Peter woke up with a jolt, surprised he'd been able to fall asleep at all. He checked his watch. It was 7:40am. He had been abducted by aliens for a little over 5 hours. His Mom had been gone a little bit longer then that.
He stared at his hands, but he didn't cry this time. He was thirsty.
He got up and cautiously checked the door. There was no handle or latch, so he tried pushing on it, and waving his arms in the air, but neither of these did anything. He moved on, wandering around the room poking at every strange thing he could find. It was small, though, so there wasn't that much. Just a simple dresser and a bed.
A button on the wall made a low bowl thing pop out. It wasn't shaped quite right to be a toilet, but there was a bit of water in the bottom and it was the right height.
So he wouldn't have to go on the floor if no one let him out. That was good to know.
He pressed the button again and the toilet went away. Only there weren't any other buttons in the room and none of the other stuff on the walls did anything, which meant there was no sink. Peter didn't know what upset him more: the thought of drinking alien toilet water, or the fact that he couldn't wash his hands.
He wasn't that thirsty yet, so he took his mind off it by putting all the things the blue alien had strewn all over his bed away in the dresser. He fit it all in one drawer, and he realized he didn't even have a change of clothes.
Would the aliens make him wear what he had on for the rest of his life? Would they at least let him clean it? Did they have a laundry machine?
All these stupid questions were making him panic, so he picked up his walkman and stuffed the headphones over his ears. He was about to press play, but he hesitated.
The last thing his Mom would ever say to him was, "Take my hand, Peter." And he couldn't do it, wouldn't do it. He had turned away, so afraid of his poor dying mother that he couldn't even look at her, let alone touch her. The tears finally welled up in his eyes. What was he even afraid of?
He couldn't listen to her music now.
Hell, he probably deserved to be here. Some sort of Divine retribution.
He wiped his eyes. That was stupid. No matter what he did, his Mom would be sad if stopped listening to her Awesome Mix. It would be like forcing himself to forget her.
He pressed play, and closed his eyes in relief as the up-beat tempo of 'O-o-h Child' washed over him. It felt like his Mom telling him everything was going to be okay.
He climbed into the bed and wrapped the covers around himself, content to lay there and listen.
Yondu waved a hand through the glowing holo-map, skimming from System to System, past Kree space, to the far edges of the Galaxy. He pointed at a specific star with a single planet. "Here," he said. "That's where the boy's Dad wants us to take him."
The curious crew members surrounding him were quick to protest, Horuz the loudest. "That's on the other side of the damn Universe! What the hell are we doing this fool job for Yondu? We're supposed to be taking what we want from who we want, not traipsing from nowhere to nowhere, reuniting kids with their Daddys!"
Yondu ignored him and took a seat in his captain's chair. Kraglin took that as his cue.
The First Mate snarled at the deserters. "Are you lot goin' against the Captain? You know how mutiny's dealt with amongst the Ravagers, don't 'cha?"
But Horuz wasn't letting go. "This isn't mutiny, Kraglin. All I'm saying is-"
"We do what the Captain says we do!" Kraglin leaned into his face and jabbed him in the chest. "And we go where the Captain says we go! Anything else is mutiny!"
Yondu smirked and gave a long trilling whistle. His arrow swept from it's holster and started to tumble about by his head. He continued to whistle a slow, mournful tune, and raised his hand so the weapon did elegant circles around it.
The Ravagers backed away from this display.
Kraglin pointed to the navigator. "You! Set a course, make sure we got a stopover before we reach Kree space. The rest 'a you, get the hell outa here!"
They didn't have to be told twice.
Once they were gone, Kraglin leaned on the back of Yondu's chair and watched as the arrow continued to dance. "You okay, Boss?"
The arrow was snatched up and placed back into it's holster. "'Course I am. What makes you think I ain't."
"Oh... nothin'." Kraglin shifted as the navigator went through his calculations and the stars passed by outside the windows. "It is awful out of the way, though."
