GOTG fic: (I Hope That You See) Right Through My Walls (1/1)
Title: (I Hope That You See) Right Through My Walls
Disclaimer: Not mine.
A/N: Set post GOTG2. Unbeta’ed. Fills my hiding injury or illness in hc_bingo. Title taken from a Christina Perri song.
Summary: Peter’s fine, and everyone is hovering around, waiting for him to shatter into a thousand little pieces. He can’t talk them out of it, so he tries to keep life going as normal to prove them wrong. For a month or so, he does pretty well. But then, what does he go and do? He shatters into a thousand little pieces. Because of course he did.
-o-
So, apparently, everyone thinks that Peter’s going to be pretty messed up.
Honestly, he’s not sure what the big deal was.
Obviously, yes, he did find and proceed to kill his long lost father. It was a bit of a buzzkill since he’d literally spent his whole life pining after the man, making him out to be David Hasselhoff in his head. And finding out that your dad is actually a Celestial being is hard. And discovering that he’s a maniac is hard still. But it actually made things easier. It’s not as hard to kill your day when you’ve never met him before, and it’s less painful hardly knowing your dad when he turns out to be a crazy person with delusions of taking of the galaxy.
So, when you broke it all down, Peter’s really fine with that the fact.
Now, yes, Yondu is a different story. He’s a harder story, and Peter, admittedly, has struggled with it. Because, you see, hindsight’s always 20/20, and it’s easy to wax nostalgic about the old blue idiot when he goes and dies on Peter’s behalf. But that’s after a lifetime of terrorizing Peter and telling him that he’s going to eat him. Yondu taught him everything he knows, including how to be completely insecure in his own damn skin. It’s a hell of a thing, turning an enemy into your hero, but Peter’s handled the transition pretty damn well, if he says so himself.
Then, naturally, there’s everything else. Okay, so Peter had had Celestial powers for like .2 seconds, and for that period of time, he had actually been the strongest person on the team. As quickly as he’d embraced that power, he’d gotten rid of it forever, and it’s a loss he feels inside himself very palpably because damn it, he’d had a connection to the light. The light, whatever the hell sort of abstract reality that is.
Or was.
And fine, Peter’s not sure who he is or what the hell he’s doing, but he never has. Why should now be any different?
Peter’s fine, and everyone is hovering around, waiting for him to shatter into a thousand little pieces. He can’t talk them out of it, so he tries to keep life going as normal to prove them wrong.
For a month or so, he does pretty well.
But then, what does he go and do?
He shatters into a thousand little pieces.
Because of course he did.
-o-
It starts much less dramatically, though.
In fact, it starts with a case of the sniffles.
Now, Peter chalks this up to whatever the hell Rocket has modified in the ventilation system. They may have had a brief amount of nuclear exposure during one of Rocket’s less safe bomb-making sessions, and the whole thing had been flushed, and Peter’s not sure that it’s really reticulated correctly since then. Plus, he had to spend a few hours doing a space walk to fix damage to the rear nacells because Drax had decided to invent a game called Space Ball, which basically just involved throwing heavy objects against the hull to see what would happen.
With all that, Peter’s not exactly been sleeping, and since he’s been keeping himself with coffee and basically all sorts of denial, it’s no surprise that he’s run down.
“You’re sick,” Gamora announces at the breakfast table.
Peter makes a face, wrinkling his nose. “I’m not sick.”
Mantis blinks, tilting her head curiously. “It is funny,” she says. “I can easily distinguish lies from truths with nothing more than a glance.”
“So you know I’m telling the truth!” Peter insists.
“Oh, no,” she says. “You are lying.”
Peter groans, pouring himself another cup of coffee. “It’s nothing.”
“You’re leaking like a damn sieve over there,” Rocket says. “It’s disgusting.”
“It’s a runny nose,” Peter says.
“That’s what you always used to say,” Kraglin chimes in. Kraglin has been a super helpful addition to the crew. He’s the only idiot around here who follows orders, and he’s actually the type who picks up after everyone else so things are cleaner than ever. He’s also annoyingly truthful. “Right before you went and got sick.”
“He does have a weak immune system,” Drax says. He looks at Peter very earnestly. “I am continually surprised that you are not dead.”
Peter smiles with a murderous undertone. “Thanks.”
“Seriously,” Gamora interjects over the growing melee over Peter’s health. “You should go take it easy.”
“We haven’t got a job lined up yet,” Peter reminds them. “We’ve been taking it easy for the past month.”
“Perfect,” Gamora says, with a prim smile as she drags him up by the arm. “Then you won’t be missing anything by getting some extra rest.”
-o-
Peter pisses and moans the whole way back to his quarters, but Gamora actually tucks him in. When he sneezes, she snuggles close.
Suddenly, lying down doesn’t seem so bad.
“There,” she murmurs, pressing a kiss to his forehead. “And when you get better, we can do even more.”
“I’m not sick,” Peter protests.
She gives him a knowing smile as she makes her way to the door. “But you’re not strong enough for what I have planned.”
Peter’s mouth falls open.
She winks and turns off the light.
Well, damn.
-o-
Peter’s fine, but the sleep really does feel good.
At least, until he wakes up in a cold sweat thinking that his connection to the light was still real and he had inadvertently tried to take over the universe.
Again.
Panting in the dim light of his quarters, he tries to get his bearings and ground himself again.
It’s a dream, a dream. It’s not real.
He sneezes, following up with a cough.
Flopping back to his pillow, he throws his arm over his face.
“I’m just fine,” he croaks, like it matters.
He groans.
He really wishes it mattered.
-o-
The sneezing, despite his best efforts and most pronounced denials, turns into coughing.
Coughing, though, is really an anticlimactic way of describing it. It’s more than a hack, even. It’s a deep, body shaking motion that threatens to shake his lungs out of his chest. It’s a wet thing, too. It seems to make his very blood tremble, and the amount of fluid that he brings up actually chokes him.
Which makes him swallow it down.
And the whole process starts again.
It probably wouldn’t have been so bad if Peter wasn’t so set on pretending like it wasn’t happening. Because coughing is more than sneezing. If he’s coughing, then this is a cold. If this is a cold, then he’s sick. If he’s sick, then he’s some stupid pathetic mortal who literally gets sick when they’re floating around space doing absolutely nothing.
Why are they doing nothing?
Because everyone is apparently worried about how he’s coping with, you know, patricide and suicide and becoming mortal when you didn’t even realize you were immortal. And whatever.
