riverviewlogs | ( closed ) domesticity isn't so bad.

Entry tags:

( closed ) domesticity isn't so bad.

who: Peter Quill and Gamora
what: An evening in the life of ridiculous space dummies.
when: August 11th — right before the amnesia event.
where: Community housing: floor 13, room 4
warnings: None!

[ Despite the fact that they've only been in the city for over a month, it's become surprisingly easy to find a new routine. It's far more laidback in comparison to their usual fare – less scrambling for legal and slightly-less-than-legal jobs – and only having to share a room with Peter is much better than the way they'd all been living on top of each other back on the Milano. There hadn't been much of an opportunity to adjust to the Quadrant, but their apartment is cleaner than the overall ship itself, so it has that in its favor. (That excludes the general messiness that comes from living with Peter, but that's bearable.)

But everything feels easier. The weight of the galaxy doesn't sit on their shoulders, they don't have to report to the Nova Corps, they aren't constantly recognized by "fans" or otherwise so— it's different. Gamora has a normal (emphasis on "normal") job for the first time in her life, and though it also happens to involve killing monsters and protecting anyone meandering beyond the wall, she has something as mundane as shifts. She reports in, handles a squad of her own for the Guard, but then she goes home for dinner like everyone else.

But being home for dinner means that a regular meal at roughly the same time has become part of her schedule, and since hers and Peter's shifts tend to coincide more often than not, that usually means they see to their dinner together. They've managed to sample a good deal of the restaurants the city has to offer, and their fridge is generally full of whatever leftovers they've had for the week; they don't cook much, but they still somehow manage to sit to eat together most nights.

It becomes a habit. In fact, she'd be more surprised by Peter missing dinner than she is by how they've fallen into such a domestic routine.

And that's what it is, isn't it? Domestic. Living together, eating together, spending downtime together. Sometimes that includes Mantis (because Gamora has become oddly protective of her, tentatively treating her like any of the other Guardians), but sometimes, it's little more than absently keeping busy near or with each other in the hour or so they may have to spare.

(Though as the days roll by, she's become especially fond of something as simple as waking up in the morning to see Peter snoring softly in the bed across from her. Sharing space isn't new, surely, but with their unfamiliar surroundings and all of this change – both here and back in their own universe–, just seeing him helps.

It makes her smile, and somehow, for the first time in a long time, she feels less displaced.)

Tonight, she comes bearing a bag of pasta for their dinner in various red and white sauces. She's discovered that this kind of food is actually tasty, and though she'd never experienced any of these sauces before coming to this city, she's decided that the Terran ones Peter had her try are more than worthwhile.

She unlocks the front door, letting herself inside, and then kicks it closed as she heads to the small kitchen to set down their food. She starts going through the boxes, putting them out one by one, before going to fetch a couple of plates and forks for them both (while ignoring the small pile of dishes already in the sink; they should probably take care of that tonight, but she maintains that it's Peter's turn again).

She pauses long enough to pull out her communicator and fire off a text. ]

Hurry up if you want to eat before it gets cold.

Or I'm going to start without you.

[ Probably not, but still. ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ That's—

An entire month? When he was pretty sure he had just docked in the Eclector the other day? ]

That doesn't make any sense.

[ Sharply. Yondu's faction of Ravagers didn't allow women. A distraction, the old bastard says. There was a time and a place for the "nookie nookie," as the idiot was so fond of putting it, and it wasn't aboard the Eclector.

Peter pinches the bridge of his nose, trying and failing to keep his panic at bay. Why the hell does she know so much? About his Walkman, about his mom's tape, about the ships he lived on? It adds credibility to her story, sure, but how the hell does he just lose a month? It's not like losing keys or something. It's not like he just set it down somewhere and forgot about it after the fact. ]

How the hell am I supposed to believe— any of this?

[ Ah, but how to break it to him that's it's more than just a month?

Maybe she'll come to that later. ]

I know it seems impossible.

[ Because if she remembered so little? If she'd lost everything that had happened with Peter and the Guardians... well, this would be a very different conversation.

Potentially a very violent one. ]

I—

[ She stops, hesitating, and then reaches for the communicator in her pocket. ]

Here. Come look at this.

[ He stays rooted to the spot for a long while, watching her warily. It takes a long while, but he takes a hesitant step toward her, then another.

(If his hand moves toward his blaster again, he's barely aware of it.) ]

What am I looking at?

[ Gamora doesn't show any measure of impatience as she waits – giving him the chance to come closer at his own pace, like offering a dog a hand and trusting it won't decide to bite.

"What am I looking at?" ]

Yourself.

[ She flips through the communicator, glancing through the archives for Peter's last open call to the network, and she finds it on the correct date. There are multiple files accompanying it, timestamps galore, and she fastfowards through some of it.

She holds the screen up to him as a smaller picture of Peter is playing on the communicator, holding the Zune up to the camera.

"Don’t suppose anyone here’s familiar enough with this that they can show me how to add stuff?"

