ɢ ᴀ ᴍ ᴏ ʀ ᴀ. (
godslay) wrote in
riverviewlogs2018-09-03 11:49 pm
( open ) did you do it?
who: gamora and YOU
what: returning from an infinity war canon update and Trying To Deal
when: beginning of september through the middle of the month
where: around the quarantine
warnings: infinity war spoilers, mentions of death, probably body horror, etc etc etc
ɪ. ᴀ ʀᴜᴅᴇ ᴀᴡᴀᴋᴇɴɪɴɢ
ɪɪ. ʙᴜsɪɴᴇss ᴀs ᴜsᴜᴀʟ
ɪɪɪ. ɴᴏᴛ ɪɴ ᴛʜᴇ ʜᴏʟɪᴅᴀʏ sᴘɪʀɪᴛ
ɪᴠ. ᴛʜʀᴏᴜɢʜ ʜᴇʀ sᴜɴᴋᴇɴ ᴅʀᴇᴀᴍ
ᴠ. ᴡɪʟᴅᴄᴀʀᴅ
what: returning from an infinity war canon update and Trying To Deal
when: beginning of september through the middle of the month
where: around the quarantine
warnings: infinity war spoilers, mentions of death, probably body horror, etc etc etc
ɪ. ᴀ ʀᴜᴅᴇ ᴀᴡᴀᴋᴇɴɪɴɢ
[ Everything hurts.
It’s been a long time since Gamora could safely say “everything hurts,” but when she jolts awake in a hospital bed (familiar and strange at the same time), her whole body feels like one big bruise. She sits straight up, ignoring the way she hurts, trying to shake away the insistent pain.When she reaches to touch the pounding point on the back of her head, her fingers find dried blood, what seems like a scabbed-over trauma, though she can’t quite figure out how—
It hits her like a blow to the gut.
Vormir.
The cliff.
The Soul Stone.
Thanos.
Gamora covers her mouth with a hand before she makes herself sick thinking about it. She shakes on the small cot, her eyes wide, sounds trapped behind her palm as four years of memories war with the realization of where she is.
Riverview. The Quarantine. She knows this place, she knows this hospital, but she— hadn’t. She had forgotten all about it, and she’s four years older now. She’s four years older, and she’s—
When an attendant comes to check on her, Gamora nearly strangles them on instinct alone, reacting to the adrenaline in her system screaming fight fight fight fight fight run—
She’s a mess, but when she grounds herself enough to let the poor attendant go (coughing, choking, looking absolutely startled and taken aback), she bolts. Her familiar leather coat is covered in dried green blood. Her hair is matted with it, the smell of ancient dust clinging to her skin, scapes across her face, her hands still left to heal. But she doesn’t care. She can walk, she can run, so she isn’t going to bother with the 24 hours of supervision.
If they want to try and hold her, they can.
Good luck.
She makes it blocks away from the hospital before she finally stops running, and she grabs at her shirtfront with trembling fingers as she gasps for breath, still quaking, still processing, still raw and running on the adrenaline of remembering what it felt like to be dragged to the edge of a cliff and thrown. She finds the spot on her stomach where she’d tried to stab herself, only to lose her dagger to bubbles, but that glimmering silver knife is back in her belt, untouched.
With a shout that fills the night air, she rips the knife away and hucks it as far from herself as possible.
No, no, no.
She’s not paying attention to where she throws the knife (fortunately retracted), so there’s every possibility she’s thrown it at someone or it’s simply clattered across the pavement, remaining unscratched and unscathed with a glittering red jewel that seems to mock her from a distance. ]
ɪɪ. ʙᴜsɪɴᴇss ᴀs ᴜsᴜᴀʟ
[ Days later, and Gamora is more composed. Not settled, not happy, not relieved – but composed. She’s cleaned up, put back together, and reinstated as captain of her squad again. Some might reasonably argue that she’s not ready for duty again, but she wouldn’t allow herself to be benched.
She needs something to do. She needs something to keep her mind off of everything that spins through her head when she lets it.
Which is why she’s spending extra time at the training facilities, running some poor unfortunate souls through some unusually rigorous drills.
When an obstacle course is cleared for the second time, Gamora stands waiting at the finish line, her arms crossed, her face impassive and unimpressed. She jerks her chin back to the start of the course. ]
Run it again.
ɪɪɪ. ɴᴏᴛ ɪɴ ᴛʜᴇ ʜᴏʟɪᴅᴀʏ sᴘɪʀɪᴛ
[ Oh, hey, it’s Dragosta. Gamora remembers the festival well, though it’s still strange to try and reconcile her memories of home with her memories of the Quarantine. Unlike vague curiosity the first year around, Gamora looks on with fondness in her eyes (just the faintest softening in her expression, barely readable to a stranger) as she plucks up a little bottle with red thread inside of it. The woman minding the display offers it to her with a warm smile, but Gamora turns her down.
