WHO Cassie Banner-Romanoff & Groot WHAT Oh Hai Tree WHEN Recently WHERE The Park WARNINGS Language because see the "Who" STATUS Closed | Gdoc | Continuing in comments
Cassie wasn't feeling great lately, but she was feeling better after talking to her parents. That didn't exactly make her more pleasant with people, but she was less likely to just immediately snap people's heads off. Her drawings were getting slightly less dark and angsty, but only slightly. It really depended on her mood at any given time and some days it was better than others. Today wasn't such a bad day, all things considered. The weather was starting to improve a little bit and her parents weren't turning into other people. That was always a good thing.
She decided to hang out at the park while she was working on her English assignment. It was actually kind of interesting, even if she didn't want to admit as much to her parents. Or anyone. Cassie had found a spot underneath a tree, kind of hidden from most people while she read her book. When she started to go a little cross eyed, she took a break and played this old school video game for a little while. The sound was kind of repetitive as it beeped and she hadn't figured out how to turn it off. By now, she was mostly just tuning it out, but today she realized the sound had drawn the tiny tree dude over to her.
Cassie held it out to him. "Want to try?"
***
Groot was often just wandering around the park, bored. There wasn’t anything exciting on this stupid planet and yeah Quill was there and Gamora was there but they did stuff that wasn’t Groot-related and Rocket wasn’t there to talk to and the dumb Drax beast wasn’t there to fight with so it got pretty boring. So he just sought out his own entertainment. Which was almost always in the park. He liked the trees.
Today, though, he got a little sidetracked when he heard a beeping. Being drawn in by the noise, he saw a Terran girl with what looked like a video game, and he wandered right up to stare at her until she noticed him. Luckily that happened sooner rather than later because he didn’t want to have to actually put any work into talking to her. He didn’t like to talk to people. They were all stupid and he still compared most girls of the right looking age to Evie. Who he kind of still hated a lot.
So he already didn’t like this one. But she offered him her game, and that earned some points.
He didn’t answer, just looked at her with big eyes and held out tiny hands to take the game.
***
Cassie had gotten the thing at the bottom of some sale bucket at the store, so she figured the tree guy could run off with it and it wouldn't be that big of a deal. She needed to get back to her book anyway so when he held his hands out to take it, she handed it over to him. Once she'd handed it off, she opened her book back up and started with the next chapter.
It was kind of distracting having an animated tree dude in front of her, though. Cassie kept glancing at him over the top of her book as she tried to place who and what the baby tree was. She was reasonably sure that he was attached to someone from her parents' world since she thought she'd seen him before. He liked snacks if memory served. If that was the case, she had snacks in her bag, too. One on one, especially around someone who wasn't stupid happy, Cassie was actually pretty alright.
***
Groot was much the same way. He hated people who were excessively cheerful. There were things to be cheerful about, yeah, but not here very often and even back home he was grouchy more often than not. Everyone was always telling him what to do, treating him like he was incompetent just because he was little. Which was stupid; he was a fucking Guardian of the Galaxy. Even little he was more badass than almost everyone in this stupid place.
It took him a moment after taking the game to figure out what he was playing, but he settled into it pretty quickly. After setting the game on the ground so he could use both hands to push buttons. Except he wasn’t very good, too little to be fast enough to do it right, and before too long Groot was just frustrated at the game. He shouted loudly, which was really not a lot more than a squawk, and kicked the game.
“I am Groot!”
Stupid piece of shit wasn’t even fun.
***
She'd noticed him getting a little frustrated with the game, so when he squawked and kicked the game, Cassie didn't even blink. "Yea," she agreed. "It's kind of hard." It'd taken her a little while to figure out exactly how to play it, but she didn't think he was going to be down for giving it another shot. She set her book aside and reached into her bag for the snacks she'd been keeping for later.
Cassie put them out in between them so that he could take whatever he wanted. "Snacks are better anyway." She kind of didn't even want to work on her school work anymore either. For as interesting as it was, it was still homework and she wouldn't ever be eager to do homework. "You can kick it again if you want. Cost me like two bucks."
***
Groot probably would have kicked it again regardless, but since she gave him permission, he went ahead and did just that, wound up grumbling again because that hurt. Which just made him hate the thing more. Whatever. He didn’t even want to play the stupid game. He wanted snacks.
Hopping up to stand on the game he held his hands out expectantly. He might not have any idea who this dumb girl was but she talked to him like a person and that definitely won her some bonus points, not even his family did that all the time. And she didn’t care much if she tried to wreck her stuff, apparently. Which was pretty okay too. As people went, Groot would say this one wasn’t instantly hateable.
***
It was kind of cute to see him kick the game again and then grumble, but Cassie didn’t let that show. She got the feeling he wouldn’t like that at all, which she totally understood. She hated when people treated her differently because she was younger, even though she'd lived through more shit than anyone else had. It probably was the same for a tiny tree since he was way cooler than a tree.
When he held his hands out, she nudged some of the other unopened snacks on the ground between them toward him.
"You can take what you want," Cassie told him. No way was she going to share what she was eating when there were perfectly good snacks right in front of him. "There's like four to pick from." Five actually, and one of which was the same as what she had in her hands. Cassie just wasn't paying that much attention to what snacks were in front of her.
***
That was a completely unacceptable response. Groot didn’t lower his hands, just stretched them further, almost growing in her direction.
“I am Groot.”
He didn’t want the other snacks. He wanted that snack. It was good because it belonged to her. His family had always just given him his own too, but when he’d asked, he’d usually gotten a piece of theirs instead. It helped to be little and adorable and not particularly different from a human toddler in many ways. Groot was definitely spoiled.
***
Cassie just locked eyes with Groot. She’d never been spoiled before coming to Madison and while most people wouldn’t look at her and say she was spoiled, she thought that was the case. Here, she had a roof over her head every night, a warm bed and all kinds of food, running water that actually was the temperature on the dial. She wasn’t being hunted, and though she did firmly believe she was a rat in a cage, at least she wasn’t being poked and prodded with needles. That was what being spoiled meant for her.
Groot was small enough that she wondered how old he was. Had he known anything else before Madison Valley? Had it been better or worse? If he wanted her food for some reason, maybe it was worse. Maybe he had a fear of being poisoned or something.
Cassie sighed and handed over the bag of chips. “Whatever.” It wasn’t worth arguing or trying to unpack it. Instead, she reached for the bag of mini Oreos to replace her now shared snack.