Thor and Rocket - not dead

[st_ripetail]

Rocket was not doing okay. It was weak, yeah, but it was still... not okay.

He'd been alone in the cages, and then not because Lylla had been with him. Then she'd left. Then he'd been alone, and then not because Groot had been there. And then he'd gotten lucky-ish because when Groot left - however temporarily - there'd been the other idiots. The Guardians. But then he'd been alone again, ripped out of that and dropped in the primitive-as-fuck Terra city of Gotham. It hadn't been so bad, he'd found a few people for when he needed company. But then it'd happened again, he'd been ripped from there and dumped in this Inn place, forced to start over again.

That had, though he hadn't realized it until the ghost shit, been a bit much. But he'd soldiered on, did his best, mostly got along with the humies. It wasn't their fault he kept losing shit. And Quill was around in the Inn, even if he sometimes seemed off. Too careful or something, thinking shit he wasn't saying, which was weird for the Quill Rocket knew.

But then real-Groot came as a ghost and showed him... that stuff. And that had taken 'a bit much' to 'too fucking much'. Baby Groot (not technically a baby, but still) turning to ashes. A few humies who were here at the Inn, but Rocket didn't know them, and they were pretty much ashed anyway so it didn't matter. The big guy with the mismatched eyes who called him Rabbit - Thor - who wasn't ashed, but... somehow Rocket and Groot had been around him, not the other Guardians.

What had happened to them? Had they left him behind? Had he left them? Why? Was that why Quill thought things he didn't say, and was that pity or anger or what?

For a while, Rocket had just stayed in his room, only venturing out to resupply (food, booze, gift shop junk for parts) during off-hours when pretty much everybody was asleep, literally burying himself in his junk so nobody would see him if they happened to come into his room. (Nobody did.) But that didn't help much, and eventually somebody would start wondering if he was gone or whatever, so he started going out in the day a little bit again.

Not much. Just enough to be seen. Enough that he could be dismissed as 'oh, I saw him yesterday' instead of 'oh shit has anybody seen that little fucker 'cause I haven't'.

Today, he'd gone out into the desert and piled up several bunches of rocks as makeshift targets. A couple of them had bombs buried in them so they'd explode real good when he unloaded the cannon at them, but he hadn't done that yet. Piling rocks was tiring, so he was taking a break surrounded by the rocks he hadn't piled yet.

Comments

[st_ripetail]

"Fuckin' fantastic." Rocket slid the cannon back into its sling on his back, thought for a second or two, then ran up Thor and settled on his shoulder. He could keep up and all, but it just seemed easier to let the big friend do the walking.

[st_ormbreaker]

For a moment, Thor is caught off-guard by Rocket suddenly scrambling up onto his shoulder, but his shoulders quickly relax under the weight of his companion.

Thor smiles. "You ever been to Asgard?" he asks, with considerably more pep.

[st_ripetail]

"Nah, never seemed like a me kinda place, ya know?" Rocket's tail lashed back and forth slowly, helping him balance rather than expressing mood. "All golden an' fancy an' shit. Also not too big on visitors from what I heard. Always thought it was too bad, though, 'cause I bet you Asgardians outbrawl Laxidazian trolls no problem."

[st_ormbreaker]

"You're not wrong," he says. "Fought plenty of Laxidazians. Fought plenty of everything." You didn't get to be 1500 years old without fighting at least one of almost everything under the sun.

"You should give it a visit. Good alcohol, good food... plenty of stuff to steal, too."

Thor pushes open the double doors to the inn's entrance.

[st_ripetail]

“Yeah, maybe.” If he ever did get back, he’d be with the Guardians, at least until Groot was out of his pot, which meant random visits to gold palace-world’s were probably not on the agenda.

And after Gotham, ‘back’ felt like a really big if. “Aren’t you the fucking king, though? Seems like a bad idea t’encourage pillagers. ‘Come, visit an’dyeal our shiny shit!’”

[st_ormbreaker]

"The king thing's a recent development," he says. "Personally, I think my brother could have used someone shaking up the place a bit while he was in charge."

Thor heads up the stairs.

[st_ripetail]

“Hey, I’m happy to wreck shit.” Rocket frowned slightly, ears swiveling. “Ain’t he younger? How’d he end up in charge before you?”

[st_ormbreaker]

"Stripped my father of his memory and his power, cast him down to Earth, then lived as him in his stead," he says. "I don't know how he managed to pull it off." His impersonation of Odin hadn't exactly been passable. Had everyone on Asgard believed Odin had gone senile?

