Peter Quill hadn't believed it at first.
"How dumb do you think I am!? An explosion? So he just randomly blew himself up?" he raised his blaster. "I'm not playing around pal, where is he?"
Completely unbothered by the weapon pointed at their face, the bartender lead him to an alleyway out back and pointed at a small crater surrounded by scorch marks.
The legendary Star-Lord could only stare open-mouthed at what was left of the raccoon.
How am I going to tell Groot?
Sure, it wasn't that unlikely a way for Rocket to kick the bucket- he built incendiaries in his sleep and was fond of a liquor that doubled as rocket fuel- but the abruptness of it still caught Quill by surprise. Only a few hours ago the maniacal little trash panda had been arguing with him about what music to play. And a few hours before that he'd been arguing with Gamora about his choice of spaceport. And a few hours before that he'd been arguing with Drax about the unparalleled superiority of ranged weaponry. And now he was gone… with barely a strand of fur left behind.
Kicking at stray pebbles, his hands in his pockets and his face downcast, Peter made his way back to the Milano. Rocket would have made fun of him for crying, but would have also been pissed at him for not crying. The Legendary Star-Lord settled for what he hoped was some manly eye-leaking, (but was in fact closer to full on bawling-his-eyes-out).
He hadn't known the vicious little bastard for very long but there were few things that brought people closer than saving the Galaxy together and the fallout of saving the Galaxy together. In the space of a few days, Rocket had become closer to him than any of the Ravagers had in twenty-something years.
He was interrupted from the makings of a kick-ass eulogy by the arrival of Gamora. She took one look at him and must have known exactly what was going through his mind because the first thing she said was "He's not dead Peter."
Needless to say, that caught him by surprise."Huh?"
"Let me guess, you were told that he died in an explosion of his own making when one of his bombs spontaneously combusted." Gamora started counting on her fingers. "He also died in the Contest of Champions last week, on Xandar a month ago, and just yesterday was eaten by an Abilisk and ritually beheaded on Hala."
"But that doesn't make any sense. How could he have died last week and last month?"
Before Gamora could tear that question apart with the calculated brutality of one taught not to suffer fools (who had for whatever reason, chosen three fools and a tree as her lifelong companions), Drax joined them.
"Gamora. Quill." He dumped a hunk of lifeless metal upon the ground that looked awfully like a murderbot. It was hard to tell from the multiple stab wounds and the fact that parts of it's face had been horrifically bent inwards by the blunt-force weaponry Drax had in place of fists. "I have avenged our companion, but we must hurry. This foul mechanism has sent his remains to the Shyraxian Meat Market. We must retrieve what is left of him before it is too late."
"D-did you just kill Optimus Prime!?"
Drax shrugged. "I did not ask this machine it's name. As soon as it joyfully confessed to Rocket's murder I saw fit to relieve it of it's lifeforce."
"It was never actually alive," Gamora pointed out, grateful to any and all Gods out there that the bartender who'd confessed to Rocket's murder wasn't a living organism.
Drax didn't seem to have heard her. "I brought it's corpse here with me in case either of you wanted to take retribution with your own hands. I'm sure Rocket would have wanted us all to take turns hurting the one responsible for his demise."
Quill turned to Gamora, finally having put the pieces together. "So there's just some general conspiracy to pretend that Rocket's dead?"
"That is not what I said," said Drax, having the audacity to sound confused. "Were you not paying attention?"
Gamora rolled her eyes. "I'm not sure I'd go so far as to call it a conspiracy- but yes."
"Alright, new plan. We find Rocket, save his ring-tailed little ass and shoot the dickhead responsible for this mess in the face." Quill whirled dramatically on the spot. "I call dibs on the first shot."
"Rocket is doing it Peter."
Sire worked on him more than the others. It was not something Batch 89 talked about, but they all knew it. Rocket left his cage a dozen times for every time Teefs or Lylla did, while Floor never left hers- Rocket figured it was because she was already perfect.
The worst thing about testing was that testing hurt. Rocket did his best not to make noises or squirm away from the needles and scalpels, but occasionally he'd fail and Theel would be angry with him and sometimes Sire would be too. That always made Rocket feel guilty.