She doesn’t need it.
She leaves the table of jars and spells behind, instead heading back to community housing. She makes it most of the way back, navigating through a crowd, before—
Those damn fairy lights.
She finds her way suddenly impeded, and when she pushes her hand against the invisible enclosure, she downright glares when she can’t move forward.
Sorry to the person who happens to be stuck with her, because your fellow prisoner looks particularly murderous. ]
ɪᴠ. ᴛʜʀᴏᴜɢʜ ʜᴇʀ sᴜɴᴋᴇɴ ᴅʀᴇᴀᴍ
Has anyone returned home through the portal and then come back to the Quarantine? Did you lose time? How much?
ᴠ. ᴡɪʟᴅᴄᴀʀᴅ
( ooc: you know the drill. hit me with anything and everything or send me a pp @poprocks to work something out! )

no subject
Maybe Gamora won’t move forward, but Peter certainly will. He doesn’t surge forward to close the space between them, but he’s slow, careful, a hand held out to her like he’s trying to calm a spooked creature. No sudden movements. That’s what got him the gash across his upper arm in the first place. ]
Hey. [ Soft, gentle. ] Hey. It’s okay. [ Even if it isn’t. Not by a long shot. But— ]
You’re safe here, okay? You’re all right.
no subject
(Because how hilarious, saying that "it's okay." It's not. It's not, nothing is okay—)
But she isn't looking at him like he's some stranger, because she knows it's Peter, and something in her is screaming with relief, knowing that he's here and he's intact (or he was, until she swiped at him), and she'd been so scared for him, for the others, for the universe—
She didn't think she'd ever experience such all-consuming fear again. ]
Peter.
[ His name. She can say that right now safely. ]
no subject
[ Still gently, still carefully, because he doesn’t want her to lash out again, doesn’t want her to try and snap his neck or something. (Thankfully, they’re only a stone’s throw away from the hospital, so hopefully if she does accidentally kill him, they can bring him back.)
He closes the gap between them with deliberate movements, and when he’s close enough to touch her, he stops just shy, casting her a questioning look. It’s been a long while since he’s had to ask permission. It’s been years since he’s had to be this cautious, but with her nerves so shot, with her on such high alert, with her instinct to fight cranked as high as it can go, he falls back on those old habits easily.
And just so he’s abundantly clear: ]
Can I—
[ touch you? ]
no subject
She throws herself into his arms, her own winding around his neck, her face pressed against his shoulder as she holds onto him fiercely. The last time she'd seen him, he tried to do what she asked of him. He tried to go through with his promise, and they'd been so close and he could have killed her and that would have been better that would have been better—
He smells like himself. Clean and familiar and whole. He's warm and sturdy and there, and she thought she'd never see him again. After Thanos took her, she didn't have any real hope that she could escape or find her way back to the Guardians. It was too late, at that point, and all she could do was try to protect her sister, try to keep Thanos from taking the Soul Stone, and—
She failed.
She had opportunities to take her own life sooner, moments she'd been left to her own devices, and she could have pulled it off, couldn't she?
(No, he would have put her back together, if she was still on his ship. It would have been too easy to keep her alive with all of his resources at his disposal.)
But now, she's here, somehow back in the Quarantine, and so is Peter. They're safe. They're alive. They're... something.
They're here. That's all she can process right now. ]
no subject
And— fuck. Fuck, he’s— he’s missed her. So fucking bad. This has been the longest goddamn week of his life, and— maybe, maybe if the situation were different, he’d actually fucking cry. Right then and there. He might break down into hiccuping sobs and gulping breaths from joy. But this is the situation they find themselves now: Peter, feeling weirdly... empty. Relieved, of course; over-fucking-whelmingly relieved, because he thought— he didn’t know if he’d— if Gamora would ever—
He’s relieved. Of course he’s relieved. But there’s blood flaking off the back of Gamora’s coat, and when Peter reaches to the nape of her neck, there’s blood matted in her hair, knotting the strands together, and when he ducks his head, he smells it, that metallic scent, and she’s trembling against him, her grip too-tight and desperate, and—
(He mourns.
... Gamora.
I had to—)
Peter screws his eyes shut, his grip briefly tightening around her. He can’t break down. He can’t. He has to hold it together. Because Gamora is— she needs him to be steady, right now. She needs to lean on him. She needs him to be supportive. She needs him to be the captain, just like Groot does, just like Mantis does. He shoves away his nausea, his mounting horror, that writhing, hideous guilt.
