Daisy Johnson + Peter Quill
Infinity War Spoilers, Talk of Death | Complete
Daisy had thought about reaching out to Peter earlier, after reading Tony’s post and all of the comments to it. It seemed like a lot of their world - her own team excluded, at least - had gotten some kind of group memory update and it hadn’t been a good one. She’d gotten two of those, herself, in the year and a half she’d been in Atlantis, but this was the first she’d seen such a large group get new memories all at once. It was kind of weird that she and her team hadn’t gotten one along with the rest of their world, but maybe that was a good thing. What the others described didn’t sound like anything she wanted to live through, although she couldn’t help but wonder how the destruction of earth could fit in with all of this. Had all this happened before the day she did it?
Spotting Peter Quill in a dark corner of the bar within minutes of walking in effectively tore her thoughts from her own dark future and horrible deeds she had yet to commit, that she was determined to never commit. Usually, when she hung out with Peter, it was all flirty fun, laced with jokes and innuendo. Now, though, he didn’t appear to be in a joking mood.
“Hey,” she said, sliding into the seat across from him without waiting for an invitation. “You wanna talk about it?”
He knew these things happened, that people got memory dumps in their sleep but he hadn’t expected one and he sure as hell hadn’t expected anything like what he’d gotten. It seemed as if nearly everyone from his world had gotten similar memories, all involving Thanos destroying half the world just as he’d promised. Everyone had lost a lot but to Peter if felt as if he’d lost more than most, His friends who were more like his family, Gamora, whom he hadn’t even realized he loved until Thanos was about to take her away, and apparently even himself. The last thing he remembered was saying something...he couldn’t remember what and then there was nothing. Was that what dying was like?
Peter looked up when Daisy walked in and he nodded. “Sure, have a seat. Can’t say I’m great company but it’s better than drinking alone.” he took a sip of his drink and looked at her. “Did you get memories too? I stopped reading after a while, it was too damn depressing. I decided drinking was a better alternative.”
Daisy shook her head. “Looks like this update skipped over my team.” This was the first she’d even heard of a big group update like this happening, here or even at Breck. She couldn’t even remember it happening in Lawrence from those dream memories she had.
“You don’t have to be great company,” she assured him, pausing to give a server her drink order, “but if you want to talk about what happened....” it was hard for her to imagine anything worse than the total destruction of Earth, especially when Deke told her she’d been the one to do it. Destroyer of Worlds, they called her, apparently. Judging from the things she’d read, thought, apparently that wasn’t actually the worst thing the future could hold.
“Ever heard of Thanos? He’s a Titan, kind of the opposite of the Greek gods I think. He was trying to find these Infinity Stones so he could destroy half the world. Only half because he was going to take the other half and make it into what he wanted it to be.” Peter downed the rest of the drink in front of him and signaled for another. “I felt myself die…..at least I think that’s what it was. I just know that he did something and then everything went dark. It wasn’t like the dream just stopped, it was like I wasn’t there anymore. Stark confirmed it, he survived it but watched us fall apart or whatever the hell we did.”
There was a lot more to the story but Peter wasn’t sure he could talk about it yet. It would take a couple more rounds for him to be able to think about Gamora, about Thanos taking her, about the last words they said to each other and how pissed he was at himself for not letting himself admit those feelings earlier. Now he would never have the chance because she was gone and apparently in their home world, so was he.
Daisy shook her head at his question. It wasn’t a name she’d hear but she didn’t think he was looking for an answer, anyway, since he kept going. She listened to him talk, but her eyes widened as he told her he was pretty sure he was dead.
“Damn,” she said after a moment. It was a lot to process and the idea of Peter dying, it wasn’t one she was okay with. “You need another drink.”
“You’re right. I need several more drinks,” he said and sighed.”I mean we all know we’re going to die someday except for there was that time when I met my father that I found out I was immortal but I gave that up when I had to kill him.I’m not sure I’d want to be immortal though, I think it makes you a little bit nuts.” Ego had certainly been a whackjob but even at that, Peter might have considered his offer to stay had he not admitted to giving his mother the brain tumor that eventually took her life.
“Just knowing how you die…….I don’t think that’s something that a person needs to know. Especially since I kind of wanted to go out in a blaze of glory, not just turn to dirt.”
Daisy was quiet for a moment, just letting him talk, although she did reach over and squeeze his hand when she wasn’t sure what she could actually say. Dreaming about your own death had to be pretty freaky.
“I had a vision of the future once,” Daisy admitted. It felt like so long ago but somehow it also felt like yesterday. “It told me a member of our team was going to die, but it was hard to see who and then I thought I knew. The necklace I saw floating in the vision, it was one I was given and I thought that meant it was supposed to be me. I was ready for it to be me. I thought maybe sacrificing myself to save the world could make up for the bad things I’d done.”
“It was Lincoln, though,” she continued. “He took my place. He died not just to save the world but to save me.” Shaking off the past memories, she turned her focus back to Peter. “Sorry, that really has nothing to do with what you’re going through. I just meant.. I’m sorry.”