Peter’s fine with that.
And he’s fine with his sneeze and his not-cough.
He thinks he’s pulling it off, too. He makes it through a whole shift without coughing on anyone, and he saves his coughing fits for Drax’s bathroom breaks. Those things are so horribly loud that there’s no way anyone’s listening for Peter’s mucous fueled coughs.
Then, Rocket is an asshole.
True, Rocket is always an asshole, but Peter feels like crap and his patience for assholery is lower than usual.
“Here,” Rocket says, throwing a small bottle at him.
Peter tries to catch it; it falls to the ground. Holding back a grimace, Peter bends over to pick it up and tries not to cry at how bad it makes his head feel. “What’s this?”
“Cough syrup,” he says. “My own personal concoction.”
Peter makes a face and throws it back.
Rocket, naturally, catches it.
“I’m not sick,” Peter says with a glower. “And even if I was, then I wouldn’t want your jury-rigged solution.”
“Hey, medicine’s not so unlike mixing chemicals for a bomb,” Rocket says.
“So you’re going to explode my lungs?” Peter asks, incredulous.
Rocket rolls his eyes. “Now’s not the time to be as literal as Drax,” he says. “Just take the stuff, Quill. I made it especially for you.”
“When?” Peter asks, folding his arms over his chest.
“When you were hacking in your room while Drax was on the toilet,” Rocket says.
“I was taking a nap!” Peter lies.
“No one can sleep through Drax,” Rocket says.
“I’m fine,” Peter replies.
Rocket shrugs, finally pocketing the bottle. “I guess,” he says. “They’re your lungs, Quill.”
Peter is a little too sulky. But whatever. “They are!” he says petulantly. “And they’re just fine, thank you very much.”
-o-
Fine, in Peter’s experience, is relative.
It’s also, he decides, completely pointless.
His dad died -- both of them -- but he’s fine.
He’s coughing so hard that he coughs up blood -- but he’s completely fine.
It’s not even a lot of blood, and it’s not even that often, and really, who hasn’t coughed up a little blood from time to time?
In addition to the coughing, he thinks it’s also vaguely possible that he’s got a fever.
And that he’s partially delusional at the moment.
That would explain, at any rate, why the stars were grouping in constellations of Askavarian strippers, who seemed to be rocking in time with a very weird rendition of Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer.
“Quill,” Drax says.
Peter blinks, looking away. His head spins as he tries to focus on Drax, who has someone managed to stand right behind him without Peter being remotely aware he was there.
This might be because of the illness he doesn’t have, but Drax does this shit all the time.
That much, at least, isn’t weird.
“You should rest,” Drax continues.
Peter realizes quite belatedly that he’s been trying to process Drax’s simple greeting for upwards of a minute. “What?” is the only reply he can come up with in the interim.
“You need to rest,” Drax says. “Your shift is over.”
Dumbly, Peter looks back at the window. The stars are done dancing now, and it occurs to him he’s done absolutely nothing for the past three hours on his shift.
“You look horrible,” Drax announces.
Peter cranes his neck back to look at him. “You sound like you care.”
“And you sound contagious,” Drax says. “I do not wish to be exposed to your lesser germs.”
It’s not intended to be an accusation of anything, because this is Drax, but Peter can’t help but be offended. “I’m not contagious.”
“Oh,” Drax says, looking relieved. “So you know what illness you have? Is it a parasite?”
“I don’t have a parasite!” Peter growls. “And I’m not sick!”
Drax seems to seriously consider this. He has to, because he’s literal. He’s learned some give in take in the few months they’ve been together, but he’s pretty crappy at it.
That’s okay, Peter’s crappy at everything.
It’s nice for the others to have weaknesses every now and then.
“You seem sick,” Drax says skeptically.
“Well, I’m not,” Peter croaks with increasing levels of idiotic defiance. “I’m fine enough to sit here for your shift, too.”
Drax tilts his head. “Really?”
“Of course!” Peter says.
“Excellent!” Drax says, patting him on the shoulder. “I would appreciate more time for sharpening my knives!”
Peter could say that’s not what he meant, but he’s pretty sure if he opens his mouth, he’s going to sneeze and then cough and then choke and then cry because everything hurts so damn much.
Instead, he sits there, staring stupidly at his hands for a moment before looking back up at the screen. It takes a moment, but the Askavarians come back and Peter’s night goes on.
-o-
Then, he starts to cough so hard that he can’t breathe.
To be fair, this much is hard to hide, but Peter’s more resilient than he looks.
Not really, of course. He’s fragile and prone to sickness and emotionally he’s all over the map.
What Peter means to say is that he’s really good at faking it.
Most of the time, that means cracking a lewd joke and telling lies.
In this case, it means simply trying not to speak, move, smile or basically inhale.
He manages this with surprising grace, if he does say so himself, and he’s managed not to excuse himself for a ten minute fit of coughing that leaves him light headed, gasping and as blue as Yondu.
Until he sits down for lunch.
And Mantis and Kraglin join him.
This wouldn’t be so unusual except that Peter’s purposefully planned not to eat around people. In fact, it’s almost mid afternoon and he knows for a fact that everyone else has eaten and should be doing something productive.
For Mantis and Kraglin, Peter’s newest recruits, that something productive apparently involved him.
Of course it did.
He’s the weakest member of the team, and definitely not the brightest, and they need him.
“I just wasn’t sure, you know,” Kraglin is explaining. “I know how Yondu used to do it, and I know that’s how we used to do it, but then I remembered that this was your own ship and you always were sort of a pain in the ass, and I didn’t want to stock your cargo bay in the way that you didn’t want it to be stacked. And I mean, what if you needed something? How would you find it?”
Kraglin has been going on about this for, no joke, ten minutes. It’s been basically a nonstop monologue, and it’s been going on so long that Peter actually has no idea what he’s talking about.
At his side, Mantis is nodding earnestly. “I tried to help, but as soon as I touched him, his confusion was too pronounced,” she says. She looks shy. “We were unable to make a decision.”
Peter honestly doesn’t care. Or, if he does care, he doesn’t really remember that he cares. Or he doesn’t remember how to care.
At any rate: the caring, it isn’t happening.
He’s only aware that he’s staring when Kraglin stares back.
“Um, Pete?” Kraglin asks. “You okay there?”
Peter blinks and startles in a way that he hopes doesn’t look entirely pathetic.
(It does, though. He knows it does.)
“I’m fine,” Peter says.