He swallows around the ugly lump in his throat, takes a shuddering breath as he lifts his head. He doesn’t pull back, not yet, and instead murmurs into her ear, ]
I’m taking you back to the apartment, okay? We’re gonna get you home and cleaned up.
no subject
The Quarantine was home for over a year, and now it's home again, isn't it? The only place they really can call "home," now.
Or, at least, the only place she can. Maybe Peter and the others are still alive through the portal, but she knows that if she went back, it would be to nothing. To literal, empty nothing. Would she disappear? Would there be some sort of afterlife waiting on the other side? Or would she go back long enough to experience the impact of hitting the ground far below the shrine on Vormir?
If she goes back, she's gone.
So Riverview has to be home, if she's going to live.
She nods against his shoulder, but her arms don't loosen around him yet, like she's terrified letting go will make him vanish. If she pulls away, will she find herself with nothing but fistfuls of bubbles? ]
I— Peter, your arm.
[ Because she cut him open. She did that, and she should take care of it. ]
no subject
This time, though, he offers, ]
I’ll take care of it when we’re home.
[ An assurance, solemnly given. He doesn’t want her to argue.
He reluctantly pulls back, the hand of his good arm curling over the line of her jaw, his thumb brushing over the deep, silver lines at the swell of her cheek. (Fuck, he’s missed her. He’s missed her so much, and his heart swells even as it twists, as bile rises up his throat. ]
Let’s get you home, okay?
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She's not doing very well on this navigating part. ]
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He walks her home, taking familiar routes, familiar trams, and while passersby cast them alarmed looks (some of them horrified), Peter ignores them all in favor of murmuring to Gamora in a low voice, pointing out little landmarks as they pass. (Hey, remember that place? They serve great burgers. Oh, that’s the place that Groot broke their sandwich board, remember?) Nonsense, mostly; a constant hum of inane commentary, but anything to fill the silence that’s doggedly trying to settle between them.
They make it back to the housing building without anyone calling the cops on them, and he walks her into their shared apartment, kicking the door shut behind them. ]
—and Mantis has been staying here.
[ This, apparently, is attached to some earlier bit of information he had offered as they came up the hallway. ]
She and Groot are out, but— they’re okay. They’ve been here since we’ve been—
[ Home. But that can’t really be “home” anymore, can it? Not anymore.
He moves to help her shrug out of her coat. ]
—since we’ve been gone.
no subject
(She'd been counting on remembering everything from their time in the Quarantine. They'd tried so hard to prepare, but...)
She watches old hangouts pass by, clinging to the flashes of memory that remind her of the good times they've had in the city, as it lets her rebuild what she can remember of times that are now four years removed for her. But she knows the streets, she knows the way home, and she stays pressed against Peter as she ignores every onlooker and gawking pedestrian. She doesn't know what she looks like, but she can guess.
Once at the apartment, she just nods along as Peter explains that Mantis has been living there, and she thinks that must be nice. She's glad Mantis has been looking after Groot, that he hasn't been left alone (and he's little again, isn't he? It's so strange after dealing with their snarky bundle of twigs back in their world), and she just takes stock of an apartment that she knew so well.
She lets Peter help her out of her coat, but she barely casts it a glance. ]
Throw that out.
[ The coat is ripped, covered in her blood, and she doesn't want to try to salvage it. ]
no subject
Four years have left him a little more responsible, and shockingly, it’s translated to his brief time back in Riverview. It means he’s been keeping it up. And more importantly, it’s something to do with his hands, something to keep him moving. Something to keep him from sinking down and down and down into the dark muck of his thoughts. Little, easy tasks to keep from staring long and hard at the shadows just around the corner.
When she takes off the coat, when she condemns it to the trash heap, he doesn’t argue with her, just tosses it over the back of a chair to dispose of later.
And he guides her to the bathroom, breaking away from her momentarily to set up the shower, to let the spray of water heat up. He helps her strip off the rest of her clothes. It’s careful, slow, gentle and almost clinical with the way he does it. There’s dried blood on her clothes, too, leaving the material stiff, and— it’s flaking off with every shift, dusting the floor, dusting his hands, and he—
He feels sick, for a second. He feels so fucking sick, because it’s— it’s so much. It’s too much. It’s way too fucking much.
But he swallows down the acrid taste creeping up his throat, takes a shuddering breath. Hold it together, he tells himself. Hold it the eff together, Star-Lord.
He tosses his own clothes aside, and he steps into the shower first, guiding Gamora in. ]
no subject
Dark green washes down her body and swirls around the drain. Mud goes along with it, and though the warm water stings over the remainders of her scraped-open skin, she doesn't flinch away.
