"A ball?" Yondu says, looking half disgusted and half like he wants to laugh, which, hey, isn't exactly a new way for him to be looking at Peter.

"It was all I could think of!"

Ego is flying at him, gathering rocks, boulders, around his body in a protective layer and Peter, launching himself towards the man who killed his mother, the man who wants to kill the entire universe, tries desperately to picture-

—a shell, armor, something to protect him something to-

soft on the kid, let him get away with too much, no matter how many times Quill betrays you, you protect him like—

(protect him like)

I don't use my head to fly the arrow, boy

(protect him like)

I use my heart

Peter, flying towards the man who claims to be his father, whistles sharply, and an arrow made of light flies forward, straight through Ego's chest.

The force that Peter puts behind it shatters Ego into pieces.

It's while Ego is still re-forming that Peter is grabbed by Yondu, the Aero-rig carrying them up and up into the atmosphere.

The winds of Ego's planet whip around the two of them like they want to rip them apart.

And the air is getting thin and Peter is having trouble breathing and—

"He may have been your father, boy," Yondu says, "but he wasn't your daddy."

The air is very thin now, and Peter can barely breathe at all, and the lack of oxygen is making his chest hurt—

"I'm sorry I didn't do none of it right," Yondu says, right on the edge of where the atmosphere ends, and then he's—

—he's put something—one of Rocket's spacesuit generators—on Peter's chest and Peter can breathe again, but Yondu is—

Yondu is—

Yondu puts his hands on either side of Peter's face and fixes his eyes on Peter, like Peter is the most important thing in the entire universe, the only thing worth looking at and they're out of the atmosphere of Ego's planet now, and—

and Yondu doesn't have a spacesuit.

"No! No!"

Below them, the planet boils with Ego's wrath, a clouds and dust and destruction as the Celestial re-forms into something enormous, but Peter barely notices, panicking and trying pull the generator from his own chest, and he can see ice crystals forming on Yondu's skin as he freezes, as all of the oxygen is pulled from his body, as—

Peter reaches desperately for the Light inside himself.

They're not on the planet anymore but it's close, so close, and so maybe—

The Light is there; he can feel it, and as his father rises up in a terrible form to destroy him, Peter pulls the Light up out of himself and wraps it around Yondu, trying to mimic the spacesuit. It flickers, shining on Yondu's skin, covering him in a thin layer of luminescence, lighting up his crest, outlining him in starlight.

But Peter doesn't know how to make air for Yondu, how to think oxygen into being for him, how to picture the molecules and the components and—

I don't use my head to fly the arrow, boy

(—but maybe he doesn't have to—)

I use my heart

Stop thinking, Peter tells himself, stop using your head; stop thinking, and then, inside his mind, he hears Yondu's voice, the raspy, mocking drawl of it

never were no good at thinkin' anyway, boy

And he can picture just how Yondu would say it, the exact way he'd tilt his head to look at Peter and—

And Peter just—

(Yondu's hand on Peter's shoulder as he shows him how to shoot a gun for the first time and Yondu letting Peter wire his walkman into the loudspeaker of the ship and Yondu sitting at the control panel while Peter plays with all of the little figurines he usually keeps on the dash and the first thing Peter ever steals on his own was an cheap little plastic doll and when he gives it to Yondu he throws his head back and laughs and he laughs like that again the first time Peter picks his pocket, the first time he has to break Peter out of prison, the day he gives Peter the Milano and—)

—and Peter just—

I'm sorry I didn't do none of it right

—and Peter just—

—Yondu—

—Peter just loves.

Yondu's hands jerk against Peter's face and his eyelids flicker as he gasps in a ragged breath of air.

Beneath them, Ego's planet explodes as the bomb detonates.

Rocket finds them and brings them aboard the ship just as the last of the Light is fading from Yondu's skin.

"Boy," Yondu says later, after the celebrations, after the others have all left the two of them alone together. "Picked somethin' up, while back."

Yondu reaches into the pocket of his coat and pulls out something plastic and rectangular—something with a cord wrapped around it, earbuds attached to the cord.

"It's what they're listenin' to, on Terra, now," Yondu continues, holding out the thing.

Peter reaches out and takes the thing, turns it over in his hands, looking at it. It's like a walkman, sort of, except—

He unwinds the cord slowly and settles the earbuds in his ears—

And pushes play.

The music starts—Cat Stevens; Peter knows this song; it's called—

Yondu is watching him, his eyes on Peter's face, his expression hard, like he's expecting Peter to laugh or make a sarcastic comment.

Peter doesn't say anything, can't think of anything to say, nothing that would be the right kind of words. Instead, he pulls one of the earbuds carefully from his ear, holds it out to Yondu.

Most people probably wouldn't see any change in Yondu's expression, but Peter knows his face better than most people, and he so he sees the way Yondu's jaw softens just slightly, the way the lines around his mouth smooth out just a bit.

Yondu reaches out and very carefully takes the earbud from Peter's hand, fits it into his own ear.

The music plays on.

"You told 'em what?" Yondu asks incredulously as Ravager ship after Ravager ship jump into the space around theirs.

"Dead," Peter repeats, "I told 'em you were dead."

(Peter had been talking to Kraglin, a few days back, and he'd mentioned Staker's words to Yondu in the snow. Peter had planned this thing out after that conversation.)

He looks over at Yondu, who's staring at the viewscreen, at the ships, something raw and wounded in his expression.

"They all came," he says.

The horde of freedom hangs in the space before their little ship.

"Damn right they did," Peter says.

The first of the Ravager ships fires off its colors, fireworks exploding like shooting stars, and then all of the ships in the horde of freedom are firing their colors, too, in salute. It's a Ravager funeral display. The highest form of honor for a Ravager, reserved for a leader who died in glory.

Yondu sucks in a sharp breath, like somebody's struck him when he wasn't expecting it.

Peter watches him out of the corner of his eyes.

"…ain't every man gets to see his own funeral," Peter says after a moment, watching the lights reflect on Yondu's skin.

Yondu turns to look at him, and Peter is shocked to see tears in his eyes. His jaw works for a moment, visibly.

"—ain't every man," he says finally, the words slow and careful, "got an idiot son what tells his friends he's dead."

His eyes on Peter's face as he says it, something uncertain at the back of his expression.

Peter feels his heart clench. He swallows hard.

"—guess you're just lucky, then," Peter says, unable to stop his voice from wavering, feeling tears rising in his own eyes.

Yondu's breath hisses between his teeth and his eyes close for just a moment.

He opens them and looks at Peter again, his lips pressed together in a hard line.

Then he reaches out for Peter, puts one hand on the back of his neck, and pulls him forward into a hard embrace.

Peter hears himself make a broken kind of noise, and then he's wrapping his arms around Yondu and hugging him back.

"Yeah," Yondu says, his voice even rougher than it normally is. "Yeah, I reckon I am."