Thor opens the door to his room and reaches for a flask on the tabletop. He wordlessly offers it up to Rocket.
"

[st_ripetail]

“Huh. I guess that works.” Rocket accepted the flask, unscrewed the lid, and took a slug.

The liquor hit his system like a freight train. No extra burn, and it wasn’t the best he’d ever tasted, but... he could see exactly - though suddenly fuzzily - what Thor meant by ‘one shot is enough for humans. One shot was probably enough for almost anybody.

Except Asgardians. Lucky bastards. “Oh, that’s nice.”

[st_ormbreaker]

Thor grins at that with obvious pride.

"We're still working it out," he says. "Loki and I were never distillers." Though Thor definitely had a soft spot for Asgardian beverages of all sort -- especially ale.

He holds his hand up to take the flask.

[st_ripetail]

Rocket considered not handing it over, but a thought struggled up in his mind: if he played nice, he’d probably be able to convince Thor to share again. Be responsible! Or whatever that word was.

He handed the flask down, managing (just barely) to keep hold of his perch on the man’s shoulder while doing so. “Doesn’t gotta be perfect with a kick like that.”

[st_ormbreaker]

"I suppose that's the most important part to get right." Thor carefully sits down on the couch, making sure not to catch Rocket's tail between his back and the couch and takes a long swig of it, then holds it on top of one of his thighs.

"You go to Asgard and you can try the real thing."

[st_ripetail]

“Yeah, I can see that conversation goin’ well.” Rocket laughed, then abruptly stopped and leaned against Thor’s head. “I’m never goin’ back, ya know. I been gone too long. Pretty sure I’m gonna die of old age in a place like this.”

[st_ormbreaker]

Thor tilts his head back, trying to get a good look at the raccoon still perched on his shoulder.

"What do you mean?" Rocket hadn't been here for that long.

[st_ripetail]

"I was in a different place before this. Worked the same as this one, kinda. No schedule to arrivals an' it was a whole city instead'a one hotel." Rocket slid down gracelessly to flop on the couch, still more or less leaning on Thor. "It'd been like... two years since I saw anybody I knew when I got here. Maybe three. I got used to the 'never again'."

[st_ormbreaker]

Thor finds botht ideas disconcerting. First, the idea that there are other pocket universes like these that people are sporadically trapped in; second, the idea he might not be able to return home and take care of Thanos himself. Perhaps he should be content to stay here where people were alive and well, but that wasn't an option. Not for Thor.

"Must have been nice to have more to do at least," he says, instead of remarking on Rocket's less-than-optimistic viewpoint.

[st_ripetail]

"Eh, it's about the same either way. We were maybe gonna start fighting a bit with the parasites outside the city an' that woulda been fun," so much fun, "but a lotta the days were as samey as here. Food an' stuff's better here, though."

[st_ormbreaker]

"What happened?" Thor asks. "All of a sudden, you just found yourself here instead of there?"

[st_ripetail]

“Yuuuup. Rolled out of bed, grabbed the cannon, walked out of my room and boom!” Rocket threw out his arms like there had been an actual explosion. “Road to the Inn.”

[st_ormbreaker]

"Sounds miserable," he says, opening his flask again. "You settle down, get used to everything and everyone, then wind up here."

Thor hopes that when he leaves this place, it's not to go anywhere else but home.

[st_ripetail]

“Eh, it’s not so bad. Mosta my life I don’t really do people. Lylla, then Groot, then the Guardians. Other people, eh, I don’t fuckin’ care.” Rocket was pretty sure it was a species thing: the ability to get along without bonding would be good for a killing machine.

[st_ormbreaker]

Thor raises a brow at that. "So you had no friends back there?"

[st_ripetail]

“I did! I’m used to not keepin’ people I meant.” He still missed Jemma, sometimes. Other people, on and off, but Jemma was consistent. “I don’t usually miss people when they fuck off or I do.”

[st_ormbreaker]

"Your Quill," Thor begins, taking another drink from the flask. "Did you ever miss him?"

[st_ripetail]

“Yeah. Him an’ the other Guardians. Mostly Groot an’ him though.” Gamora after that, but from the wrong time she’d just call him names and think he was a thing. That wasn’t a worry with Groot or Quill. “Didn’t cripple me or nothin’.”