And she hits pause.

She fastforwards again, and this time, when she hits play, Peter's mid-sentence when a dirty rag comes flying at his face.

"Oh, real mature, Gamora—"

He chucks the rag back at her on the screen, and Gamora pauses the video again, offering the communicator to Peter with his own face peering into the camera from the days old recording. ]

[ He watches her, mistrust clear in his face, but when she hits play, he hears— well. That sounds like him, but you always sound different to yourself than you actually do, so maybe it's—

No. He glances at the device in her hands. That's— that's definitely him. He'd recognize his own handsome face anywhere. ]

What the hell?

[ This, breathed out. Him, with that weird brown device in his hand. Him, smiling and shrugging and laughing. Him, doing all this shit and having no memory of it. She holds out the device to him, and doesn't quite snatch it from her, but it's a close thing. He fast forwards through it, again and again and again.

—ift. From my dad. (what the fuck?)
—holy crap, I love Ferris Bue—
—try “Cherry Bomb” by the Runaways. “Ballroom Blitz” by Sweet—
The radio was kind of constantly on when I—
Just Star-Lord wor—
—doing the legwork, give "You Send Me" or "Cupid" a—

His grip goes slack on the device, though not enough to drop it. ]

What the shit? [ Somehow even fainter. ]

I don't remember any of this.

[ He stares at the screen for a second or two longer – a frozen image of himself with a tentative smile on his face – before he drags his gaze up to her. A flicker of anger sparks itself to mask that strange bit of fear snaking through him. ]

What the fuck is going on?

Edited (273 icons and i forget to pic one) 2017-08-20 09:51 (UTC)

[ Gamora genuinely can't imagine how surreal it must be to see himself on the device and have no recollection of it. It's him, clearly him, in this very apartment, laughing and grinning and being himself, while Gamora sits off-camera, cleaning her sword. It's still fresh for her, still only set apart by days, and she remembers smiling to herself in certain moments, rolling her eyes more often than not, and—

(The next day at work, she'd looked up "You Send Me" and "Cupid."

She listened to them for the rest of her shift.) ]

If I had an answer for you, I would give it.

[ She says it with a grave look on her face. She means that, and she itches for an explanation, to know what's caused this developing mess. ]

We will find out.

[ A promise. ]

"We."

[ He repeats it flatly, skeptically. Yesterday, seeing that steely determination might have reassured him, might have made him feel better about whatever mess he had gotten himself into.

Today, though, Peter doesn't know what to do with it. His wariness returns in full force, and he holds the device out to her. ]

Listen, I'm sure you mean well— [ He's not, in fact, sure of this at all, and it shows with the sharpness of his voice, with the way he gives her another once over like he's looking for tells. ] —but I still have no clue who the hell you are.

[ It— stings more than Gamora thought it might, to hear the way he talks to her now, how he looks at her with so much mistrust. She knows she's a stranger to him now, but to remember everything they've gone through and the time they've put into the team while it's nothing in his eyes is... hard.

She forces it back, smooths out her expression to focus – because emotional reactions are not the point here. ]

My name is Gamora. Before we came here, we were— on a team together.

[ Explaining this feels strange. Though they'd only been a part of the Guardians for a couple of months, it felt like such huge steps had been taken and they'd come far.

In the back of her mind, she remembers a conversation with an anonymous source on the network, mere days before.

"What would you do if the person you were in love with literally forgot you existed?"

It had all been hypothetical then – or so she'd thought. ]

... A team.

[ That same skepticism.

Peter doesn't play well with others. Sure, he can do it, is fully capable of it, but he doesn't like it. ]

You were with the Ravagers?

[ Because that's the only team she could mean. It's the only team he's affiliated with. Maybe in the month that Peter's managed to lose, Yondu has also lost his goddamn mind and let women onto the team. Which means that if she's with them, too, Peter is inclined to trust her even less. ]

[ Gamora doesn't quite scoff – but it's close. ]

Far from it.

[ If you want to talk about "honorless," look no further than Yondu's lot. ]

You left the Ravagers shortly before we met. You took one of Yondu's jobs for yourself, so by the time we met, you had a sizable bounty on your head, courtesy of the Ravagers.

So, no, I was not associated with them.

[ He observes her for a breath or two before sighing. There's not much he can say on this, whether he believes her or not. (He had been considering striking out on his own, and the easiest way to do that was to take the payment for a job and run like a bat out of hell.

So maybe she is telling the truth.)

He scrubs his face, frustration bleeding through every pore. ]

Fine. Whatever. Let's say I believe all of that. That we're teammates. That I'm not with the Ravagers. That I'm just forgetting an entire friggin' month.

Fine.

Then why the hell don't I have my ship? And what the hell happened to my Walkman?

[ ... Well, before addressing the rest, she realizes there's something more she needs to correct first. ]

Peter, it's been more than a month. You and I have been here, in this city, for about four weeks now.