It wasn't Sire's fault. Sire was being kind to him. Sire only wanted him to be better so that he could belong in the beautiful new world. Rocket had to be perfect so that he could stay with his already perfect friends.
He learned not to flinch when the scalpel came down.
The best part about testing was that when it was over Theel would toss him back into the cage he shared with Floor. And then they'd play games to laugh away the hurts. Rocket pretended not to notice but whenever he came back from testing they always seemed to play his favorites. Sometimes it was a 'moving' game where they tried to move in a new way they hadn't tried before (Teefs tried to jump, Lylla tried to stand on her hands, Floor tried to walk on two legs the way Rocket and Lylla did, Rocket tried to spin his legs the way Teef's could spin his), or it was an 'imagining' game where Rocket told them about something new Sire had shown him and they all tried to think about it (rivers, complex mathematics, the sky…)
Rocket figured the one he was playing now was a particularly unfun type of 'moving' game. He wasn't sure what the rules were or what the point of the game even was but Floor's ceaseless giggling told him that at least she was having fun.
Good for her, he thought bitterly, taking a sharp turn.
His internal map of Corix was of no use down here so Rocket had no idea where he was going. He ran mindlessly, taking every turn he could in a desperate attempt to get away because Floor was fast. Even on all fours and with a lifetime of experience running away it was all Rocket could do to stay out of her reach. He didn't dare look back but he could tell from the growing clamour of her clattering legs that she was gaining on him.
The one advantage he did have was that he could change directions more easily, and didn't need to fold up his limbs to fit down some tunnels. Not much, but Rocket took what he could get.
He wasn't running completely blind either. As detrimental as his sense of smell was down here (and he knew it was better than Floor's) he still had ears and in the distance he could hear the sound of rushing water. He wasn't all that fond of water beyond it's function in washing things or keeping him alive (and even then he preferred beer) but he figured with her legs the only way to outrun Floor was to outswim her.
He really hoped he didn't hit a dead end before that…
Peter whirled back around with just as much dramatism. "Huh?"
"How can he be doing anything when he is dead?" demanded Drax.
"Why would he do that?"
"And can we please hurry up and avenge him?"
"How do you-"
"Maybe if you stopped asking I could answer," Gamora snapped, loudly enough to make Peter flinch. Drax crossed his arms over his chest and gave her the slightest of nods while Peter awkwardly gestured for her to continue.
"If either of you had bothered to ask anyone other than bartenders, you would know that Rocket has spent the last few hours bribing, blackmailing, or threatening the business of half the proprietors on this planet into telling anyone who asks for him that he is dead. It is painfully unsystematic, and falls apart at the slightest bit of scrutiny, but I believe this is Rocket's way of moving past any mistakes he's made in the past."
"By mistakes you mean-"
"For whatever reason," Gamora explained, knowing that the reason was most likely 'Rocket'. "There are undoubtedly people out there who would see him harmed."
Drax finally seemed to have cottoned on. "The furry fiend still lives?"
Gamora nodded. "I think we should still try and find him to make sure. And to drag him back to the ship so that we can leave." She sighed. "I've been seen now which means it's only a matter of time until-"
"You seek bounty hunter 89P13, da?"
As one, the three turned in the direction of the voice. Peter Quill had seen a lot of strange things since getting abducted by aliens (talking tree and cyborg raccoon weren't even top ten), so talking dog in a spacesuit didn't even surprise him.
"Nyet! I am telekinetic dog, transferring words directly from my brain to yours," explained the labrador, wagging her tail behind her.
Mindreading talking dog in a spacesuit was a bit more surprising.
"How do you know Rocket?" asked Gamora, who had seen way more strange things than Peter (talking tree, cyborg raccoon and talking dog in a spacesuit weren't even top fifty) and was familiar with telepaths.
"I am sure 89P13 talk endlessly about escape prison fifteen times?"
"Twenty-three now, actually," said the Guardians in unison.