Peter listened and he reached out and laid his hand over hers. “Hey that’s fine. That’s gotta be creepy too.” He was curious about who Lincoln was but he didn’t want to ask since it was obviously someone who was important to Daisy. “It’s hard when you know someone sacrificed themselves for you. The man who raised me did that and it made me realize that the family I’d been looking for my whole life was right in front of my own nose and I didn’t even know it. What a dumbass.” He shook his head.
“I think the worst thing about this is not knowing what happened to the people that weren’t there. The people who are here were able to tell us but there’s a lot of people we don’t know about. People who were on Earth or who knows where. Also, I want to kill that bastard Thanos for what he did to Gamora but I’m dead so that sucks.”
Daisy didn’t have any answers for that. She hadn’t lived it yet, so there was definitely a chance she’d be gone, too.or Coulson, Jemma, Fitz, any one of them, really. “I guess none of us really knows what we’re going back to. My immediate future is supposed to involve me destroying the Earth, though, so I guess that’s something to look forward to.”
She caught the mention of Gamora and gave Peter a curious look. They hadn’t really talked a lot about their lives before now, she realized. She assumed Gamora was someone important to him, but she didn’t know who she was. “What happened to Gamora, Peter?” she asked because who she was wasn’t as important as how her fate was obviously getting to him.
Peter wanted to change the subject but he knew he shouldn’t. He needed to talk about it and he also knew Daisy wouldn’t give up if she was concerned about him. “Gamora was adopted by Thanos after he destroyed her home world,” he said. “He constantly pitted her against his other daughter, Nebula. Gamora got away from him but she was trained as an assassin and she was damn good at it. She ended up going after the same thing I was going after and that’s how I met her. Eventually she stuck around with my crew.” Throwing back another shot, he sighed. “We kind of had a….thing….although it took us forever to admit it. Like I thought it was just great sex but the last thing she said to Thanos before he took her was that she loved me and I loved her too but I never knew how to say that or show it. He took her to find one of the Infinity Stones and he killed her because he had to sacrifice something and in his own fucked up way, he did love her.”
For a moment he sat there and then looked at Daisy. “I think that’s probably the longest thing I’ve ever said that didn’t have some kind of bullshit in it. I’m not great with emotion.”
It occured to Daisy that this was the first really serious conversation the two of them had ever had. Usually, they just joked around and teased one another, but here they were sharing things about themselves she doubted either of them had ever really told anyone else. Her team knew what had happened to Lincoln, but it wasn’t like she’d talked to anyone about her feelings about it.
“I’m really sorry about Gamora, Peter,” she said, reaching for his hand again, squeezing it in what she hoped was a comforting gesture.
Her nodded and returned her squeeze. “Thanks. I should have tried harder to stop him but it was too much for me. She had asked me to kill her rather than let him take her but I couldn’t do it. I thought I could because I knew that it was what she wanted but I couldn’t do it. It didn’t matter though because she died anyway.” That was the part he kept playing over and over in his mind, her request and his promise which he hadn’t kept. That moment of hesitation…..but would have made any difference? He had no idea.
“Of course you couldn’t do it,” Daisy said as she thought about what would happen if she had to kill any member of her team. They fought like any family, but she also loved them all like family. If she had to kill any one of them? She doubted she could actually pull the trigger.
“Killing someone you love, no one could honestly expect that of you.”
Signaling the bartender, she ordered them another round of drinks - tequila this time - and a big plate of nachos for them to share. With the rate he was drinking, she thought food sounded like a good idea.
“Tell me about her,” she said when she turned back to Peter. “What was she like?”
How could he possibly describe Gamora? She was like no one he’d ever known and she challenged him in ways that few people ever had. “Gamora is one of the most badass people I have ever know,” he finally said. “She didn’t have a great life growing up, Thanos raised her to be a weapon really, to kill people, to even fight her sister so he could watch them hurt each other. He was one sick fuck. She got away from him though and even though she was pretty determined to kill me when we met, she didn’t do it. I guess I’m just that charming,” he snorted and took another drink. Peter wasn’t great at talking about feelings so he covered it up with joking but the truth was, he never quite understood why Gamora stayed.
“She stuck around after we defeated Ronin and got the infinity stone, that’s when we found out I was half alien. We made a good team…….all of us, me Gamora, Rocket, Drax, Groot. We did some good things and we did some really stupid things but that’s how it goes sometimes.” They nearly got killed more than once and usually is was because either Peter or Rocket had decided to do something entirely different from what was planned. “Gamora could fight like you wouldn't’ believe. She was great with knives and swords, I wouldn’t have wanted to go up against her. She tried to teach me some stuff and I did learn but it wasn’t the same, I’m better with guns. But as far as what kind of person she was, she was a real badass but underneath it, she cared about people. We both pretended that what was going on between us was casual but it wasn’t. I don’t know why we worked but we did.” Peter had been with a lot of women but there had never been anyone like Gamora and he wished he’d had the guts to admit it before it was too late.
Nodding, Daisy just listened as he talked. She sounded like a hell of a woman, probably someone she would have liked, too. She thanked their server as the drinks and nachos arrived and encouraged Peter to keep going before they both started to dig into the food. There weren’t a lot of things she could really say to make any of this better, but at least she could listen. That would have to be enough for tonight.