Instead, she reaches out to set her hands on Peter's chest. The skin contact is a relief, and it's absolutely foolish, but she feels like she has to keep touching him. If she stops, he could melt away, so she has to hold onto him. She has to keep him safe.
She has to. ]
no subject
Instead, he pulls her against him, guides her to rest her brow against his shoulder, and he sets to work. A handful of bodywash, worked into a lather, and he rubs it into the worst of the mess caked onto her back. He tries to be gentle with the still-raw scrapes, the deep, dark bruises mottling her skin – and probably far more careful than he needs to be. He treats her like she’s made of porcelain, and— even with how often she insisted she wasn’t delicate, all the other times he’s done the same, he hardly feels guilty for it now.
And as he works, he keeps up that babbling, murmuring whatever comes into his head, just barely audible over the white noise of the water hitting tile. ]
It’s Dragosta again, apparently. Remember that stuff? Remember when you took that potion, and then we watched that movie? “No one puts Baby in a corner.” Maybe we can do it again, huh?
[ The shampoo comes next, and he hesitates before working it into the matted mess at the back of her head. His breathing hitches for a second, his words faltering, and he can’t— he doesn’t know what happened. He knows Thanos— he knows that the purple bastard—
He knows it happened, but Peter doesn’t know how. But with all the blood, he can hazard a guess.
He swallows thickly, loudly, hands shaking as he tries to untangle her hair, but his voice remains just as quiet, just as steady. ]
We can go to one of those dinners, when you’re feeling up to it. We can— we can walk the gardens, whenever you’re ready. Or see a movie again, or just— whatever you want. When you want. Okay?
no subject
We can do that.
[ It's the first thing she's said to really respond to him. But the thought of Dragosta tries to kick up some soft flicker of warmth, because she does remember going to dinner with Peter, going to see a movie together with that absurd little thread tied around their fingers.
She wants to ask him if he's okay. She wants to know how long he's been here and what he remembers, and if he's alive back through the portal. She doesn't know what she's missed or what happened after Thanos took her, and...
She just wants Peter to be okay. She wants her family to be okay. ]
no subject
He exhales slowly, just the tiniest bit of tension draining away, and he gently untangles her hair, working out the dried blood.
(The blood spins away into the drain, dark green and intense in a way that Peter isn’t ever sure he’s seen before. He’s helped her bathe after serious injuries in their four years together; he’s been caught, almost hypnotized, frozen and staring at a drain as her blood spun way and disappeared, but—
Never like this. Never so much. And he thinks for a second that he might be sick.) ]
No rush.
[ Murmured again, and he turns, brushing his lips over her temple. ]
You should get some rest. And when you’re feeling up for it, we’ll go. We have time.
no subject
That's all we have now, isn't it?
[ Time.
They've failed, she's failed, and if she wasn't here, she would be gone. So she has time in this place, but—
That's it. ]
no subject
The resignation. The tone bordering close on bitterness. It’s like a slap across his face, because—
(He promised. And he failed. And that’s just how it is, isn’t it? Everyone he loves, everyone who’s ever loved him, they just— slip away out of his grasp. They die, and they die reaching for him, and nothing he ever does is good enough, nothing he ever does can stop it, and—
And it’s him, isn’t it? It’s him. He’s a fucking jinx, and Mom had told him, over and over and over, and at the time he had thought it was a compliment, only now he knows it must’ve been a curse—
“You’re so much like your daddy.”
It’s Peter’s fault. It’s all his fault.)
His hands still in her hair, still unsteady in spite of the way he tries to control the tremor, but he— falls out of sync, for a second. His mind goes blank as he tries to mentally reset, as he tries to control himself, as he struggles desperately to hold it together.
Keep it together. Don’t fall apart. Time to be captain.
A slow, shuddering inhale, and he works out the last of the dried blood. ]
You’ve got me. And Groot. And Mantis.
[ Quietly, gently. ]
We’ve got each other. That’s not nothing.
no subject
She twinges with guilt. Realistically, she doesn't blame him. He did what she asked him to, and he kept his promise, and she can't fault him for that. They were outgunned from the word "go," and she knew they were out of their depth.
They never stood a chance.
She reaches up to catch his wrist, gently squeezing as he keeps working his fingers through her messy hair. ]
... I know.
[ Because she has them. She has him. They made it here, and she knows that isn't insignificant, but they'd spent the entire year they'd been in Riverview preparing for going home. But it hadn't mattered.
