InsaneJournal

Who: Peter
What: His first moments in the soul dimension
When: Shortly after the dusting
Rating: Green



It was orange.

So orange.

For a few moments, Peter honestly thought Drax had touched Peter’s eyes with his fingers. So much so, that Peter found himself reaching up to wipe it away, ready to curse out the alien when he stopped and realized…no, no, everything was orange.

Whipping around, eyes wide open, he called out for his teammates, called out for Gamora, screamed until he found his voice was hoarse but nothing. Nothing but the gentle wind, and the soft shimmer of the atmosphere. He was alone. Again. Dropping down to his knees, his hands loosely by his sides, he tried his best to calm down.

“It’s okay,” he repeated over and over again to himself. “It’s okay. You got this.” He didn’t. Not at all. The silence was overwhelming and he kept patting his pockets, out of an ingrained reflex, desperately searching for his Walkman at first, before remembering that was destroyed. His zune was on the ship….was his ship here?

Before too long, his despondency turned to anger. He started kicking at the orange sand, before picking up the random rubble that was strewn around and throwing it in every direction possible. Working himself up, he started to curse and yell and scream and throw until a voice broke through.

“I don’t remember teaching you those words.”

That voice stopped him in his tracks. The last time he’d heard that voice, he was 8 years old, running away from her hospital bed. Taking a deep breath, he turned slowly, his face crumpling immediately at the familiar sight. “Mom?”

It wasn’t her. It couldn’t be her.

But it was.

She looked the same, in fact, even better. She looked like she did before the cancer, when it was just him and her against the world, the two of them laying in their pillow forts, listening to music, eating cookies…whatever he wanted, she made it happen. He had no idea they were poor, had no idea that she struggled to make sure he had everything, no idea that if it wasn’t for his grandfather, he’d probably have been taken by Child Welfare. All he knew was that she loved him more than anything else and he loved her more than anything else and she was suddenly standing in front of him.

There was no stopping the tears as he rushed at her, pulling her into a tight hug. She even smelled the same. Sunflowers . He’d played with that perfume bottle so many times, watching her get ready in the mornings.

“It’ll be okay, Peter. That’s all I can tell you. It’ll be okay.”

Peter held tighter and shook his head, clenching his eyes. “Stay, Mom. Don’t leave me, please don’t leave me, I don’t want you to go, I’ve missed you so much. I love you, don't go, never go, please...” He rambled and rambled and rambled and rambled and then suddenly there he was.

Arms empty.

Alone again.

This time, he didn’t even have the strength to cry. Instead, he fell to the ground and sat there. Even though he felt something tugging, trying to get him to walk, to get to his feet.

He couldn’t.

So he sat.