WHAT: Nebula breaks things thinking Gamora is gone, but Gamora shows up with cheeseballs WHERE: Knowhere WHEN: October 10th WARNINGS: References to death STATUS: Complete
Days passed in a sluggish blur. There was familiarity in Peter’s room – their room – but it felt hollow, and the air tasted stale. She rarely sat idle in it. Knowhere required a hands-on approach when it came to some lingering repairs and clean up, so she busied herself with that.
She patrolled.
Ran errands.
Ran errands for two hours, a mindless haze through grocery aisles, headphones digging into her ears as it blasted the same playlist on a loop. Her and Peter’s playlist, a selection of songs that felt special to them. Her phone dinged at some point and interrupted a song for two seconds. Gamora paid no mind to it, perusing through the snack isle, wondering why the fuck there seemed to be an endless variety of cheese-flavored snacks.
Goldfish crackers. Cheetos. Baked Cheetos. Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. Better Cheddars. White Cheddar Popcorn. Cheese-stuffed pretzels. Cheeseballs, a giant container of them so large Groot could probably swim in it. He’d like that. Her sister, too.
(Gamora stayed away from Peter’s favorites. The wound his absence left was wide open, and raw.)
She took her time back towards Knowhere; hummed along a tune every now again, mouthed out some lyrics she felt confident about. Three bags worth of snacks hung from her hands. Their weight felt non-existent. The stroll was nice.
And then something loud was heard over the sound of music, as if something sturdy had been hit with a wrecking ball. That caused pause, and she removed her earbuds to track the source.
“What are you doing?” Gamora frowned, approaching a scene of violence that, unsurprisingly, came from the force that was her sister. “We’re supposed to fix this place, not mess it up even more. Did something happen?”
Nebula had expected it to be Rocket that was telling her to stop fucking around. She’d gotten the notification, they all had gotten the notification: Gamora was gone. It would’ve been for the best, for her to be reunited with Peter, if their lives had been even just a little bit more fair.
If she hadn’t been fucking dead and another Gamora in her place. Nebula loved her sister, both sisters, and hadn’t blamed the new Gamora for being in the position she was. Their world had been better for her, even if she’d joined up with the Ravagers. She’d understood her need to distance herself from the original Gamora. Nebula got that.
But to send her back? That was cruel, and Nebula was pissed. She couldn’t go murder a bunch of annoying monsters or take on a bounty without losing her cool, so it seemed like a better option to hit large metal plates with her arm transformed into a sword instead. Until, inevitably, Rocket showed up looking sad with Groot and Cosmo at his heels and then the four of them would just sit on the ground and cry together.
Not Gamora.
Maybe it was a trick. Nebula still looked pissed as she turned around. “You were- there’s a list. Gamora?”
“I got cheese balls,” was Gamora’s perplexed reply to - whatever her sister was referencing, she didn’t understand what she meant when she’d said there’s a list. Her arm stretched out to show her the bags, and there was one bag specifically that held a giant container. “I don’t know what makes them different from cheese puffs but – ugh, nevermind, hold on.”
Groceries set to the ground, she reached for her phone, wondering if she’d been texted something and just happened to miss it. It was entirely possible. If there was an actual emergency, there would have been incoming calls and Nebula would be yelling in her ear about something.
There was a notification. Gamora swiped to reveal it. She blinked, and sounded very fucking offended when she uttered a confused, “What?”
Nebula was still pissed. “What?” It wasn’t Gamora’s fault, and the yelling was at the world and not at her sister, even if it looked pointed that way. But yelling between them was nothing new, it was something of a love language.
“Yeah!” She yelled again. The rising urge to smash something again was there, and she didn’t ignore it. One more smash. “We thought- We thought you were gone. Again. I’m getting,” Another smash, “really” smash “damn tired” smash “of losing my sister!”
Which was probably a dumb thing to say since Gamora was standing right there.
Gamora never took yelling personally. That was their love language anyway, the yelling. She’d always make an active effort to approach gently, and speak with less of a rising temper - but yelling was their default. There was just love behind it now.
“Nebula,” she sighed, abandoning all the snacks she came back with to close the distance. “Nebula,” Gamora repeated, and went to grab her arm before the air was filled with another sound of something crumbling under her sister’s strength. “That thing’s obviously wrong. Look at me. Please.”
