[fic] harder than you, softer than me
fic: harder than you, softer than me [ao3]
fandom: MCU - Guardians of the Galaxy
pairing: Gamora/Nebula
summary: background character study of the sisters
word count: ~1100
disclaimer: I know nothing of the comics canon (yet!) so please forgive me if this is a huge bastardization. MCU canon only for the time being.
a/n: for about an hour yesterday I thought that scorpiod1 needed a pinch-hitter over at the Low Key Summer Fic Exchange and by the time upupa_epops had caught up with me to let me know that this was not, indeed, the case - I had already expressed to a room full of twelve year olds that I had murder in my heart (which they found hilarious) and had written about 75% of this fic. So! Here is fic. For scorp. And also (kinda) for snickfic (because I owe you like a million Sif things and hopefully this will make up for it), or at least cross-posted to eljay early for the sake of snick because of love and a million other reasons.
[Thanos chose Gamora as his favorite because she was the one that never truly broke.]
Thanos chooses his children well, the ones that look upon the burning corpses of their families that they loved (he only ever chooses children who were loved) and raise their eyes with new fire lurking behind their tears. He takes the ones that look in the face of his destruction, watch their world crumble around their ears, and refuse to crumble along, that grow strong in the face of their own pain.
He should never have brought together into his heart the souls that hate him most, that only are strong because of their hatred for him. All his darkness seemed capable of creating was more darkness.
And he was a master of it, Gamora thought as she stood in front of her sister and gloried in the state of her ability to maim.
It took years of Thanos' training before Gamora was able to acknowledge that the horrific beauty that comes from pain and destruction.
I told you it was an acquired taste, he whispered in her ear - always inches away from her waking consciousness.
It took being ripped apart and being pieced back together - becoming the monster that he created for himself in his dreams, beautiful and deadly to the last - before she realized there was never an option for her but to become a part of that dreadful beauty of chaos. Even without the interferrance of Thanos, there was something in her very nature that seemed to lean into destruction, draw strength from it.
Yet still she was resentful of it all. Pretended that Thanos' world was a glove that she could someday shake off.
Until Thanos gave her Nebula.
He described them as playmates and though the two had never learned to play (or had long ago forgotten) and though they were much too old for playing (or never were young enough), Thanos always chose his words carefully. For a time, Gamora threw herself into the world Thanos built her to rule.
With a sister at her side, it became a game.
Bood. Death. Destruction. Pain.
She rolled around in it for the sake of Nebula's smile; sometimes a flash of light in the darkness and othertimes more the beginnings of a growl than anything resembling mirth.
Nebula found mirth in the places Thanos allowed her to live and Gamora followed her willingly, a tiredness deep in her fragmented bones yearned for laughter and peace. And so she took it when it was given to her with only the barest traces of guilt lingering around her frayed senses; too sharp to shut out the world and too raw to acknowledge her inner coflict.
Thanos kept his children seperate from each other - he was jealous of their affections, wanted to wrap them wholly up within himsef and be their whole world.
But one thing they all knew was that Gamora was his favorite.
Nebula didn't wonder why after meeting the dark-haired woman with burning eyes.
She was the only one that he hadn't been able to fully break.
Nebula gloried in dragging her sister after her into the heady rush of death, began to seek out that brief moment of dismay in Gamora's eyes when she turned her blood-spattered body to her in supplication. That split second of doubt made the darkness in Gamora all the more violent in its beauty, all the more shocking in its action.
Made all other actions jarring in their crudeness.
Gamora believed herself made from her bones to her wires to be destruction. Nebula watched her dance across the stars and couldnt help but come to the same soul-shattering conclusion.
It was the moment that the one fell in love with the other that finally broke them.
Gamora would later say rather ruefully that if Thanos had known what would happen when he brought them together he was either a willful contributor to his own downfall (in which case she could no longer say with certainty that she had ever known him at all) or was hoping for a rather more positive outcome.
