The jukebox played The Rubberband Man by the Spinners. A lot. For the past two hours at least, as someone had commandeered the contraption and then threatened other patrons – with her eyes, and her quiet, sultry voice that was the personification of death – from using it. It was hers tonight. Didn’t exactly make sense considering she could listen to the song on an infinite loop on her phone, but she blamed the mild lack of rationale on the alcohol buzzing in her system.
(Gamora wasn’t drunk, by the way. She was capable of it, but getting there took effort. She had two livers; a Zehoberei thing.)
The song wasn’t a depressing ballad. It was catchy, up-beat – might be what the youths would call a retro bop, and she knew every lyric. Not once did she use her voice to sing along, but she mouthed the words, tapped her fingers against the booth she’d chosen for herself in sync with the beat. There were empty bottles of some extraterrestrial beer on the table. A bowl of untouched wings too, something she ordered for herself because sustenance but she couldn’t be fucked to pick at it.
Being at a bar felt like a betrayal, like a mockery of what Peter went through with his grief – she hadn’t visited any when he arrived, too scared that he’d be tempted to fall back into an old comfort despite her presence. Gamora couldn’t remember if she knew anyone here. She didn’t want to be seen or known. She didn’t want Nebula or Rocket hovering or worrying that she’d fall into the vices that Peter had.
She wouldn’t. But tonight, in the corner of the bar, wearing Peter Quill’s jacket – the one item of his from home left behind – she just wanted to wallow. She wanted to mourn.
Peter was likely back home, reunited with his grandfather. He wouldn’t remember their moments here. He wouldn’t remember her apologies (I’m sorry I didn’t go right, I’m sorry I asked you to kill me, I’m sorry I didn’t come back). He wouldn’t remember this second chance that was snuffed out before it could really begin.
Gamora was here, dead and alive, remembering how she had stressed to him this exact scenario. I don’t know if we’ll have a future here, and if this place sends you back home then that’s it. It’s over again.
It was over. Hopefully, he would find peace without her.
“Prepare yourself for the Rubberband Man,” she sang quietly, rolling a half-empty bottle between her hands. Gamora remembered the last time she heard this song – on the Benatar, before finding Thor, before that promise, before Thanos. No one else cared for it but her and Peter. “You’ve never heard a sound like the Rubberband Man. You’re bound to lose control when the rubberband starts to jam.”
Tensions were a little high at Al’s this particular evening. There was some grumbling from some very grumpy regulars about the woman monopolizing the jukebox in the front room, but once Carol had gotten a look at the culprit, she’d dismissed them to the back room without a second’s hesitation. A few had tried to argue, but a flash of glowing gold eyes had been enough to cow them. She’d been at this long enough that they knew better than to mess with her for long.
She knew what Gamora was going through. Losing Peter was a big blow, especially knowing their future at home would be much different than it could be here. She knew the Guardians a little bit; they’d crossed paths at times before Thanos and the Snap bore down upon them all. She knew enough of their dynamic to gauge the pain Gamora had to be feeling right now.
That didn’t mean The Rubberband Man for the twenty-fifth time that night was something Carol particularly enjoyed. She could put up with it; she’d grown up on seventies music, and the Spinners hadn’t been uncommonly played in the house at her mother’s hand. For Gamora’s sake, she would let it keep cycling if that was what she needed.
“Hey.” She approached Gamora in her booth and flattened a hand on the table, taking note of the untouched wings and old red jacket without comment. “How’re you holding up?” She nodded in the direction of the bottle in the other woman’s hand. “Need another?”
Gamora did not look like an approachable woman. And yet, she’d been approached, and her response had to wait as she processed just who had approached her. If she was confused (which she was), she didn’t show it. Thinking back, she did remember an old conversation that – oh, shit.
“You own the place,” she recalled, dragging her eyes slowly from the bottle to Carol. The point of coming here was to be unrecognized. To be no one. A mistake had been made, but she didn’t have the urge to excuse herself. She was here, and had a tab, and this sort of beer was one of the only things in Vallo that was giving her a slight buzz. “I had forgotten.”
“Surprise?” Carol shrugged, noting that Gamora didn’t seem particularly pleased to see her, but that wasn’t unusual. In their brief encounters back home, she had never seemed pleased to see much of anyone. Tonight, Carol understood it more than she ever had. “I figured you’d been spending all your time drinking Thor’s mead and forgotten.”
