I'M SORRY IN ADVANCE. No character death, you'll be happy to know. Or gross squicky Joffrey-from-GOT poison-face. Nevertheless - poor Peter.

They'd said it would work on Terrans.

They said Terrans were just like Xandarians, but that their biology was a wee bit more robust when it came to chemical exposure – so why, why the heck, is he currently slumped at the bedside of a critical-state idiot, waiting for the moment his heart monitor beeps offline?

"Captain," says Doc quietly. Yondu almost spooks out of his seat. Catches himself, arms tight over his chest in what's not so much a cross as a squeeze. He glares.

"What?"

Doctor's gaze is sympathetic – ugh – but professional, so Yondu tolerates it. He creaks into the chair besides him, moving like a man twice his age, and strips off his plastic gloves before pinging them at the trashcan. "Any idea what did this?" he asks. "Anything at all?"

Wordlessly, Yondu digs out the packet. He drops it in Doc's hand. Powder spills between his fingers like ashy rain. Doc's eyes are bloodshot from a night spent prising open a Terran's clamping windpipe and draining fluid from his lungs, and they take three tired flicks to scan the letters and another to comprehend. But by the time they finish, they're almost popping.

"Xandarian Nightshade!" Doc stares at Yondu, shaking it, the dog-eared lip of the sachet pinched between index and thumb. More dust falls, sprinkling their boots with icing sugar. "You know what this is, don't you?"

Yondu nods. "Found it at the bar."

The lie comes as easy as breathing. He cups his chin, stubble prickling as he drums on the opposite chairarm, and continues talking into his calloused palm. "Musta been that merchant who contacted us 'bout the slaveship. Knew I shouldn'ta made him serve us the drinks. Spotted this after, picked it from his pocket. But figured if it was just Xandarian crap it couldn't do too much damage." Keeps his phrases short. Abrupt. To the point. His voice croaks hoarser than ever, after a long night spent shouting at medical staff – which, in retrospect, wasn't as helpful as he'd thought at the time. He's been glaring at Peter's wavery vital signs for so long that they're practically engraved on his retinas, but he doesn't bother looking away from them to check if Doc believes him.

There's a quiet sigh. Doc ensures his assistants are snoring before patting Yondu on the shoulder.

"It's not your fault," he says, and moves away.

"Didn't ya tell me once that Xandarians and Terrans could take the same shit?"

They've teased Quill from the brink. Again.

It's his third crash. They've kept him kicking only by aid of adrenaline – not theirs but his, and lanced direct to the heart. By now, Yondu's used up every miserly capacity he has for guilt and empathy. It's time to find someone else to blame.

But Doc shakes his head, from where he's emptying a plunger of viscous ruby liquid into Quill's intravenous line. "Not exactly. Usually, the double-dose must be precisely calculated – that's hard enough with a pureblood subject. But whatever Quill is besides Terran, those genes have made palpable changes to his physiology. When I've medicated in the past, I've actually used far below what would affect a Xandarian. It still makes a monumental difference – almost as if his immune system scarcely needs a hint to pick up a concept and run with it, healing his body on the way. Incredible, really –"

Great. Fucking great.

Yondu lets Doc waffle on. Unseen by anyone but the assistant, who's new enough to be cowed by a leer, he gouges his thumbs into his scrunched-closed eyes and screws them there until he feels the sting. "Ain't helping him now, is it," he says.

Doc's sleep-deprived babble cuts off. He shuts his mouth guiltily. "No. But, with time – so long as we keep monitoring him, reacting to any changes... His system should flush. He's not out of danger, but if he survives tonight…"

Yondu cuts him off by screeching out his chair. "He's as safe as he's gonna get." Not like his presence makes an ounce of difference, and he can't sit by a bedside all day. He's got a ship to run. And a traitorous contact to kill, if only for appearances' sake. He pauses by Quill's bedside long enough to take in the ghastly hue of his face, the rapid twitch of his pupils behind bruised-violet lids, the purpling veins that stand out from his greying skin and glow in time with his sluggish pulse.

There's a lot he could say. Most starts with 'Sorry' and ergo is never actually gonna be said, but he thinks about saying it. But while Doc's a smart-ass he ain't a mind-reader, and he's one of the rare men on this crew who doesn't take sentimental as an insult. Yondu capitalizes on that. "Just in case," he mumbles. Pauses. Gives himself time to breathe, matching his own juddery exhales to Quill's. Starts again. "In case he don't make it. Can I… In private?"