"Cosmo and humongous jerkface work together on prison break number sixteen. We form bond of unbreakable trust while sharing cell together. When we leave I think as only talking animals in Galaxy of bipedal primates we is comrades forever." Here Cosmo's telepathically projected voice turned into a growl. "Nyet. Rocket betray me, call me 'bad dog' and borrow eighteen units he never pay back."
She must have read their thoughts, because her tone softened and she had the grace to look a bit embarassed. "Is less about amount and more that Cosmo expect better from friendship with fellow furry inmate. I know you are comrades. I see news on Xandar holochannel. Rocket is hero now and Cosmo is happy to help Zashtitnik Of The Cosmos find him!" Cosmo's face did that thing that was the dog equivalent of a smile. "If it's okay with you, I only want a ride off this planet after and to give 89P13 big bite on backstabbing backside."
The first time he'd seen Floor he'd been scared of her. He'd been scared of Lylla and Teefs too, but at least they had been in a separate cage. Floor had been right there with him, and Rocket had been terrified. Of course, it hadn't taken very long for him to realise that he'd been wrong about her. Floor had been kind and playful and earnest and happy.
It took hitting a dead end for Rocket to realise that she was still all of those things. And terrifying.
"Game over!" she cheered, turning the corner to find Rocket pressed up against the end of the tunnel. Buzzsaws whirling with menace, the rabbit slowed her pace to a crawl. "Me win!"
"Wait! Waitwaitwaitwaitwaitwait!" the raccoon half-pleaded, half-screeched as his mind scrambled for an escape route. Appealing to her better nature wasn't going to get him very far. He was pretty sure Sire wanted him alive but he reeeeeeeally didn't want to know what the saws were for. She obviously didn't remember him, but he knew her which meant there had to be something he could- "C-can we play again?"
A whisker away from his chest, the buzzsaw came to a halt.
"Again?" Floor repeated the question. Rocket held his breath as she pondered this, and breathed an immense sigh of relief as her face lit up. "Yes! Again! Again! More playtime!"
"J-just let me catch my breath, okay?"
"Okay!"
Sliding to the ground and laying his back against the wall that had so nearly been the death of him, Rocket did his best to just breathe, to calm his beating heart, to stop hyperventilating, to drone out the constant whirring of the buzzsaws.
"Me likes your mask."
That hurt. "Thanks."
"And your tail!"
That hurt more. "Th-thanks."
"P13 and L06 friends now?"
That hurt most of all.
"Forever," the raccoon sniffled, his muzzle quivering with emotion as his vision blurred. He screamed at himself to get a grip. Any second now he'd have to run or she'd end him. He had to focus. He had to escape. Now was not the time to sob like the pathetic little thing he was. He could do that later… Unfortunately, emotionalistics were never logical like that and tears began stubbornly rolling down his face.
"Forever," Floor repeated. She must have liked the sound of that because a moment later she was reaching out a leg to gently wipe the wetness from his eyes.
All things considered, letting Cosmo take a bite out of their raccoon was a fair to generous offer the team unanimously agreed on going through with. They'd have probably felt worse about it if he hadn't kept them waiting for hours and tricked two of them into thinking he was dead. Any and all remaining remorse had gone right out of the window when Quill had pointed out that Rocket would never have hesitated to make the same deal for their sakes.
So while Gamora went to clear things out with the hive-mind of Decepticons Drax had pissed off, Quill found himself heroically doubling back to the Milano to let the mind-reading Soviet dog catch the apparently-very distinctive scent of raccoon.
Weird, never really noticed it. Then again I was raised by space pirates with poor hygiene, my sense of smell is probably broken. And it really wouldn't surprise me if he is a stinky little-
"Is not that he smells bad," Cosmo interjected, having apparently been skimming through his surface thoughts. "It is just like he is always ceaselessly bragging- 'only one thing like him' so easy to find if you know what to look for."
"Okay."
"You smell infinitely worse."
"A little uncalled for, but again, raised by space pirates." Now that he thought about it why Rocket would be such a 'humongous jerkface' to Cosmo was starting to make a little more sense. Aside from the fact that Rocket was pretty much a dick to everyone, the raccoon was touchy about his personal space on the best of days (and that was putting it mildly- Drax had once made the mistake of trying to sort through the heap of junk Rocket hoarded, which had resulted in the raccoon being so genuinely distressed Groot had had to desperately talk him out of detonating his entire stock of homemade explosives right then and there) and likely wasn't fond of having his mind probed.
