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“Rocket.”
He perked up at the sound of his name, his ears standing at attention as his back straightened at the sight of her; her round black eyes and her blue skin, somehow a rare sight on his doorway but a cherished sight nonetheless.
Sight, that’s right—everything had been blurry since then. Like he knew time passed and then in a single blink of an eye—not at all.
Groot only grew larger. His back was strewn with vines, leaves all green and full of sunlight. Not a single one of them held even a tinge of yellow in them—the way his birth father always had; an outer space windowless prison does something to a plant, Rocket used to say to himself. Now Groot doesn’t wilt. Doesn’t miss his nutrients. Doesn’t spare his body of its natural armor out of the desperate need to feed himself. Rocket recalled the days when he was only a child. Of course, he’d come to terms with the fact that he was Groot’s father a long time ago. But he hopes he did right by Groot, and the thought drifts him to sleep some days.
Kraglin got a less obnoxious fin for Yondu’s arrow. It was a lot more like the one Nebula had shot right out of Yondu’s head—sleek and barely noticeable. Adam got his own unit recently, but before then he was living with some of the children they’d saved on the High Evolutionary’s ship that day. He’d been installing plants outside his window and getting pet supplies for the puppy thing he’d been carrying around aimlessly.
And the baby raccoons had their own room to play. Sleep. Run. Walk. Cry. Eat. Drink. Rocket checks up on them every now and then, some of them getting a lot fatter than others. He pretends he doesn’t care so they wouldn’t cry but he wonders if some of them are starving themselves more than others.
“Nebula,” he said back, scratching the underside of his jaw as he leaned on the table.
“It’s … been a while.” Nebula strolled in, taking her time with the windows and the furniture and the fridges just opposite the entrance.
“How’ve you been?”
That was the question.
The question had been ringing in his ears since that day.
That stupid day.
He’d almost flinched when it bared its teeth at him, growling with saliva dripping down its chin much like how he used to.
His muzzle lifted at the thought. Sleep was harder to come by now that when he passed by Mantis’s bunk, he can only remember how it felt like to fall flat unconscious in seconds. Groot was all grown up and doing community work, and Rocket wouldn’t have him any other way. Whenever Rocket plays a song on the zune to forget, he remembers all over again.
But this whole unit …
The whole unit was only his.
And that was the first time he’d thought that and felt his ribcage drop at the weight of his own beating heart.
“Message received,” Nebula muttered airily when Rocket didn’t reply.
“I don’t know how to tell you the truth without worryin’ you,” Rocket blurted before she could pull any sort of face that would usually make him feel bad.
“If I didn’t want to be worried, I wouldn’t have asked,” Nebula said sternly as she finally turned to face Rocket. “So?”
Rocket only sighed. He only sighed because that’s all the moment allowed him; he couldn’t betray them. Even his body wouldn’t allow it, not when everyone was where they needed to be.
But she was looking at him. She had that look in her eye—a look only Rocket’s been able to decipher since the snap that left the both of them broken and still a little cracked. Five years, five whole years and now for a split second, Rocket wonders if it’s the same thing again but of course it wasn’t because they’re alive and living their lives out there, somewhere—
“You miss them,” Nebula said.
Her head was tilted and she had taken a seat on the far side of the room where the couch had been.
“Of course I miss them,” Rocket repeated, a lot more bolder than he thought he would. His voice was solid, loud, sturdy. Not nearly as shaky or as small as he had been.
But they both knew.
They both knew it by now, the slow but definite beating of Rocket’s heart, how every five seconds was another sigh. Another day, and then another nightmare, and then another thirty minutes of sleep and maybe, just maybe, the night becomes bearable. And then it’s another day.
“You know,” Nebula began with a huff, her gaze moving down to the floor.
“Peter wants you to visit.”
Rocket turned to Nebula, damn—he didn’t even remember turning away or slouching, but he had been again before whatever just happened. It was like a spark had been struck in the metal gap of his artificially expanded ribcage.
“Why?” … was all he had in him.
Nebula could only frown at him, her eyes narrowing as she briefly looked him up and down, fingers intertwined loosely.
“Does it really matter?” Nebula asked.
I know it matters, Rocket could almost hear a more gentle voice of hers blowing past his ears like a companion of the wind.
But does it really?
In some alternate universe, in some better universe, where she hadn’t been so painfully much like him, maybe she would have asked that way.
Rocket opened his mouth, but Nebula stood up abruptly and began walking back to the door. “You’ll go.”
