At lot has happened over the last few months, the last few weeks. There's a chance that he hasn't fully processed all of it yet. Sometimes, mostly in those dark quiet moments shivering in sweat damp sheets after he's been shocked awake from nightmares, of sharp thorns of light cutting through him or Yondu floating just out of arms reach struggling to breathe, he can almost convince himself that all of it was just one big bad dream.
Almost, because there's no lie that'll quiet the guilt gnawing up through the bottom of his stomach to sit like acid at the base of his throat, tightening up like a vice every time he tries to swallow around it. There's no amount of imagination that can trick his brain into seeing the sleek lines of the Milano in the steel beams above his bed or believable reassurances that'll promise him he could still find the comm frequencies to a Ravager ship that no longer exists.
He knows it's his fault, is the thing. No one will say it, not even if anyone is thinking it. They're all a dozen different breeds of asshole but even they have lines they won't cross with their own team, which whatever is left of this ragtag family they accidentally ended up knee deep in. But Peter doesn't need them to tell him what he already knows: if he hadn't been so desperate to swallow Ego's hook, none of this would have ever happened.
Fuck, or at least most of it. Peter hasn't been able to bring himself to ask Kraglin what happened when the man seems half ready to snap under whatever miserable guilt of his own that he's been shouldering since they pulled Peter into the ship still clutching Yondu's body, but the list of reasons a captain and his first mate show up without the rest of their crew isn't very long. It was either an attack or a mutiny, and Peter is pretty sure which one put the haunted look in Kraglin's eyes.
Ego is on him, though, and there's no two ways about that. If he'd taken a minute to just...see what was in front of him, if he just tried to look through all the bullshit instead of chasing some 8 year old's dream of what a father was suppose to look like he might still have one.
Hindsight is funny like that, he guesses, and no amount of grief is ever going to undo all the mistakes he made to get where he's standing.
Which is also, hilariously enough, the last fucking place in the galaxy he actually wants to be standing even if it means getting the Milano back.
He'd tried to steel himself for coming back to Berhert. On the surface, it honestly isn't the worst place in the world they could have picked for an emergency crash landing. It's quiet and remote with no immediate or pressing threat of savage wildlife or bloodthirsty locals to put a hitch in their plans of patching the Milano enough to get her back in the air, and if the worse thing he had to deal with was memories of Ego crawling their way up under his skin, well, hell, he's definitely survived worse.
And then sees the bodies.
Correction: smells the bodies.
The scent of decaying bodies, of death, isn't something you can scrub out of your senses once it sets in the first time and it feels like they hit a fucking wall of it the minute they come out of the airlock. It takes longer, through those first few unsteady twists of his stomach and the knee jerk instinct to recoil away from it, to understand exactly what it is that Peter is looking at and all at once the ground seems to drop right out from under him.
He never asked what happened here after they left with Ego, or even how Rocket and Groot ended up with Yondu in the first place. With everything that had been going on the only thing that Peter could manage at the time was relief that they were all okay, that they were together. He never stopped to ask what it had to have taken for them all to get that far.
He's been watching Rocket cannibalize anything he can get his hands on to make weapons for too long to be able to miss his handy work in the traps dotted around the fallen bodies, sitting innocently between glimpses of torn red leathers and strips of what had once been people. His people.
Ravagers come and go, sometimes, either because they stepped off at some port and decided to disappear or because they'd fucked up bad enough to have their flames stripped from them or because they took a hit they couldn't get back up from, but...he knew most of them. Grew up among them and took his licks from them and learned what they'd teach him and, yeah, some of them were real pieces of work. Some of them were the kind of assholes he stayed wary around even with the threat of Yondu's wrath making people think twice about messing with him too much.
But for better or worse, they were the only family he ever had out here and now--
He almost jumps when Rocket's voice breaks through the white noise hum building in his head, dragging his eyes up from the bodies ripped apart around them to find the hard lines of Rocket's face. He doesn't think it's just a coincidence that Rocket seems to be looking anywhere but at him. Peter doesn't think he could call him on it even if he wanted to when he isn't sure he can trust his own voice.
"Yeah." It's a thin rasp of a thing, almost getting caught on something jagged lining his throat, and it takes just about everything in him not to look back down and try to but names to whatever dead-eyed faces might be intact enough to recognize. "Yeah, let's go."
It's harder to get his feet moving again than he'd like to admit, forcing one in front of the other and trying to keep his mind as blank as possible before anything ugly roots too deep(how can you just turn your back on them, they were your fucking family--). He knows they got a long trek in front of them before they can make camp. The last thing they need is to be held up right now over shit no one can change.
The body count only racks up as they walk, the serene beautiful of the dense forest marred by bodies dropped like ragdolls, mangled by whatever animals found them or else burnt up or bloody from whatever trap Rocket caught them in, and while it doesn't exactly get easier to breathe around the tight knot in his chest, cinching tighter with every body they pass, he does feel a little less likely to empty his stomach into the nearest bush if he opens his mouth too wide.