“You do not look completely fine,” Mantis says.
Peter groans, and the sound is wet and garbled and it hurts. “How many times do I have to tell you--”
He’s starting to lose his temper, which isn’t good.
Because when he loses his temper, he loses control.
Not of his emotions.
Of his whole damn body.
He coughs violently, and pain stabs through his chest. It’s all he can do to squelched it, and it hurts so much to swallow back the fit that tears spring to his eyes.
Fine is also, apparently, sheer force of will.
He raises his eyes defiantly to Kraglin and Mantis again. “I’m fine.”
All the lies Peter’s told in his life, that one doesn’t seem so bad.
-o-
Not so bad, but probably the most ridiculously ostentatious.
Because seriously, Peter’s not fine.
The coughing fits are becoming frequently, and the congestion in his lungs is getting so pronounced that every breath actually hurts.
A lot.
Peter’s actually fairly certain that his lungs are trying to shut down all together, because what the hell.
What the hell.
He agrees to take time in his quarters, but only if it’s his turn to hang out with Groot. Groot’s growing, but he’s also gotten lost by crawling through the conduit system and jumping into the engine corp, so they generally don’t let him roam free.
Peter thinks that watching Groot has to be easier than doing his duties. After all, all he has to do is lock the two of them in the room and do his best not to pass out.
Besides, Baby Groot can be kind of fun now. He’s the only one with a real appreciation for Peter’s taste in music, and the thought of zoning out to some good tunes sounds pretty good to Peter.
Then, of course, his Zune ups and dies.
Groot looks up at him in utter dismay.
Peter fumbles with it, and curses when he sees the low battery sign. He’s not sure when he last charged it; shit, he’s not sure what day it even is now.
“Just a second,” he says, bracing himself as he tries to get to his feet. “I just need to get the charger and we’ll have the tunes back in no time.”
On the bed, Groot watches him expectantly.
Peter falters, but he grits his teeth and pushes himself the rest of the way up.
With his back to Groot, he’s sort of thankful the little tree can’t see how the blood drains out of his face or how he thinks he might pass out.
He blinks a few times, and realizes, wait, he is going to pass out.
Faltering, he reaches out to brace himself but he comes up empty. His vision is swimming and his equilibrium is shot to hell and he can’t breathe and he can’t think.
From the bed, Groot is calling for him, “I AM GROOT!”
The sound is small and distant and so full of concern.
Peter tries to say that he’s fine.
But he’s too busy falling to the floor.
Funny, all this time he’s been trying to prove himself.
And all he’s proven is how stupid and weak he really is.
Shit, he thinks, as he hits the ground.
Shit.
Peter’s way more messed up than he realized.
-o-
It’s okay, though.
His team’s got it under control.
They lift him up, drag him out of his quarters. They carry him, pressed tight and secure against them, to the medical bay. They’re running tests; they’re consulting the database; they’re infusing him with fluids, with medicines, with everything Peter needs for his lungs to work again.
Funny, he’s thought of himself as the one in control.
But they’ve never needed him.
He watches, detached and unable to speak, while they stand above him, worried faces in a row.
Not like he’s needed them.
He exhales and surrenders the last of his fallacies and accepts his weakness.
-o-
His weakness.
But their strength.
Peter’s willing to die at this point, but they’re not willing to let him.
They drain his lungs; they put him on oxygen. They change a cool cloth on Peter’s fevered forehead and pack his armpits with ice.
It’s too much, but Peter’s too weak to protest. He’s conscious only in pockets of time, and he never attains enough control to speak or say anything at all. He can only swallow when they command, and he feels himself gag as they roll him on his side and coax him into coughing.
There’s nothing he can do as they pound him on the back, encouraging him until globs of red hit the ground and he breathes once more.
Sure, he probably could fight.
But Peter knows he won’t win.
He’s not sure if this is the best thing in the galaxy or the worst.
Exhausted and weary, Peter lets himself fall asleep before he has to find out.
-o-
This goes on for what seems like hours.
When he wakes up, well and truly wakes up, it feels like days.
“Weeks?” he asks, feeling almost sheepish. “I’ve been out for weeks?”
“Just over two,” Gamora clarifies.
“Felt like more,” Rocket mutters.
“Indeed,” Drax adds. “The hours were quite long.”
Peter feels more aware than he has in the last two weeks, but he’s still lacking in strength.
That’s funny.
Him, lacking in strength.
Peter’s all about the obvious.
He shakes his head, too tired to do more. “But what the hell was wrong with me?”
“It seemed to be a virus,” Gamora says.
“You was always picking up those things,” Kraglin says.
“And you were in great emotional turmoil,” Mantis adds. “I fear that may have made matters worse.”
Peter just feels incredulous.
And generally awful. He’s not just weak, but he’s sore. He feels like his entire body has started to shrivel up and die like the mortal he now is.
“Best I can tell,” Rocket says. “Your silly little virus settled in your lungs. What do your people call it again?”
“Pneumonia,” Gamora supplies. She smiles gently at Peter. “We looked it up.”
“There is no cure,” Drax says. “But we attempted the treatments, as rudimentary as they seemed.”
“Being a virus, there’s nothing that kills the bug,” Gamora explains. “But by managing the symptoms--”
“We kept your sorry ass alive,” Rocket concludes, and he’s trying to seem smug. He sort of pulls it off.
Peter’s still too weak to call him on it, though.
Besides, the only shit that needs to be called out right now is his.
He sighs, and at least the fact that he’s so weak means that he won’t be able to blush fully. He wants to think that will make it easier.
“I’m sorry,” he says, the miserable weight threatening to sink into his chest again. “I never should have tried to hid the illness.”
It doesn’t make it easier.
He still feels like a total jackass.
Baby Groot blinks at him ever earnest.
And Peter promptly wishes that they’d just let him die.
Furrowing his brow, Peter knits his eyebrows together. “I just thought -- I don’t know,” he says. “I thought if you didn’t know, then maybe you wouldn’t see how weak I was. I thought I could still seem like your equal, I don’t. If I hid it.”
Rocket, damn him, actually laughs.
Talk about kicking a guy while they’re down.
Peter’s chest clenches in painful defense. “Hey--”
Gamora reaches out, her hand gently on his arm. “He just means that you didn’t hide anything.”
Peter’s still embarrassed, but Gamora is about the only one who makes him not want to kill himself at the moment. Still, she doesn’t make any sense right now. “Um, yeah,” he says. “I was. I went around all week, trying to keep you guys from seeing that I was feeling under the weather.”