Yondu said nothing.
"What were you doin' all the way out there, anyways?"
"Getting away from all you shit-heads."
Kraglin snickered. "Say... what about the kid?"
"What about 'em?" Yondu swivelled to face his First Mate. Thinking too much about the kid was putting him on edge.
Kraglin scratched at the side of his nose, trying to look unassuming. "Well, I don't know... he ain't got no food or water right? Someone'll have to bring him some if we want him to survive the trip."
"Shit..." Yondu leaned forward and massaged his temples. After the disturbingly literal bloodlust of his crew, he couldn't trust any of them alone with the boy, and though Kraglin was excellent at keeping things running and dealing with the finer details, the man had a massive mouth on him.
The kid would know what he was and where they were going in minutes, and Yondu still had no idea what he might be capable of if pushed.
Not that Kraglin knew what the specifics were. All Yondu told anyone was that this was a simple fetch and deliver: grab a kid from some backwards planet, bring him to his Daddy on some different backwards planet, earn a decent sum of money... only there was no money. Beings like that didn't deal in physical currency, and what Yondu stood to gain was worth more to him then all the Units in the Galaxy.
He'd have to be the one to keep little Peter Quill alive.
Before he could say anything, his console lit up with a message from his engineer. He poked the floating screen. "What do you want, Trelzar?"
The face that came on screen was grizzled and half dominated by dark, blinking implants. The man's artificial eye swivelled around nervously. "I found something, Captain. Thought you might want to see it."
Yondu grunted and violently waved the screen away. He got to his feet and said, "I'll take care of the kid after I deal with that. Hold down the fort."
"You got it, Boss." Kraglin plopped down into his own chair and put up his feet.
The ship's engineer, Trelzar, had a table set up next to his Captain's personal ship and was organizing small bits of blasted devices when Yondu appeared next to him and said, "What is all of this?"
He jumped and caused his work to scatter all over.
Yondu watched patiently as he scrambled to reorganize everything. Trelzar was an odd, nervous fellow, but he was also loyal and resourceful, and so Yondu tended to cut him more slack then most of the crew would get.
"I'm so sorry, Captain," the engineer said softly. "You startled me, is all."
Yondu made a noise in the back of his throat and picked up one of the pieces. It was metal, white, slightly blackened. "These are what shot up my ship?"
"Yes, here." Trelzar handed him a narrow, pointed device made from the same white metal as the fragments, a bit of Terran writing on it. He was holding a small missile, he realized.
Trelzar said, "Found that wedged good into your left stabilizers. Didn't detonate for some reason, which is lucky. If it had, it woulda taken out the thrusters on that side. You came very close to death today."
Ignoring the chill that ran up his spine, Yondu said, "Well, I'm still alive. So why should I care about some little Terran missiles?"
"Because they're not supposed to have this level of technology," Trelzar answered gravely.
"This ain't that advanced."
"But it isn't the primitive black-powder they're said to wield either. There was this rumour about Terra a few decades ago..."
Yondu rolled his eyes, but Trelzar didn't notice and went on. "they say a Skrull crew was passing through this quadrant when they noticed an unusual amount of radiation in Terra's atmosphere. They must've figured the Terrans blew themselves up, so they flew in to see if there was anything valuable left behind." He looked around himself and back at his Captain. "Only the Terrans weren't gone, and the Skrulls were shot down, crashed in a desert, never heard from again. They say the Terrans tore them apart..."
With a snort, Yondu said, "That's it? You're trying to scare me with an old space tale?"
The engineer urgently shook his head. "I don't think it's a story Captain... While you were gone, I scanned the planet. There were high concentrations of radiation at certain spots. I believe they're using it for energy, and they had satellites in orbit. There was even debris on their moon."
"Okay, so they're not so planet-bound. So what?" Yondu shrugged. "Why should I give a shit?"