"He never complain when used for high stakes poker," Cosmo pointed out. "But da, that is one of many reasons Cosmo and 89P13 are not so friendly on terms."
"Well we're here." He gestured at the Milano as they clambered aboard. "Fairly certain he's already put his paws everywhere so it shouldn't be too hard to- Groot!" The tree looked up at him from where he was dragging his pot across the floor in the general direction of Rocket's junk collection. "You know you're not meant to be moving around so much."
"I am Groot!" the tree protested, as Quill picked up his pot and set him down on his usual spot on the table. He was gesturing so desperately that Peter felt compelled to follow his vine to where it was pointing.
"Oh you want his infoglass?"
"I am Groot!"
Quill still couldn't tell exactly what the tree was saying, but he knew Groot well enough by now to know that the noise had been affirmative. He handed the plant the tablet, and smiled as Groot immediately opened the painting app Rocket had installed (supposedly for Groot).
I am really nailing this childcare thing.
"I am not sure giving screen to child so young counts as good parenting."
Quill tried not to think about how annoying telekinesis was.
"Telepathy, actually." Cosmo got the irony a moment later and drooped in shame. "Sorry, is bad habit."
In true Star-Lord fashion Quill waved away the apology. "Don't worry about it. We're all good. You got the scent?"
"Da!" Cosmo barked, immediately perking up again, her tail wagging behind her. "Now find 89P13 in no time!"
The game started again.
Floor was nice enough to give him a thirty second head start. It wasn't much and it was all kinds of terrifying to hear her counting down how long he had left to live, but Rocket took what he could get.
Normally the raccoon would have considered hiding, but that was not an option- even if her antennae didn't feel vibrations in the air she would likely be able to hear the way his heart was drumming at his rib cage.
"Three! Two! One!" The distant sound of the buzzsaws starting up again made Rocket double his pace. "On my way!"
Despite the fact that Floor now thought of him as a friend, Rocket wasn't sure the same trick would work again if he ran into another dead end (and why the flark did a sewage system even have a dead end?) and he reeeeeeeally didn't want to think about what would happen if Floor ever got bored of this game. So he ran, turning whenever he could and hoping desperately he wasn't going around in circles.
He could hear rushing water and just like Floor's scuttling it was growing closer.
Rocket took a particularly sharp turn and suddenly he was slipping and then he was sliding and then he had lost all control of his movement and was screaming downwards at breakneck speed.
He raked his claws against the pipe's slick walls in a futile attempt at slowing his descent, lighting up the tunnel with the sparks of his desperation. Gravity and the gross greenish water that resided in all sewers tossed him about with the same care and affection life usually had for him- which was to say none at all. Just when he was beginning to wonder how this day could get any worse, the pipe came to an end and hurled him into a frothing, churning mass of water.
Rocket had just enough time to grab a lungful of air before he hit the surface.
It was ice cold, and dimly reminded him of the time he'd woken Quill up by connecting a hotel room's shower to the idiot's bed. He'd have to do it again sometime...
Well, you found your water idiot. Now what?
He managed to get his head above the surface and greedily swallowed the air. It was rank, and tasted more than anything like decay, but it was oxygen and Rocket took what he could get.
Deeply grateful that there were no giant orloni (or teenage mutant ninja turtles if Quill's knowledge of sewer systems held any value) the raccoon paddled towards dry land. He was also grateful that his cybernetics didn't malfunction when submerged in liquids (you would think that would be the standard across the Galaxy but more often than not, it wasn't). He managed to climb onto the pavement built for septic workers and rats alike, and shook himself dry but not clean (he would need to buy Gamora some more shampoo later, he was pretty sure it was going to take all of hers to wash the stink off of him) and promptly expressed his gratitude the only way he knew how.
"Flark this," he spat. "Flark my life. Flark everything."