Doc finishes fiddling with the tube and gives Yondu a look which is, despite the circumstances, approving. "Of course," he says, nodding to the assistant. "Yell if there's a change."

"Sure."

Yondu waits for him to leave before he strokes the soft fuzz on Peter's cheek. Then props his lolling forearm upright, and loops the IV-line out the way so he can twist the cover off his watch.

Peter dreams of slaves.

He dreams of a drifting ship and a collar that tightens whenever he speaks. Peter's never been able to shut his mouth when it's in his best interests. Now he gabbles and babbles and jabbers away, as the ring around his neck begins to crush...

His heart stops. His heart starts again.

Peter dreams of a straitjacket that turns into a lifejacket in the space of a blink. A cage undergoes the same treatment. One moment he's faking a fit to escape, bashing himself to bruises. There's a blue hand almost close enough to grasp. Then the hand twists into a shark, ravenous mouth lined with row after row of broken yellow teeth. It champs ferociously on the bars; the cage is all that protects him.

When he dreams of bottomless staircases, the pings of a monitor drag into one long beep.

A jolt of brightness frightens away the shadows. Peter's next dream is of being swallowed by a scream so deep it has constellations in the tonsils. When he passes through the oesophageal wormhole, he finds himself on Earth, holding a toy-sized Eclector. He dreams of a boy with tow-hair and a bright grin, who makes his new spaceship fly over an acid green lawn in summertime. Voices throat through the open kitchen window, along with the smell of cooking dinner: meatloaf and apple pie. Grandma's scolding mom for letting him play make-believe with a lump of scrap metal. Shouldn't little boys have real toys, she snipes, her old voice smokey and crotchety as a bunch of cigarettes in an exhaust pipe. Granddad's telling her to lay off, that Merry should raise her child her own way. Grandma replies that if 'that man' had stuck around long enough to walk down an aisle she wouldn't have to interfere – but after that someone shuts the window, and Peter can't hear any more.

Beep. Beep. Beeeeeeeeep.

His heart's getting tired of this. It takes longer to restart, and when it does, Peter sees the same garden – only there's a creak from the door and a crunch of leaves, and suddenly it's autumn. Mom wraps thinning arms around his waist. She tells him that he can play with anything if he only has the imagination, and when Peter looks down he sees the Eclector, snapped in half by a childish stomp. The echoes of the tantrum – I want toys, not scrap metal! I want a dad, not a mom! – recede with the dying wind.

Then it's winter. Mom's standing alone before the alter, veil over her face. Snow flurries through the open church door, but it's not chilly and there's no draft. Pale sunbeams break over the pews, and everything's bright but fragile, as if it'll shatter at a breath. The whole family's here. Grandma, granddad, Yondu and Kraglin, his aunts and uncles, his new little cousin. There's even Horuz: lurking at the back, glowering like he'd rather be anywhere else.

The pastor's an A'askavarian. His watch breaks as he looks at it. Everybody ignores the chime of glass hitting floor, so Peter does too.

Grandpa's beckoning from the first row. He looks worried – but nothing can ruin a day as perfect as this. Giving mom's hand one last squeeze, Peter bounds over, energy compressed into a child's small body, and clambers on his lap so he can feel his whiskers tickle as grandpa hisses urgently in his ear: "Peter, where's your father?"

Peter shrugs. "I don't care," he says. Pushes off grandpa's knees and runs back to mom, miniature Ravager boots slapping off the church tiles.

Mom looks glacially beautiful. Her dress is an icy froth of white, billowing out like a mermaid's tail. It trails the entire length of the aisle, and Peter can't tell where the snow ends and she begins. He hugs her. Makes her stoop to his level. Lifts the veil so he can kiss her cheek, because everyone deserves a kiss on their wedding day whether or not it comes from a groom.

His lips mash on cold hard bone, and Peter opens his eyes.

"Where am I," he tries to say. But his tongue's turned to a lump of tar and his throat's drier than Tatooine. (He'd been so mad when Yondu told him that didn't exist. How long ago had that been? A day? Week? Year?)

Peter gives in and attempts to roll over. His efforts are similarly aborted – not least by the spiderweb of sensors and wires stuck to his torso by a hundred flesh colored sucky-pads. One wire looks like the earth cord in a dismantled plug socket, and another's translucent and humming on the low cusp of Peter's hearing. And, for all he knows, he's finally been captured by a gang of aliens who prefer probing their Terrans to training them into galactic-class space pirates.