We had spent two months together with the others, after you left the Ravagers.

[ ... What. ]

—What.

[ What. ]

Three months. You're— you're saying I'm missing three months.

Yes. Three months.

[ The gravity in her tone leaves no room for levity, no lies or bent truths. ]

A lot has happened.

[ Okay. What the fuck.

He sits down on the couch, because apparently standing might be asking too much, and he covers his face with his hands. ]

This is un-fuckingreal.

[ Gamora keeps her distance, even though she finds that her first instinct is to draw close, to set a hand on his shoulder.

She purposefully refrains. ]

I am— sorry, to have to tell you like this.

[ To have to tell him at all. The apology doesn't come easily, if only because this isn't her fault, she's certain of that, but she can see how difficult this is (and she doesn't blame him in the slightest). ]

Do you need a moment?

[ He has no idea how he's supposed to process this.

Three months, she says. Three months just— gone. And how the hell does that even happen? Did he just— leave the front door open and those three months ran off? If he just waits, will they come back of their own accord? Does he have to slap up some "Lost Memories" posters and offer a reward?

What the hell is he supposed to do?

And part of him still doesn't believe it. Maybe those recordings had been faked – though he has no idea why anyone would go to the trouble. Maybe she's playing an elaborate prank on him. Maybe this is a weird fucking dream, and any second now, he's going to wake up on his bunk in the Milano, blinking at the overhead and thinking, I should stop eating lovir before bed.

Do you need a moment? she asks, and Peter lets out a disgusted sound. ]

What I need is my stuff.

[ Gamora's lips press in a thin line, and she realizes her answer won't be terribly helpful. ]

What you have there is all of it.

[ Aside from the aero-rig, perhaps, but they hadn't come through with the Milano, and— certainly not with the Walkman. ]

We weren't dragged into this place with time to pack.

[ He inhales deeply, but the breath shudders on hits way back out. He drops his hands, turning to look at her with a hard gaze. His jaw clenches around the words when he asks, ]

How do I leave?

[ (not we, as it might have been just hours ago.) ]

[ There's no wavering in her own eyes as she meets his, but her voice is not unkind when she replies. ]

You can't. The portal to our world hasn't reopened.

The thing that brought us here has kept us trapped, and until that changes, we cannot leave.

[ She says "we," if only because of their shared world.

Little else would be meaningful to him at this point. ]

[ He grunts out another frustrated noise, hands tangling in his hair as if he actually means to tear it out. As it is, his fingertips dig into his scalp, his breathing grows more harsh as he tries to wrangle that mounting sense of anger.

Another shuddering exhale, louder this time. When he speaks, his voice is level but strained. ]

What happened to my Walkman.

[ Gamora's answer isn't immediate. She doesn't want to tell him about Ego, about his father, because those are details that still weighed heavily on him, even with memories intact. It's too much – especially on top of everything else. ]

... It was broken, before we came here.

It's— [ She hesitates, uncertain. ] It's gone, Peter.

[ That answer isn’t good enough, and it shows in the way his eyes blaze, in the way the line of his jaw tightens with frustration. ]

How was it broken? Where is it? [ And as he speaks, his breathing becomes more ragged, something desperate and horrified taking hold of his voice. ] I could’ve— I could’ve fixed it. I would’ve taken the pieces. I would’ve kept it. I would’ve saved something.

It can’t just be fucking gone.

[ How is she supposed to explain this? How does she tell him in a way he'll be willing to accept?

(Though she understands why he wouldn't accept it otherwise, given everything that Walkman means to him.) ]

There was too much chaos. Everything was going to hell, and by the time we could get you out, there was no way to recover any of it.

[ They'd needed to finish Ego. To get Peter away.

There's sympathy in her tone, something gentler, because she knows how important the Walkman is. They all do. ]

We couldn't get it back, Peter. We would have, if there was any chance.

[ Shit.

Something in her voice tells him she’s— telling the truth. Impossibly. Inconceivably. She isn’t lying to him, and that just... makes everything worse.

He feels— hollowed out. He feels the air fly from his lungs. He feels his eyes sting. He feels something twist in his chest, cold and bitter and furious.

(That same feeling that had exploded him in in the Kyln, though he doesn’t remember it now. That same feeling that made him dart through the closing gate as the employees processed their belongings. That same feeling that had him shouting in the faces of armed men and women while handcuffed and vulnerable.

That same cold, all-consuming rage when Ego confessed to killing Meredith Quill.)

He snatches up the empty beer bottle from the table in front of him and gets to his feet in one smooth motion. The bottle shatters against the far wall when Peter hurls it with a shout.

He wants to scream. But he doesn’t.

He stands there, his back turned to her – Gamora, apparently – with his head bowed. His breathing is shallow, harsh, far too quick, his hands clench into white-knuckled fists, and his entire body shakes with fury.

A few seconds like this, before he spins on his heel, moving to brush past her toward the door. ]

( closed ) domesticity isn't so bad.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)