AN: This entire fic was written before the movie came out, so this chapter and this whole fic will be endgame spoiler free. I'm just slow AF editing, and chronic illness takes a lot of me (mentally and when it comes to stuff like cognition with editing/writing), so sorry this is taking so long.

Things are still- different, strange between them, but it doesn't hurt as much as it used to. As much as she hates to say it, she does- understand it. Especially in the aftermath of the truth coming out.

And he- he didn't know. The feelings she was having the whole time, the feelings she still had for him. He thought she didn't remember him, that Peter just seemed like a stranger to her, someone she had no connection to in the slightest. She probably would have done the same. She knows she would have done the same, try to spare him all she could. She would've done anything to keep him safe, spare him the heart ache, even if protecting him meant keeping him in the dark. She would've spared him all she could. Whatever was possible, to keep the hurt away from him.

It probably would've been fine if everything was gone, but the feelings were still there, and it just made the distance confusing and painful.

She remembers what he said. "It's not your responsibility to live up to the life I remember having with you."

There is still a tension between them, but it's… different, oddly shaped. More awkward than painful. She recognizes the pressure he was trying to keep off of her, the weight of this knowledge. She recognizes that the Guardians were advised to provide support and be her friends and family, to keep it to platonic and familial support, like any of the so called 'experts' knew shit about people coming back from the soul world with memory loss (like that was a common occurrence for anyone to deal with). In the wake of revealing secrets, and hashing it all out with Peter, she finds she's not mad at any of the guardians (including Peter) for keeping such a major thing from her- rather, she's mad at the people who told them to do that. (It took her a couple days to reach this conclusion, but still, she got there all on her own. She deserved some time to just be upset and mad at everyone and everything- mad at the universe for this whole thing).

She wasn't happy with them for doing it, but she didn't blame them for trying to do what was supposed to be best- what they were told by someone who claimed to know what they were doing said was the right thing to do in this situation. The healthy thing. She never met the "experts and docs 'n shit" as Rocket called them who had apparently provided consultations before she opened her eyes after being brought back from the dead, but safe to say she did not appreciate the advice they gave her family.

Still, it had been over a month, and she recognized this was an impossible situation, and it wasn't any use holding grudges against the people she loved. (She got the emotional processing of that bombshell out with Peter when she found out).

Besides, she's too… happy in the aftermath to be mad at Peter for not telling her.

Now that she knows, it is still strange between them, with an undercurrent of weirdness and awkwardness and sheepishness, but that was cloud nine compared to the confusion and hurt feelings she was stuck with in the first couple weeks following her return to the land of the living.

It was still weird between her and Peter, but at least it didn't hurt anymore.

She finds herself smiling more often, finds herself truly enjoying how they can have a real conversation with each other again, how Peter looks at her again, laughs with her again, spends time with her again. There are still the awkward smiles and sheepish looks they give each other when they interact half the time, the apologetic smiles when they bump into each other and so on, but it's better than nothing, better than it was.

While her relationships with the rest of the team have already settled into something comfortable and natural, she and Peter have yet to reach equilibrium in their interactions with each other.

Two months after her resurrection, a month after the whole 'used to be dating' bombshell, and they still hadn't figured things out with each other. They had been making progress in not being weird or awkward around each other, but it was still taking time. It's a learning curve.

Okay, it wasn't all fine with Peter. It didn't hurt as bad anymore, but some of it still hurt.

Because she… she still loves him. It hurts to not be with the person you love, knowing it will never be the same between you again.

She tries to push it out of her mind. Concentrate on how Peter genuinely wants to be her friend again, tries to be satisfied with that, focus on being the best friend that she can be to him in return.

She wishes they could just be together again, but she knows that she is not the person… she is not the person he knew.

It's not fair to him for her to expect it to be any different- or for them to be the same, when she isn't…. she's not who she used to be, the person he knew, the person he spent years with, the person he had a relationship with, the person he fell in love with.

That's all there is to it, really. There wasn't any changing that. Even though her thoughts always come back to it, seems like she's thinking it over and over. She's just not the person he knew. It's not fair to him to expect it to be otherwise. She knows it's not.

She is a different person than the woman he knows and loves, and even though she still loves him so much, it's not fair to expect him to want the same with a stranger.

And that's what hurts.

It is still hard. Gamora wishes it was easier, she wishes a lot of things. She wishes she could be the person he remembers, wishes she could be together with the one she loves. And she's trying so very hard to keep this all in mind. She just- she doesn't want to hurt him. More than anything, she doesn't want to hurt Peter anymore.

She's very conscious, aware, that she's just a ghost. She's just a ghost in the body of one of his dead loved ones, and she doesn't want to hurt him. Some days it seems like it's all she can think about. How she's a ghost living in the body of someone he used to love but is gone now. She knows it's not... productive, dwelling on thoughts like those, but she can't help it, because it's true, and she seems to be reminded of it every time she looks his way. That longing in her chest, knowing the reason behind it, the reason behind why it'll never be satisfied. It's not so much looking at him, she supposes. It's feeling that pull, this flurry of emotions (mostly good, and warm), and then her brain has to ruin it because she remembers why she can't be close to him, not in the way she wants to be, the way she's desperate for.

When she says something similar to him one day, about being a ghost in the body of someone they all used to know, that he used to know, Peter's quick to correct her.

He doesn't think of it like that. He explains it like time travel.

The way Peter says- he thinks of it like he's from five years in the future, and this is just past Gamora. Like they're both displaced in time.

She's the Gamora who hadn't met him yet, basically.

It's not that the Gamora he knew is gone, it's that she just hasn't met him yet.

The way he explains it- it gives her hope.