Nebula’s shoulders dropped and it was visible just how quickly the fight went out of her. That was rare, as the fight rarely ever went out of Nebula. The moments where she went slack were few and far between but there it was. She let her guard down.
No more yelling. She let Gamora grab her arm, and didn’t retaliate - not like it wouldn’t have been on brand for them to fight, because they always fought - but her brain was too busy calculating the chance of this being all a fever dream first. Gamora looked the same. Green skin was of it’s standard complexion, hair was of their Gamora’s.
Eyes that actually had emotion behind them, and weren’t just locked away behind a wall. Nebula slumped a little. All she could do was repeat her earlier words, lamely. “I thought you were gone.”
“Still here getting you groceries,” was Gamora’s hushed reply to her, starting any signs of affection by squeezing her arm. Seeing Nebula like this was rare. She had witnessed softer sides of her here; the sides that were eight years in the making, during a time she was gone. And she had never seen her sister grieve for her.
This was close to that. It didn’t help with Peter –
Her arms went around her for a tentative but protective hug. Nebula could use more of them from her, and Gamora was never going to stop trying. “I’m not leaving you,” she whispered fiercely. “I’m here. This place can screw off.”
Nebula did something that was close to a tantrum. Her whole body tensed, and she made a noise that was something like a snarl wrapped in a scream, and bent her knees and just-- didn’t launch, but her body wiggled like she wanted to pound the ground or stab the air or do something proactive that wasn’t just getting hugged by Gamora.
Oh. She probably should hug back. Right?
Nebula still wasn’t sure how all of this worked. But she did reach up and rest her organic arm against Gamora’s shoulder and stilled against her sister. Relaxed, even. “Living in a universe without you sucks.”
Gamora loved her sister. She was fairly certain (most days) that the feeling was mutual. The words had never been spoken, but living in a universe without you sucks might be the closest thing Nebula could ever say to it.
It made the hug that much tighter.
“Would change it if I could,” she strained out, knowing damn well that talking hypotheticals was pointless. Gamora knew it didn’t do any good, for anyone; but she hoped the sentiment behind it was at least appreciated, because she’d give anything to be back home as herself, and with her family. “But I’m here,” she added as a reminder, putting her hands on Nebula’s shoulders to reel herself back. “I got distracted at the store in the snack aisle. I would have come sooner if I’d seen whatever the hell that list was the moment it came out.”
Nebula wasn’t crying, her face was just a little wet. For sweaty reasons, not crying reasons.
“I know.” She got serious, and stoic, and wasn’t ready to let her emotions take hold of her, so Nebula shook off Gamora and straightened her shoulders, as if she hadn’t just had a mini-breakdown about all of this. “I’m gonna kill whoever did this.” She’d be first in line, anyway, but no doubt others were struggling with the same emotions if everyone else was still on the same list, too.
“Shit, Rocket. Groot.” She looked around, didn’t see them. “We gotta go find them. Groot was pretty upset and Rocket was talking him down. You’re going to owe him a hug too.”
If Gamora noticed how damp her sister’s face was, she said nothing. She knew better than to push just by mentioning it – or by putting her hand on her cheek, something she wished to do without the threat of Thanos hovering over them for once. “We’ll find them,” she promised, retracing her steps to pick up the fallen bags of groceries. “With snacks, because–”
She held them up to her sister, the most prominent item in one of the bags being a giant plastic jar of cheeseballs (not puffs) that Groot could no doubt swim in. It was best to pivot from the situation. She was here, and food would distract Nebula. “There are a ridiculous amount of cheese-flavored snacks available,” Gamora frowned. “It’s like an obsession in this place.”
Nebula took the largest bag, and wrapped an arm around the giant container of cheeseballs. It wasn’t her favorite, but Groot had seemed to like it and Nebula liked to make Groot happy. Not that she’d say that out loud, but he was just as much family as Gamora was these days.
All of the Guardians were. She’d had five years with Rocket, and she knew how much he’d missed everyone during the blip. Having Gamora here with them was a blessing neither of them would say out loud but both were thinking it.
She bumped Gamora’s shoulder as they started to walk, affectionately. “All of these cheese snacks and you still can’t manage to get the right one.”
Gamora paused to let that sink in, and then – “They all taste the same,” she protested, waving the other bag around with her arm as if she was using that to argue too. “They’re all literally the same flavor, Nebula, shapes are meaningless.”