Love came upon Nebula slowly, like the very beginnings of a forest fire. Small to begin, but impossible to catch in the act of growing, before suddenly everything is burning and there’s nowhere left to turn. One minute she was teasing her sister and the next her heart was beating in time to Gamora’s moods.
Love came upon Gamora like oil heated over an open stove, one minute cool and thick and the next crackling and snapping, trying restlessly to leap out of its confines.
Thanos grew his children in a factory, gathered them up in their darkest hour and ripped them to shreds as if he could somehow find a formulae for the perfect creature.
Nebula was the first one to realize he had seriously gotten her all wrong, had put all the pieces back together incorrectly.
A child of Thanos should be pure intent, pure chaos, pure destruction.
Love was not part of the deal. Being a child of Thanos means that lines are simple, there is no love or heartache or loss anymore. It burns all away and all that is left is action and reaction.
Nebula was not ready for love, for her heart to beat, to feel pain once again.
(She had known enough pain to last a thousand lifetimes and she was not ready to start feeling it all suck away at her again.)
Nebula affection for her sister and she threw it into the fire, stomping upon its delicate remains and shaping it into hate within her heart like armor.
Even more a daughter of Thanos than ever before.
(Which is possibly what he had hoped for all along.)
Gamora turned to her sister with her dark eyes and felt a deep, intrinsic desire to wrap her long arms around her and press her warmth deep into her sister’s cold, dark heart.
Even less a daughter of Thanos than she had ever been.
(Which couldn’t possibly had been what he’d hoped for.)
(One dark, heady night they pressed against each other - no longer as sisters but just as shapes in the dark - and tried to reform the other into the thing that they needed. Gamora lingering with her fingers trying to press into Nebula’s body a tiny part of her warmth. Nebula biting and scratching just a little too hard, trying to stir up anger and aggression in Gamora’s heart.)
Out of love, Nebula’s heart hardened against the universe and she strove even more to destroy.
Out of love, Gamora’s heart turned her chaos onto the darkness, bringing pain to those who would cause it.
(Out of familial, intimate lust, two sisters drove each other back and forth across the universe, hearts wounded and always bleeding, never once forgiving, never once forgetting.)
fandom: MCU - Guardians of the Galaxy
pairing: Gamora/Nebula
summary: background character study of the sisters
word count: ~1100
disclaimer: I know nothing of the comics canon (yet!) so please forgive me if this is a huge bastardization. MCU canon only for the time being.
a/n: for about an hour yesterday I thought that scorpiod1 needed a pinch-hitter over at the Low Key Summer Fic Exchange and by the time upupa_epops had caught up with me to let me know that this was not, indeed, the case - I had already expressed to a room full of twelve year olds that I had murder in my heart (which they found hilarious) and had written about 75% of this fic. So! Here is fic. For scorp. And also (kinda) for snickfic (because I owe you like a million Sif things and hopefully this will make up for it), or at least cross-posted to eljay early for the sake of snick because of love and a million other reasons.
[Thanos chose Gamora as his favorite because she was the one that never truly broke.]
Thanos chooses his children well, the ones that look upon the burning corpses of their families that they loved (he only ever chooses children who were loved) and raise their eyes with new fire lurking behind their tears. He takes the ones that look in the face of his destruction, watch their world crumble around their ears, and refuse to crumble along, that grow strong in the face of their own pain.
He should never have brought together into his heart the souls that hate him most, that only are strong because of their hatred for him. All his darkness seemed capable of creating was more darkness.
And he was a master of it, Gamora thought as she stood in front of her sister and gloried in the state of her ability to maim.
It took years of Thanos' training before Gamora was able to acknowledge that the horrific beauty that comes from pain and destruction.
I told you it was an acquired taste, he whispered in her ear - always inches away from her waking consciousness.
It took being ripped apart and being pieced back together - becoming the monster that he created for himself in his dreams, beautiful and deadly to the last - before she realized there was never an option for her but to become a part of that dreadful beauty of chaos. Even without the interferrance of Thanos, there was something in her very nature that seemed to lean into destruction, draw strength from it.
Yet still she was resentful of it all. Pretended that Thanos' world was a glove that she could someday shake off.