"Because you've brought a Terran into our midst," Trelzar hissed.
Yondu smirked and pocketed the missile. "The boy? He's harmless."
"He's also not the backwards primitive we were expecting."
"Just make sure my ship's fixed before we reach Kree space." He didn't have time for this. For some reason, people seemed to only look at non-spacefaring species in one of two ways: as harmless rock throwers, or as flesh rending monsters. Which was stupid.
Yondu had been around enough to know plenty of planet-bounds were perfectly civilized, and plenty more had highly creative ways of killing you. Hell, even rocks hurt.
It was an attitude he'd seen get people killed, but he didn't give enough shits to argue the point with his crew.
He headed to the mess, which was actually very clean. He insisted on it. His Ravagers wouldn't be much of a Pirate band if they all died of dysentery, would they?
He walked into the kitchens like he owned the place (because he did), and grabbed a bottle of water, as well as a tray. He filled it with some of the less disgusting leftovers in the preservation unit and went to play personal butler to his Terran prisoner.
The doors opened for him as he stepped into the room. The kid was covered in a bundle of blankets with his back to the door. Not a particularly smart move, but then again, most children didn't have to deal with the threat of assassins, or bounty hunters... or your own men turning on you.
He could tell the kid wasn't asleep so he gave a sharp whistle to get his attention.
Nothing. No reaction. And it wasn't that he was being ignored. The kid simply still didn't know he was there.
There was a strange noise in the room, like someone was chanting something down the hall. Whatever. He wasn't about to stop anyone from practising their weird religions.
He put the tray and water bottle down on the dresser and gave the blankets a shake. That got some attention.
As the kid struggled to disentangle himself from his cocoon, Yondu stood back and watched with his hands on his hips.
Peter emerged a dishevelled mess. His eyes were red and puffy (especially the bruised one), and he had those wire things tangled in his hair.
Yondu realized the chanting was coming from those wires. The soft, orange bits were covering the kid's ears, so it had to be some sort of listening device.
The kid pushed a button on the box the wires were attached to, and then removed the whole thing from his head. He proceeded to not say anything and stare anywhere but at his guest.
"Brought you food and water, boy." Yondu indicated the stuff on the dresser. He brought it into the room, but he wasn't going to spoon feed the kid.
Peter moved quickly once he spotted the water bottle. It was made of something that was't plastic or glass, and the cap was attached to it by a cord, but it still worked like every water bottle he'd ever used. He had the cap off and half the water down in seconds.
Yondu watched with slight amusement. If he was a nicer guy he might have felt bad, but no one was going to die from going half a day without water (unless they were amphibian or something).
When the water was gone, Peter caped the bottle and put it back on the dresser. He didn't move from that spot, aware the alien was staring at him. Cautiously he said, "It tasted funny..."
"Yeah? And?" Yondu asked, bemused. What did the kid expect? Filtered planetary spring water?
"You... you poisoned it!" Peter turned around. His eyes were huge and he was dripping with suspicion and fear.
That earned a snort. "Why would I do that? And why would you drink it if you thought it was poisoned?"
"I was thirsty!" yelled Peter. "And you still wanna eat me!"
So much for respect and trust. Of course, he couldn't blame the kid. Any trust placed in him was thoroughly misplaced. With a sigh, Yondu explained, "You don't poison something you're gonna eat. You'd end up eating the poison yourself."
The kid opened his mouth to argue, but then the point sank in. "Oh..." he said sheepishly. "Right..."
Yondu smirked. "Space travel 101, boy: the water always tastes like it's filtered through a Chitauri's armpit.
"What's a..." Peter started, but cut himself off. The alien was being strangely friendly, but he didn't want to push it.
"Chitauri? Bad news. Better hope you never meet one." Yondu figured he'd done enough. The kid had food and water now, so he turned to leave.
Peter bit his lip. He wasn't ever going to find out anything if he didn't ask questions. That's what his Mom always said. "Wait!" he yelled as Yondu reached the door. "You really an alien?"
