( open ) did you do it?

[godslay]

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

[ 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! )

Comments

[godslay]

[ He tugs, and she drops his hand, turning to watch his face, and—

There's a moment – just a second – where she looks like Peter physically struck her. ]

... What?

[ Repeat it. Say it again. ]

[madeupnames]

... I'm that Spider guy who swings around Riverview. I lied about my job.

[His mouth feels pretty dry, and his tongue weighs a hundred pounds, and he thinks he might seriously have a heart attack any second now — but hell if he didn't have it coming, so he just stammers his way through an explanation; his hands move to fidget in front of him shakily, because he can't seem to do anything else with them.]

It hasn't happened for me yet, but I'm with the Avengers. I - I, um. I end up on one of Thanos' ships after the Time Stone got taken off Earth. Eventually we... meet up with Big Pete and the others on Titan to plan a way to stop him there. [He sucks in a breath.] I was told about it... About everything. A — About a month and a half ago.

[He looks at his hands as he talks, rubbing the space between his thumb and forefinger until it hurts.]

I knew how it'd all go down.

[godslay]

[ It's so much at once. Ever since waking up in Riverview again, it all feels like so much, like an overload of information, sensory and otherwise, that threatens to drown her. She's still trying to process, hasn't stopped trying to process, and this— isn't making it any easier.

She stares at him with wide, frozen eyes. ]

You knew.

[ For a second—

That's it. That's all she can say. ]

Before we left. You knew.

[madeupnames]

[He feels incredibly small and useless right now, but he owes it to her to see this through like he did Big Pete (and honestly, he's not even sure why the guy gives him the time of day after he knows the crap he didn't tell them). He just folds his arms and bunches his shoulders, voice defeated and weak.]

I did. About a month before you left, I learned what happened.

[He looks down at his feet, feeling his temples throb and his eyes ache.]

I — I thought if I told you, it'd make your time here worse. And... I wasn't sure how to say anything, and I just... I didn't think about what could happen because of it. And so it's... It's my fault you guys had to go back to that. I could've warned you, and I didn't, and I am so sorry.

[godslay]

[ It takes another bout of silence for her to run through everything Peter is saying to her. He knew, and he didn't tell them. They went back thinking things would be fine (and they were, for four years), but their lives fell apart in the worst way.

(Even though she'd dreaded it for so long, part of her just waiting for the inevitability—)

But he knew, and he did nothing. He didn't warn them, he didn't—

But they didn't remember Riverview when they got home. None of their preparations carried over, because they didn't have a single shred of memory about their time through the portal, so nothing helped. ]

... It wouldn't have changed anything on the other side.

[ She says it hollowly, the naked truth.

(But they could have stayed. What if they'd never gone back? What then?) ]

[madeupnames]

[He shakes his head, almost viciously, like he's trying to stave off anything she offers.]

You could have stayed here, stayed here longer — and not have had to live through that.

You coulda' just stayed here and you'd be okay. Even for a while longer.

[The more he's here, the more he thinks of it? The angrier he is at himself. He still can't look her in the eye, arms crossed, hands squeezing the space above the crease of his arms until it's hard enough to bruise.]

Why would I deserve to know and you guys not? You should have known.

I coulda' — [He struggles for a word — and thinks of Ben.] ... saved you. From... from suffering.

I promised to help, and I — I —

[I blew it.]

[godslay]

[ He's right, really. She doesn't interrupt him, because there's nothing untrue about what he's saying. They could have stayed. They could have avoided all of that (so much, so damn much), and continued to live in the Quarantine. They were so happy here. Missing so many important people, but— happy.

Safe.

Alive. ]

You made a mistake.

[ Flat. Almost hoarse. ]

[madeupnames]

[His expression pinches, and he breathes the beginnings of a laugh that dies near instantly on the tumble.]

I seem to make a lot of those.

[He thinks about Ben's ghost — what he'd said. It's been on repeat; he heard it niggling when he spoke to Quill, and he hears it now: 'You're never quite good enough, are you, Peter? If you're not failing me or disappointing Tony Stark, you're letting down your friends or the known universe. What would your parents say?']

Anyway, I... wanted to tell you, and — and apologize, because it's my responsibility to do whatever I can to help, and I didn't. [His eyes flood over, as he stares holes into the tram's waiting area with his gaze.] But I never... I'd never hurt any of you guys on purpose.

[He really — he really likes the Guardians. A lot. They've been good to him, have been friends and has done things for him they'd never have had to do. It only makes it worse; they've been kind and have helped him out, and this is what he contributes?]

[godslay]

[ Again, his words are met with a silence, but there's nothing— cold behind it. The ice that comes with her anger, the fury, the indignance – it's not there. Because as hard as it had all been, as miserable and traumatizing and awful... ]

I know.

[ Peter is a good kid. And she's been indulging whatever strange impulse makes her want to do what she can to take care of him, because he's been trying so hard and he's along in this world and—

She doesn't want him to be.