But— maybe that doesn't matter. Because now they're here, and maybe they failed, maybe they lost, but they got kicked back through the portal to have another chance to live their lives in the Quarantine. ]
What—
[ She shakes her head minutely, letting her forehead fall against his shoulder. ]
What do we do now?
no subject
Here she is.)
But what now? That’s the fucking question. What do they do now? There’s nothing they can do, is there? This is... this is it. There’s a giant fucking dumpster fire back home, and for all Peter knows, Groot and Rocket and Nebula still might be in the thick of it, and even if they need their help, there’s nothing they can do.
He’s tired. He’s so fucking tired. His side still aches with the dark bruising along his ribs, earned from the fight with Thanos. He feels hollowed out, he feels— two steps out of reality. He feels—
(sitting silently in a hospital hallway. “I’m not in love,” the voice croons in his ears, while his thoughts drain out of his head, and—) ]
... We rest.
[ That’s all they can do, isn’t it? ]
We recover. We... we regroup. And we... we just—
[ He falters, uncertain, searching for an answer. But after a few breaths, he bows his head. ]
... I don’t know.
no subject
I was so scared.
[ She whispers this out against his skin, the words almost lost under the beat of the water falling over them both. She was terrified – for Peter, for the others, for herself (though herself, least of all) – and it feels like her worst fears came to fruition.
But now... it's over. She's dead, and soon, half of the universe will be back home. And there's nothing left to do about it.
(How can she accept that?) ]
no subject
Gamora has— she’s never said that, in all their time together. She’s always been fearless, she’s always been so fucking unflappable, and Peter found himself leaning on her when his own resolve flagged. He may have been the leader, he may have called a handful of the shots, when the Guardians submitted to it, but Gamora was— he always took more than a few cues from her, and—
His fault. His fucking fault. If he had been faster, if he had been smarter, if she had just done as she asked, she would have— Thanos wouldn’t have—
He spurs himself into motion at last, wrapping his arms around her, ignoring the twinges of protest from his battered body, burying his face against her hair. His voice seems to have slipped away, but the desperate way he holds her speaks volumes for him.
I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for everything. ]
no subject
(If she holds him close enough, maybe neither of them will slip away.)
She stands like that with him, not moving under the warm water beating over their shoulders and her hair, and she doesn't want to move. She never wants to pull away.
(It's absurd. Unrealistic. But she can't help it right now.) ]
I love you.
[ Another soft murmur as her lips move over his skin. ]
I'm—
[ She stops on a hitching breath, that I'm sorry of her own hanging in the air. ]
no subject
I love you, too.
[ And the answer comes to him as easily as anything; something grounding that he so desperately needed.
He centers himself while Gamora clings to him, as her throat catches on the words she’s trying to say. (He thinks he knows what it is, and he doesn’t want to hear it. She has nothing to apologize for. They did everything right, didn’t they? But Thanos just... Thanos outplayed them, like Gamora had always feared he would.
And if he lets her say it, then the words will spill out of him, will fall from his lips like guts from a gaping wound, and if that happens, then his control will slip, and that’s not what Gamora needs.)
Peter takes a few rallying breaths to forces himself to regain control after that little frantic burst, and he reaches over to shut off the water. Reluctantly, he pulls back, steps out, wrapping a towel around his waist, though it does little for the fact that he’s still dripping wet. He plucks up a second, wrapping it around her shoulders, and offers a hand to help her step out. ]
C’mon. You’re gonna get pruney.
no subject
Not back on their world.
Finally, the water is shut off and a towel is wound around her, and Gamora reaches up to hold it in place as she takes Peter's hand, stepping out onto the bathmat. Her hair drips wetly on the floor, but at least the water is clear, no reminders of the pool of blood or—
She doesn't need Peter to hold her up, and she heads out of the bathroom, back to the familiarity of the room they'd shared with Groot. It's odd being here again, instead of their private quarters on the Quadrant, and she has to look around, take it all in, before she heads to the dresser to find something to wear.
(She goes for one of Peter's shirts, a pair of her own cloth shorts.) ]
no subject
That's good. That's great.
(There's a tremor in his hands as he pulls them down his face, as he tries frantically to maintain his composure.
This is good, he reminds himself. She's here, and he's here, and they have each other, and they have Mantis and Groot. It's like he said. They have each other.
His breath hitches. He's spent over a week falling apart by degrees, and a part of him— a part of him had resigned himself completely to shattering. But he's shoring himself up again, because—
Because he needs to.)
Peter does a haphazard job of drying himself, of pulling his clothes back on. His shirt clings to his dampened skin, and his hair drips down the back of his neck as he joins her in the bedroom. ]
It should all still be there. Your stuff, I mean.
It's... only been a couple weeks. Since we left.
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