A beep sounds in time with the blood rushing in his ears. It speeds as he realizes he's stuck, and something tugs inside his arm when he tries to thrash and free himself. Fuck. If he's been honey-trapped again, Yondu'll never let him hear the end of it… He smacks the lip of the table as he struggles, flipping the tray of medical-come-torture instruments. He's not sure if it's the crash and clatter or the smash of his watch – again, dammit – that brings his captor running, but it works, and Peter readies himself to attack, doubling the IV over to use as a handy garrotte…

"Quill!"

He knows that voice.

Peter relaxes as Doc rushes over, crunching through the broken glass, and allows himself to be eased horizontal once again. The bunched IV falls from his hands. As Doc flutters his hands and chitters an exclamation in non-translator-compatible dialect, Peter lets his fists loosen on the sheets and catalogs every ache and bruise. His chest's the worst. As if he's been stabbed…

Peter glances down, chin to chest, and goggles at the bandage. "Don't remember that," he tries to say, but can't get out the words. Doc fills a glass and helps him drink when Peter struggles to hold it, unconsciously checking his pulse and pupil dilation as he does so.

"Adrenaline shot," he explains, motioning to the dark plaster. "You were poisoned."

The water tastes like sour booze and unbrushed teeth, but it's cool and it soothes his parched throat and he'd guzzle until he puked if Doc didn't tilt the slick glass rim away. Peter swallows, messily, and coughs a weak burp. "Poisoned?"

"Yes." Doc's mouth thins. "By your last contact."

Ah. The bar. Peter shudders. Then attempts to sit again, feebly swatting at Doc when he's resisted. "Wait! The other guys, everyone else who drank… Are they…?"

"Everyone else is fine. It seems you were the target."

"But me? Why…?" Peter casts his mind back. What's the last thing he remembers? Loping into the bar at Yondu's left side, Kraglin to the captain's right. Feeling the power of an army at his back, as red-clad creatures from every quadrant known to Nova (and a few more on the side) elbow their way into the cramped room, scouting for booty. Wincing as he watches captain and first mate exchange jovial small talk over the screaming, writhing merchant, who's pinned to the floor with an arrow through the branch.

Yeah. He can see why the guy wanted vengeance. But why choose Peter as the target? Unless… Peter's memory scrolls again, finding the furthest piece in the chronological jigsaw before things fade to fuzz and darkness.

Yondu handing him a drink.

"I wasn't the target," he growls. "Where's Yondu?"

Doc raises a spindly brow. "Killing the merchant."

"Ah crap, I gotta, I gotta warn him…" He drags his wrist to eye-level, and squints at the watch's snapped frontpiece. He might still be able to pick out Yondu's call-sign if the plasma cell has yet to expire. Alas, he's not that lucky – but he does spot a weird lil' nugget, trapped under a shard of unbroken glass; one he's never noticed before.

Yondu stomps down the warbird's docking ramp, sticky footprints winding after him. Shoulda known tree-folks squirt sap like geysers. Stuff's glue-thick and smells grossly woodsy, and if he stands in the same place too long he ain't leaving it without aid of a chainsaw.

"Ya killed him?" asked Kraglin, falling into step besides him. Sniffs. "Huh. Sandalwood. New cologne?"

"'Yeah' to the first, 'fuck off or I'll smear it on you' to the second."

Kraglin hastily removes himself to the rear. But hollers after Yondu, voice bouncing about the spacious cavern of the Hangar and assaulting him from every direction – "Hey, boss! How's Peter?"

Yondu stops. Hunches in his coat, and makes a valiant attempt to scrape some of the sap off his sleeve – it only leaves his fingers coated in the viscous syrup, so he wipes it on the nearest Ravager instead. "Fine," he grates. "He's fine."

"Glad to hear it." Kraglin nibbles his lip. "Although, ya know. Don't tell him I said that, or nothin'."

"Whatever." Yondu continues his steady tramp towards the medbay, having to pull to unstick the treads of his boots, and wonders if the lack of notifications on his wristpieces insinuates the best case scenario or the worst.

First thing he notices is that Quill's awake.

Second is that his watch is broken. "Fuck."

"Nice to see you too," Quill snorts. Yondu scans through the contents of the dustpan in Doc's hands, sees the crushed remnants of the tracking chip, and determines that the cosmos must be cracking a joke at his expense.

"Congrats on not dyin'," he says, painting a gummy trail along the wall as he heads for the exit. "I'm going to bed."

