As they walked back to the ship, they were met with some curious looks from passers-by; the looks were always quickly turned away, discouraged by forbidding glares from Gamora and Drax. Peter didn't particularly care about the looks - he didn't really care about anything beyond the fact that his friends had found him, he was alive, and Zoral couldn't touch him ever again - but still, it was nice not to be stared at.

Peter felt exhausted and shaky and fucked up, and he felt incredibly lucky. He thought things had been about to get a hell of a lot worse, and then Rocket had appeared out of nowhere, and Peter didn't have to find out how much worse it could have gotten. Still, everything hurt. And he was cold and too hot at the same time - thanks to the damn fever - but he was just as happy to be held against Drax's warm torso. Not that he'd ever admit that out loud. But Drax was warm, and solid, and probably not a hallucination. He was also surprisingly gentle for such a scary-looking guy.

No one said anything as they walked along, or if they did, Peter missed it. Here and there, time was slipping past without him noticing. Peter didn't really care about that either.

Suddenly Drax stopped walking, and Peter picked up his head from where it rested against Drax's shoulder. They were next to a small ship, and Rocket was opening the door and going inside, at which point Peter had a question.

"Um, guys?" he asked hesitantly. "Where's the Milano?"

"Waiting for us on the next planet," Gamora answered, following Rocket into the ship. "It was too conspicuous; they needed to think we were gone."

"Oh," Peter said faintly. His left hand clutched at Drax's arm as Drax bent carefully to edge through the doorway.

Ahead of them, Rocket made his way up to the cockpit, to get them off the ground as quickly as possible. Gamora detoured to the side, shoving things onto the floor to clear a space on the tiny ship's only bunk; as soon as she moved aside, Drax gently deposited Peter into a seated position on the bunk, trying to jostle him as little as possible. Peter tried not to wince, but everything hurt and every movement was painful, no matter how careful Drax might be.

When he was finally settled, Peter noticed that Gamora was staring at his right hand. Peter glanced down at his hand and immediately wished he hadn't. Present and remembered pain made him feel queasy, and he held his hand a little closer to his stomach. His hand was probably the most immediate concern. He could smell the infection, and he hadn't tried moving his fingers yet and he didn't want to. Peter knew, intellectually, that they would have to do something about it, but he really wasn't looking forward to it.

"We should cleanse your wounds," Drax announced. "Several are already showing signs of infection."

And there it was. "Yeah," Peter sighed. "I know."

Silence dragged on for a few seconds. Peter could feel Gamora and Drax watching him while he stared at the floor, seeing nothing, fighting an internal battle between the longer you wait, the worse it will be and please, God, no more.

Then an arm moved toward Peter and he instinctively flinched away.

Gamora froze.

Shit, you moron, Peter told himself. Calm the fuck down.

Her voice was hesitant. "Peter -"

"No, I know, it's fine," he quickly assured her. "I just don't - I can't -"

Her face started to crumple, but she held it back, and then she just looked really fucking sad. Peter felt like an asshole.

"Look, just knock me out, okay?" Peter finally said. "Then you can... without me freaking out on you."

Drax blinked at him. "Peter Quill, I do not think it would be wise -"

"No, not literally knock me out. Just give me a painkiller and a sedative, and I'll sleep through it while you guys... do what you need to do."

Sudden understanding came over Drax's face. "I see," he nodded. "That would make this... less difficult. For all of us."

"I'm just... I've had enough," Peter sighed. "And I'm tired." The first aid was really necessary, but some of it would hurt like hell, and Peter didn't want to hurt any more. And for Gamora and Drax, well... a conscious, screaming patient was a serious distraction when you were trying to perform first aid.

Gamora's eyes gleamed suspiciously for a moment. Then she blinked furiously to clear them, and bent down to open the medical kit sitting on the floor with everything else that had been on the bunk. She rummaged for a moment, and drew out two injectors.

