Whiskey to Feed the Fire
Getting Peter to bed was always an adventure for Meredith. The boy had more energy than should be able to fit in his little body, making putting him to bed harder than a three ring circus performance. At least when they were at home, the boy was often lulled to sleep by the comfort of his bed and the sounds of his grandfather rummaging around downstairs.
Not out on the trails. His bed was now nothing more than a few blankets and his pillow was a lumpy knapsack. The only sounds around him now were the howling of coyotes. Bedtime had just gotten a lot worse for everyone involved.
After a while of soft singing and cooing to her son, Meredith was finally able to get the little boy to sleep. She stayed by his side for an extra ten minutes, not wanting to move and accidentally wake him. Then she would have to go through the same process all over again. She loved her son more than anything, and she wouldn’t be angry if he woke up, but she still had some questions for Yondu and his strange friend. With a quick glance at a sleepy Tullk curled up in his own cot, she slipped out of Peter's grasp. She trusted the older boy to wake up if something happened.
When she got closer to the group around the fire, she immediately noticed that Kraglin was holding an unlabelled bottle and swaying like a windchime. Niyol had a lazy smile on his face and was reclining haphazardly on a log, most likely a result of the alcohol as well.
Where had they hidden that?
Meredith didn't dwell on the minor detail as she stepped closer to the fire. Yondu's ruby red eyes cut up at her with such an intensity she almost stopped dead in her tracks. He certainly wasn't drunk. His gaze was sharp, ready for anything. For the second time since she met him, Meredith realized why Yondu Udonta was such a formidable Offworlder. It was written in his eyes.
"The hell are ya doin', Meredith?" Yondu asked, breaking her from her trance as she sat down on a log. Lucky for her, her body hadn't stopped moving when her mind did.
"I've got a few questions," Meredith said. They had left in such a hurry that she didn't get time to properly interrogate him on who this Dr. Celeest really is, and whether or not it was really safe for Peter to come along. Not exactly her proudest moment as a mother.
Yondu shrugged. "Just wait until mornin', woman. We're goin' be together for a damn week, at least," he said, leaning back against a large boulder while he sat in the sand.
Niyol glared at his friend and spoke before Meredith got the chance. "That's no way to treat a lady, Yondu. She should claw your eyes out for that," he said. Yondu grunted, and Niyol turned his attention to Meredith. "How did you even end up with a brute like Yondu anyway?"
Meredith shrugged slightly. How did she end up here? After a moment of contemplation, she thought up a shortened version of her story that wouldn't leave anything out. It was harder than it sounded.
"Well, it all started when I was attacked on my way home from work," Meredith started. She might as well just cut to the chase; she was sure that Niyol wasn’t interested in the little details of their introduction that just wouldn’t leave her alone. "Usually, I would've been able to get out of that situation, although I'm sure he was bigger than me. I don't really remember it all. All I remember is getting really weak and dizzy, and then all of a sudden I was in an Offworlders' Inn room and they were telling me I had a problem with my brain.
"Honestly, it was the only thing that made sense. This had happened before, but the doctor's told me that there was absolutely nothing wrong as far as they could see. They all chalked it up to stress, but I really wasn't stressed. Yondu was the first person to really give me anything behind my symptoms," Meredith explained.
Kraglin butt in, obviously drunk. "She left out the parts where I almost got shot tryin' to wrangle her little maniac of a child… twice!!" he cried, his words slurring together.
Meredith shushed him to let Peter and Tullk sleep, but Yondu slapped his back with a laugh. It was harsh, not like any laugh that Meredith had ever heard before, but it was still a laugh. Maybe he had a bit more to drink than he was letting on. "Calm it down, boy,” he said, shaking his head fondly. Meredith raised her eyebrow. “Xandarians can’t hold their liquor. Niyol and I have had more than he has.”
Meredith chuckled softly. That wasn’t what she was surprised about, but she wouldn’t correct him. He was definitely a little tipsy if he was being so open about his fondness of his first mate. “I’m not surprised. He’s just a boy.”
“He’s sittin’ right here,” Kraglin pouted, taking another drink of the liquor before Niyol snatched it from his hands. “Hey-!”
“What? You’re drunk enough,” the native responded, shaking his head fondly. “Ms. Quill, you must be one strong woman to be able to handle these rascals.”