Until Thanos gave her Nebula.
He described them as playmates and though the two had never learned to play (or had long ago forgotten) and though they were much too old for playing (or never were young enough), Thanos always chose his words carefully. For a time, Gamora threw herself into the world Thanos built her to rule.
With a sister at her side, it became a game.
Bood. Death. Destruction. Pain.
She rolled around in it for the sake of Nebula's smile; sometimes a flash of light in the darkness and othertimes more the beginnings of a growl than anything resembling mirth.
Nebula found mirth in the places Thanos allowed her to live and Gamora followed her willingly, a tiredness deep in her fragmented bones yearned for laughter and peace. And so she took it when it was given to her with only the barest traces of guilt lingering around her frayed senses; too sharp to shut out the world and too raw to acknowledge her inner coflict.
Thanos kept his children seperate from each other - he was jealous of their affections, wanted to wrap them wholly up within himsef and be their whole world.
But one thing they all knew was that Gamora was his favorite.
Nebula didn't wonder why after meeting the dark-haired woman with burning eyes.
She was the only one that he hadn't been able to fully break.
Nebula gloried in dragging her sister after her into the heady rush of death, began to seek out that brief moment of dismay in Gamora's eyes when she turned her blood-spattered body to her in supplication. That split second of doubt made the darkness in Gamora all the more violent in its beauty, all the more shocking in its action.
Made all other actions jarring in their crudeness.
Gamora believed herself made from her bones to her wires to be destruction. Nebula watched her dance across the stars and couldnt help but come to the same soul-shattering conclusion.
It was the moment that the one fell in love with the other that finally broke them.
Gamora would later say rather ruefully that if Thanos had known what would happen when he brought them together he was either a willful contributor to his own downfall (in which case she could no longer say with certainty that she had ever known him at all) or was hoping for a rather more positive outcome.
Love came upon Nebula slowly, like the very beginnings of a forest fire. Small to begin, but impossible to catch in the act of growing, before suddenly everything is burning and there’s nowhere left to turn. One minute she was teasing her sister and the next her heart was beating in time to Gamora’s moods.
Love came upon Gamora like oil heated over an open stove, one minute cool and thick and the next crackling and snapping, trying restlessly to leap out of its confines.
Thanos grew his children in a factory, gathered them up in their darkest hour and ripped them to shreds as if he could somehow find a formulae for the perfect creature.
Nebula was the first one to realize he had seriously gotten her all wrong, had put all the pieces back together incorrectly.
A child of Thanos should be pure intent, pure chaos, pure destruction.
Love was not part of the deal. Being a child of Thanos means that lines are simple, there is no love or heartache or loss anymore. It burns all away and all that is left is action and reaction.
Nebula was not ready for love, for her heart to beat, to feel pain once again.
(She had known enough pain to last a thousand lifetimes and she was not ready to start feeling it all suck away at her again.)
Nebula affection for her sister and she threw it into the fire, stomping upon its delicate remains and shaping it into hate within her heart like armor.
Even more a daughter of Thanos than ever before.
(Which is possibly what he had hoped for all along.)
Gamora turned to her sister with her dark eyes and felt a deep, intrinsic desire to wrap her long arms around her and press her warmth deep into her sister’s cold, dark heart.
Even less a daughter of Thanos than she had ever been.
(Which couldn’t possibly had been what he’d hoped for.)
(One dark, heady night they pressed against each other - no longer as sisters but just as shapes in the dark - and tried to reform the other into the thing that they needed. Gamora lingering with her fingers trying to press into Nebula’s body a tiny part of her warmth. Nebula biting and scratching just a little too hard, trying to stir up anger and aggression in Gamora’s heart.)
Out of love, Nebula’s heart hardened against the universe and she strove even more to destroy.
Out of love, Gamora’s heart turned her chaos onto the darkness, bringing pain to those who would cause it.
(Out of familial, intimate lust, two sisters drove each other back and forth across the universe, hearts wounded and always bleeding, never once forgiving, never once forgetting.)