Promises, Promises

The first time hadn’t really been his choice. Not really.

It his first job with the ravagers, his first real job anyway. Away from Yondu and Kraglin and the safety that being the captain’s pet Terran had provided him. He knew it wasn’t like that of course; for all Yondu had kept Peter around when he was little and not much use to anyone, and had saved him from being lunch (and heaven help those crew members who thought the little Terran kid would be a good snack), the captain seemed pretty keen for him to actually be a decent ravager one day.

Yondu had spent a bunch of time explaining how to pick pockets, how to pull off a good con, and how to not get his ass entirely handed to him in a fight, and Peter had mastered it all. He was ready for a proper mission. (Okay… so he was still working on the fighting one… Kraglin had said he reckoned Peter might not be full grown yet, so there was still some hope he might get better...)

He’d done some asking around the crew and, at first, no-one had wanted to have him along. It’d stung a bit when Feax had laughed right in his face and told him outright that he’d just be in the way. He knew he wasn’t anything special, but he’d been getting better. He’d been really trying.

Eventually, Porath, (one of the oldest ravagers and the closest thing they had to a cook, on account of the fact he was too old to do much else) had taken pity on him, and said that he could come along on his next supply run.

Yondu hadn’t wanted to let him go, but Peter had been sure to ask him in front of some of the more… ‘restless’ members of the crew; Yondu’d had no choice but to say yes, lest the grumbling about ‘the brat not earning his keep’ turn into something more decisive and mutinous. Yondu had warned him to keep out of the way and let Porath do all the talking, but he'd actually seemed pleased that Peter was doing something useful for a change.

And, after all, it was a simple supply run, so how bad could it really go wrong?

Bad.

It went really bad.

The deal itself had been a pretty dull affair. Units had been exchanged, hands had been shaken, and boxes of protein substitute and ration bags loaded into the hold of Porath’s ship. The boxes were heavy and his hands were scraped and bruised by the time he'd got the last of them onto the ship. It had had none of the illicit danger or thrilling heroics Peter had been hoping for.

Porath had even offered to take him out for an ice shake after, as a reward for working hard, before they headed back. It’d reminded Peter of being a little kid back on Terra, eating ice cream with his Grandpa, before his Mama had gotten sick. He’d said yes only after Porath had promised not to tell the others; he’d taken the job so he could prove that he was one of the ravagers proper and he reckoned trying to eat the little blue ice spheres, with the stupid implements this planet tried to call cutlery, while Porath laughed himself green was not going to impress Feax or the rest.

By the time they’d set off back to the ship, it was dark. They’d had to leave the ship out in the desert to avoid drawing attention to their deal, and Peter found the desert atmosphere strangely oppressive; the total absence of any stars in the blackness of the sky, even out here away from the bright lights of the city, seemed more alien somehow than the pale violet the sky had been in the day.

Distracted by his not-star gazing, Peter didn’t notice anything was wrong until Porath spoke.

“What’d you want?”

Peter startled, eyes snapping back down to see a group of four mean-looking guys standing across the path they’d taken, blocking their way.

The biggest (and he was big, bigger than Spix down in the engine room was, bigger even than Feax) laughed at Peter’s surprise, though his eyes, when they met Peter’s, were cold and dark with something else. Peter flushed and glanced away.

“I’d like you to put your weapons down nice and slow," His voice was gravely, like he'd been yelling too load and worn it out, "Then empty your pockets out. You do that and you can be on your way, old man.”

“You think you can rob me, boy?" Porath’s voice was calm and even, like it had been when he had given Peter a lecture on not running through the kitchens, after he tore open his knees when he was ten. "I been robbin’ folk since you weren’t nothin’ but a thought. Now, stand aside, let us pass, and we’ll not have to make a scene here.”

Peter wasn’t sure he’d even be able to open his mouth to speak. His heart was racing so fast in his chest he could hear its pulsing pressure in his ears. The big guy wasn’t looking at him anymore and Peter began to gradually inch his hand toward the holster strapped to his leg…

“That ain’t gonna happen. How about I make this clearer? Drop your weapons or we shoot the kid.”