Only he doesn't. Because hell, Thanos himself could scupper him and Yondu'd stand up swinging – his bow to no one rule includes omnipotent Titans, anthropomorphic entities, and planet-eaters alike; Yondu ain't genuflecting if the goddam multiverse piles on his back. Just because thing's've gone a bit awry doesn't mean he's giving up.

With that in mind, Yondu sits in his nest and snaps his fingers for the lights. "Yeah," he mutters, yawning. "I'm gonna do this. Third time lucky, right?"

The Techies do ask why he needs a tracker this time – or at least, how he's getting through them so quickly. "Eating 'em," Yondu says, not entirely untruthfully. Snatches it out of the girl's hand, gives her a demeaning pat, and scampers off to show whatever deity has made a hobby out of foiling his plots a massive middle finger. He's buzzing by the time he reaches Quill's bedside. Has to concentrate to stop himself giving the game away – it's the giddy elation of the sleep-deprived, as Yondu convinces himself that there's no way this can possibly go wrong again.

It never does do to tempt fate.

Quill wakes up as soon as Yondu rolls his cuff off the watch. The medbay's dark and silent, the assistant on duty operating from one of the other compartments to allow Quill and Doc peace to sleep. Yondu doesn't know what startled his eyes open – he hasn't made a sound, and Quill'd looked deep under – but whatever the cause, he's caught without an excuse.

"Um," he says. "Yer dreaming. Go back t'sleep."

"Liar," Quill wheezes. Grabs his hand. "Knew you were coming back. Gotta tell me you missed me properly."

Yondu extracts himself, grimacing, and moves to a safe distance. That tantalizing gleam of uncovered circuitry from Quill's wrist gores his eyes like boar tusks. His night vision's better than Quill's – helps to emit your own bioluminescence – and he reckons that if he can secret the nodule inside, Quill won't be able to distinguish tracker from vital internal power cores. "Somethin' like that," he says. But how to get close enough? How to convince Quill to shut his goddam eyes long enough for him to do the deed and make his getaway? He ain't singing him no lullaby, that's for certain. Those tracks on Quill's walkthing already repeat through his brain on an average of five times a day-cycle. Anyway, he don't have the voice for it.

Quill's watching, expectant. The gentle rumbles of Doc's snores from the pallet around the corner make a comforting soundscape, like one of them ocean soundbites Xandarians buy for their arsy-farcy meditation, and… well, ain't the medbay beds wider than Quill's?

Okay. He can do this. One little moment of vulnerability – faked vulnerability at that! – ain't too heavy a price to pay; not when you consider the boon…

Yondu licks his chapped lips. His throat's gone arid all of a sudden, and when he rubs the seam where the cool crystal of his implant yields to nape, his fingers come away sweat-tipped. "I had a nightmare," he mutters. Coughs. Resets himself – gotta make this believable, after all. "I had a fuckin' nightmare, okay. Like before. When ya… well, y'know. When you tried to crack my safe." When you decided to hug me instead. To this day, he's not sure which outcome he would've preferred. "Anyway," he continues to Quill's shocked face. "I dunno. I just. Thought I'd make sure you were still breathin', is all."

"Oh," says Quill, eyes showing the whites. Struggles a little higher on the bed, looking stumped. "I thought –" Then reconsiders whatever he had been about to mention, meets Yondu's eyes, and flips back the sheet.

No. Oh hell no. Yondu almost chokes. "You ain't serious."

"It helped before."

Says you, Yondu wants to spit. I still say you were lyin', because I don't get nightmares – Except it's an untruth his deception relies on, and he's gotta uphold if he doesn't wants the boy to get suspicious. Always too smart for his own good, that one. Yondu sags. "Yeah," he admits. Stalks forwards and flops the blanket over Quill's wire-studded belly. "Ain't getting under the covers though. Too warm."

Quill shrugs. "Your choice. Don't pull out my tubes, or I might not wake up come morning." And he shuffles onto his side, facing away from Yondu, and tugs the sheet up to his chin. Yondu surveys the space besides him. Gingerly lays a palm flat on the mattress, feeling how it's soaked in Quill's body-heat. Presses until creases form in the sheets, like ripples frozen in time, and rests more and more of his weight on the bed until he's sitting, Quill's legs sliding slightly towards the indent. "C'mon," Quill mumbles, already half-asleep. "Get in already, old man."