The state of Gamora’s face wasn’t a personal slight. She always had that look to her - sharp, hard, until someone she knew came along to soothe the tight lines. Or until she sighed, which was exactly what did it this time, her shoulders slumping and red jacket dwarfing her further.
“I don’t want them to see me drink,” was her answer, honest in a way she may not have expressed if her lips weren’t already loose from how her sobriety was leaning towards the tipsy side of things. “Peter developed a problem with alcohol after what happened. I’m not looking to follow in his footsteps, and I don’t want them to worry about it. I just needed a moment of weakness.”
Then she’d go back to enjoying her people while she still had them because, god, she needed them. More than they could ever need her. Gamora was dead, and she knew they had learned to start letting her go back home – but she couldn’t say the same for herself. She couldn’t fathom letting any of them go.
So while they were here, she wouldn’t.
Ah. Carol nodded almost sagely. She could see a world where she became alcohol-dependent to deal with all the shit life had thrown at her. Luckily, it took a very specific kind of alcohol to get her really drunk, with her unique combination of cosmic powers and Kree blood. She couldn’t say it hadn’t been tempting in those days following Natasha’s sacrifice. She understood Peter’s loss more than he – or anyone else – would ever know. But at least Natasha had made the choice for herself.
“Well, you’re more than welcome here,” Carol assured Gamora with a flash of a small smile. “You and Rubberband Man.” She stepped aside just in time to press the proper key combination again, letting the song make its twenty-sixth loop. “Secret’s safe with me.”
Bottle on the table, Gamora crossed her arms and tilted her head back into the set of the booth. “Didn’t occur to me that someone I know would be a victim of me putting this song on repeat,” she chuckled. Or that she may have subtly threatened Carol’s patrons when she took over the jukebox. “This can be the last time. Then your other customers can have it back.”
She wasn’t here to cause trouble. Carol seemed to know that, though – not like she was tossing her out of the establishment for hogging it.
“Nah, they’ll be fine,” Carol replied dismissively. A couple had come crying to her about being glared at and threatened, but she’d just sent them away. Gamora had every right to be sad, and Carol wasn’t going to step on her toes with how she handled that. This was a safe space for her – maybe that made it a little better than somewhere she’d be a complete stranger. “Play whatever you want. I’d recommend eating something, though. Need something on your stomach with that beer.”
She knew it would take a much more concerted effort for Gamora to get drunk – she was aware of the Zehobereian quirks – but it was her little way of showing she cared without getting too in Gamora’s face. They weren’t too well-acquainted, but she’d picked up enough to know that pushing herself on the other woman wasn’t going to win her points. “I’ll be around if you need anything, okay?”
Music made her feel closer to Peter. Before his dramatic arrival (Gamora still stopped by the docks, looking up at the sky with hope she needed to snuff out), she had collected the majority of the songs they listened to as an attempt to re-create their playlist they’d compiled for themselves once upon a life. She listened to it alone – until she didn’t have to anymore.
Now Gamora would have to, but she didn’t have it in her to put that playlist on anytime soon. This one hadn’t even made it on there, though it was a safe one to put on. It evoked a good bit of nostalgia without reducing her to tears. She was tired of tears. A bit tired of everything.
Rubberband man, rubberband man,
How much of this stuff do he think we can stand?
So much rhythm, grace, and debonair for one man.
“I’m not gonna finish these,” she said, gesturing towards the wings. “You’re more than welcome to help unless you’re not a fan of your own product.”
Carol looked around. Everyone seemed occupied, no one grumbling about the jukebox monopoly anymore. The bar was covered, and hell, she’d taken a step back from management for a reason. She might as well enjoy the perks and lend a familiar face an ear. So, with a shrug and a nod of assent, she slid into the opposite side of the booth.
“So,” she began, plucking a wing out of the basket between them, “can I ask why Rubberband Man? Does it have some meaning behind it?” She wasn’t asking in a judgmental way, though she’d admit, she’d expect something more like a love song after the kind of loss Gamora had suffered.
“Last song I heard on the Benatar before I got thrown off a magic cliff,” Gamora answered plainly, taking a sip from that bottle she’d been playing with. “It’s also cheerful. I don’t need to flood your bar with the dulcet tones of a depressing song.”
