Gamora picks up the wailing little boy and holds him in her lap.

He was so young. Just a toddler.

"Don't be afraid," she told him, stroking his hair, absently brushing his cheek, still streaking with tears. "Don't be afraid, Peter. I will protect you."

When Peter, her Peter came back, he's still crying.

"I- I saw her," he gasps, his breaths sharp and ragged. "She said she- she loved me too," a broken sob escapes him.

Gamora moves closer, wrapping her arms around him.

Peter bites his knuckles in an attempt not to cry, or really, to try and stop crying. To stifle the sobs.

"She was so young. Younger than me, younger than you," he curls into his wife, tears slipping from his closed eyelids. His lip quivers. "She said she loved me too."

Sometimes she wished he would stop going back that far.

She didn't know whether these visits with his mother hurt him or healed him more.

They were always so painful and left him gasping for ragged breaths as he sobbed.

She knows that Peter would never give up seeing his mom again, never give up being able to talk to her, to hug her, feel her touch, hear her voice again.

But sometimes Gamora wished he would just stop seeing her, stop going back so far. He always came back to her so broken and shaken.

He always came back to her with his ragged, patchwork heart in pieces. He always came back to her crying.

She knows that Peter wouldn't give them up for anything- these visits- but she wished they would just stop.

He always came back so broken.

AN: Inspired by Bloom by Tyranno over on AO3 (link = /works/10960113)- an awesome, fully developed GOTG Time Traveler's Wife AU (featuring the beloved starmora), and is much more interesting and lighthearted than this mess of a drabble. Title from a Paper Kites song.