Which is why as hurt as she is, as awful as this is, she doesn't hate him for it.

He's a child. He's a child who made a mistake. It's not okay, and she doesn't know when it will be, but she doesn't resent Peter.

She nods away from the tram platform. ]

Come on.

[madeupnames]

[He looks confused, twisted up, as she coolly nods for them to go. His stomach is twisting into knots and his eyes are welling up, and he can't stop — shaking. He feels stupid. He should have processed all this by now, and it's not like he even lived any of this yet. But Gamora isn't acting angry at him, Quill is talking to him, Mantis doesn't hate him — just what is this, huh? Nothing in his head is turning out the way his ugly imagination had beat him to death with.

He almost blurts out you don't get it, but of course she gets it, she gets it way more than him. She's been there. She's dealing with way more than him, because she actually had to die. Him? He just knows he's gonna.

Everyone knows they're gonna die someday, so boo-hoo, Peter Parker.

But he could've protected them in ways he clearly couldn't back home.

They're just strangers there. They barely know each other.

But to Peter, she's no different than someone he's trying to rescue in Queens.

Ned and May, they might be dead, too. 50% of your school is dead. 50% of Queens is dead. You're dead. Billions and billions and trillions of people—

His voice is thready and small, on the cusp of what is certainly not internally imploding panic.]

... Where?

[godslay]

[ ... He sounds like he's going to shatter and shake apart with everything that he's been holding in.

(She doesn't blame him; she thinks she might fall to pieces just standing on the platform.) ]

I know a place.

[ Somewhere she goes when she needs quiet, when she needs to process, when she needs to separate herself from everything else for a little while. ]

[madeupnames]

[He nods, swallowing hard, and he almost feels kind of out of his own head when he follows her. Part of him almost says "I have a place, I should go home" — because if he needs a moment to brood or cry or think, he always runs home. That's the nice thing about living in a studio apartment and not a community housing place, you know? Nobody — not your roommates, not your hero idols, not your worried friends with their worried brows, not Alex or Athena — can see you crumple mentally for a few hours.

He's gotten better, though. Sort of. When Peter came back, it was easier. At least knowing he came back. And he thinks he's sort of numbed himself to the being dead thing, mostly? Now it's just... being terrified for everyone else he's ever known in his sixteen years living.

He ducks his head and stares at the floor, but follows.]

... Okay. Yeah.

[He's not sure why she'd want to hang around him right now.

It was kind of a big bombshell, at least from a friendship standpoint.

"Oh, hey! I lied about my job! Also I could've stopped heaps of trauma for you and Peter!"

He wipes quickly at his face, when she's not focusing on him.]

[godslay]

[ Gamora knows the way by heart now, even if it feels like it's been years. Four years, but also just a week? She's still trying to wrap her mind around how things can feel so fresh and distant at the same time.

However, that's much less important right now.

She doesn't offer small talk or chatter as she leads Peter off, out to the community gardens she loves so dearly. Down the paved paths, through flower beds and foliage that gets deeper, until she veers away from stone walkways, into the trees. Deeper, until they stop in a clearing, where bundles of flowers dot the ground, winding through bushes and up along the branches of trees on crawling vines that look like they ought to be invasive, but seem harmless to the other plantlife.

She halts, looking around (because everything is the same, nothing's changed, at least here, at least this is the same—), to take in the odd... silent peace. ]

[madeupnames]

[Peter — who is usually pretty vocal — is entirely silent, with his chin tipped down. Thoughts lately have been like gnats swarming his head and apologies have been easier and easier to overdo. It feels a lot more like the Peter Parker before the bite: meek, less confident, more than a little lost when it comes to anything but his science books. What to say? What to do? What does she want him here for? Why isn't she angry?

He stops, watching her take it all back in again. It's a beautiful place, but his stomach hurts like it's in a dozen knots. Not fair to the flowers and stonework, he knows, but it feels like he's been caught up in a nightmare since the day he stupidly asked Tony Stark for the truth.]

It's. It's pretty.

[He says it very quietly, hands tucked deep into his jacket pockets.

Maybe she took care of this place before? Maybe she comes here to unwind?

He's just not sure what her reason is to bring him along.]

[godslay]

[ Even if Gamora was terrible at reading others’ body language, Peter is practically screaming his discomfort in the hunch of his shoulders, the pointed way he keeps his hands on his pockets, every time he looks down at the ground.

She nods quietly to the grass. ]

Sit.

[madeupnames]

[When someone like Gamora tells you to sit down, you sit down; he practically does it at the speed of light, he's so nervous about, uh, everything. This whole night has been... No, this whole month has been one of the most stressful of his life. Not including — well. No need to go down even more depressing avenues of thought.

His palms are sweaty in his anxiousness, and he wipes them on his jeans.

Opens his mouth, closes it.

Man, usually he's really good at saying stupid stuff to lighten the mood (or make people annoyed at him, which at least changes the atmosphere). But he's honestly just. A little scared.]