i just found out merriam webster has a time traveler feature that tells you some of the words that were “born” the same year as you. it’s pretty neat yall should do this
What the hell must Peter have thought, I wonder, when he saw the little troll doll among Yondu’s console toys? It must have been an absolute gut punch. Yondu guessed what was going on with the orbs after all, and not only forgave Peter for tricking him but was downright impressed that he had, and kept the toy around because he was proud of Peter, because he missed Peter…
(And now Peter has to put it on his funeral pyre.)
Peter was managing to hold it together okay until he found the damn troll doll.
It helped to have something to do. He was all right as long as he could just keep doing things instead of thinking about things. Kraglin was off finding and preparing fabric for the binding of the dead (old spacer custom; Peter had no idea where it had come from, but a lot of space-nomad cultures like the Ravagers seemed to have something similar) and Peter had decided to scour the Quadrant for items to lay on the bier. He’d last seen Groot sitting in Rocket’s lap with Mantis beside him, the little tree sprouting flower after flower, to be carefully plucked from his body and placed on the growing pile. Drax and Gamora were preparing the body itself.
Honestly, Peter hadn’t expected everyone to pitch in. He’d thought it would just be him and Kraglin. He couldn’t let himself think about it right now, about the enormity of all these willing hands working together to prepare the funeral arrangements for someone most of them had hardly even known, as if all of them had lost –
As if they’d lost a member of their family.
Because that’s how family worked, wasn’t it? It wasn’t people you liked, necessarily. It was people you were tied to, people who were tied to you, tied with bonds that not even death could break –
Stop, he told himself, blanking his mind as he carefully picked up handfuls of toys in the captain’s quarters. They were everywhere, stashed into drawers, tucked into nooks and crevices.
He craved his music to get him through this. He hadn’t wanted his Walkman so badly since his early days on the Eclector, when the loss of his mother and his world had been a raw, gaping hole through his chest. He just wanted to put on the earphones and tune out reality for awhile.
Instead, he stuffed his pockets full of toys and went up to the flight deck, where Yondu’s favorites would be.
He didn’t see Nebula sitting in the pilot’s chair until he started skimming toys off the armrest and then the suddenly dawning awareness of a very still presence in the chair made him jump so hard he dropped the entire handful.
“Thanks for giving me a heart attack,” he muttered, crouching to pick them up and hiding his face while he could blink back the tears that had been springing up, despite his best efforts, throughout this entire process. “Do you mind?”
“Someone has to fly the ship.” There was no intonation in her voice.
Peter cleared his throat. He recognized the toy in his hand, a little round-headed red thing; it had been sitting up here since Peter had been a teenager. Dealing with the ones he didn’t recognize, acquired since he left the ship, had been easier; these were going to be hell. “What I’m saying is, could I have a few minutes? I won’t take long.”
There was no answer, in fact there was no sound whatsoever, but when he dared to look up, she had vanished.
Probably hiding in the shadows, waiting to slide a knife between my shoulder blades, he thought, trying to reassert a tiny amount of normalcy in his own head. He went around to the other side, trying to blank his mind and just let his hands go through the motions of picking up the toys one at a time. Little jeweled cat thing he might’ve seen in the Broker’s shop once upon a time … a winged serpent that he knew they gave away as tourist geegaws on Bel-Set III … and, oh …
All else was forgotten. The items he was holding slid from his nerveless fingers and clattered on the floor as he reached to pick up the troll doll with exquisite care.
Probably the only troll doll in outer space. He’d had it with him, in his backpack, when he was
(picked up)
abducted on Earth. Last seen when he’d sealed it into the orb containment device and handed it into Yondu’s waiting palm on Xandar.
He’d expected Yondu would figure out the trick eventually.
Expected Yondu would open it, sooner or later.
Expected he’d be pissed.
But he wasn’t expecting to find it here – not just among Yondu’s collection, but in the place where Yondu put his very favorites, the ones he liked to keep around to look at, pick up, and run through his fingers while he thought about things. As a kid, Peter used to shuffle the order around, even swipe one occasionally just to mess with him … but he’d always, always made sure he didn’t lose it and put it back, since he had a feeling that Yondu wasn’t going to spare the arrow on a scrawny Terran brat who meant less to him than most of the trinkets in that collection –
Peter clutched the troll doll so tightly he could feel the plastic deforming under his fingers. He pressed it to his forehead and squeezed his eyes shut, but that didn’t stop the pressure building behind his eyelids, the tightness twisting his throat shut.
“You son of a bitch,” he choked out. “You son of a bitch. You couldn’t say any of this while – while there was still time –”
He folded slowly to the floor, curled around that damn doll, and cried.
There was the vague awareness, in some part of his mind not given over to abject grief, that it almost seemed as if something settled on his back, a calm and steady pressure like that of a strong hand, palm flat against his back, pressing soothingly between his shoulder blades. But he was too deep in his misery to notice it except on a superficial level, until it morphed somehow into a smaller hand, just as strong, stroking down his spine – a familiar presence, kneeling at his side.
“Peter?” Gamora’s quiet voice asked.
“I’m good,” he gasped. “I’m good.” He dragged a fist across his eyes, took a few deep, gulping breaths, and carefully smoothed down the troll doll’s wild hair where it had been crumpled in his fist. “Do you, uh – there’s some more on the –”
“I’ve got them,” Gamora said softly, displaying a handful of toys. “Peter, we’re ready to prepare the pyre.”
Peter could only nod, not trusting his voice. Gamora helped him to his feet and released him once he was standing, but stayed at his side, near enough to touch and yet giving him a bit of space. When she moved forward, he did too, though not without a glance behind him at the stars standing silent vigil outside the ship.
For a brief instant before he set foot on the ladder leading down to the rest of the ship, he had to pause, as if something had touched his shoulder ever so briefly – the light pressure of a hand, there and gone in a quick squeeze – and then he followed her down to the funeral.
