Chapter 12 – Sufficiency

The Milano - 2015

The Milano didn't have many quasi-private areas. Like most m-ships, they weren't intended to house more than a three man crew, and they weren't intended for long term habitation. Adding another person hadn't caused a scramble for a new bunk space though. Teacher had made herself at home in Quill's quarters and hadn't emerged for food, the latrine, or anything else as far as Gamora could tell. "Always with the women," she muttered to herself. It was just typical that the Gardener's mysterious emissary would be a buxom blond creature that liked to sleep in the same bunk as her student.

It wouldn't even bother her that Peter was sealed up in a cramped room with the woman nine hours out of ten, but in the rare moment he emerged, he wasn't himself. Gamora had returned his tapes, expecting Peter to resume playing them as usual, but there was no music, and there was no laughter.

Drax settled next to her, shoulder to shoulder, facing the closed door to Peter's quarters. "Are we planning to interfere?" he asked.

"No." Gamora frowned, without turning to face her friend. With anyone else she would need to see a facial expression to be sure whether they were serious, but Drax always said what he meant. "Something is not right with this. Peter is off, but it is not time to break the door down."

"He is very quiet," Drax agreed. "When will it be time to break the door down?"

Before Gamora could respond, the door cracked open and Peter emerged, his face pale and his hair tousled. She considered busying herself so that their scrutiny would be less obvious, but Drax didn't even shuffle. He wouldn't understand her behavior, and maybe some open scrutiny would make Peter talk to them. Who would have thought the day would come that they had to coax their chatty Terran to talk?

Peter opened his mouth and closed it. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and returned their stares with a sheepish smile. "We're getting close to Terra."

"Your home world," Gamora nodded.

"The planet of outlaws," Drax added.

"I don't remember it like I should." Peter took one of the seats at their table, and his smile slipped away into a sad, vague expression.

"You were a child. It's normal to forget some details," Gamora said.

"No, this is different. Those pieces that aren't here are siphoning me away. Teacher seems to think I'll be okay as soon as we pick up the part of me on Terra, more stable, more complete. She says it's natural. We've only been a team for a short time. I'm the center, the most complete version of me, but my roots in other places had longer to grow and are stronger; they're pulling me into them. Teacher and Groot have been helping keep me together, keep me here."

"I do not think they are succeeding," Drax said, utterly sincerely.

"Me either," Peter said.

The Gardener's emissary and Groot were helping, doing something while the rest of them got to quietly wait and watch. Well, Gamora wasn't a sit and watch kind of girl. She solved problems. "I know what you need." Gamora strode across the corridor. She selected a mix tape and popped it into the player. She turned the volume up and smiled at the familiar alien rhythms. Only once the music was playing did she realize that the room was empty of the blond emissary who should have been there. "Where exactly is Teacher?"

"Out here and in there. I told you, she's helping glue me together. She's not bothering to manifest corporeally at the moment. Other priorities," Peter said.

Normally Peter couldn't help himself when his music played. He at least nodded his head, or tapped his feet when he didn't lip synch and dance. It was who he was, but he sat quietly with Drax, unmoved by the sounds vibrating his vessel. "If your Teacher isn't manifesting herself at the moment, what have you been doing in that room for hours and hours?" Gamora asked.

"Nothing? Drifting away."

"Well that stops today." Gamora pulled Peter to his feet, moving to the music she had turned on, encouraging him to follow her lead. Gradually, hesitant head bobs and feet shuffling shifted to more confident movements. Before her eyes, Peter seemed to grow more solid, more alive, color returning to his face and hands. He smiled, a real expression this time. "What is a Pina Colada, anyway?" Gamora asked.

For a moment he faltered, unable to answer, then his smile widened. "It's a Terran beverage, fruity, alcoholic. I've never had one. We should have one when we get to Terra."

"As many times as you have played this song, we most definitely should."

Rocket poked his head out of a maintenance duct, his regular sleeping hole. He bit back the urge to critique the miniature dance party, though the lame dancing made it hard. He had heard the conversation from the beginning, and he knew exactly how much trouble Groot was having holding onto their comrade. If lame-ass dancing helped Peter not disperse into the ether, then he could dance and Rocket would keep his mouth shut for it.

