[G] I'm Sorry
Ego was collapsing around him.
Quill looked around, awed by the sight.
Blues buried in greens, reds, greys, and browns. The cellular-modeled interior of the planet crumbling and breaking apart, the blood-vessel-like blue tubes igniting with yellow, then orange, then black smoke pluming off of that. Explosions.
He watched it all, and he couldn't bring himself to move. It felt like the end. He had no will to fight. No will to move.
He felt heartbroken, like his world was crashing in on him.
He lost his dad, learned his mom was killed by his dad, and had nearly lost his entire family.
Then, suddenly, as he hears the rumbling and explosions approaching him, he's tackled by something small.
And it's carrying him. Struggling to, but it is.
Then he recognizes the fuzzy face, looking up at the sky as it flies between the canyons around them.
It belongs to Rocket. ROCKET.
Quill was being saved by Rocket...
Rocket takes a breath in, and out.
He blinked, stunned, and suddenly, as they start to rise higher, Rocket adeptly takes the Aero-Rig off of himself, and before they can lose much height, he's adeptly twisted around Quill, and slapped it onto the human.
And then they're rising again, and Quill barely even notices something else was slapped onto him too.
His mind doesn't think about the blue sheen now surrounding him, as Rocket starts speaking. And that gets all his attention.
"That ass wasn't y' family..." Rocket half growls, clinging to Quill as they fly up, carrying on and on.
"Gamora... Drax... Groot... Yondu... That's y' family." Rocket says, glaring up with a smile, a sheen to his eyes.
He inhales sharply, and speaks further, as the lower edges of blue auroras start to pass them. "I'm sorry..."
"F'r bein' a jerk all th' time... Gettin' everyone in danger... Startin' fights..." Rocket goes on and on as blue becomes green, and deeper colors.
"what...?" Quill tries to look into Rocket's face, but Rocket's looking forward.
"I'm sorry that I made y' hate me... That I always caused probl'ms... I'm sorry..." Rocket grimaces, drawing another weak breath, and sniffing slightly as the blue fades into another wave of green, thinner wave.
"'M sorry I messed it up. Wasn't there like I shoulda been..." His breath is getting weaker now.
"M' sorry that..." Rocket takes another weak breath, closing his eyes. Shivering now, as space surrounds them. Quill had hardly even realized they were in the void now... When did he get a space suit on...?
"I couldn't d-do things... r-right..." Frost is starting to set in, ever so slightly. It's getting ever so slightly harder to hear.
Rocket shifts, bracing his legs against Quill's chest, as the Aero-Rig runs out of power.
"S-So... g-go be... w-with y'r family..." Rocket says weakly, with finality, before pushing Quill away through space.
The little raccoon, who only barely reached Quill's knee in height started to stiffen more in space.
His ears slowly stopped twitching. His breath stopped huffing out into space. His fur stopped bristling.
That brown color started to fade into a lighter color. Frost on the edges making him look like he was turning to ice.
He closed his eyes, accepting it.
Quill watched him accept it.
Quill couldn't accept it.
He finally found his voice.
"No-NO! ROCKET!!! NO!!!" Quill shouts, screams, cries into the void as the inertia of the push sends him to GOD he doesn't fucking CARE where. "ROCKET!!!"
Quill suddenly feels a hand grab him from behind, and drag him into a ship's bay. He slams onto the floor, and looks up at the steel roof. Up at the blue man standing over him.
"Rocket..." Quill says weakly, feeling tears streaking down his face like rivers. Yondu goes out into the void. Aero-Rig and Space Suit equipped.
He has no clue if he cries for minutes, or hours, or seconds, or what. But he suddenly feels a hand on his arm.
"Peter!" Gamora says firmly. Voice gentle, but clearly trying to snap him out of it. "I thought I lost you, oh god..."
"G-Gamora... R-Rock..." He looks at her, and sees frosted fur past her, Yondu was... Pulling Rocket's jumpsuit off???
Quill sits up, stunned, almost headbutting Gamora.
"What the-What the fuck are you doing??" Quill asks, stunned.
"Gittin' 'im some warm clothes!!" Yondu snaps.
"Now git up an' git th' fuckin' heated blankets!!" Yondu barks at Peter, and Quill's immediately up.
"He's alive!?!?" Quill asks, stunned as he moves to get the heated blankets.
"He ain't GONNA be if y'don' hurry th' fuck up!!" Yondu says firmly, taking his own jacket off, and moving Rocket to lay on that. "Greenie, go get Kraglin, an' you two get some hot water!"
Gamora rushes off dutifully.
While Quill lays a heated blanket over Rocket, Yondu takes his shirt off, and tosses it in the emergency quick-heater.
Quill lingers, and gently brushes Rocket's cheek. It's shockingly cold. "Rocket. We love you. Don't you DARE fucking die."
"I'm gonna get you some more blankets." He tells Rocket, getting up to find more blankets to heat up.
Yondu briefly takes Rocket from underneath the blankets, toweling off the frost on his fur. Then slides the shirt over him, and bundles him back into the blanket. "Warm up y'little bastard... Warm up."
"Can't believe y'fuckin' tricked me..." Yondu sighs.
"Doubt y'even knew y'd live, huh, punk?" Yondu sighs.
Quill rushes through the halls, almost running into a firmly walking Drax. Drax freezes as if he were looking at a ghost, and Quill dodges past him. "Get warm stuff!!!" He orders.
"I-yes, understood." Drax rushes to work.
The whole team moves like lightning, darting around to get the work done.
They bundle Rocket in warm stuff.
They rush around, doing whatever Yondu commands, as a unit, and as a family.
Because one of them thought he wasn't part of it, and almost threw his life away.
And now they had something to prove.
Almost an hour later, Rocket had been moved to the couch, bundled in whatever warm stuff they could find.
Quill had sacrificed his jacket to the cause, Yondu was shirtless, Nebula had given her jacket too, seemingly caught up on the mess.
They all say, looking at Rocket. Mantis was tucked in on the opposite couch.
"Rocket..." Quill says softly.
"He really said all that?" Gamora asks, borderline whimpering. Looking at the unconscious rodent.
"He really thought we didn't love him. That he had screwed up his chances for us to care for him. That he thought we hated him..." Drax says gently.
"And so he cannot be allowed to die, is what we established?" Nebula says in annoyance, frustrated at this conversation happening for what feels like the fifteenth time in the hour it's taken to get here.
"He 100% can't." Quill says firmly.
"Understood 'captain'." Nebula says with a roll of her eyes.
She had sort of been forced into the crew, as when everyone was running around, she asked Gamora what to do, and she'd said "you're part of this family, too, help us find warm things."
"mgh..." Rocket says weakly.
"I am Groot!" Groot says excitedly, from his perch next to Rocket's head, on the freshly heated pillows.
"Rocket!!" Quill says, quickly kneeling to be level with Rocket.
Rocket flinches slightly.
He weakly blinks, looking around.
He blinks, alert suddenly, and looks DEEPLY concerned.
"F-Flarkin' 'ell... Everyone's dead...?" He asks, sounding heartbroken.
Quill snorts, shaking his head, and looking away as he tears up slightly. "No..."
"No... No man, you're alive."