Yondu paused. "I ain't from your Terra if that's what you're asking."
"It's Earth. And how come you're speakin' English? ET didn't know no English, not till he learned it."
"I don't know what neither of those things are," Yondu said in answer. He opened the door by brushing his hand on it.
"Wait!"
This time Yondu turned around, a frown on his face. The kid was getting bold again.
Peter tried rephrasing his question. "Why can I understand you?"
"That's... complicated." Yondu said simply. He never really understood it himself. Something to do with bacteria sized robots and brain altering that made his skin crawl. "Just be glad your language is compatible."
His own had been completely undecipherable. When he first took to space, he couldn't talk to anyone until he learned Xandarian, which made him sound like his vocal chords were coated in sand.
"Speaking of language," he said. He closed the door, pulled the missile from his pocket, and held it out. "A bunch of these things almost destroyed my ship. You're gonna tell me what's written on it."
Only Peter had his hands up and was backing away. "That thing's real? I ain't touchin' it!"
"It's a dud. It's fine."
"Nuh-uh." The boy shook his head. "My Grandpa said if I ever find a bomb, or grenade, or... is that a missile? He said not to touch it, 'cause 'even if it looks old and broken, it can still blow your arms off.' You really shouldn't have that in your pocket, Mister."
Yondu was amused by the amount of concern he was sensing, but he was pretty sure Trelzar wouldn't have let him walk off with it if it was still dangerous. Still... the kid was afraid, and not just for himself. Yondu knew to cultivate that type of thing, so he angled the missile so the words were visible. "Fine, then. You can read it from there, can't ya?"
Peter wasn't exactly happy. He wanted the alien to put it down, but it was better then being forced to hold the thing. He didn't want to point out that the words were upside down so he tilted his head till he could read them, "It says... Stark Industries."
Yondu tried not to laugh as the kid almost did a hand stand instead of asking him to turn the weapon over. "And what is that?"
"It's um..." Peter straightened up and scratched his head. "It think it's this big weapon company? They're on the news a whole lot. They probably thought your spaceship was the Russians."
Yondu frowned at the missile feeling a little disappointed. He didn't know what a Russian was, but he figured this all had to do with some sort of war. He had no interest in war. He started to tuck the weapon away in his coat when the boy's eyes bugged out.
"Don't put it back in your pocket!" Peter yelled. Then he noticed the weird look he was getting and lowered his head. "Or... um... maybe you should put it somewhere it can't get you if it blows up?"
Yondu didn't like this. What did the Terran care if he blew up? But the concern was genuine. This boy, Peter Quill, didn't wish any harm on him, despite being kidnapped, and scared out of his mind, and dragged across the Galaxy... despite what Yondu knew was going to happen when Quill met his father.
Sometimes being the only one around with these senses could be frustrating... if the kid could read him back, he'd know better.
Still, Yondu owed it to him to at least be a little nice.
He took a small isolation unit from his pocket. It was usually used to protect the more delicate artifacts he 'retrieved' from atmospheric and physical damage. It would be more then enough to contain the missile if it decided to explode. He placed the coin sized bit of metal against the weapon and depressed it. A little red light blinked on, and the missile was surrounded in pinkish light. "There. Happy now?"
"Um... I think so?" The boy watched his actions with a confused frown. "What did you do?"
"Contained it." He put in his pocket and didn't get any protests this time.
"Oh..." Peter shifted awkwardly. "Thanks."
Yondu's eye twitched. He was being thanked for not blowing himself up?
He turned to leave again. "I'll be back."
"Wait..."
He was halfway out the door, but he paused.
Peter took his chance to ask the question he really wanted answered. "Will... will I ever go home?"
"Probably not." Was Yondu's blunt answer. The truth was closer to, 'definitely never,' but honesty was never his strong suite. He shut the door and locked it.