The guy on the far left drew a pistol from his jacket and aimed at Peter’s head. Peter froze, his hand brushing the strap of his holster.

What happened next was so fast, he barely saw it. Everyone moved at once.

Porath ripped his pistol from its holster and fired two blasts, killing the man aiming at Peter and the one beside instantly, just as…

The big guy began to run towards Porath, drawing a knife from a sheath at the base of his back, just as…

Porath turned his weapon towards the charging giant…

The big guy reached out with his other hand and grabbed the side of Porath’s pistol, forcing it to the right…

Porath fired again, his shot missing the big guy, but striking the last thug on the right…

The big guy drew back his knife…

Porath raised his empty hand and pushed uselessly at the big guy’s shoulder…

The big guy thrust his knife into Porath’s stomach…

Porath fell to the ground…

And Peter opened his mouth to scream....

Porath’s blood was everywhere. It was thick and green and it had spilled all over the hands and jacket of the big guy. Peter could see the pool of blood growing from where Porath lay slumped, back to Peter, at the big guy’s feet.

“You quiet that noise, boy!” The big guy barked at him. Peter’s breath was coming in pants and gasps. He couldn’t take his eyes off Porath.

Porath wasn’t moving. The guy had stabbed him in the stomach. Peter couldn’t remember what Porath’s species had in their stomach. Peter couldn’t even remember what species Porath was. He couldn’t be dead, though. Because if he was dead it would be Peter’s fault.

“Now, boy. Throw your weapon on the ground and empty your pockets out or I’ll make sure he’s definitely dead.” The anger in the giant’s voice was audible. “He might yet survive a knife to the gut, but a shot to the head, that he won’t come back from.”

Even as he spoke, he aimed Porath’s own pistol down at his slumped form.

“Now, boy! You wait too long and I won’t need to shoot him.”

Peter didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t let Porath die. He carefully drew his own pistol and threw it onto the dusty ground. Then looked up at the man.

“I….”

His voice was small and cracked when he spoke. He felt himself blush red. He was so weak…

“Empty those pockets now, boy.”

“I don’t… I don’t have anything.”

He reached into his pockets and drew out the linings to show. There had been something gritty in his right pocket, and it had left course grains behind. He could feel them under his fingernails.

“You got nothing, boy?” The big guy seemed even angrier at this, and Peter cringed down. He was going to die here. They were both going to die because he hadn’t picked up any units because Porath was taking him for ice shakes. He felt his eyes prickle and he blinked the wetness there away as best he could.

“Fine then, get his pockets now.” The guy gestured down with the pistol at Porath’s bloody, slumped figure.

“Wh- What?!” Peter was horrified. Surely he didn’t mean…

“You simple boy?! Empty out his pockets.” The man seemed to be getting angrier and angrier as things didn’t go according to his plan. “Now.”

Peter took a deep breath and crawled forwards towards Porath. The guy stepped back as he approached, keeping the pistol trained on them.

Porath was lying on his side, away from Peter, and as Peter reached forwards to grasp his shoulder, he paused. What if he was dead? Peter couldn’t imagine Porath dead. He’d been there right from the start; when Peter was alone on a ship full of aliens and monsters, Porath been kind to him. He’d bought him ice spheres and let him come along on a stupid, easy mission because Peter had wanted to feel useful even though he just got in the way. And even on this 'safe' job, Peter might still have gotten him killed.

Decisively, he grasped Porath’s shoulder and pulled him over onto his back.

There was green blood everywhere. It had stained Porath’s red, ravager clothing black, and bits of grit and small stones from the dirt where Porath had been lying were stuck in it all down his side. Peter couldn’t even see the wound he knew was there, just a jagged tear in the fabric of his jacket. He looked away from it, afraid he might see Porath's insides.

Peter reached into the first pocket he saw, trying not to cringe at the blood smearing up his hand and wrist.