Drax looks instantly perplexed.
“Sick,” Peter corrects himself before he has to listen to Drax’s far fetched interpretations of the metaphor. “That I was feeling sick.”
“Half dead more like it,” Rocket mutters.
Gamora holds her free hand up to them, even while keeping her eyes on Peter. “Do you really think we couldn’t tell?”
The way she asks it, it’s like a mother to her kid.
Which seems far too apt.
Peter wants to die all over again.
Because that’s the question then, isn’t it? It’s the obvious question that Peter hasn’t been letting himself ask, not once. He’s been laboring and struggling and plotting and why?
They knew.
They’ve always known.
The only person Peter’s really been hiding anything from? Ain’t one of them.
It’s himself.
He’s the one who can’t handle his own weakness. He’s the one who doesn’t know how to accept it.
The team, though.
They’ve known all along since Peter nearly got his ass kicked in the Kiln.
Still, for as obvious as the revelation seems, it’s not easy. This time, even his weakness can’t stop his cheeks from flushing, and he wishes like hell that he wasn’t too weak to even hide his shame.
“Yeah,” he says, throat constricting painfully. He tries to smile, but his eyes are watering instead. “I just wanted you to think I could do it.”
“You did just fine,” Gamora tells him, and it’s not easy to tell if she’s being serious or facetious again. This is how she talks to Groot, so it’s a little hard to tell.
“Given the weight of your grief, I believe you are entitled several such allowances,” Drax says. “In my anger, I once summoned Ronan and nearly got you all killed.”
“Nothing I haven’t seen you do before,” Kraglin says with a good natured shrug.
“You were suffering from extreme inner turmoil; I’m surprised you did not succumb much earlier,” Mantis says.
“Yeah, and I mean you’re not exactly the one known for their brilliant strategies around here,” Rocket says.
They are, without a doubt, trying to make him feel better.
Which just makes him feel so much worse.
Miserably, he sighs, keeping himself limp against the bed. “It’s just, I’m the weak one,” he admits. “I’m a liability, and I don’t know. I just didn’t want you guys to realize that I really wasn’t worth the effort.”
This isn’t what he’d normally say, but what the hell. Nothing’s normal anymore, and it’s not like Peter has any semblance of his pride left to hold onto. He’s pretty sure that Gamora changed his clothes, and he has this weird memory of Drax wiping his ass. And if Rocket’s been spoon feeding him and Kraglin cleaned up his sputum from the floor, then what else has he got to lose?
Mantis has probably already deduced he’s a loser.
And Groot’s too little to make any discernment.
Peter’s fallen pretty far on this one.
So he might as well understand what the bottom feels like.
“Peter,” Gamora says, taking the obvious burden from the others. “You’re the same as you’ve always been to us.”
Peter groans. “That’s the problem, though,” he says. “I never realized just how limiting I was for you all until this.”
“No, that’s your problem,” Rocket says. “We accepted it a long time ago.”
“And continued to find a partnership with you worthwhile,” Drax says.
“Pete, you know how Yondu was about this stuff,” Kraglin says. “You needed people good at lots of different things.”
“But what am I even good at?” Peter asks. The explosion of emotion feels strong, but it just makes his voice crack. He can feel the weakness, eating away at the edges of his consciousness, even as he struggles to hold it in place. “Rocket can fly; Drax can plan strategy; Gamora’s making out to be a damn good diplomat, and Kraglin knows a thing or two about how to make a crew run. Groot’s there to keep you all soft, and you’ve got a damn telepath on your side now. What the hell is one stupid little human going to do for you?”
There’s a silence, and it hurts as it lingers. Finally, little Groot steps up. “I am Groot.”
The pronouncement may sound like everything else in the world, but Peter still recognizes its meaning.
He exhales, feeling the emotion shatter through him. “I just never realized how much of a difference there was,” he explains. “I always thought I was mortal, but I’d never felt it like that. When Ego died, I felt the light die. Something left me, and it’s something I never knew I had, but now that it’s gone, I can’t hide it. I’m not even the same guy I was before. I’m weaker, which I didn’t even think was possible, but I am, guys. I’m so much weaker.”
There’s something more to that confession than he intended, but his defenses have been long since ruined. With any luck, he won’t remember this conversation later anyway.
It’s Gamora who sits forward, her fingers wrapping even more securely around his wrist. “It’s a weakness you can heal from, the same as I have healed from being Thanos’ daughter. The same as Drax as he recovers from the death of his wife and daughter. The same as any of us when we realize that our identity is not as certain as we’d once hoped. The things that matter, Peter. The things that define your place on this team, we have accepted the good alongside the bad. This is our team dynamic, and it is more than the sum of its parts.”
“And so what?” Peter asks. “I’m the token loser on the team? The one that makes you feel better about yourself? The one who reminds you who you’re fighting to protect?”
“Because you ground us,” Gamora interjects, a bit more forcefully now.
The others say nothing, stolid in their unspoken agreement.
She wets her lips, softer now. “We need you, Peter. Because you take your weakness and keep fighting. And that kind of strength is something we can all learn from.”
Well, shit.
That’s a good answer.
That’s a really good answer.
Now Peter’s burning bright red, and there’s no reason to hide anything. He was never the son that Yondu needed. He wasn’t the son that Ego had needed. He hadn’t even been the son his mother deserved.
But those expectations don’t exist here, not with his team.
They were a team of misfits, each one as screwed up as the last. And sure, maybe Peter was the most mortal among them, but that assumed that was what mattered. Like Drax was nothing more than brute strength and Rocket was nothing more than genetically enhanced DNA. Like Mantis was a pet and Kraglin was a yes-man. Like Groot was a child and Gamora was just an assassin gone rogue.
Peter’s done some stupid stuff lately.
He’ll do stupider things in the future, most likely.
And his team will be there to stand by him when he does.
“Okay,” he says finally, the tension easing in his throat. His next breath comes easier than the last. “I can probably deal with that, then.”
“Good,” Gamora says, sitting back as she lets go of Peter’s arm. “And then we can deal with the fact you’re sick.”
“And weak,” Drax adds.
“And generally pathetic,” Rocket says.
Gamora smiles. “Trust us,” she says. “You’ll be fine.”
Peter, naturally, has his doubts because he still feels like he’s half dead. And he’s still a complete emotional wreck over everything. And he feels useless, scared and devoid of light.
But his team -- they’re the strongest people he knows.