Peter wordlessly held out his left arm. Gamora reached up with the first injector, and hesitated, glancing up at Peter's face for an instant and then back down to his arm. Her hand hovered, not touching him while her eyes looked for an undamaged patch of skin. She finally placed the injector to a spot on the inside of Peter's bicep and depressed the button, and quickly followed that with the second injector.

A brief feeling of coolness spread through Peter's arm and dissipated quickly. Then, a soft numbness started settling over him, like a warm cozy blanket. Sleep sounded nice. Especially a pain-free sleep.

Peter noticed that he was listing sideways, and caught himself with his left hand against the bunk. Then Drax was leaning over Peter, helping him ease down into a lying position on the bunk.

"I'm really glad you guys came and got me," Peter said sleepily. It felt important to make sure that they knew. "They were gonna kill me, you know? ... And dead sucks, but... it hurt so much, and... if you're dead, it doesn't hurt anymore."

Gamora was looking at him again, still not saying anything, but her eyes looked wet.

Peter felt a very faint flash of alarm, and tried to reassure them. "But you guys... found me..." He blinked, slowly, feeling the pull of sleep. "You found me... so it's okay now."

"We will always come for you," Gamora said fiercely, and Drax rumbled some kind of agreement, and Peter finally slid into unconsciousness. He still felt like shit, but at least he felt safe.

zzz - zzz - zzz - zzz - zzz - zzz - zzz - zzz - zzz

Hands, again, trying to roll Peter onto his side, trying to pull his torso up to vertical. Every movement brought back more aches and pains. Fucking Kree.

Fuck. He never left, did he? Peter was fucked in the head and hallucinating, and he dreamed up a rescue for himself. Better than the alternative, better than whatever that crazy blue bitch was going to do. Or was doing - or had already done? Hell, Peter couldn't remember.

Then Peter was sitting upright, leaning against a warm body that wasn't blue.

Not blue. Gray?

Peter blinked a few times and tried to focus. He didn't recognize his surroundings.

"Quill?" a voice rumbled just above his head, and Peter jerked in surprise. A large, careful hand at his back kept him from moving.

Peter's brain was slow to catch up. "Drax?" he finally said.

"Yes."

"...Oh." Not hallucinating, then. Probably. Unless this was a really good hallucination.

Drax eased his other arm under Peter's knees and lifted, and Peter relaxed against that solid, warm torso and let himself be carried again. It was kind of nice.

"Where are we going?" Peter mumbled, already drifting back toward sleep.

"We are returning to the Milano."

"Hmm..." The Milano. Home. Fuck it - even if Peter was completely out of his mind and just hallucinating all of this, it was pretty great. Might as well go with it. Slowly, consciousness faded away again, carried off by the receding sound of heavy footsteps.

zzz - zzz - zzz - zzz - zzz - zzz - zzz - zzz - zzz

Three days, the doctors said, to repair all of the damage, with the procedures spaced at careful intervals so as to not overtax the patient's already-taxed body. Three days of doctors and nurses and techs hovering, testing, operating, scanning, checking, replacing bandages and refilling intravenous fluids. They treated the cuts, the contact burns, and the electrical burns; they patched the cracked and broken ribs; they pieced together his broken ankle and knitted the ligaments in his knee; they treated the residual neural shock on his right side, matching the neat trail of contact burns along his left arm and shoulder. His right hand was a complicated problem, requiring three separate procedures to clear out the infection, repair the damage to the nerves and muscles and tendons, and stitch together a patchwork of torn skin. There was a 95 percent chance of regaining full functionality of the hand, the doctors promised, but there would be permanent scarring.

In between procedures, Gamora and the others made sure Peter Quill was never alone. They took turns sitting by his bed, sometimes one at a time and sometimes in pairs. Even Groot watched over him, sitting in his pot on a small table next to the bed. When Peter wasn't outright sedated, he slept the sleep of the heavily medicated. He never woke; but sometimes, near the end of a cycle of medications when their effects began to ebb, he would start to get restless. His sleep would become fitful and uneasy, and he would unconsciously flinch away from any touch.