He glanced up at the man with the gun. “There’s- There’s nothing in this pocket.”

“Get the others then, boy. And you better start prayin’ you find something.”

The man’s gaze was cold. Peter could feel him watching as he searched each pocket on the ravager’s uniform. Each time he found nothing, he could feel his panic growing. He tried desperately to think of when Porath had paid earlier. Wait…

Peter reached up, unzipped Porath’s jacket and reached inside, there was a pocket there! He felt his fingers close around a data stick he knew held Porath’s units. He nearly collapsed in relief, but not before he noticed something else. Porath’s chest was moving; shallow breaths raising it gently up and down. Porath wasn’t dead.

Peter nearly threw the data stick at the man with the gun.

“Here! It’s his units. I don’t know how much, but, please… Can we go…? Please, he’s still alive. I could still save him. Please!”

Peter knew he was begging now, but he didn’t care. His tears had finally fallen, but it didn’t matter because maybe he hadn’t failed. Not completely. He’d let them be robbed and he’d let Porath get stabbed but there might still be time for them to get out alive.

The man bent slowly and picked up the stick to examine it. He didn’t lower his gun. Peter wanted to shout at him, scream for him to hurry up, couldn’t he see that Porath needed help?

Finally, the man spoke.

“He can go.”

Peter blinked. “What?”

“He’s paid. He can go.”

Peter moved to stand, he needed to get Porath back to his ship somehow, needed to get them both back to Yondu’s ship, where someone might be able to help Porath.

“Not you boy.”

The man’s voice was soft, calmer now that he’d been paid, Peter guessed, but there was something darkly threatening there still.

“I- I don’t understand…” Peter stuttered out. And it was true, “You said we could go…”

“I said he could go. He’s paid his way. You, on the other hand, haven’t paid anything…”

“But- But he can’t go… He’s hurt, he can’t leave without me…. Those units were for both of us…” Peter hated the whining tone his voice had taken on, but he didn’t understand. It wasn’t fair! “I don’t have anything else to pay you.”

“That right boy…?” The man’s voice was so soft now that Peter had to strain to hear him, even in the silence on the desert. “You’re more innocent than I reckoned then… Who is he to you?”

“What?” Peter was confused by the man’s words. Why was he suddenly asking now?

“He ain’t your family. That much is obvious from your colouring… Ain’t there some reason other reason he keeps you around? A pretty thing like you?”

Peter flushed bright red, suddenly realising what the man was saying. He thought that Peter… He thought that Porath…

“NO! He ain’t like that! Don’t you say a thing like that!” Peter felt hot and angry and embarrassed and Porath was still bleeding into the dirt behind him. “I need to take him to get help, please…”

The man was smirking now, his dark eyes trailed up and down Peter’s body, leaving some awful feeling in their wake.

“Tell you what, boy. You do what I say, and you and the old man can both go.” Peter knew what was coming. He wanted cry. This was a nightmare. This couldn’t be happening. “Come here, boy.”

The man gestured with the pistol to the ground in front of him. Peter couldn’t move. He couldn’t do it.Yet his body seemed to be moving of its own accord, walking him forwards. Peter paused when he reached the man, glancing up, uncertain of what to do next. Maybe the guy didn’t want… that. Maybe Peter had misunderstood…

“Kneel down, boy.” He hadn’t misunderstood. He felt fresh tears overflow and roll down his face. “Come now, boy. Enough fussing; it ain’t gonna be so bad. You might like it.”

The man’s smile was mocking and Peter glared back him. He wouldn’t like it. He knew he wouldn’t like it. He knelt. He could feel the pebbles on the ground pressing into his knees, even through the thick fabric of his pants. They hurt.

The guy tapped the top of his head to draw his attention,

“You do anything other’n what I tell you, you even think of bitin’ me, and I will make you watch me kill him, before I kill you. You understand me?” Peter’s head nodded silently. His words were gone. His mind was utterly blank. Everything felt unreal. “Now open your mouth, boy.”

