and I thought I was mistaken and I thought I heard you speak

[ceptme]

After everything that's happened, it's jarring to come back to Berhert and see it just the way they'd left it.

Or well...just the way he'd left it anyway. The assorted Ravager corpses already half stripped of meat by the local wildlife probably come as an unpleasant surprise to Quill, who'd been long gone on hell's family reunion by then. The familiar reek of death hangs heavily in the air around the crash site. There's something a touch unnerving about seeing those familiar red leathers and flame patches in the cold light of day, caught in traps he set. He wonders how many of them he fought beside in the skies over Xandar. How many faces he'd recognise if he let himself stop for long enough to look.

He stands in silence with Quill, face turned towards the sky as the looming shadow of the ship recedes into the distance with a vast, shuddering thrum of engines. If he's honest with himself, he's not enjoying the experience of being left behind on Berhert without a ride again. But the there's no helping it. The ship needs repairs of her own, and ones lengthier and more involved than what it'll take to get the Milano up and running again. None of them had been entirely happy with the thought of parting ways again so soon after everything that happened, but the fact of the matter is, they need the Milano. In the time it'll take their newly-acquired flagship to limp to the nearest friendly post for repairs, they'll already have the Milano spaceworthy, and probably beat the others there.

The clearing they've set down in - the most convenient one large enough for the bulk of the bigger ship - is a fair walk from the crash site, through a similarly gruesome tableau. Rocket's grown numb to things that'd turn anyone's stomach, but eau de rotting corpse still isn't his first choice. He's holding onto the thought that the smell hopefully won't be as bad in the area right around the Milano; he'd deliberately kept the fight away from the ship, mindful that Groot was in no fit state to be trying to back him up.

He's still pretty sure he could have come out on top of that little scuffle if it hadn't been for Yondu's damn arrow, but if there's a time and a place to bring that up, this certainly isn't it.

He wrinkles his nose at a particularly well-fried corpse and jerks his head toward the treeline. "C'mon," he says, not looking up at Quill. "We got a long way to go. Better get moving if we wanna be set up at the crash site before it gets dark."