This was one of those times. Gamora wished there was something more she could do - anything - but prior experience had proven that any physical contact, no matter how gentle, simply made things worse. Sometimes, he seemed to calm somewhat if she hummed a tune from some song; a half-remembered lullaby from her childhood, or a song from Peter's ridiculous mixtape (ridiculous, but occasionally enjoyable - not that Gamora would ever admit it). So when he was restless like this, Gamora hummed whatever she could think of.

Groot was with her today, keeping watch from his usual place on the table. While Gamora hummed, Groot gently swayed his spindly arms to the music, and occasionally hummed a few notes with her. Gamora was halfway through the song about pin͂a coladas, trying to remember the next words to sing in her ahead along with the humming, when one of the usual nurses stepped into the room. Gamora stopped humming and gave the nurse a questioning look.

"Just a spot check," the nurse offered, "to see if it's time for another application of the skin-regen gel."

Gamora made a doubtful face. "I don't think now is the best time."

"I know," the nurse sighed. "I would have preferred to do this earlier, but I was caught up with another patient." She leaned over the side of the bed next to Gamora and Groot, and carefully touched her fingertips to the side of Peter's face; she was expecting his unconscious flinch, and maintained fingertip contact; he didn't move again after that, so she tipped his head gently to the side. With her other hand, she lifted the edge of the bandage covering a deep burn mark on the underside of his jaw; she studied the healing burn for a moment, and then re-sealed the bandage. Then she moved her focus to his left arm, and the long swath of bandages that covered the contact burns running from his shoulder down to his hand, interrupted only by the intravenous line feeding into the inside bend of his elbow. The nurse lightly touched his forearm, again waited out the predictable flinch, then peeled back a section of bandage, studied the skin underneath, and replaced the bandage. She moved around to the other side of the bed, and repeated the process for a set of parallel burn marks along his ribs.

Gamora watched in silence. She had already committed to memory every mark, every injury that she could see evidence of, and every bit of itemized damage that the doctors had listed in their examination reports. She wished that she could fetch the Kree bitch, alive, and bring her to Peter and cleave her head in two with her sword. Or, she imagined, she might let Peter hack the bitch to pieces himself, if Gamora thought it would help him feel better. But all Gamora would be able to offer him was a report of the woman's assured death, along with every other one of the sadistic monsters in her company. That would have to be enough. Peter didn't really seem like the kind of person to hack his enemies apart with a sword, anyway.

"I am Groot?" a small voice asked next to Gamora.

The nurse looked up from across the bed. "He's healing very well so far," she said hopefully. "Many of these will heal completely, without leaving a permanent mark."

Gamora wondered to herself how many of those injuries had occurred after they flew away in the Milano. How many would leave permanent scars. Logically, she knew that their course of action had been the best possible choice; but still, she wondered. It felt like guilt.

The nurse shifted her attention to Peter's extensively-repaired right hand. It was clean and infection-free now, but Gamora clearly remembered the mangled flesh that she and Drax had discovered underneath the crusted blood and filth. It made her extremely glad that Peter had been sedated while they cleaned and disinfected it as best as they could with their limited supplies.

"Ah," the nurse said, sounding pleased as she finished peeling back the bandages wrapped around Peter's hand. "This is looking very well."

Groot acknowledged her, sounding pleased. "I am Groot."

Gamora blinked, and tried to replace her mental image of ruined, bleeding flesh with the present reality: clean, stitched and glued from the inside out.

Then, very suddenly, Gamora realized that something was wrong. Peter's breathing had changed. He wasn't calm - he was rigid. Before Gamora could reach him, Peter gave a panicked cry and jerked his partially-unwrapped hand away from the nurse, and he twisted and swung his other arm across in an uncoordinated punch. The nurse shrieked, tried to duck and took the punch straight to the side of her head, and sprawled to the floor on the far side of the bed. When he swung his arm, it yanked the intravenous line out of his elbow with a spatter of bright red blood droplets across the bedsheets.

Groot squeaked worriedly. "I am Groot!"