If they say he’s going to be fine--
Well, then, who’s a guy like him to argue?
Disclaimer: Not mine.
A/N: Set post GOTG2. Unbeta’ed. Fills my hiding injury or illness in hc_bingo. Title taken from a Christina Perri song.
Summary: Peter’s fine, and everyone is hovering around, waiting for him to shatter into a thousand little pieces. He can’t talk them out of it, so he tries to keep life going as normal to prove them wrong. For a month or so, he does pretty well. But then, what does he go and do? He shatters into a thousand little pieces. Because of course he did.
-o-
So, apparently, everyone thinks that Peter’s going to be pretty messed up.
Honestly, he’s not sure what the big deal was.
Obviously, yes, he did find and proceed to kill his long lost father. It was a bit of a buzzkill since he’d literally spent his whole life pining after the man, making him out to be David Hasselhoff in his head. And finding out that your dad is actually a Celestial being is hard. And discovering that he’s a maniac is hard still. But it actually made things easier. It’s not as hard to kill your day when you’ve never met him before, and it’s less painful hardly knowing your dad when he turns out to be a crazy person with delusions of taking of the galaxy.
So, when you broke it all down, Peter’s really fine with that the fact.
Now, yes, Yondu is a different story. He’s a harder story, and Peter, admittedly, has struggled with it. Because, you see, hindsight’s always 20/20, and it’s easy to wax nostalgic about the old blue idiot when he goes and dies on Peter’s behalf. But that’s after a lifetime of terrorizing Peter and telling him that he’s going to eat him. Yondu taught him everything he knows, including how to be completely insecure in his own damn skin. It’s a hell of a thing, turning an enemy into your hero, but Peter’s handled the transition pretty damn well, if he says so himself.
Then, naturally, there’s everything else. Okay, so Peter had had Celestial powers for like .2 seconds, and for that period of time, he had actually been the strongest person on the team. As quickly as he’d embraced that power, he’d gotten rid of it forever, and it’s a loss he feels inside himself very palpably because damn it, he’d had a connection to the light. The light, whatever the hell sort of abstract reality that is.
Or was.
And fine, Peter’s not sure who he is or what the hell he’s doing, but he never has. Why should now be any different?
Peter’s fine, and everyone is hovering around, waiting for him to shatter into a thousand little pieces. He can’t talk them out of it, so he tries to keep life going as normal to prove them wrong.
For a month or so, he does pretty well.
But then, what does he go and do?
He shatters into a thousand little pieces.
Because of course he did.
-o-
It starts much less dramatically, though.
In fact, it starts with a case of the sniffles.
Now, Peter chalks this up to whatever the hell Rocket has modified in the ventilation system. They may have had a brief amount of nuclear exposure during one of Rocket’s less safe bomb-making sessions, and the whole thing had been flushed, and Peter’s not sure that it’s really reticulated correctly since then. Plus, he had to spend a few hours doing a space walk to fix damage to the rear nacells because Drax had decided to invent a game called Space Ball, which basically just involved throwing heavy objects against the hull to see what would happen.
With all that, Peter’s not exactly been sleeping, and since he’s been keeping himself with coffee and basically all sorts of denial, it’s no surprise that he’s run down.
“You’re sick,” Gamora announces at the breakfast table.
Peter makes a face, wrinkling his nose. “I’m not sick.”
Mantis blinks, tilting her head curiously. “It is funny,” she says. “I can easily distinguish lies from truths with nothing more than a glance.”
“So you know I’m telling the truth!” Peter insists.
“Oh, no,” she says. “You are lying.”
Peter groans, pouring himself another cup of coffee. “It’s nothing.”
“You’re leaking like a damn sieve over there,” Rocket says. “It’s disgusting.”
“It’s a runny nose,” Peter says.
“That’s what you always used to say,” Kraglin chimes in. Kraglin has been a super helpful addition to the crew. He’s the only idiot around here who follows orders, and he’s actually the type who picks up after everyone else so things are cleaner than ever. He’s also annoyingly truthful. “Right before you went and got sick.”
“He does have a weak immune system,” Drax says. He looks at Peter very earnestly. “I am continually surprised that you are not dead.”
Peter smiles with a murderous undertone. “Thanks.”
“Seriously,” Gamora interjects over the growing melee over Peter’s health. “You should go take it easy.”
“We haven’t got a job lined up yet,” Peter reminds them. “We’ve been taking it easy for the past month.”
“Perfect,” Gamora says, with a prim smile as she drags him up by the arm. “Then you won’t be missing anything by getting some extra rest.”
-o-
Peter pisses and moans the whole way back to his quarters, but Gamora actually tucks him in. When he sneezes, she snuggles close.
Suddenly, lying down doesn’t seem so bad.
“There,” she murmurs, pressing a kiss to his forehead. “And when you get better, we can do even more.”
“I’m not sick,” Peter protests.
She gives him a knowing smile as she makes her way to the door. “But you’re not strong enough for what I have planned.”
Peter’s mouth falls open.
She winks and turns off the light.
Well, damn.
-o-
Peter’s fine, but the sleep really does feel good.
At least, until he wakes up in a cold sweat thinking that his connection to the light was still real and he had inadvertently tried to take over the universe.
Again.
Panting in the dim light of his quarters, he tries to get his bearings and ground himself again.
It’s a dream, a dream. It’s not real.
He sneezes, following up with a cough.
Flopping back to his pillow, he throws his arm over his face.
“I’m just fine,” he croaks, like it matters.
He groans.
He really wishes it mattered.
-o-
The sneezing, despite his best efforts and most pronounced denials, turns into coughing.
Coughing, though, is really an anticlimactic way of describing it. It’s more than a hack, even. It’s a deep, body shaking motion that threatens to shake his lungs out of his chest. It’s a wet thing, too. It seems to make his very blood tremble, and the amount of fluid that he brings up actually chokes him.
Which makes him swallow it down.
And the whole process starts again.
It probably wouldn’t have been so bad if Peter wasn’t so set on pretending like it wasn’t happening. Because coughing is more than sneezing. If he’s coughing, then this is a cold. If this is a cold, then he’s sick. If he’s sick, then he’s some stupid pathetic mortal who literally gets sick when they’re floating around space doing absolutely nothing.
Why are they doing nothing?
Because everyone is apparently worried about how he’s coping with, you know, patricide and suicide and becoming mortal when you didn’t even realize you were immortal. And whatever.
Peter’s fine with that.
And he’s fine with his sneeze and his not-cough.