Peter had been her major gateway into music. Terran music, anyway. She had learned to love it all on her own.
Magic cliff was easy enough to deduce – Vormir. Shit, that was a little bit of a morbid memory, wasn’t it? Carol didn’t know the full details – none of the Avengers really had – but she knew Gamora hadn’t sacrificed herself like Natasha. At least it sounded like the song was attached to the good part before all that had gone down.
“Alright, fair enough,” she agreed, taking a moment to munch on the chicken wing in her hand. “Fits right in with where Quill’s pop culture knowledge would’ve stopped.”
With one wing polished off, she reached for a wad of napkins and studied Gamora briefly. “Look, you’ve never struck me as someone who’s here for small talk. And the last thing I want is to force you to talk, but I’m here if you do want to get anything off your chest. No judgment.”
Carol was right. Gamora loathed small talk. She didn’t entirely consider this conversation that, but she also didn’t know what fuck all the classify it under and her brain cells couldn’t be bothered to overthink it. It didn’t matter.
“I hate everything,” was what she settled on replying with, the words coming out honest and exhausted. There was nothing choked about it. Her head tipped back against the seat, eyes fixating on a water spot in the ceiling. The several drinks she had polished off gave her the nerve to just – speak. “I shouldn’t, because if he’s back home then he’s alive and recovering, spending time with his grandfather on Earth. I want him to move on.”
That was the best thing for Peter. What they had was over. It ended abruptly and unfairly – and he couldn’t get that back with a Gamora that didn’t want it.
“Don’t know if I’m ever going to get to that point. I don’t want to.”
Gamora came to accept a lot of cruel circumstances in her life. She’d been taken as a child, molded into a murderer; people deserved to hate her, deserved to seek vengeance for her sins. She’d been taken again as an adult, knowing her life was a speck of dirt in the grand scheme of the universe; dying to prevent Thanos from achieving his goal was a necessary evil. So was asking Peter to kill her.
Dying, at least, was supposed to be simple. She wasn’t supposed to see all that came after her death. She wasn’t supposed to be alive to have a crisis about how she died and what it had all cost her. She had to accept everyone moving on without her while she felt stuck, and she didn’t know if she could.
(Maybe those drinks were hitting her harder than she thought, fuck.)
Carol took that in quietly, feeling the exhaustion in those words coming off Gamora in waves. She could really only imagine the shit Gamora had been through. She’d died – or, more accurately, she’d been killed. Everything she’d known, everything and everyone she’d loved, had been taken from her in one fell swoop. All at the hands of a man obsessed with shaping the universe to his liking.
Then to have this second chance in a strange place where she had to wait so long for the ones she loved to come to her only to have one of them ripped away? It was no wonder she was exhausted. If Peter wasn’t here, she wouldn’t get to have him again. That was a tough situation to accept, especially so soon after he was gone again.
“You don’t have to,” Carol offered. She figured Gamora knew that already, but sometimes an outside voice validating you was a comfort. “I’m not going to sit here and give you false hope that Quill will come back. He might, but he might now. You know that as well as I do. But there’s no reason to worry about moving on now. Hell, if you really never do, or never want to, no one here’s going to make you.”
You don’t have to. No, Gamora didn’t know that. Not really. Moving on would be the emotionally healthy thing to do - or so people claimed, she didn’t know if she believed that. She had vague memories of that alternate Vallo timeline too, one where she did find the occasional companionship with a friend (in bed) but her heart wasn’t in it. It was still Peter’s. A decade down the line, she was his despite the world having gone to shit and him never stepping a foot in it. Now he had, and she felt the sentiment that much harder.
“I half-expected some kind of lecture on ‘letting people in’ so I won’t ‘miss out’ on something,” she chuckled throatily, eyes falling shut. “Glad you didn’t. I might live an entire lifetime here missing him, and I think I’m okay with that.”
Maybe that wasn’t the healthy take. It wasn’t Carol’s, personally – Emmeline was the third person she’d truly fallen in love with, and if a day came years from now, when Emme was gone and Carol was still Carol (likely alive, likely immortal), she wouldn’t prevent herself from moving on. That didn’t mean that was everyone’s way, and this situation wasn’t the same as what Carol hoped hers would be. Gamora hadn’t lived a long, full life with Peter. Her life had been cut short, and any chance she had of that was taken away.