It was awful.

He threw up after, blue melted ice shake mixed in with… other stuff… He’d cried and the man had laughed, but Peter didn’t care because at least it was over, at least he had saved Porath. At least he could go home now. He wanted to get back to where it was safe, and where Yondu and Kraglin wouldn’t let anyone hurt him. He wanted Porath to be okay.

“You can go now. Here, take this.” The man threw down Porath’s data stick into the dirt next to Porath. “Consider it a tip. You weren’t bad kid.” The man laughed and walked off into the darkness, taking Porath’s pistol with him.

Peter scrambled across the dirt, rocks tearing the skin on his hands, and placed his hand gently in front of Porath’s face. He waited, silently begging to feel a breath against his hand. Porath couldn’t have died. Not while Peter was… No…

He felt it. A gentle movement of air over his palm, then another.

“You’re alive…” He was crying again and he was acting like a little kid with all this stupid crying, but Porath was alive! There was still time!

He stood, retrieved his pistol from where he had thrown it before, and returned, walking around the bodies of the men Porath had killed in the fight. Grasping at Porath’s jacket to begin to haul the man over his shoulder, he spotted the data stick on the ground…

A tip, was what the man had called it. Like he was paying Peter. Like Peter was a … a whore. If he took the units, would that make it true? But then they weren’t his to leave behind…

Peter snatched the units up and stuffed then back inside Porath’s jacket. Heaving the man onto his back was not easy, but he could just about manage the old man’s weight. He had no choice. He had to get back to the ship. He had done what he had done to save the old man… to save his friend… and he would be damned if he was going to waste his chance because he was too weak. It was his weakness that had gotten them into this mess…

Yondu was furious. Porath had been sent straight to the med bay, and Kraglin said he thought he was gonna be okay…

Apparently Deltans can lose 25% of their blood volume before they go into kind of stasis and slow their body right down (Apparently Porath was a Deltan). Means that he managed to make it back to the ship with time to spare, he could have taken a week and it would still have been fine.

Peter tries not to think on that. It probably wouldn’t have changed anything if he’d known. Probably…

Yondu had yelled and yelled and even whipped his arrow to right near Peter’s throat, his crest glowing red. He’d never done that to Peter before, Peter though detachedly, but then Peter had never messed up this bad before.

“I knew I should never’ve let you go, boy!" Yondu's face had darkened in anger, and his arrow whipped around to rest over Peter's jugular. "What good’s a Terran child in a fight? Answer me that, boy!”

“Don’t call me ‘boy’!” The moment he said it, Peter could hardly believe he’d spit the words at Yondu. Judging by Yondu’s face, he couldn’t believe it either. “I’m not a child.” He added, more petulantly.

“You’re a child until I say you’re not. Boy.” Yondu looked at him. Peter felt as though Yondu could see through him, see him proper. He wondered what Yondu saw. He felt a strange urge to hide himself, what if Yondu could tell... He looked away, focusing on the boot of the ravager to Yondu's left.

“Everyone out!” Yondu’s yell startled Peter. The crew weren’t expecting it either, judging by the confused moment before the ravagers started to file out of the hanger where they stood. Peter just wanted to get back to his bunk and wash Porath’s blood off of himself. He could feel it drying over his hands and down the side of his neck where it had smeared while he’d carried the unconscious Deltan. He started to leave as well…

“Not you, boy.” Peter stopped in place and turned back to Yondu. He was so tired.

“You want to explain this story of yours to me again, now?” Yondu sounded strange; there was an unfamiliar quality to his voice, something Peter hadn’t heard before. The Centaurian folded his arms and leaned back on a console, eyeing at Peter speculatively.

“‘Cause as I’m to understand it, you and Porath was robbed on the way back to the ship, he took out three of ‘em ‘fore gettin’ knifed, and you talked the last guy into just… lettin’ you go…?”