Yondu shucks his trenchcoat off his shoulders. Dumps it on the floor, teasing off his boots one by one to join it. Doc's too smart to say nothing, even if he happens to be awake. And what better chance is Yondu gonna get? "Go to sleep, brat," he says, and tangles his hand in red-gold curls for the briefest of moments before reclining and shuffling backwards until his shoulders nudge Quill's. They're spine-to-spine, sheet stretching over Quill and under Yondu, and Yondu can feel his ribcage expand and contract every time he breathes. He steadies his own to match. Then, and only then, once he's certain Quill's under (and he's not responding to gentle kicks, prods, or jiggles of the IV) he inches away, sits again, and bends over Quill to fiddle with his watch. With the casing already broken, he plants the bug in less than a minute; pushing it close enough to the plasma bead that the glow of its activation will be drowned.

There. He's done it. Now he can go back to his bed.

Or stay here. Ain't that long to morning, and medbay's closer to the Bridge than his room...

Yondu smiles, rolls horizontal, and shuts his eyes.

Peter keeps his exhalations slow and paced, in for four, out for four, while he feels the mattress dip. There's a wash of heat as Yondu bends over him, leather sliding on the sheet. The gentle lifting of his wrist, the soft clicks and cusses as he manipulates the tracker into place, are all oddly relaxing, soporific, sinking into Peter's mind like a worn-out recording. He knew it. All of this; the nightmare, the concern; has been fabricated in preparation for this moment. He'd been expecting it with such assurance that having his suspicions confirmed is a borderline comfort.

Except, y'know, for the fact that Yondu's tracking him.

Under the heavy, busted watch, Peter's fist hardens into a knot. He wants to rip it out. Gouge it from its nest of wires; fling it in Yondu's face; shout that he knows… But he also knows that if he does that, Yondu'll resort to other methods of keeping him tethered.

Chain him in the brig. Sabotage his M-ship. Steal his Walkman.

Best he keep this to himself. Then, when the next high-paying job flags up, he can jet off to claim the bounty and dump the Tracker on a passing Novaship. That'll come later though. It's been a helluva day, and right now, Peter needs rest. And while Yondu might be a dick – a hundred percent of one, at that – he's also warm. And kinda comfy. And this might be a positive memory of the man that Peter'll want to treasure, because once he's deserted there won't be any more.

Peter dreams of cages and sharks.

He dreams of opening the cage door (turns out the lock was on the inside after all, he just never noticed before). The shark snaps hatefully at him. But when Peter touches it, he discovers it's only a shoal of minnows that skitter away from his water-parsing hands, blue light glinting off their scales. A trick of the eyes; not a shark at all.

It takes Peter a month to recover. By the end of it, he's bordering stir-crazy – so much that he bothers Kraglin until he forks over some of his mission files for him to trawl through and assign. One name stands out from the rest. Anonymous buyer. That's nothing unusual – Ravagers like to have plausible deniability when shit goes tits-up, and their clients are always more comfortable keeping their identities to themselves, especially when ordering copious amounts of drugs be smuggled through the Nova stockade.

The location is what catches Peter's eye, as well as the price tag – fifty thou for a twee dashboard ornament. Morag's a planet he's never been to: hunk of rock drifting past the Dagobar system that'd once housed some swanky Ancient's security vault. According to the file, it's been deserted for the last century, ever since the volcanic eruptions went from 'regular' to 'ridiculous' – but as the vault was listed as being cleared of valuables during the evacuation, no one's bothered to go back and scope it.

Apparently, one of those useless lil' baubles the Ancient had abandoned has caught somebody's eye. Somebody rich enough to go through the Broker on Xandar, rather than a middle-man orientated towards usual Ravager clientele. Peter thumbs through the description, holographic leaves peeling back and forth before his face; it looks boring enough, just some funky orb with a weird industrial design. Buyer probably wants it to sit on their control console, like someone else he knows. But who's he to question the whims of folks when they're willing to pay him easy-money?

Peter taps the assignation box at the bottom of the holographic page and enters his own name. Then he dismisses it, tucking the pad into his pocket to return to Kraglin. He swings his legs over the sides of the medical pallet. Shunts his feet into their boots – which by now are well-fitting veering on tight. Pulls his Ravager jacket over his broad shoulders, and smiles.

One more chapter to go! Please, if you've enjoyed this, I'd ask that you leave a comment...

I'm off to uni today, so please be gentle with me regarding the next update. It might be a while! I'll try and plug away at it when I have free time, but it's likely to be late.

Anyway, cookies for spotting the two Star Wars references. These are actually easy!