Promises, Promises

It had sucked when Rocket told him the leg wasn’t really part of the plan.

Later, he had realised, of course it had been a joke. Of course Rocket hadn’t expected him to suck a guy off just to get the stupid leg. What self-respecting being does that, after all? It was Peter’s fault, really. For being such a dumbass that he’d believed him. For not knowing what else to do when the guy said no (they were in prison after all – it wasn’t like he had access to his units to pay the guy (and he still can’t believe none of the Guardians had questioned that)).

It was best that the others didn’t know. This 'Guardians' thing was still so new and his place in the group still so fragile. He hadn’t really expected to gather a bunch of misfits in his ship and fly around saving the world, but then it wasn’t really something that you planned ahead for.

Still, his place in the team was pretty fucking tenuous at best and he knew it.

Rocket was a wizard with weapons and, he discovered later, all kinds of machinery in the bowels of his ship. It stung a little to realise that the ship he’d been flying for over a decade liked someone else better. Which was ridiculous, but that’s how it felt sometimes when Rocket scampered through the small spaces in the ships inner workings with such ease.

Peter had always had to fight and sweat and squeeze his way in there to change the random parts that seemed to keep crapping out on him, and he’d never managed it without emerging covered in grease and usually bleeding in a couple of place where the ship had fought back.

Still, it kind of made sense, he conceded begrudgingly, Rocket was much smaller and smarter and better with machines; it just made sense that he could go where Peter didn’t really fit and could do seemingly instinctively procedures that had Peter swearing and confused (and occasionally, when he got really desperate, calling Spix shame-faced, needing help).

Gamora was beautiful and deadly. Her reputation might have caused problems in the Kyln, but there was advantages to having such a famous badass on the team. Peter knew Gamora didn’t think much of him, he’d tried to share his music and had gotten shut down pretty hard after all, but he lived in awe of her every day.

Still there was one thing, Rocket had alluded to it in the Kyln, and Drax had said it outright on Ronan’s ship; people thought Gamora was a whore. They thought she used her body however she needed to in order to get the job done. Peter had known better; Gamora, for all her crimes, hadn’t used her body the way he had. She didn’t need to. Peter wanted to scream every time someone called her whore. Couldn’t they see how much better she that that she was? How much better than him?

Drax was huge in a way that made Peter wary. He couldn’t help it, he’d never liked being around people so much bigger than him. Drax was more than useful to the Guardians, he was a brutal and deadly fighter, and he was strong willed and driven enough to carry on, even when it seemed like they were really, really screwed. Drax was also intimidating as hell, and it had been really useful more than once to avoid having to have the fight at all.

But what their enemies didn’t realise was that Drax was also sweet and funny (even if he still didn’t understand why people were laughing) and loved stronger and more determinedly than anyone Peter had even known.

Groot was gloriously useless at the moment. Peter knew he was the worst fucking person ever when he took solace in the fact that he was more useful than a being who had been almost fatally injured only months before. But he could carry more than Groot. He could fight better than Groot. He could walk around and Groot was trapped in his pot.

Except, Groot was growing by the day now, nearly three feet tall and almost ready to leave his pot (according to what Rocket had translated – Peter still wasn’t totally sure that Rocket wasn’t just making some of his translations up). It really wouldn’t be long before Groot was bigger, stronger, faster and better than Peter. And he knew it didn’t take much to be better than Peter, but Peter was sort of hoping that maybe he’d be better than a plant at least, and he really was the most petty, jealous asshole ever for thinking it.

Peter tried to find a place, he really did. He’d brought his music to share with the others, but they’d seen it as a temporary diversion at best, and they liked it quiet sometimes (judging from the way they would ask if he could please listen through the headphones, Peter, you’re driving everyone mad).

He’d pilot the ship whenever he could, but she’d betrayed him again because he wasn’t really any better than any of the others, even though he’d been flying her for years.