Carol had been in that space, too, at one point. She’d been sure she’d never get past Natasha; at home, there was this piece of her that was still stuck on her. Here? The Natasha she’d met first hadn’t been hers. The second Natasha hadn’t been hers until she suddenly was, and by then, it was too late. Carol had forced herself to move on, and despite the emotional fissures that had arisen, she’d stayed committed to that choice – to her wife – through it all.
“That’s your right,” she said. “Maybe the lecture’ll come in a decade if you’re stomping around here miserable. But sometimes you get one person you really love. And who the hell says you have to let them go if you lose them?”
So far no one had instructed she let go. The wound was too fresh for that. Gamora hadn’t thought it when it was just her here, either. She lived her life, yes, but she wasn’t out seeking a replacement for him despite knowing that it was over back home – and not because they had chosen it for themselves.
She hoped no one would advise it down the road, either.
“I’ve never felt the need for a relationship,” she said to Carol, leveling her head and opening her eyes to look at her. “Until Peter. I’d also been working for – him, before Peter.” Thanos’ name felt like a curse to utter, as if she was capable of invoking him to this place. She worried about that sometimes. Gamora took the bottle again, waving it around with a sarcastic smile. “Maybe if this place takes Rocket and Nebula away I’ll go with them. I’ll be dead, but maybe stomping around miserable in ten years won’t be my problem.”
She took another gulp, polishing off the beer at last, and all she felt was guilt for indulging in a vice that had been destroying Peter through the aftermath of her death.
Carol wadded up her napkin and flung it lightly at Gamora’s forehead. “Shut up. Wouldn’t you rather have the problem of being miserable in ten years if it means being alive?” It would suck to be without someone she loved so much for that long, of course, but she would be alive. She would exist. That had to count for something.
Gamora looked offended. That wad was dirty, covered in wing sauce, and Carol’s aim was grossly impeccable. And, yes, seconds after the words left her mouth she realized how shitty it sounded; having a second chance at life was better than death, but she wanted that second life with her people. If they stayed, she was happy to stay.
If they happened to leave her down the road, they’d be fine back home without her. Moving on, probably already moved on. She’d just be here without them, feeling like a bitter ghost with unfinished business. But that felt hard to articulate, too.
Instead, she grunted.
“I’ll get over myself,” Gamora groused, making a weak effort to pick up a wing to look at it like it also offended her. “I didn’t expect to have to deal with the aftermath of my death, Danvers. Death’s supposed to be final. Not complicated.”
Carol was unfazed by the offended look leveled her way and nodded thoughtfully instead. “I’m not going to argue with you on that. I did the whole almost-dying thing myself, and it ended up complicated. No way around it. But I think getting to live will win out eventually.”
“Eventually,” she echoed, a heavy sigh puffing from her nose. Gamora had handled herself fine before they all arrived – she kept to herself, lived her life, stabbed a thing when a thing needed to be stabbed. She’d do the same things after Peter, after Nebula, after Rocket.
She just might get mad about it.
“You don’t have to entertain me,” Gamora said to her, breaking up a wing to make it easier to eat. “If you’re here, you must be working.”
Carol glanced at the clock behind the bar and answered Gamora with a nod. There was no urgency for her to get back to work, but she could occupy herself for a while and come back around for a check-in. She had come here to be on her own, to process however it was she felt like processing. Giving her that space was the respectful thing to do.
“I should go make the rounds,” she said. She reached out and brushed her fingers across Gamora’s knuckles – it was the briefest, slightest touch, several steps down from the way she’d touch Wanda, or Sam, or Kamala, someone she knew well. But touch was part of her love language, showing that she cared, and more of an impulse than a conscious thought. “I’ll be back around here in a bit.”
Gamora was—fine with that touch, she supposed. Sometimes she’d give Drax a gentle squeeze of his shoulder, and Mantis a careful brush of her antennae when her hair got wrapped around one. She knew what Carol meant by it.
“No rush, I have bird wings to keep me busy,” she sighed, knowing she had to eat at least a few more and then have a glass of water. Gamora wasn’t irresponsible; she’d walk out of here in a straight line, mostly sober, back to the skull that housed her family.
Give or take another hour, and maybe one more loop of The Rubberband Man.