He swallows hard, cutting a sideways look at Rocket, and doesn't even know if he wants an answer when he asks, "what the hell happened?"
no subject
Almost, because there's no lie that'll quiet the guilt gnawing up through the bottom of his stomach to sit like acid at the base of his throat, tightening up like a vice every time he tries to swallow around it. There's no amount of imagination that can trick his brain into seeing the sleek lines of the Milano in the steel beams above his bed or believable reassurances that'll promise him he could still find the comm frequencies to a Ravager ship that no longer exists.
He knows it's his fault, is the thing. No one will say it, not even if anyone is thinking it. They're all a dozen different breeds of asshole but even they have lines they won't cross with their own team, which whatever is left of this ragtag family they accidentally ended up knee deep in. But Peter doesn't need them to tell him what he already knows: if he hadn't been so desperate to swallow Ego's hook, none of this would have ever happened.
Fuck, or at least most of it. Peter hasn't been able to bring himself to ask Kraglin what happened when the man seems half ready to snap under whatever miserable guilt of his own that he's been shouldering since they pulled Peter into the ship still clutching Yondu's body, but the list of reasons a captain and his first mate show up without the rest of their crew isn't very long. It was either an attack or a mutiny, and Peter is pretty sure which one put the haunted look in Kraglin's eyes.
Ego is on him, though, and there's no two ways about that. If he'd taken a minute to just...see what was in front of him, if he just tried to look through all the bullshit instead of chasing some 8 year old's dream of what a father was suppose to look like he might still have one.
Hindsight is funny like that, he guesses, and no amount of grief is ever going to undo all the mistakes he made to get where he's standing.
Which is also, hilariously enough, the last fucking place in the galaxy he actually wants to be standing even if it means getting the Milano back.
He'd tried to steel himself for coming back to Berhert. On the surface, it honestly isn't the worst place in the world they could have picked for an emergency crash landing. It's quiet and remote with no immediate or pressing threat of savage wildlife or bloodthirsty locals to put a hitch in their plans of patching the Milano enough to get her back in the air, and if the worse thing he had to deal with was memories of Ego crawling their way up under his skin, well, hell, he's definitely survived worse.
And then sees the bodies.
Correction: smells the bodies.
The scent of decaying bodies, of death, isn't something you can scrub out of your senses once it sets in the first time and it feels like they hit a fucking wall of it the minute they come out of the airlock. It takes longer, through those first few unsteady twists of his stomach and the knee jerk instinct to recoil away from it, to understand exactly what it is that Peter is looking at and all at once the ground seems to drop right out from under him.
He never asked what happened here after they left with Ego, or even how Rocket and Groot ended up with Yondu in the first place. With everything that had been going on the only thing that Peter could manage at the time was relief that they were all okay, that they were together. He never stopped to ask what it had to have taken for them all to get that far.
He's been watching Rocket cannibalize anything he can get his hands on to make weapons for too long to be able to miss his handy work in the traps dotted around the fallen bodies, sitting innocently between glimpses of torn red leathers and strips of what had once been people. His people.
Ravagers come and go, sometimes, either because they stepped off at some port and decided to disappear or because they'd fucked up bad enough to have their flames stripped from them or because they took a hit they couldn't get back up from, but...he knew most of them. Grew up among them and took his licks from them and learned what they'd teach him and, yeah, some of them were real pieces of work. Some of them were the kind of assholes he stayed wary around even with the threat of Yondu's wrath making people think twice about messing with him too much.
But for better or worse, they were the only family he ever had out here and now--
He almost jumps when Rocket's voice breaks through the white noise hum building in his head, dragging his eyes up from the bodies ripped apart around them to find the hard lines of Rocket's face. He doesn't think it's just a coincidence that Rocket seems to be looking anywhere but at him. Peter doesn't think he could call him on it even if he wanted to when he isn't sure he can trust his own voice.
"Yeah." It's a thin rasp of a thing, almost getting caught on something jagged lining his throat, and it takes just about everything in him not to look back down and try to but names to whatever dead-eyed faces might be intact enough to recognize. "Yeah, let's go."
It's harder to get his feet moving again than he'd like to admit, forcing one in front of the other and trying to keep his mind as blank as possible before anything ugly roots too deep(how can you just turn your back on them, they were your fucking family--). He knows they got a long trek in front of them before they can make camp. The last thing they need is to be held up right now over shit no one can change.
The body count only racks up as they walk, the serene beautiful of the dense forest marred by bodies dropped like ragdolls, mangled by whatever animals found them or else burnt up or bloody from whatever trap Rocket caught them in, and while it doesn't exactly get easier to breathe around the tight knot in his chest, cinching tighter with every body they pass, he does feel a little less likely to empty his stomach into the nearest bush if he opens his mouth too wide.
He swallows hard, cutting a sideways look at Rocket, and doesn't even know if he wants an answer when he asks, "what the hell happened?"