He thinks he’s pulling it off, too. He makes it through a whole shift without coughing on anyone, and he saves his coughing fits for Drax’s bathroom breaks. Those things are so horribly loud that there’s no way anyone’s listening for Peter’s mucous fueled coughs.
Then, Rocket is an asshole.
True, Rocket is always an asshole, but Peter feels like crap and his patience for assholery is lower than usual.
“Here,” Rocket says, throwing a small bottle at him.
Peter tries to catch it; it falls to the ground. Holding back a grimace, Peter bends over to pick it up and tries not to cry at how bad it makes his head feel. “What’s this?”
“Cough syrup,” he says. “My own personal concoction.”
Peter makes a face and throws it back.
Rocket, naturally, catches it.
“I’m not sick,” Peter says with a glower. “And even if I was, then I wouldn’t want your jury-rigged solution.”
“Hey, medicine’s not so unlike mixing chemicals for a bomb,” Rocket says.
“So you’re going to explode my lungs?” Peter asks, incredulous.
Rocket rolls his eyes. “Now’s not the time to be as literal as Drax,” he says. “Just take the stuff, Quill. I made it especially for you.”
“When?” Peter asks, folding his arms over his chest.
“When you were hacking in your room while Drax was on the toilet,” Rocket says.
“I was taking a nap!” Peter lies.
“No one can sleep through Drax,” Rocket says.
“I’m fine,” Peter replies.
Rocket shrugs, finally pocketing the bottle. “I guess,” he says. “They’re your lungs, Quill.”
Peter is a little too sulky. But whatever. “They are!” he says petulantly. “And they’re just fine, thank you very much.”
-o-
Fine, in Peter’s experience, is relative.
It’s also, he decides, completely pointless.
His dad died -- both of them -- but he’s fine.
He’s coughing so hard that he coughs up blood -- but he’s completely fine.
It’s not even a lot of blood, and it’s not even that often, and really, who hasn’t coughed up a little blood from time to time?
In addition to the coughing, he thinks it’s also vaguely possible that he’s got a fever.
And that he’s partially delusional at the moment.
That would explain, at any rate, why the stars were grouping in constellations of Askavarian strippers, who seemed to be rocking in time with a very weird rendition of Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer.
“Quill,” Drax says.
Peter blinks, looking away. His head spins as he tries to focus on Drax, who has someone managed to stand right behind him without Peter being remotely aware he was there.
This might be because of the illness he doesn’t have, but Drax does this shit all the time.
That much, at least, isn’t weird.
“You should rest,” Drax continues.
Peter realizes quite belatedly that he’s been trying to process Drax’s simple greeting for upwards of a minute. “What?” is the only reply he can come up with in the interim.
“You need to rest,” Drax says. “Your shift is over.”
Dumbly, Peter looks back at the window. The stars are done dancing now, and it occurs to him he’s done absolutely nothing for the past three hours on his shift.
“You look horrible,” Drax announces.
Peter cranes his neck back to look at him. “You sound like you care.”
“And you sound contagious,” Drax says. “I do not wish to be exposed to your lesser germs.”
It’s not intended to be an accusation of anything, because this is Drax, but Peter can’t help but be offended. “I’m not contagious.”
“Oh,” Drax says, looking relieved. “So you know what illness you have? Is it a parasite?”
“I don’t have a parasite!” Peter growls. “And I’m not sick!”
Drax seems to seriously consider this. He has to, because he’s literal. He’s learned some give in take in the few months they’ve been together, but he’s pretty crappy at it.
That’s okay, Peter’s crappy at everything.
It’s nice for the others to have weaknesses every now and then.
“You seem sick,” Drax says skeptically.
“Well, I’m not,” Peter croaks with increasing levels of idiotic defiance. “I’m fine enough to sit here for your shift, too.”
Drax tilts his head. “Really?”
“Of course!” Peter says.
“Excellent!” Drax says, patting him on the shoulder. “I would appreciate more time for sharpening my knives!”
Peter could say that’s not what he meant, but he’s pretty sure if he opens his mouth, he’s going to sneeze and then cough and then choke and then cry because everything hurts so damn much.
Instead, he sits there, staring stupidly at his hands for a moment before looking back up at the screen. It takes a moment, but the Askavarians come back and Peter’s night goes on.
-o-
Then, he starts to cough so hard that he can’t breathe.
To be fair, this much is hard to hide, but Peter’s more resilient than he looks.
Not really, of course. He’s fragile and prone to sickness and emotionally he’s all over the map.
What Peter means to say is that he’s really good at faking it.
Most of the time, that means cracking a lewd joke and telling lies.
In this case, it means simply trying not to speak, move, smile or basically inhale.
He manages this with surprising grace, if he does say so himself, and he’s managed not to excuse himself for a ten minute fit of coughing that leaves him light headed, gasping and as blue as Yondu.
Until he sits down for lunch.
And Mantis and Kraglin join him.
This wouldn’t be so unusual except that Peter’s purposefully planned not to eat around people. In fact, it’s almost mid afternoon and he knows for a fact that everyone else has eaten and should be doing something productive.
For Mantis and Kraglin, Peter’s newest recruits, that something productive apparently involved him.
Of course it did.
He’s the weakest member of the team, and definitely not the brightest, and they need him.
“I just wasn’t sure, you know,” Kraglin is explaining. “I know how Yondu used to do it, and I know that’s how we used to do it, but then I remembered that this was your own ship and you always were sort of a pain in the ass, and I didn’t want to stock your cargo bay in the way that you didn’t want it to be stacked. And I mean, what if you needed something? How would you find it?”
Kraglin has been going on about this for, no joke, ten minutes. It’s been basically a nonstop monologue, and it’s been going on so long that Peter actually has no idea what he’s talking about.
At his side, Mantis is nodding earnestly. “I tried to help, but as soon as I touched him, his confusion was too pronounced,” she says. She looks shy. “We were unable to make a decision.”
Peter honestly doesn’t care. Or, if he does care, he doesn’t really remember that he cares. Or he doesn’t remember how to care.
At any rate: the caring, it isn’t happening.
He’s only aware that he’s staring when Kraglin stares back.
“Um, Pete?” Kraglin asks. “You okay there?”
Peter blinks and startles in a way that he hopes doesn’t look entirely pathetic.
(It does, though. He knows it does.)
“I’m fine,” Peter says.
“You do not look completely fine,” Mantis says.