Rocket's ear twitched as it processed the echoing sound of Floor's screams of excitement. His insides all but fell out as the same pipe he'd come through now shot Floor into the water. She was more graceful than him, her legs extending to their full length in mid-air. She didn't hit the surface so much as brush it and there came a soft thunk as her cybernetics hit the bottom.
"Best! Game! Ever!" Floor cheered, completely oblivious to the fact that her white fur had been stained a delicate green.
"Glad you're having fun," Rocket grimaced, once again considering his escape routes.
The rabbit giggled and took a step forwards.
Rocket felt and heard the soft electric crackle, and Floor's wide eyes told him she had too. She stared in confusion at her frozen leg and suddenly Rocket knew what was going to happen before it did.
"FLOOR!" he screamed, as the tide overpowered her meagre anchors and swept her away.
Without thinking the raccoon threw himself into the churning mass and paddled for dear life towards the small white rabbit that had been his very first cellmate. Floor was unable to scream as her mouthpiece malfunctioned and despite the best efforts of her organic limbs, and no doubt aided by the weight of her cybernetic ones, she sunk beneath the surface.
Rocket dived, his eyes screwed tightly shut as he followed the fading vibrations of her thrashing. His limbs were beginning to ache, his lungs were beginning to burn, and for one horrible moment Rocket was sure he was going to drown and Floor was going to drown and Quill and the others would never know what happened to him and the last thing he'd said to Gamora was that knives and swords both sucked and that was as shitty a 'goodbye' as they came and he hadn't gotten Groot the pot with flowers he'd promised-
And then his paw closed over a metal leg and it was just like that time he had grabbed Drax's hand on Xandar. All the power in the world rushed through him.
Rocket broke the surface, holding Floor above him with one arm and treading water with his remaining limbs. He swam back to the pavement, hauling himself and the rabbit to the safety of dry land with a strength he didn't know he had.
There was no time for relief. "Floor! Floor, you okay?" He checked her pulse, remembering stupidly that he wasn't sure what was normal for her. She was still breathing though, that was good. "You okay?"
There was a crackle of electricity that caused Rocket to yelp, and then Floor's voice returned to her. "P13... swimming… no… fun."
Before he knew what he was doing, the raccoon hugged her, chuckling even as fresh tears rolled down his face. As terrifying as she now was, and as much as it hurt that she only referred to him by a designation he loathed, Floor was still Floor. And it was so unbelievably good to see her again.
"This is Q12," Lylla's voice blared out from a comm unit attached to the rabbit's mouthpiece. "I managed to disarm him but P13 disabled my comm got away. I think he's gone into the sewers. I'm going in pursuit."
"P13 here!" Floor chimed in before Rocket could stop her. "Playing game with L06!"
And as she blared out their coordinates, the raccoon felt his heart break. Floor was still Floor and Lylla was still Lylla… and somewhere along the line he'd been cut out of the equation.
"Play again?" asked Floor, when she was finished, even though her limbs were still completely useless.
"Can't right now." Rocket swallowed and pulled away. There would be time for hugs later. Survival came first.
Footnote: Turns out the chapter I have most of the stuff written for wasn't this chapter, but the next chapter! The Floor sewer chase took a lot more words than I expected so I ended up splitting it again. And also I ended up introducing Cosmo earlier than I expected because it ended up being convenient to do so here.
Moreso than with Lylla, Rocket is able to connect with Floor because she's basically exactly the same as she used to be- just with buzzsaws. Lylla's gone through a bunch of stuff between the last time he saw her and the present so while she's still the same 'person', she's a lot more different than Rocket remembers her to be. (So kinda like Vol 1/2 Gamora vs Vol 3 Gamora basically)
Mini-headcanon but yeah I think Rocket and Cosmo knew each other before any of the exciting Guardians stuff happened (and before Cosmo ended up in the Collector's clutches)- that growl-off in Vol 1 was personal.
Sorry if I kept y'all waiting or anything, I'm gonna try and be frequent with my updates for as long as I can (hopefully something every Saturday/Sundayish) so that means not rushing out the chapters and whatnot. Thanks btw for all the kudos and comments- they make me feel all warm and fuzzy. 3
