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**SPOILERS FOR GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL.3**
Nebula’s not listening.
Well, that’s a lie. She’s partially listening to and processing what the worker with the clipboard is explaining to her, but her focus remains fixated on the two figures standing a few yards away.
She watches, trying and failing to maintain apathy, as her sister from another time appears to be saying her goodbyes to Peter.
“I bet we were fun,” she hears Gamora tell him, their backs to each other as she seems poised to board the Ravagers’ ship.
“Oh, you wouldn’t believe,” comes the captain’s wistful response. Nebula can’t even see his face from where she’s standing, but she can just tell from his tone of voice that his expression now is a far cry from the sad puppy look he’s spent the last several months sporting.
Nebula feels happy for him, that he’s grown in this way. She knows how tough it’s been, with everything concerning both versions of Gamora, and she’s relieved Peter seems to have emerged from it all mostly okay.
Despite the constant reminders of Peter’s incompetencies, and his haphazard plans, and his failed attempts at leadership, and his dubious moral code, and his overall terrible track record, Nebula’s horrified to discover that she might possess a little…fondness?
It’s disgusting.
But it’s also, unfortunately, undeniably, the truth. She realizes that, entirely without her consent, the person who just used to be Quill to her, or Star-Lord whenever he pissed her off (which was constantly), or any colorful variation of idiot, has now become Peter.
And she has no idea how it happened. Or why she’s even thinking about this now.
What she does know is that she called him Peter for the first time tonight, but that was a moment of weakness, okay? If it hadn’t been for that gold maniac swooping in to save him at the very last minute, Peter would have died, and Nebula refuses to examine why the mere thought of such an occurrence continues to cause a phantom ache in her biomechanical gut.
When the de facto leader of her found family came back from the brink of death and then had the gall to immediately launch into a fucking joke about looking cool, Nebula should have punched him square in the unsightly, bloated jaw. Not too long ago, she would have. Without hesitation.
But tonight, she didn’t. She hugged him instead, but that’s just because they’d all very nearly lost him, and over a fumbled Zune, no less. It’s not like it means anything.
What’s perhaps most peculiar about it all is that Nebula’s certainly no stranger to loss, having literally lost her family and nearly every part of herself over many terrible years. She’s intimately familiar with the experience of giving something up, of having no choice but to move forward when it feels like there’s nothing left, so much so that she should be a bonafide expert in this arena.
But when the possibility of losing Peter was rapidly switching into a legitimate reality, Nebula was frozen. Watching him slowly perish in space, completely unable to save him…
…Well, it was more excruciating than having her brain pulled from her skull and her spine torn from her back.
Because at some point since Peter and the rest of the Guardians rejoined her and Rocket after their five-year absence, this music-obsessed imbecile had become someone utterly impossible for Nebula to extricate herself from.
Maybe it was around the time he complimented her eyes.
Her eyes — every part of her, really — have always been associated with pain. With Thanos. With the type of childhood she’d never wish on her worst enemies.
But when Peter had stopped to look at her at Orgocorp, really look at her, for a split second she’d felt what it must be like to be admired.
It was…nice.
Or maybe it was earlier, back on Knowhere, when his inebriated, outright mess of a self had reached for her arm. He’d muttered something about loving her sister, the version that they’d lost in 2018…and for the briefest of moments, hating herself as soon as she’d thought it, Nebula had let herself believe the sentiment was meant for her, instead.
Or maybe it was simply when they were bickering over his useless instructions and his pathetic attempt at driving a car.
Or maybe…
Shit.
Maybe there isn’t actually one isolated incident at all.
Maybe it’s impossible to pinpoint when exactly her walls fell down and she started to care, because Peter’s steadfast commitment to this team, to this family, to these people that no one ever said he had to give a shit about but yet he does anyway, people that inexplicably now also include her, has always been there.
Maybe it’s just everything about Peter that’s made him Peter in her eyes.
Fuck, did I really just think that?
Nebula scowls, blinking herself back into the present moment. She’s just in time to see her sister walking towards her, bearing the confidence of someone who knows they’re on their way to exactly where they’re supposed to be.
What’s that like?
_______
Gamora knows she can’t stay.
When that Quinn guy — shit, Quill — when that Quill guy is saved from very nearly dying a gruesome death out in space, she doesn’t join the Guardians’ relieved group hug that envelops their misshapen-faced friend on the streets of Knowhere.
She doesn’t join the group hug because this isn’t her group. These aren’t her people. They’re great people, she can see that now, and these people have all, rather amazingly, found each other. She’s immensely grateful to have gotten a chance to witness the depth of love they all clearly possess for one another, but she doesn’t have any real part in it.
Despite what the not-dead guy seems to think, she’s not the same person that they once all knew and loved. She never will be.
So she leaves, and on her way out, she lets him down gently.
“I bet we were fun,” she tells him sincerely once she’s a few steps past him.
“Oh, you wouldn’t believe,” he confirms, a melancholic acceptance coloring his reply.
It’s a peculiar thing, Gamora thinks, meeting someone who cares so deeply about an iteration of her that doesn’t exist anymore.
And sure, perhaps this version of her could still come to love him over time — she has to admit, getting caught up in this mission with the Guardians has demonstrated the more redeeming qualities of their still-objectively-idiotic leader — but Gamora has the sense that there’s already a version of someone who loves him right now.
She makes eye contact with her sister, who stands at the nearby railing talking logistics with a crew member.
“Quinn?” she says abruptly, and stops walking for a second. She stays facing forward.
Shit. Quill.
If she’d actually been planning to stay, she’d need to get better at that.
“Yeah?”
She assumes he turns back to look at her, but as she speaks, Gamora keeps her gaze directed towards the Ravager ship that she belongs on.
The last thing she’ll say to this guy is what she knows he needs to hear.
“Whoever it was that you were in love with, it wasn’t me,” she reminds him, repeating herself from before. This time, though, the sentiment is wholehearted. Genuine.
She drops her voice to a whisper.
“It sounds more like her.”
She doesn’t see his reaction.
She doesn’t need to.
At that, Gamora leaves him behind, and assuredly makes her way towards a totally-not-eavesdropping Nebula.
They exchange their perfunctory grunts of acknowledgment, and then Gamora steps onto the ship, finally home.
No words were spoken, but this time especially, Gamora hopes her meaning to her sister was clear.
Go get him.