“Yeah…” Peter knew it wasn’t his best story but he’d been too busy getting them back to come up with anything else. “I had a gun…”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, boy, but you ain’t a real intimidating figure. Why was you even away from the ship in the first place?”

“I-… He… Porath took me to go get ice shakes…” Peter felt all of eight years old again. He couldn’t look at Yondu, keeping his eyes on a light blinking on a panel over Yondu’s shoulder.

“Ice shakes…?” Anything Yondu might have had to say way thankfully cut off by the sound of Kraglin opening the door to the hanger.

“Captain…?” Kraglin seemed unusually hesitant for some reason, glancing over at Peter before making his way to Yondu. He whispered something to Yondu that Peter couldn’t make out before handing him something small. Whatever it was was blocked from Peter’s view by Kraglin and he wasn’t stupid enough to think that that wasn’t on purpose. Kraglin glanced back at Peter, before leaving, something like worry in his eyes.

Peter wondered what Yondu was going to do to him. His punishments had always been tough before, scrubbing the floors and toilets, confined to his bunk, but this time… This time he had fucked up so bad maybe Yondu would actually hurt him. Or worse, maybe Yondu would make him leave, dump him on some planet and never look back. What would Peter do on a strange planet? He could pick pockets, sure, maybe run a con even though most he knew were two people at least…

You know what else people pay for… The thought flickered in his mind. You’ve done it before after all…

“Peter?” Peter glanced back to Yondu, and he saw what Kraglin had brought. The data stick of units. Shit. “If you was robbed… Why was Porath’s units still in his pocket?”

Peter stared at the data stick. They hadn’t been robbed. How could he be so stupid? Of course they hadn’t been robbed; they had walked away with everything they had started with (minus one pistol).

“I-...” What could he say? He couldn’t tell the truth. Not to Yondu. Not to anyone. “I-… I guess we wasn’t robbed…?”

“You guess you wasn’t robbed?” Yondu sighed and rubbed his face, scrunching up his eyes. He looked weary. Peter absently wondered how old Yondu actually was. “Help me out here, boy. What are you not sayin’ here? ‘Cause I can’t think of nothin’ you could have done that’d convince a thug t’ let you ‘n’ Porath live after Porath killed three of his crew.”

Peter couldn’t think of anything either. He was too weak to have fought him and not near intimidating enough to have scared him off like he’d claimed. There was nothing he was good enough at. No useful skill or ability that would have helped him save his friend. It was sheer dumb luck that the guy had wanted to… have Peter do that. He was too weak to have done anything else.

“Peter…?” Yondu sounded tentative now, and wasn’t that a miracle. He must look pretty pathetic to have made Yondu feel the need to try and comfort him. “When you said you wasn’t hurt… was that true?”

Yondu’s gaze travelled up and down Peter, no doubt scanning for any sign of red blood amongst the green. Peter tried to hide his cringe at the look, it wasn’t similar to how the man had looked at him, not really. But still, he felt on display, like he wanted to go hide himself and not be seen again.

“I’m fine.” Peter knew his tone was too brittle and snappish to be convincing. But even as his story crumbled around him he knew he couldn’t have anyone know what he’d done. He couldn’t have anyone know how he’d debased himself and cried like a child. How he’d been sick after and how he’d wasted so much time before just notunderstanding while Porath had bled into the dirt.

“If-…” Peter had never heard Yondu hesitate before, “If you don’t want to tell me what happened… that’s alright… You’re here, Porath is here, the job got done… no-one got robbed…”

Peter looked up at Yondu then, disbelieving. He was letting it go. Yondu was letting it go…

“But…” Peter looked away again, “At least go up to the med bay, and let Kraglin look you over. He ain’t never shared a secret with me that weren’t his to share.” Yondu finished with a meaningful look. “Promise me now, boy?”

It was as good as he’d get. Peter didn’t plan on telling Kraglin anything and he knew Yondu would check with the Xandarian, but it didn’t matter. Yondu had shown a chink in his armour by letting this go unexplained now and Peter was stubborn enough to use it.

“I promise.”