Gamora had her hands full trying to keep Peter from throwing himself off the bed. "Peter, stop!" she said forcefully. "You're safe now - you're safe!" His fist glanced off her cheekbone. She ignored it; her bruises would heal a lot faster than his, if he hit the floor in his current state.

"Get the fuck away!" he gasped, still struggling as Gamora managed to pin him to the bed on his right side, facing away from her, with her upper body and one arm - ever mindful of his right hand, tucked in close to his body. His left hand hit her shoulder, trying to shove her away, and she twisted her other arm around to trap his arm against her side, as gently and carefully - but firmly - as she could.

"Peter, stop, it's me - it's Gamora!"

"I am Groot!"

She tried to catch Peter's eye, but he was staring unfocused at the far wall, his chest heaving for breath under her while he muttered a string of "No - no, fuck no - please - fuck - don't - no -"

"Peter, listen to me... You're safe now, it's okay. You need to calm down." Then, finally, something penetrated the fog of half-lucid panic. Peter abruptly went quiet, and stopped moving. "Peter?" Gamora asked. "Peter, you're okay."

"I am Groot?"

Peter's gasping breaths were gradually slowing, settling into a more normal breathing pattern. "Groot?" he finally said.

"I am Groot!" Groot waved excitedly from the table behind Peter; Gamora could see his tiny green leaves swishing in her peripheral vision.

Peter's eyes flicked upward to her face."Gamora?"

"Yes," she replied. "Yes, it's me. You're safe now." She carefully loosened her hold on him. "I'm going to let go now. Please stay still."

"The fuck?" he huffed. "Yeah, I'm... I'm good."

"I am Groot."

Gamora slowly straightened, releasing Peter's bandaged left arm and settling it at his side as he gingerly rolled back to lie flat, still holding his right hand against his chest. He rolled his head further to the side and grinned weakly at Groot.

"Hey, Groot," he said.

Gamora noticed a small bloodstain was growing across the bandages on Peter's left arm where the intravenous line had torn loose. "Damn it," she hissed, grabbing a fistful of the bedsheets to press against the fresh wound.

Startled, Peter looked back up at her. "What -"

"You ripped out your IV line," Gamora said. She glanced toward the wall, where the line still hung, dripping fluids and medication onto the floor. "We're in a hospital. We found you four days ago and brought you here for medical treatment. You're going to be fine."

"I am Groot," Groot said assuredly.

Peter looked down at his right hand, with the bandage still half-unwrapped, exposing the angry red patchwork of glued-together skin underneath. "What about -"

"Your hand will be fine," Gamora assured him. "Some scarring, but no disability."

The nurse finally staggered to her feet on the other side of the bed, and Peter startled again. The nurse squeaked. "Sorry!" she said hurriedly. "Very sorry. Didn't mean to cause any distress." There was a bright red mark on the side of her forehead, and a slight swelling where Peter's fist had struck her. She stood unsteadily, blinking as she tried to keep her equilibrium.

"Oh, shit," Peter breathed. "Did I do that?"

Gamora nodded at his partially-wrapped hand. "She was checking your bandages. You regained consciousness unexpectedly, and you... reacted strongly."

"I am Groot!"

"Shit. I'm sorry," Peter said. "Uh, ma'am? Are you okay?"

The nurse took two unsteady steps toward the bed; she looked at Peter, looked at the loose bandages around Peter's hand, looked at Gamora, looked at Peter again, looked at the detached intravenous line hanging near Groot, looked at Groot.

Groot waved an arm at her.

Gamora stared at the nurse, trying to see if her eye pupils gave any indication of a head injury. The nurse clutched at the edge of the bed with one of her own hands while the other hovered uncertainly. She looked up at Gamora again and waved at Peter's elbow, where Gamora still clutched a bloodstained handful of sheets. "Keep pressure on that," the nurse instructed, and then she waved in a more expansive gesture, indicating Gamora and Peter and the loose bandages and Groot and the dripping intravenous line and the rest of that side of the room. "We need - um - This is very... untidy."

