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.

Rocket hated sleeping. He had to do it, of course, everybody did, but that didn't make it okay and tht didn't mean he did it any more than he had to. If he'd ever admitted it, and if anyone had ever asked him why, he'd've probably said something along the lines of 'fuck off'.

It was the nightmares, that was the problem. They didn't happen every time he slept, but they happened enough. They sent him back in time, and when he woke up all he could do was huddle and shake for a while. Longer than he could ever deal with. So most of the time he slept as little as possible, but every so often a body had to catch up.

He'd learned a long time ago that waking up not-alone helped. He was always alone in the dreams, reality got kicked into gear faster when there was someone else around, after. Lylla, fellow prisoners, Groot, Jemma. It didn't matter, for those purposes, who was risking getting their fingers bitten off by a panicked Rocket.

For Rocket, it did. There were only so many people he was okay with allowing to see him be a shivering weak wreck, even if it was just for a minute or two. In Gotham, there'd been a few, but in the Inn? Not Quill, because either the man would hold it over his head forever or he wouldn't, and either way was intolerable. Snow wouldn't mind and wouldn't chat, but Rocket liked how their relationship didn't include either of their pain. None of the kids, because they'd chat, or try to help, or whatever the fuck the eager-to-please tried to do with broken things.

That left two possibilities, and Rocket found himself outside and knocking on the door of one: Pike. They understood each other enough that Rocket thought she'd probably get it, and if not - well, he'd just cope.