Peter groans, and the sound is wet and garbled and it hurts. “How many times do I have to tell you--”
He’s starting to lose his temper, which isn’t good.
Because when he loses his temper, he loses control.
Not of his emotions.
Of his whole damn body.
He coughs violently, and pain stabs through his chest. It’s all he can do to squelched it, and it hurts so much to swallow back the fit that tears spring to his eyes.
Fine is also, apparently, sheer force of will.
He raises his eyes defiantly to Kraglin and Mantis again. “I’m fine.”
All the lies Peter’s told in his life, that one doesn’t seem so bad.
-o-
Not so bad, but probably the most ridiculously ostentatious.
Because seriously, Peter’s not fine.
The coughing fits are becoming frequently, and the congestion in his lungs is getting so pronounced that every breath actually hurts.
A lot.
Peter’s actually fairly certain that his lungs are trying to shut down all together, because what the hell.
What the hell.
He agrees to take time in his quarters, but only if it’s his turn to hang out with Groot. Groot’s growing, but he’s also gotten lost by crawling through the conduit system and jumping into the engine corp, so they generally don’t let him roam free.
Peter thinks that watching Groot has to be easier than doing his duties. After all, all he has to do is lock the two of them in the room and do his best not to pass out.
Besides, Baby Groot can be kind of fun now. He’s the only one with a real appreciation for Peter’s taste in music, and the thought of zoning out to some good tunes sounds pretty good to Peter.
Then, of course, his Zune ups and dies.
Groot looks up at him in utter dismay.
Peter fumbles with it, and curses when he sees the low battery sign. He’s not sure when he last charged it; shit, he’s not sure what day it even is now.
“Just a second,” he says, bracing himself as he tries to get to his feet. “I just need to get the charger and we’ll have the tunes back in no time.”
On the bed, Groot watches him expectantly.
Peter falters, but he grits his teeth and pushes himself the rest of the way up.
With his back to Groot, he’s sort of thankful the little tree can’t see how the blood drains out of his face or how he thinks he might pass out.
He blinks a few times, and realizes, wait, he is going to pass out.
Faltering, he reaches out to brace himself but he comes up empty. His vision is swimming and his equilibrium is shot to hell and he can’t breathe and he can’t think.
From the bed, Groot is calling for him, “I AM GROOT!”
The sound is small and distant and so full of concern.
Peter tries to say that he’s fine.
But he’s too busy falling to the floor.
Funny, all this time he’s been trying to prove himself.
And all he’s proven is how stupid and weak he really is.
Shit, he thinks, as he hits the ground.
Shit.
Peter’s way more messed up than he realized.
-o-
It’s okay, though.
His team’s got it under control.
They lift him up, drag him out of his quarters. They carry him, pressed tight and secure against them, to the medical bay. They’re running tests; they’re consulting the database; they’re infusing him with fluids, with medicines, with everything Peter needs for his lungs to work again.
Funny, he’s thought of himself as the one in control.
But they’ve never needed him.
He watches, detached and unable to speak, while they stand above him, worried faces in a row.
Not like he’s needed them.
He exhales and surrenders the last of his fallacies and accepts his weakness.
-o-
His weakness.
But their strength.
Peter’s willing to die at this point, but they’re not willing to let him.
They drain his lungs; they put him on oxygen. They change a cool cloth on Peter’s fevered forehead and pack his armpits with ice.
It’s too much, but Peter’s too weak to protest. He’s conscious only in pockets of time, and he never attains enough control to speak or say anything at all. He can only swallow when they command, and he feels himself gag as they roll him on his side and coax him into coughing.
There’s nothing he can do as they pound him on the back, encouraging him until globs of red hit the ground and he breathes once more.
Sure, he probably could fight.
But Peter knows he won’t win.
He’s not sure if this is the best thing in the galaxy or the worst.
Exhausted and weary, Peter lets himself fall asleep before he has to find out.
-o-
This goes on for what seems like hours.
When he wakes up, well and truly wakes up, it feels like days.
“Weeks?” he asks, feeling almost sheepish. “I’ve been out for weeks?”
“Just over two,” Gamora clarifies.
“Felt like more,” Rocket mutters.
“Indeed,” Drax adds. “The hours were quite long.”
Peter feels more aware than he has in the last two weeks, but he’s still lacking in strength.
That’s funny.
Him, lacking in strength.
Peter’s all about the obvious.
He shakes his head, too tired to do more. “But what the hell was wrong with me?”
“It seemed to be a virus,” Gamora says.
“You was always picking up those things,” Kraglin says.
“And you were in great emotional turmoil,” Mantis adds. “I fear that may have made matters worse.”
Peter just feels incredulous.
And generally awful. He’s not just weak, but he’s sore. He feels like his entire body has started to shrivel up and die like the mortal he now is.
“Best I can tell,” Rocket says. “Your silly little virus settled in your lungs. What do your people call it again?”
“Pneumonia,” Gamora supplies. She smiles gently at Peter. “We looked it up.”
“There is no cure,” Drax says. “But we attempted the treatments, as rudimentary as they seemed.”
“Being a virus, there’s nothing that kills the bug,” Gamora explains. “But by managing the symptoms--”
“We kept your sorry ass alive,” Rocket concludes, and he’s trying to seem smug. He sort of pulls it off.
Peter’s still too weak to call him on it, though.
Besides, the only shit that needs to be called out right now is his.
He sighs, and at least the fact that he’s so weak means that he won’t be able to blush fully. He wants to think that will make it easier.
“I’m sorry,” he says, the miserable weight threatening to sink into his chest again. “I never should have tried to hid the illness.”
It doesn’t make it easier.
He still feels like a total jackass.
Baby Groot blinks at him ever earnest.
And Peter promptly wishes that they’d just let him die.
Furrowing his brow, Peter knits his eyebrows together. “I just thought -- I don’t know,” he says. “I thought if you didn’t know, then maybe you wouldn’t see how weak I was. I thought I could still seem like your equal, I don’t. If I hid it.”
Rocket, damn him, actually laughs.
Talk about kicking a guy while they’re down.
Peter’s chest clenches in painful defense. “Hey--”
Gamora reaches out, her hand gently on his arm. “He just means that you didn’t hide anything.”
Peter’s still embarrassed, but Gamora is about the only one who makes him not want to kill himself at the moment. Still, she doesn’t make any sense right now. “Um, yeah,” he says. “I was. I went around all week, trying to keep you guys from seeing that I was feeling under the weather.”
Drax looks instantly perplexed.
