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]

“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’.”

[st_ormbreaker]

"I'm not going to tell you to forgive him for not choosing to tell you," he says, looking down at Rocket. "But I think you should know that he will die, too."

Perhaps he shouldn't tell him that, but with all the talk of keeping secrets, it somehow seemed important for him to know.

[st_ripetail]

Rocket flicked an ear. “Yeah, well. Everybody goes sometime.” Yes, it was sad and no, Rocket didn’t even want to think about dead Quill for a second, but even with a freight train of booze in his system he was mad and hurt. “An’ there’s nothin’ I can do about it when nobody lets me know there’s a fucking Thing.”

[st_ormbreaker]

"You're not the only one to mention that," he says, thinking of Loki and Tony. Come to think of it, almost everyone so far -- exempting Quill -- reacted practically the same way: upset and hurt at not being told.

"Though, I thought you said you didn't think you were going back."

[st_ripetail]

“So? It’s not like that’s a good reason ta think ‘oh yeah, sure, I love fightin’ in fuckin’ blindfolds’.” It made sense to Rocket, anyway.

[st_ormbreaker]

"Just wondering if you've rethought your stance in the last five minutes."

[st_ripetail]

"Nope. I can be mad about everything. I'm just that fuckin' good."

[st_ormbreaker]

"I'd ask if it were exhausting, but..." Thor gestures vaguely. He's just as guilty of it, too.

[st_ripetail]

"Yeah, you get used to it." And Rocket felt he came by his touchiness honestly, at least. Go through a dangerous life being small and fluffy, and anyone would end up with a hair trigger.

[st_ormbreaker]

Silence settles between them for a moment before Thor speaks again.

"What are you going to do if you get out of here?"

[st_ripetail]

"Dunno. But I'll figure somethin' out. Thanos has those rocks on his glove, right? Maybe heist the purple one back from Nova Corps an' shoot it into a sun or whatever." Unless that would cause a supernova? Which would win, Infinity Stone or sun?

[st_ormbreaker]

"Best to get that one out of his hands quickly," Thor says. "The Power Stone is the first Infinity Stone he takes."

Thor is pretty sure that there's no way Rocket can do more harm to Xandar than Thanos will do to it in the future.

[st_ripetail]

"Nova's tough, but I'm pretty sure I could get around'em." Getting around Gamora's insistence that the stone stay with Nova Corps for safekeeping would be tougher, but... maybe explaining? Or just not telling her, that seemed more likely to work at least until it was too late.

[st_ormbreaker]

"Weren't you all captured by them before?" Thor had heard the tales -- and Quill had made it clear shortly after Thor's arrival that they had been the ones responsible for keeping the Infinity Stone out of the hands of that Kree maniac.

[st_ripetail]

“Yeah, but that was Gamora an’ Quill’s fault. Nobody cared about Groot an’ me until they started shit an’ made the Corpsstart scannin’.” Rocket was sure of that. It was ultimately the first example of him cleaning up Guardian messes, via jailbreak.

[st_ormbreaker]

"Not worried your face makes you stand out?" he asks. Disguises for Rocket have to be considerably harder than disguises for him. Not that Thor was terribly good at disguises.

[st_ripetail]

"I stick out everywhere. I just shoot anybody who gives me grief over it."

[st_ormbreaker]

"Wouldn't it make it easy for the Nova Corp to find you? Your appearance. And the shooting people thing, I suppose. The two of those in combination would probably be a dead giveaway."

[st_ripetail]

“It’s not like I was hidin’. I was a bounty hunter. ‘Til Quill an’ Gamora started shit everything was fine. It’s not illegal for mbe to exist.” Was it? Maybe his creation had been, but his existence wasn’t. Just a lot of the fun stuff he did.

[st_ormbreaker]

"Not illegal for you to exist," Thor agrees. "Just easy to find if someone spots you."

[st_ripetail]

Rocket looked up at Thor, then pointed a thumb at the cannon on his back, as if that was an answer.