DISCLAIMER: I do not own any of the characters from Guardians of the Galaxy, either in its movie or comic incarnation. I own any OC I can invent, though. I am not making a £ out of this. It is just for shits and giggles.
And here the angst is turned down a notch...
Enjoy!
After Nova Prime leaves, Ronan spends days and days in a sort of limbo, stuck in that hospital bed.
He doesn't move or speak. Xandarian medical personnel pass by. They tend to his wounds, touch him, move him around to prevent bedsores.
He doesn't even notice. He is barely aware of anything. His eyes are open and unblinking, but he doesn't see them. He barely hears their voices as they talk about him or between themselves, about their own business.
They think he has snapped, that his mind is gone. They are not very far from the truth.
He cannot find the will to live, but cannot find the strength to take his own life either. Physical death, the end of suffering, would be too great a boon for him.
He feels already dead inside, though. His soul is shattered. Everything he was or believed to be is no more.
He doesn't even know where to start to pick up the pieces and glue himself back together.
He is nothing. He has no place in the new world the Xandarians have pushed on his people, he has no role.
Except that he has, he suddenly realizes one day.
He is haaq to those bounty-hunters. They have beaten him, not exactly fairly, but thoroughly. Them, not the Xandarians!
Star-Lord, their leader, had even said the words. He claimed him, now he is theirs by law and custom.
In any other circumstance, the perspective would be appalling, but in his particular situation it represents hope, meaning, the possibility of atoning, even just partially, for his crimes.
They have abandoned him, but maybe it is because they didn't understand the implications of their claim. Few non-Kree do.
It doesn't really matter. He'll set them straight on it when he finds them.
Once he explains everything to them, they will do the right thing, he is sure, and if not, maybe Drax will kill him. Or maybe that furry creature, Rocket. Or Gamora. It doesn't matter, he is not picky.
Having a goal helps a lot, he realizes. Finally, after he doesn't really know how long, he finds the strength to focus on his surroundings, to move.
Thinking him gone to la-la land for good, the Xandarians have taken away his chains. He vaguely remembers them complaining about how hard it was to move him with them on. He blesses the weakness of these Xandarians, because it is his salvation.
The surveillance is minimal for the same reason. There are no cameras in the room and plenty of stuff to improvise weapons with.
Even if he is still weak and stiff from his prolonged immobilization, he reckons he could break out, with a bit of preparation. He just needs to find the right moment to run for it.
For a few days after that, he tries to regain as much mobility as he can by stretching and doing some inconspicuous exercise when the Xandarians are not looking. He is still confined to the bed, though. He has too many cannulas and sensors stuck to his person to be able to remove and replace them at will. He makes do.
When the Xandarians are around, he acts like he is still totally out of his mind. He feigns unresponsiveness, stares in the distance and even drools. He withdraws again into his mind, but this time it is to plan and to meditate.
His time finally comes. The two Xandarian nurses, a yellow-skinned man and a pink woman, leave for lunch. Outside it is raining like there is no tomorrow. There will be hardly any people in the streets.
The two have barely left his room when he switches off the monitors. The sensors go, and then the various cannulas. The one stuck in his stomach, through which they were feeding him, hurts like hell, but goes too. He patches himself up quickly with the supplies at hand. It is quite painful, but he will heal soon.
When he tries to stand, everything spins, even if he has sat down on the bed for quite a bit to let his blood pressure equalize. He nearly faints, but manages to pull through. He tries to walk. His legs wobble, but hold.
Next, he looks for clothes. He knows there are scrubs and other odds and ends in one of the cupboards and there is no way he is going to escape in a hospital gown, with his backside hanging out for all to see. He is not that desperate, yet.
The white clothes make his skin look even more conspicuously blue. There is no way he can blend in, but it does not matter. He doesn't plan on being seen.
He grabs a kit bag, empties it of most of its contents and stashes in it as many antibiotics and painkillers he can find in the room.
The antibiotics are for him, he is running around with an open hole in his stomach and a few others on his arms after all.
The painkillers are not.
The Xandarians have left several highly inebriant and addictive substances lying around, the unauthorized sale and administration of which are illegal in most systems. They are also very sought after in the black market, especially pure and highly concentrated like the medical-grade formulations he has appropriated. They will come in handy if he needs some cash.
Forty-five minutes have passed since the nurses have left. They never return before an hour has passed, but he cannot tarry. Time is running out.
The corridor is empty when he exits the room.