Grinkle 5 – Trading Outpost 1989

Hands and feet bound, muzzle half-choking him, Peter couldn't sit still. Knees pulled up to his chin, he rocked and he thought. There were other aliens confined around him, speaking in rapid, heavily accented basic, so garbled by their own restraints that Peter couldn't understand one word in three, but from what he had picked out, they were mostly praying or begging.

Peter flexed his hands in his restraints. They weren't much different than the ones the Ravagers had used on him when they were still trying to keep him in a cell. They weren't really designed for humans and they didn't fit snugly. "I can slip these," Peter told himself. He just had to wait for the right moment. He had to make it count.

They started moving them around, from one holding cell to another, shifting closer to the loud room, the auction room probably? His current holding cell wasn't powered with force fields, it was sealed with bars, bars that seemed maybe wide enough spaced for a skinny human to squeeze through. Peter narrowed his hands, leveraging the wrist restraints until they were literally cutting into his skin. He bit the odd rubbery material of the muzzle, determined to free his hands if it stripped all the skin off.

His heart soared as his left hand came free. With his hands loose, deactivating the ankle restraints was simple. Then the muzzle didn't want to come off. Rather than waste a lot of time fighting with the device, he focused on his exit. Leading with his shoulder, Peter pushed determinedly through the bars. For a terrifying moment he thought his head was going to get hung up at the ears, but he made it through. The other captives didn't seem to have noticed his escape, and Peter was careful not to attract their attention.

A smart kid would slide into the nearest shadow and creep out the first window he found, but Peter couldn't leave yet, not without his stuff. Besides, no one had ever accused him of being smart. Restraints hanging from his right wrist and muzzle on his face, Peter knew he'd need a disguise to search out his property and not end up back in a cage.

There were lots of goods awaiting auction scattered among the cages, most useless, but Peter found a mask with red eyes that concealed the muzzle nicely. He tucked the dangling wrist restraint into his sleeve and tried to move like he belonged here. Call it dumb luck or instinct, but Peter mingled seamlessly with the aliens around him. It helped that a large portion were smaller than the average Ravager. Between the prisoners and the buyers and everyone else talking at once, Peter couldn't follow any one line of conversation, but no one was grabbing him or even really looking at him.

He felt bad, walking past the other prisoners without even trying to help them, but he had spent a year with the Ravagers and he had learned a thing or two about survival. First you had to take care of yourself, and if you were small and outnumbered, sometimes that was all you could do. Quietly if not calmly, Peter slipped from one room to the next, searching for his things.

If he hadn't been muzzled, he might have blown his cover when he found his bag just outside. His red knapsack was barely visible in a refuse pile. Peter tugged it out, taking a moment to brush away a load of gray-green slime. A quick inventory confirmed that the corrupt police officers hadn't kept any of his valuables. Peter hugged his bag and his things for a long relieved moment, and then he hit the street, anxious to get back to the Eclector, and the safety of the captors he knew. If he was lucky, they hadn't even missed him.

Terran Orbit – 2015

The planet Earth didn't look particularly distinctive from space, not to someone as well traveled as any of the aliens aboard the Milano. Another water-rich world that refracted blue, a single moon without any special structures or even a space port to make it distinctive, Earth wasn't the least bit special, not from space anyway. Slipping through the interdiction monitoring meant that they couldn't just zip down to the surface either. Their approach had to be timed and measured. They had to get in and back out in a matter a few short hours.

"I know it doesn't look like much up here, but it's a nice planet up close." Peter kept a hand on the yoke, preparing to move into the upcoming monitoring gap. "Just so everyone is prepared. Earth isn't alien friendly. They're more likely to try and dissect an alien than try to communicate with one. So, be careful and don't be seen."

"I'd like to see a humie try to dissect me. I'd dissect them," Rocket muttered.