“I haven’t said anything—”
“You don’t have to.” She turned back to him. “You will go.”
Rocket let out a breath he’d been withholding. It wasn’t a sigh, he’s had far too many of those to know the difference.
His lips pulled themselves together without any warning.
“Okay,” he said.
He saw Nebula swallow, her chin lifting to get the lump down her gullet.
“Rocket.”
“Mm?”
“They know.”
His brows furrowed, his arms pulling closer as they crossed over themselves.
“What?”
“You don’t have to pretend,” Nebula said. She was still leaning against the doorframe, her head tilting to press against it.
Rocket could only scoff through the small gap in his teeth.
“That bad, huh?” She put a foot forward, then another, then another, like she was walking a tightrope.
“Let’s not, Nebs.” Rocket shook his head and got off the table, turning to retire upstairs where his room was.
There was a toothpick where his heart stood, meaning it was jammed right between—it was called the septum. The very thick wall that separate the right side from the left. Meaning if it moves, all the chambers move and Nebula knew her way to that very spot. It’s only natural when it’s been planted there from all the years they spent together during the snap. Rocket wondered if she’d forgotten sometimes, that it was there, that she could move it and position wherever she wanted and he would only watch because that was all he could do. That was all he could do when she made her way all the way in there, inside the hideous cavities of his even more hideous body.
“Drax will go with you,” Nebula added quickly before Rocket could take a step on the ladder.
He doesn’t have to look at her to know, because he can hear the way her lips, her voice hesitates. Even she was a victim of it.
“He misses you too.”
But maybe you don’t have to be, the wind came by again, refreshing as it is oh so ever exposing.
And to that, Rocket’s jaw only wound up even more, pressing so firmly against the upper row of his teeth.
“It’ll last a week and we’ll all be dispersed again,” Rocket mumbled through his teeth.
Fuck, it was blowing past his teeth like a whisper.
“Rocket,” Nebula repeated, almost like the name was to wrap her hands around his arms to ground him to the floor, to make sure he doesn’t leave sooner than he should have like he did almost all his life.
And he did feel it, her hands gripping him in the form of a toothpick.
And yet they were feet apart.
“Would you really rather spend your time here? Sitting and waiting for Groot to come home?”
“Yeah, he tells me how his day’s been and I care for five seconds,” Rocket replied, and the voice that made it out of him didn’t feel like him—it felt like it came from the bottom of a pile of automated responses. He recognizes situations like these and then responds the way he naturally would.
Except it escaped him this time, and he didn’t know where his brain went.
“You can’t go down without a fight, can you?” Nebula sighed.
“I—”
He stopped himself, swallowing everything he was going to say.
Was it just another automation? Just another bomb to fill the room with smoke and leave everyone just a little bit more like him?
What for?
He breathed out, his chest contracting as he did so.
“I’m …”
His throat was trembling. He was biting his tongue so he wouldn’t swallow it down too.
“I’m sorry.”
Nebula just stood there, still and unblinking as those mirrors for eyes pried at the edges of his eyelids to keep his eyes on her at all times. He saw himself. He saw himself in her eyes, his rounded reflection—and he was breathing.
There was something terrifying about looking at your own reflection after a long while of avoiding mirrors.
“Lower your weapons.” Nebula jerked her head gently in Rocket’s direction. “You’ll feel better by the morning.”
Rocket could only lower his head as Nebula walked out, sparing him one last glance through the glass before disappearing for good.
And just then, the tubes in Rocket’s lungs untwisted, and he deflated so far his chest was half the size it originally was when she had first entered.
His muzzle was so subtly gasping for air.
He pressed his palms into his eyes, not caring too much about how he might collapse any moment.
The little thing about what Nebula had said was a suffocating worm working its way through Rocket’s little head.
He knew, of course. He wasn’t an idiot and maybe a few years ago, he would have scoffed and left a long time ago.
But how does one lower their weapons when it was the one thing that kept them safe?
“I am Groot!”
He peeked through, and of course Groot had been standing there with that wide-eyed grin of his that Rocket wished came from him.
“Good news, Rocket!” He beamed.
“What is it?”
“I got a message from Peter!” Groot gestured for Rocket to come out.
And just then, Rocket saw stars.
Them.
That’s how.
“Groot …”
You look at them, wide-eyed, jumping and absolutely ecstatic to see you. You.
The you standing at the porch, the you who realizes how long it had been since you’ve gotten a hug.
“I’ve been thinkin’ …”
And then,
Just like that,
“Do you wanna go to Terra?”
Your arms give way.