"I am Groot," Groot agreed.

"Sorry," Peter said.

The nurse stood a little straighter, took a careful step back, and walked out of the room, moving with exaggerated care, like a drunk person. Or like a person with a head injury.

As she moved into the hallway, they heard her ask, "We need the assistance of another nurse in room... thirty-seven? ... thirty-six. Um... in that room. There."

Another voice replied: "Assistance with what? ... Are you okay?"

"He hit me."

Peter turned his head toward the door. "I'm sorry!"

"It was an accident," Gamora added loudly, to clarify the situation. After everything, they should have expected that he might wake up confused and defensive. She would speak to the others, and speak to the nurses, and make sure that they were more cautious in the future.

Peter looked back up at Gamora. "I punched a damn nurse," he said. "I feel like such a dick."

"I am Groot."

"Fuck, my arm hurts," Peter sighed. "Everything hurts."

Gamora patted his shoulder with her free hand, avoiding the bandages. "You ripped out your IV line. And your painkillers are wearing off by now - you're due for another dose."

"Oh." He yawned, blinked sleepily, and then looked mildly surprised by that.

Another nurse walked briskly into the room, brandishing an injector. Peter's arm tensed under Gamora's hand, and his eyes flicked nervously to the injector.

The nurse stopped an arm's distance away and tried to look as non-threatening as she could. "I have your next round of painkillers here, Mr. Quill. Along with a sedative. We need to reinsert your intravenous line, and check a few wound sites to make sure you didn't re-injure anything."

Peter looked back up at Gamora, then back at the nurse, then back to Gamora.

"It's fine, Peter," Gamora reassured him. "I'll be right here."

Peter finally gave a nod of assent. "Okay."

The nurse stepped closer, not making any sudden movements, and slowly and precisely she delivered the injection to an unbandaged part of Peter's arm. Peter's gaze tracked her movements the whole time.

When the nurse stepped back, Peter looked up at Gamora again. His eyes were already developing a glazed look as the drugs dispersed through his bloodstream.

"Go back to sleep, Peter," Gamora told him. "I'll be here."

zzz - zzz - zzz - zzz - zzz - zzz - zzz - zzz - zzz

After that, the nurses made sure to do their status checks near the beginning of a dosage cycle, as much as possible. They also made sure that the intravenous line was better secured to his arm, which proved to be a wise decision the next time he woke up in a half-dazed panic.

Five days after they had arrived at the hospital, Peter was awake more often than not. And he wanted to get out of there. Everything was mended, if not fully healed yet, and he was certifiably free of infection. His hand still looked kind of god-awful, but the damage was repaired and the doctors said he would eventually regain full sensation and mobility - all it needed now was time and careful therapeutic exercises. The same could be said for his knee and ankle; he could walk now, carefully, and soon enough he would be back to his normal capabilities.

He asked the doctors and the nurses and the techs when he could leave - again and again, persistently, because persistence is the key to success. Finally, the primary doctor in charge of his case relented and agreed that Peter could be released - into the care and supervision of Gamora (officially) and Drax and Rocket and Groot (unofficially). The doctor dictated to Peter - at some length - about what activities Peter should and should not do, and what exercises he should perform to rehabilitate which injuries. Gamora asked a lot of clarifying questions, wanted to know all the details. The doctor also insisted that Peter make a follow-up visit, either here or to one of the facility's networked sister institutions, in ten days.

Whatever. Fine. Peter was willing to jump through the hoops if it meant he could get out of here. Physically, he would be fine; mentally, he desperately needed to get back to familiar surroundings.

It was a slow process, but eventually the conversations were over and the paperwork was processed. Peter was a (relatively) free man. He put on his own clothes, he walked out of the hospital on his own two feet, and he boarded the Milano. He was home.

Finally.