"How about nobody dissects anybody? Just keep a low profile is all I'm saying. We don't want to be caught breaking interdiction. Timing is going to be tight." Peter cut a glance at Gamora, Drax, and Groot. It was probably just as well that the concentrated bit of him on Earth was hanging out at a cabin in the woods with one other human. They were going to blend in about as well as Twisted Sister at an Amish barn raising. "Brace yourselves. We're going down."

The Eclector – 1989

Secreted away in his safe, secluded pantry, Peter tried to find a way to disengage the muzzle he had been fitted with. His escape attempt appeared to have gone unnoticed, but he couldn't explain away the bright red device holding his jaws together. He heard Dar clanking pots and his heart thudded in his chest. He was going to be found out as soon as the pantry door opened. In blind desperation, he pulled his new mask on and waited, not sure what he thought hiding the muzzle with more contraband was going to do.

What if the Ravagers made good on their threat to eat him now that he'd almost escaped? What if they decided to sell him like the police officers had? The door opened, but instead of Dar, a jagged-toothed, blue-faced grin greeted him. Yondu chuckled and Peter's stomach clenched. "Well boyo, you had yourself a little adventure. See you came back and with a bit of loot too." Yondu snatched Peter by his collar and dragged him out into the open. A single look from Yondu, and Dar fled the kitchen, leaving them alone.

Yondu removed the mask, fiddled with it a bit and it folded to a tiny metallic disk. Seeing Peter's muzzled countenance, he laughed again. "When I pry this here muzzle off your face, you're gonna tell me why I got a Furmian auctioneer screaming in my cargo bay, looking for a Terran thief that stole an ancient's survival mask from his private collection, yeah?"

It was hard to tell from Yondu's tone if he was angry or amused, and Peter fought hard to keep his fear from overwhelming him.

"Now this muzzle here is tricky. It's a bixa parasite, alive and loving its spot on your face. You're lucky I know how to make it turn a loose." Yondu upended a bottle of strong smelling liquor over Peter's head. The muzzle literally squealed as it released. "Now you owe me an explanation boyo. Don't you dare lie."

A cantankerous pride that felt almost alien welled up in him, and Peter wanted to prove he could lie to Yondu. He flexed is jaw slowly. "I was tired of not seeing anything but this ship, so I broke out and saw a little of the station. Some guys tried to sell me, but I got away and stole the mask from them."

Yondu shook his head. "Not a bad lie, but not the whole truth. I told you not to lie to me." His smile faded back. "We picked you up for extra protein, not knowing you weren't livestock back on Terra. You start causing more trouble than you worth, start making a habit of defying my orders and lying to me, and we'll just eat you for dinner and be done with it. Understand me, boy?"

"Yes sir," Peter said, oddly reassured by Yondu's familiar threat and back handed compliments.

"Truth, now, since you don't want to tell it all, is that you went running to the authorities, tried to get help to get you back home," Yondu prompted. "How'd that work out for you? You learn anything?"

"You know how it worked out. They tried to sell me," Peter said, "But I escaped." He left unsaid that he was going to escape the Ravagers too, eventually, as soon as he figured out another plan.

"Nah, you didn't learn nothing. Ain't nowhere for you to go." Yondu, shuffled the metal disk that had been a mask between his fingers. "You a thief now, recorded, certified. Here real soon, you gonna learn to be a good thief or you gonna be dinner. Say your fare thee wells to Dar. Time you started learning a proper trade." Yondu tossed the silver disk to Peter. "Man ought to hang on to his first score. Survival mask like that is valuable. You'd best not show it around till you have the skills to protect it."

Author's Note:

Peter has spent the entire fic just about in crisis. It's sort of the plot, but in a way it's monotonous. There's no way around it without making this story way longer than I want it to be. An arc between dissolution of Peter's flesh and discovering that he was going to dissipate without further intervention would break things up, but I didn't take that road. I don't want to write those 3-4 chapters.

Next chapter is planned to be all Earth, no time shuffles, just Peter and Peter and friends. It's a pickle of a chapter. Not posting it until I'm happy with it, so it may be awhile. :)