He’d tried to set himself up as a kind of team manager; coming up with their plans and running herd on the rest while they did what they did better than he could. He wasn’t very good at it. The team could come up with their own plans without him, and no-one had liked it when he’d tried to keep tabs on them all during a few of their missions.

He didn’t know what to do. Everything could be done far better by someone else. He pretty much was only on the team because they operated out of his ship. And that was probably just to save the inconvenience of having to find another one.

The last mission, he’d decided he had to make himself useful, no matter what. He needed to not to reach the end of it, knowing that, without him, it would have gone almost exactly the same.

Maybe even better.

He’d seen an opportunity during their retreat (stolen data in hand), when Drax and Gamora had been pinned down, behind a crappy old hover-car that had long since quit hovering, by weapons fire from the terrorists they’d recently relieved of their data. Rocket was next to him, just inside the (far better) cover of the woods, frantically trying to unjam his ridiculous gun. He’d built it yesterday and, while it worked awesome when it fired properly, something seemed to be causing it to jam every fifth shot or so. Rocket wasn’t pleased.

“Stupid, fucking, piece of crap!”

There was no way the others could cross the ground between their cover and the tree line with the terrorists’ constant barrage of fire. It was all they could do to return fire and keep them from advancing closer (even these terrorists seemed to the smart enough to avoid coming close enough to end up fighting Drax or Gamora hand to hand).

“Rocket, is there any way to get than damn gun working?” Peter was wildly returning fire, but his pistol was far from powerful enough to break through the enemy’s cover.

“Damn, stupid, fucking thing is fucking jammed, Quill! I need to un-jam it!” Rocket’s hands were ripping pieces out of the gun now. They looked pretty important to Peter, like maybe they shouldn’t be ripped out and thrown on the ground like that, but he wasn’t the weapons expert so…

“No! Come on, please, no!” Rocket had stopped and was staring at the gun, head in his hands.

“What?! Come on Rocket, we need that gun or they’re dead!”

“Quill, it’s-…” Rocket sounded broken, “It jammed and the next shot must’ve split the barrel. I can’t fix it…” He looked up at Peter hopelessly. “I can’t fix it.”

Peter looked over at where the terrorists’ fire was slowly chipping away at Drax and Gamora’s cover. He looked back to the terrorists who, unable to spot Peter and Rocket amongst the dense trees in the darkness of the woods, were simply firing and firing at where the two Guardians they could locate.

“They’re not gonna make it over here.” Peter knew it was true; not without Rocket’s gun to distract the terrorists from their barrage. Distract.

Peter knew he could do it. It made sense, there was one of him and two of them. It was a good deal.

(He would have done it for one of them in a heartbeat, he knows. It isn’t simply the needs of the many versus the few, it’s the needs of the great versus the weak. But something about that line of thought makes his stomach twist uncomfortably. It isn’t the weak. It’s just him.)

“Take my pistol.” He shoved it into Rocket’s hands before the racoon had time to react more than a startled “Wha-”

Peter ran up the tree line as far as he could get, between the source of the gunfire and the trapped Guardians (his friends). He could hear Rocket shouting his name, but he kept running until he had reached at the end of the cover the woods provided.

Then he simply stepped out of the cover and started running.

He had planned a path roughly. He needed to draw their fire to him, but make sure that any stray shots were not going to hit anyone important. He also knew he probably wouldn't get very far, so every step had to count.

The second he stepped out from the tree line, the terrorists diverted their fire onto him. He made it three steps before he was hit. It was a shoulder wound, a graze really, so he kept going and managed another few strides before something made of white hot pain ripped through his right thigh. He felt himself fall to the ground. His vision was a riot of colour and he could’t really make sense of the noise in his ears so he could only hope that Drax and Gamora had taken their chance. The mission would be completed, the data recovered and all the important Guardians can go on to Guard another day.

It was the best solution, he told himself at he felt his eyes slide closed (it didn’t make much difference – his vision had greyed out anyway).

It was the best way to solve everything.