“Sick,” Peter corrects himself before he has to listen to Drax’s far fetched interpretations of the metaphor. “That I was feeling sick.”
“Half dead more like it,” Rocket mutters.
Gamora holds her free hand up to them, even while keeping her eyes on Peter. “Do you really think we couldn’t tell?”
The way she asks it, it’s like a mother to her kid.
Which seems far too apt.
Peter wants to die all over again.
Because that’s the question then, isn’t it? It’s the obvious question that Peter hasn’t been letting himself ask, not once. He’s been laboring and struggling and plotting and why?
They knew.
They’ve always known.
The only person Peter’s really been hiding anything from? Ain’t one of them.
It’s himself.
He’s the one who can’t handle his own weakness. He’s the one who doesn’t know how to accept it.
The team, though.
They’ve known all along since Peter nearly got his ass kicked in the Kiln.
Still, for as obvious as the revelation seems, it’s not easy. This time, even his weakness can’t stop his cheeks from flushing, and he wishes like hell that he wasn’t too weak to even hide his shame.
“Yeah,” he says, throat constricting painfully. He tries to smile, but his eyes are watering instead. “I just wanted you to think I could do it.”
“You did just fine,” Gamora tells him, and it’s not easy to tell if she’s being serious or facetious again. This is how she talks to Groot, so it’s a little hard to tell.
“Given the weight of your grief, I believe you are entitled several such allowances,” Drax says. “In my anger, I once summoned Ronan and nearly got you all killed.”
“Nothing I haven’t seen you do before,” Kraglin says with a good natured shrug.
“You were suffering from extreme inner turmoil; I’m surprised you did not succumb much earlier,” Mantis says.
“Yeah, and I mean you’re not exactly the one known for their brilliant strategies around here,” Rocket says.
They are, without a doubt, trying to make him feel better.
Which just makes him feel so much worse.
Miserably, he sighs, keeping himself limp against the bed. “It’s just, I’m the weak one,” he admits. “I’m a liability, and I don’t know. I just didn’t want you guys to realize that I really wasn’t worth the effort.”
This isn’t what he’d normally say, but what the hell. Nothing’s normal anymore, and it’s not like Peter has any semblance of his pride left to hold onto. He’s pretty sure that Gamora changed his clothes, and he has this weird memory of Drax wiping his ass. And if Rocket’s been spoon feeding him and Kraglin cleaned up his sputum from the floor, then what else has he got to lose?
Mantis has probably already deduced he’s a loser.
And Groot’s too little to make any discernment.
Peter’s fallen pretty far on this one.
So he might as well understand what the bottom feels like.
“Peter,” Gamora says, taking the obvious burden from the others. “You’re the same as you’ve always been to us.”
Peter groans. “That’s the problem, though,” he says. “I never realized just how limiting I was for you all until this.”
“No, that’s your problem,” Rocket says. “We accepted it a long time ago.”
“And continued to find a partnership with you worthwhile,” Drax says.
“Pete, you know how Yondu was about this stuff,” Kraglin says. “You needed people good at lots of different things.”
“But what am I even good at?” Peter asks. The explosion of emotion feels strong, but it just makes his voice crack. He can feel the weakness, eating away at the edges of his consciousness, even as he struggles to hold it in place. “Rocket can fly; Drax can plan strategy; Gamora’s making out to be a damn good diplomat, and Kraglin knows a thing or two about how to make a crew run. Groot’s there to keep you all soft, and you’ve got a damn telepath on your side now. What the hell is one stupid little human going to do for you?”
There’s a silence, and it hurts as it lingers. Finally, little Groot steps up. “I am Groot.”
The pronouncement may sound like everything else in the world, but Peter still recognizes its meaning.
He exhales, feeling the emotion shatter through him. “I just never realized how much of a difference there was,” he explains. “I always thought I was mortal, but I’d never felt it like that. When Ego died, I felt the light die. Something left me, and it’s something I never knew I had, but now that it’s gone, I can’t hide it. I’m not even the same guy I was before. I’m weaker, which I didn’t even think was possible, but I am, guys. I’m so much weaker.”
There’s something more to that confession than he intended, but his defenses have been long since ruined. With any luck, he won’t remember this conversation later anyway.
It’s Gamora who sits forward, her fingers wrapping even more securely around his wrist. “It’s a weakness you can heal from, the same as I have healed from being Thanos’ daughter. The same as Drax as he recovers from the death of his wife and daughter. The same as any of us when we realize that our identity is not as certain as we’d once hoped. The things that matter, Peter. The things that define your place on this team, we have accepted the good alongside the bad. This is our team dynamic, and it is more than the sum of its parts.”
“And so what?” Peter asks. “I’m the token loser on the team? The one that makes you feel better about yourself? The one who reminds you who you’re fighting to protect?”
“Because you ground us,” Gamora interjects, a bit more forcefully now.
The others say nothing, stolid in their unspoken agreement.
She wets her lips, softer now. “We need you, Peter. Because you take your weakness and keep fighting. And that kind of strength is something we can all learn from.”
Well, shit.
That’s a good answer.
That’s a really good answer.
Now Peter’s burning bright red, and there’s no reason to hide anything. He was never the son that Yondu needed. He wasn’t the son that Ego had needed. He hadn’t even been the son his mother deserved.
But those expectations don’t exist here, not with his team.
They were a team of misfits, each one as screwed up as the last. And sure, maybe Peter was the most mortal among them, but that assumed that was what mattered. Like Drax was nothing more than brute strength and Rocket was nothing more than genetically enhanced DNA. Like Mantis was a pet and Kraglin was a yes-man. Like Groot was a child and Gamora was just an assassin gone rogue.
Peter’s done some stupid stuff lately.
He’ll do stupider things in the future, most likely.
And his team will be there to stand by him when he does.
“Okay,” he says finally, the tension easing in his throat. His next breath comes easier than the last. “I can probably deal with that, then.”
“Good,” Gamora says, sitting back as she lets go of Peter’s arm. “And then we can deal with the fact you’re sick.”
“And weak,” Drax adds.
“And generally pathetic,” Rocket says.
Gamora smiles. “Trust us,” she says. “You’ll be fine.”
Peter, naturally, has his doubts because he still feels like he’s half dead. And he’s still a complete emotional wreck over everything. And he feels useless, scared and devoid of light.
But his team -- they’re the strongest people he knows.
If they say he’s going to be fine--
Well, then, who’s a guy like him to argue?