it makes me nervous."

After the two had left, the room stayed silent, Peter staring into space and Gamora waiting for him to talk.

"We should invest in a decent infirmary." Quill said after a moment, still staring blankly at nothing.

"It's not as if I had mentioned it several times."

"Yeah, you did. I don't learn, one of my issues."

Gamora snorted at the memory of their first meeting but quickly became serious again. "What did you want to tell me that you couldn't in front of our friends?"

Peter sighed. "Here I am, thinking I was being subtle."

"You're never subtle."

"Ha ha. True." He finally looked at her, all traces of his usual playfulness gone. "Those creatures, back in the terran ship… I don't want to end up like 'em."

She sat next to him and took his unharmed hand into hers, intertwining their fingers. "We don't know if that is what's happening to you."

"That's the problem, we don't know anything. You can't say for sure that I'm going to get better, that I'm not gonna turn into some radioactive flesh eating monster from hell."

Gamora was starting to see where this conversation was headed and she hated it with all her might. "As soon as we're out of here, we'll get you to the best hospital on Xandar. They will know what to do."

"I wish I had your confidence in the Xandarians' expertise on mutation induced by bug bites."

"If not in them, then I believe in you. You're resilient. You survived the infinity stone, you'll fight this."

Not knowing what to say as Peter withdrew into silence, she gently leaned against him and squeezed his hand.

"Promise me." He finally said, so quietly she almost missed it.

"What?"

"That if it gets worse and I'm not myself anymore, you'll end me before it's too late. Before I hurt or kill one of you."

Gamora stood up abruptly. "What? No. You can't make me promise you that, I can't…"

Peter took a deep, shaky breath and looked at her, eyes full of fear and unshed tears and mirroring her own expression. "Please."

"But the probability that you might turn into one of those creatures is low! First, we don't know for sure that the bug bites are the cause for what happened to the passengers and second, you're half terran. Maybe your alien DNA will not allow the mutation." She was grasping at straws and she knew it, but she couldn't face the situation. The simple thought of losing him, or any other member of their family of sorts, was devastating enough. So, killing him on purpose? No. No way. Never.

"I know that. But there's still a chance that I might turn into something that won't be me anymore. You were there, you saw what they became, how dangerous and unstoppable they were! I hate that I'm asking you to do that, especially after everything you've been through, but the guys have no idea what's coming and I can't bear the thought that I might kill you all… Please, I just need to know that if it happens, if you see that there's no coming back for me, you won't hesitate and you'll do what it takes to keep you and the rest of the team safe."

She finally gave in and nodded shakily, unable to use her voice. They stared at each other in silence, lost in their own world of sorrow and guilt until Rocket and Groot came in.

"Hey guys!" Peter greeted them in a falsely cheerful tone, swiftly wiping his eyes to regain some composure. "Are we ready to leave this hellish planet of doom?"

"Almost, but I have to make a few compatibility tests and some adjustments first. We don't want to explode on takeoff… But dude, we have a fully functioning F.T.L drive! I'm living the flarking dream, man." Rocket gave his friend a toothy grin, unable to contain his excitement.

Quill chuckled softly. "I bet you do, buddy."

The raccoon nodded, taking in his friend's appearance, pain and tiredness written all across his features. Not to mention that his arm looked really gross. "How you doing?"

"I'm fine."

Gamora scoffed at the obvious lie.

"I am Groot."

"Yeah, I agree with Groot, you don't look fine. In fact, you look like shit."

Peter huffed in annoyance. "I'm fine enough for you not to lose time over it. The priority is fixing the ship so we can leave, not making a presentation of my state of health."

"Friends, there is suspicious movement on our right side," Drax' voice interrupted them through the intercom. "It is approaching fast."

The Destroyer remotely switched on the screen in the main room so that the rest of the team could see what he was talking about.

"We really can't catch a break." Peter muttered.

Author note : About the F.T.L technology. When I wrote this, the only information I had was a thing James Gunn said about how they were able to fly very long distances in relatively short time, and that they used something different than F.T.L tech. I assumed he meant their technology was slower than F.T.L but the second movie kinda proved me wrong, but hey, that's the game^^