Meredith chuckled, crossing her legs and tucking them to the side while making sure her dress didn’t come up too high on her shins. “It ain’t easy, that’s for sure, but having a boy like Peter seems to have prepared me. Handling Offworlders ain’t so different from motherhood,” she teased, feeling more at ease than she had since this entire fiasco started. She didn’t know what it was, but she had a feeling that she could relax for a minute without any repercussions, and she definitely needed to relax. It had been a stressful few days.
Yondu narrowed his eyes and took a long drink of the liquor. His eyes didn’t even twitch when most men would have been coughing and asking for something to wash it down with. “What’s that supposed to mean, Meredith?”
Meredith winked wordlessly. Yondu narrowed his eyes further, but remained silent. Kraglin hiccupped and leaned against Niyol’s shoulder, who laughed.
“You know, Ms. Quill, you are the most tolerant white woman I have ever had the pleasure of meeting. Most women of your status would have run for the hills the moment an Offworlder started talking to them,” Niyol said, shifting to lean against the log behind him comfortably. “Unfortunately, the white people tend to hate anything or anyone that isn’t just like them.”
Meredith frowned, feeling guilt rise in her chest for what her people had done. In the past few weeks, the only people who seemed to want to help her were the ones on the outskirts of society; the same ones that were oppressed relentlessly by her race. “I’m sorry. If it makes you feel better, I ain’t exactly a poster girl. I had a son out of wedlock.”
Niyol nodded slightly. “It makes more sense.”
“The hell is wedlock?” Kraglin asked, his head lolling on the native’s shoulder. Niyol huffed but didn’t make a move to push the boy away. In fact, he seemed amused by the drunk teenager’s actions.
“Marriage,” Yondu answered lazily. Kraglin’s mouth formed a silent ‘o’ and he nodded for them to continue the conversation. He seemed to be a pretty tame drunk, which was no surprise when considering the boy’s gentle disposition.
“I hope my son and I ain’t the only decent whites you’ve met,” Meredith said, unable to fight the fond smile that crossed her face from Kraglin’s actions. He was a hoot, as her father would say, with all the goofy things he did without even thinking about it.
Niyol shrugged, suddenly seeming more sober. Meredith frowned. She knew she had struck a nerve without meaning to just by that look; it was the same one her father always got when she brought up her mom. “When I was small, the white men raided my reservation during the Navajo Wars. They murdered my parents in front of my brother and I, despite our crying and begging. The white men didn’t care. They were blinded by their greed, and I can never forgive them for that.”
Before Meredith had the chance to answer, Kraglin quietly piped up. “My ma and pa and big sister were killed too. By the Kree,” he said softly. His eyes were suddenly wet, and Niyol’s arm wrapped around him without hesitation. It looked like Meredith wasn’t the only one that saw him as a child.
“I’m sorry for your losses. Both of you,” she said gently, rubbing her arms softly. She didn’t know exactly how to comfort them, but she figured that even the bare minimum would include a bit of empathy. Sometimes that was all it took.
Yondu patted Kraglin’s leg. “Go to bed, boy. Ya need to sleep off all that alcohol to be ready for tomorrow,” he said. The first mate sniffled and nodded, standing up and swaying for a moment before he stumbled over to Tullk and Peter. Silently, he dropped down beside the two and curled into a ball, seemingly unbothered by the fact that he didn’t have a blanket or a pillow.
Meredith made a mental note to cover him up before she went to bed.
“Now that the children are asleep,” Niyol said, quieter than before. The tone was no longer light, although it hadn’t been for some time now. “I want to ask more about this tumor that Yondu told me about. What do you know about it?”
Meredith perked up at this. She wanted to know more as well. After all, it was her body; she deserved to know what was going on. Besides, Peter was asleep and he would be for a while. Whatever Yondu said, she would have time to process it and figure out a way to talk about it before her son woke up.
Yondu sighed and passed her the bottle. “Ya might wanna take a few swigs of that. This shit ain’t gonna be easy to hear,” he said.
Meredith chewed on her lip for a moment, staring at the bottle. She hadn’t drank in forever; she was too busy working or being a mother. Besides, she wasn’t exactly a fan of how being drunk made her feel.
Then again, she was about to find out more information about this supposedly lethal brain tumor that she didn’t even know she’d had until recently. She definitely earned this drink.
The liquor tasted worse than it looked.
Once she had taken a swig, Yondu started his explanation. “Now, I don’t know much. I ain’t no doctor, but a few of my men have had tumors before. Only one with a brain one, and it wasn’t pretty. He had to go through a lotta damn treatment that we ain’t got down here. Now, I do know that ya have limited time. If we don’t getcha to a good doctor soon, ya ain’t gonna have no need for one, ‘cause they won’t be able to do anything,” he said.