He checks for cameras. There is one, but they have left a massive blind spot under it when they installed it. Ronan crouches and slinks away undetected. He follows the signs to the closest fire exit, avoiding the cameras and disabling one of them with a spray of liquid plaster.
The fire door itself has been propped open with a weight, probably by someone who wanted to have a smoke and couldn't be bothered to walk to the designated smoking area. No one is smoking now. It is raining too hard.
He slides out and goes down the stairs into the garden. It is totally empty.
In a matter of minutes he is completely soaked. His stolen clothes cling uncomfortably to his skin.
He crosses the gardens as fast as he can manage, looking for an exit. He finds it near one of the now-empty team-sports pitches.
Someone has pushed a bench close to the wall separating the gardens from an adjacent property. Standing on the backrest, he can easily reach the top of the wall and push himself over. He ends up in another garden. It is a residential compound.
From the inside, the door leading to the street opens through a simple switch fitted with no additional security mechanisms. It must be a quiet neighborhood.
Ronan runs along the empty street, looking for a vehicle to aid his escape. He is quite close to the limit of his forces, exhausted and half-frozen by the cold rain.
A speedercar passes by. He hides behind the shrubbery in someone's front garden.
A sign on a nearby post catches his attention: it reads "West Point Airfield, 1/2 klik". It must be his lucky day.
He resumes his march and quickly finds his target. The front is guarded. He bets the back is not.
He is right and mentally pats himself on the back for it.
At the back of the airfield, the security is confided to a canal and a rusty metal net.
He wades into the canal, he is already so wet that it makes no difference, and starts circling around the back. He has to walk for quite a bit before he finds an opening, but there it is. Some animals have dug a passage below the reticulate in their quest for water.
He pushes the bag in first, then squeezes through. It is a tight fit, and he wouldn't have managed if he had not lost so much weight during his hospitalization. The mud helps him slide through.
He scoops some up in his hands and purposefully smears it all over his clothes and exposed skin. Now those scrubs are not so starkly white anymore, and his skin is not so noticeably blue. It is a rather disgusting feeling, but being covered in mud will help him remain undetected as he crawls through the airfield.
The only space-worthy ship he can find is an old-ish personal cruiser, a sleek little thing that can carry two-three people at most. This one seems to have clocked quite a bit of parsecs, and bears a lot of stickers from the border checks of different systems. These ships usually have a cramped bathroom and a bunk room. It must belong to an old couple of travelers, he judges.
He wishes it was the personal ship of some Xandarian officer or politician, instead. It would have made things easier, but beggars cannot be choosers. He overrides the lock and gains access to the cockpit, then hijacks the commands.
The engines purr quietly. He is flying out of there before the control tower realizes what is happening.
It is only after he has reached the orbit that he allows himself to think about how many felonies he has committed in a single day: trespassing, drug possession, petty theft for the clothes, and now spaceship-jacking. It would make for an impressive rap sheet.
Scratch that, just the amount of drugs he has in that bag would earn him a prolonged stay in prison in most lawful systems, and a close encounter with an Accuser's hammer back on Hala.
He is not planning to go anywhere lawful, though. He sets his course for Knowhere and let the ship jump to curvature speed.
When he lands on Knowhere, the alien manning the parking lot doesn't even blink at the sight of a mud-covered Kree. He looks like he has seen worse things park in there.
Before setting foot outside, Ronan takes his time and allows himself a shower to get rid of the mud and of the stink of hospital that has clung to his skin. He tends to his wounds once more and takes a shot of antibiotic for safety.
The shower-room itself is rather filthy. There are several razors, but no womanly toiletries. Entering the bunk room, he realizes that he has appropriated the ship not from an old couple, but from three or four young men with a poor sense of hygiene. An extra bunk has been fitted haphazardly and the walls are covered in posters and fliers of musical events. There are a wardrobe and a chest riveted to the floor. The young men have left some clothes in there, thankfully.
Ronan is taller and in general bigger than the average Xandarian, but the Xandarians interbreed freely with anything that moves and has legs, so the average is not really representative. He finds some stuff that fits, more or less, and is reasonably clean.
The undershirt bears the logo of something music-related and is all stretched from careless washing, the leggings are a garish red, patterned with purple and black and are skin-tight, and the socks still stink vaguely. He finds a black hooded garment and a pair of boots more or less his size. He slips them on and suddenly feels a bit more like himself, a bit safer and less exposed. There is even a jacket, even if it has far more belts and buckles than strictly required by practical considerations.
Ronan stuffs a couple of vials of painkillers in the pocket of his jacket and pulls up his hood.
He is ready to tackle the next step of his plan.