Time to put this whole shitty experience behind him. Peter hated being stuck in hospitals. Although, it was nice to see evidence that his shipmates (teammates? fellow Guardians?) seemed to care enough to not only commit homicide on his behalf, but to keep him company when he was unconscious. And before that, well, being rescued was awesome, but needing to be rescued always sucked. As for what came before the rescue... Peter would be just as happy to forget about it entirely.

zzz - zzz - zzz - zzz - zzz - zzz - zzz - zzz - zzz

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He was in the chair in the dirty gray room. He was always in the chair. He was going to die in the chair. Zoral straddled his lap, slowly and deliberately shredding Peter's chest with her dagger-sharp fingernails. Everything burned. Peter could hardly breathe. Zoral's one good eye glared balefully from her ruined face; the other was missing along with a decent chunk of her skull.

"You could never be worthy of holding an Infinity Stone," Zoral sneered derisively, blue blood dribbling from between her lips as she spoke. "Not you, a coward and a murderer."

A mob of countless Kree loomed in the background, silent and faceless, watching. Always watching. "Murderer," their whispers echoed.

"Not a murderer," Peter wheezed. "Not."

Zoral's fingernails drove in further. "Liar! Murderer!" she shrieked, her blood spattering across Peter's face. "WHO WILL DEMAND JUSTICE FOR MY DEATH?"

"Justice," the faceless mob whispered, drawing closer.

Zoral leaned closer to Peter, flexing her fingers between his exposed ribs. "I demand justice," she spat, and then her voice dropped lower. "Will you give me justice, Star-Lord?"

Peter couldn't breathe anymore. Couldn't speak. Couldn't move. Zoral's fingers felt like knives stabbing into his lungs. Her tongue darted out to trace the edge of his jaw.

"You still need to pay for your sins," she whispered huskily into Peter's ear. "I wasn't finished with you."

Then her fingers clenched inside Peter's chest, and Peter found his voice and screamed.

"I DEMAND JUSTICE!" Zoral shrieked, right into Peter's face, with her blood coating her teeth and streaming down from the ruined side of her skull. "WAKE UP SO I CAN TAKE WHAT IS MINE! WAKE UP, QUILL!" she roared, and suddenly Peter could move again, and he threw his arms up and shoved -

o-o

o-o

Peter's forehead smacked into something hard and he dropped back down. Into his bunk. On-board the Milano.

He blinked at the ceiling, breathing hard.

"Motherfucker," he finally gasped.

"Quill?"

''Huh?" Peter looked toward the voice. On the floor a few feet away, Rocket was sprawled on his backside, looking cautiously up at Peter. "Rocket?"

"You awake now?" Rocket asked.

Peter rubbed his aching forehead. "Yeah, I'm awake. Sorry, did I -"

"Yeah," Rocket said, slowly standing up to come closer. "Knocked me right on my ass."

"Shit, I'm sorry."

"Nah, I shoulda known better. You had another nightmare?"

Peter nodded, slowly getting his panicked breaths under control as the adrenaline started to drain away.

"You wanna talk about it?"

"No." Peter squeezed his eyes shut and tried not to picture Zoral's furious, ruined face. Her one good eye glaring angrily. The blood.

His adrenaline started to spike again.

"Wanna play cards?" Rocket asked. "Just 'til you're ready to go back to sleep."

Peter opened his eyes. "That might be awhile," he admitted.

"I got nowhere else to be." Rocket climbed up onto the bunk and sat down near Peter's feet, and snatched the deck of playing cards off the shelf on the wall. This wasn't the first time this had happened. Nor, Peter suspected, would it be the last. Rocket, Gamora, and Drax had all taken turns waking Peter up - it was usually whoever was closest at the time, or whoever was awake to hear him when it got bad. When it was Drax, he and Peter played some weird, complicated kind of Go Fish. Whenever it was Gamora's turn, Peter would introduce her to a different variation of poker. When it was Rocket, he would teach Peter how to play some new game that Peter had never heard of. Rocket knew more card games than anyone else Peter had ever met.

Rocket handed the deck to Peter, and Peter started shuffling the cards.

"So, what'll it be this time?" Peter asked.

"You ever play Garthian eight-card stacks?"