“Wow, I’m feeling fantastic,” Meredith said sarcastically, taking another drink of the liquor. It didn’t matter that it tasted like shit; it still burned and it took the edge off.
“I ain’t done yet,” he shot back. She fell silent, leaning against the log and motioning with her hand for him to continue and as a silent apology for interrupting. “I know Celeest. She’s one of the best damn doctors in the galaxy. She’s fixed a helluva lot worse than a brain tumor with less tech than y’all Terrans offer. She’s a goddamn miracle worker. If anyone can fix ya, it’s her.”
“And you know for sure that she’s in this town you’re heading to?” Niyol asked. Meredith took another drink of the liquor before setting it aside, not wanting to get too drunk. Still, she needed something to help her process this. Sure, Yondu was taking her to a good doctor, but, like he said, they didn’t exactly have a lot of medical technology. Hell, she had never even heard of a brain tumor until he explained it to her. How in the hell was someone supposed to fix her if her society didn’t even know what a brain tumor was?
And what would Peter do if she didn’t make it through? Her father couldn’t take care of him by himself; he wouldn’t be able to look at him without seeing all that he had lost.
“I don’t. She doesn’t stay in one place very long, but Georgetown is her last known location. I figured I could find her from there,” Yondu admitted, making Meredith snap her attention back to the conversation at hand. No, she couldn’t let herself think of the bad parts. She couldn’t think of what would happen if she didn’t make it, because then she was expecting to die. She couldn’t do that. She had to believe that she would make it through; that was the only way she was going to be able to convince Peter that she would be okay.
Niyol nodded. “Alright, well, I’ll ride ahead tomorrow to find out where she is. Meet me in Buffalo at dusk, and if I’ve figured out where she is, I’ll bring her location to you so that you can get a head start. You need all of the time that you can get.”
Meredith felt tears well in her eyes. Damn, was she still that much of a lightweight? Three big gulps and she was an emotional drunk? “Thanks, Niyol. You’re an angel.”
“Don’t thank me yet. I can’t make any promises that anyone in Georgetown will know where she is,” Niyol admitted. She nodded solemnly. “But I will do my best. Does she have an alias?”
“No,” Yondu said, fiddling with his arrow between his fingers. Now that Meredith got a look at it, she couldn’t figure out what it was made of. It was unlike any arrow she had ever seen before. She slowly began to zone out, staring at the horizon as she attempted to sort through the heap of information that had just been dumped on her.
Niyol nodded. “I’ll try to find her,” he promised. Meredith blinked out of her trance and he narrowed his eyes. “Are you alright, Ms. Quill?”
“Yes,” she said, rubbing her hand over her head. “It’s just been a long time since I’ve drank anything. I suppose I should go to bed. Thank you for the information, boys, really.”
Yondu nodded silently, obviously uncomfortable, but Niyol smiled gently at her. “Sweet dreams, Ms. Quill,” he said gently. She smiled back, feeling better already, and didn’t notice Yondu shoot a glare at his friend.
It took a moment for her to gain her balance when she rose to her feet, but once the initial dizziness passed she was able to stumble back to her and Peter’s little cot. Her son was curled into a ball, shivering in the cooling air. After draping a blanket around Kraglin’s curled-up body, Meredith quickly laid down beside her son, taking his shivering form into her arms. He snuggled into her and rested his head against her neck, but settled down quickly into a deeper sleep to her relief. She didn’t think that she could put him to sleep again in the state she was in, and she did not want to deal with a sleepy and concerned Peter at the moment.
As she took a few moments to calm down by stroking Peter’s hair back away from his forehead, Meredith couldn’t help but overhear some of Niyol and Yondu’s conversation. They were talking about someone called Ego, and their tones were anything but friendly. From the way they talked about him, he seemed like another Offworlder that had caused them trouble in the past, but she couldn’t bring herself to care too much. She knew that Yondu would tell her if he was too dangerous. It didn’t matter that she hadn’t even known him a week: she knew that he wouldn’t keep something like that from her. That just wasn’t the kind of man he was. Because even though Yondu Udonta was an Offworlder, he was the most honest man she had ever met, and she fell asleep with the comforting albeit naive thought that she was safe as long as he was around.
After all, since she’d been with him, she had felt safer than she had in years, and that's saying something. She knew he would take care of her and Peter, even if he had a weird way of promising that.