Amidst a slow and lazy flurry of December snow, a laughing Santa Claus mascot with a suspiciously non-existent potbelly chased after a giddily giggling group of children through the kindergarten playground. Entertained mothers sat on the benches from the side-lines, chatting amongst each other, probably discussing mundane things such as how old is your child, oh, where does he go to school, mine's three, oh yes, she believes in Santa alright, her father wouldn't stop insisting—they're children after all!
Of course, he couldn't hear them. They were too far away. But he'd snatched enough bits and pieces from conversations he overheard whenever he walked to school in the morning to be able to make out what everyone was so excited discussing about lately. Christmas, Christmas, Christmas. That holiday.
He was only eight years old, but Christmas felt so…so…
Unremarkable.
Mundane.
Peter Jason Quill expelled a warm sigh, his breath forming an amorphous patch of haze over the window he'd been longingly staring out from ever since this yet another tedious day began. At least it was the last day of school before winter break became official. He watched with a disinterested eye as the mothers burst into laughter when a little girl in a pink sweater got completely engulfed by an enormous hug from the fluffily-clothed red giant himself, squealing and wildly flailing her legs as her red cheeks got peppered with feather-light kisses.
Not to be a bitter gourd, but…
What an overratedly uncool holiday.
Okay, well.
Technically, it was cool—freezing, even. Thanks to the weather, he caught a nasty cold two days ago, (the kind where the nose was completely blocked by what he could almost swear was a gallon of mucus and he had to breathe through the mouth to keep sustaining his small body with oxygen.) It had only gotten worse, what with the colour of his mucus turning into a disgusting green and its consistency turning into…he didn't like to think it. Too gross, even by his standards. He blamed Missouri's weather. Missouri's weather was messed up. Sweltering hot during the summer, frozen hell during the winter. He hated this town. He hated everything about it. There were days when he just wished he could fly out into space and block everything out of his mind. The nameless people, the overly cheerful playgrounds, the…the…
He momentarily struggled to think of things to be annoyed at about this town.
Oh, yes.
He was annoyed by the all-year-round dust that stuck to his sweaty skin that made the water swirling down the drain look brown and murky after bathing.
Because, because then his mom would see, and then she'd so unfairly accuse him of going through days without taking a bath, even, even if—even if it was totally untrue. Totally.
He smiled to himself as his bitter thoughts transitioned to his mother. He heard the chatter of his classmates in the background, the high-pitched voice of his teacher enthusiastically leading the discussion, and he kept catching snatches of that word: Christmas, Christmas, Christmas. But he let the rest of their words coagulate into a blurry conglomeration of non-word sounds. Block out the noise, and that irritating noise would be noise no longer. He'd rather get immersed deep into a sea of happy memories and as faraway from the topic of that holiday as possible. Yeah, that's what he'll do. Take his mind off of Christmas as far as possible. Think happy thoughts, like…like…
Like how Mom'd take him by the shoulder and drag him towards the bathroom to wash him herself, all while he pretended he didn't like it all one bit. She'd gently scold him. Give him a lecture of how to properly do it. Opt to demonstrate it herself…
He'd tell his mother he could shower on his own. He's a big boy now, after all—to directly quote her! He could take his clothes off by himself, he knew what faucet to turn on, and he would not accidentally scald his skin with boiling water or slip on the slippery bathroom floor like he once did when he was six years old. No need for her to get worried so much. But even then, she'd keep insisting that she wanted to bathe him herself. Kept reminding him to thoroughly—thoroughly—scrub himself from foot to scalp with soap, soap and not just with plain old water, and to make sure the shampoo washed every single strand of his dirty blond hair from their ends to their roots.
He'd complain, but that's about all he could ever do, because when Meredith Quill, mother of Star-Lord, insisted, there was no single force in the entire universe that could ever thwart her from doing just what she wanted.
Why? he had dared ask once, when she made him sit on their bathtub for a long soak instead of a quick shower, Why do you keep telling me this, Mom? I know how to take a bath. I'm not a baby anymore.
But he'd immediately regretted it.
Something had flashed over his mum's face—with the subtle downward twitch of her lips and the frozen uncertainty in her eyes, she looked like she'd been struck with the discomfort one felt when caught in the middle of a lie. He'd begun to notice that she made that sort of face more and more often ever since she began her regular doctor visits. There's always that something. It never went away. Something he couldn't for the life of him figure out what, but he did know that he didn't like it. He didn't like it when that something struck his mom, and the fact that he didn't know what it even was just made him feel all the more helpless about resolving it. Made him feel terrible. Like his stomach twisting in on itself. Like a stubborn, rebellious tumour was stuck in his throat.
Of course, then she'd recovered, and that something was gone—poof, kaput, like it wasn't even there in the first place. She recovered, and she smiled that sweet smile he always loved seeing (which he had every little detail etched into memory—that crinkled skin next to her eyes, the way her cheeks bunched up, and how her eyes shone, like, like, like, like real live stars—) it was and always will be the truest, most beautiful thing in the entire universe. She alwaysrecovered, because she was brave and strong and there wasn't ever a time she didn't not recover, his Mom was awesome when it came to recovering, and he'd wondered, he wondered, just how?How do you do it, Mom? How do you recover so easily?
How?
Maybe, maybe that's what you should be teaching me right now, instead of how to take baths.
Because, because I feel like, like I'm gonna—
No. No, I don't ever want to need to know how to recover.
But, but can you teach me?How to recover so easily?
Just like how you do it?
Because, because I feel like, like I'm gonna…
…need it. Just in case.
Because if you don't teach me now, I'll…
I'll never know how.
Except, he hadn't uttered a sound. He couldn't. She'd moved to press her soft lips (charred, but to his mind they were the softest thing ever to caress his skin and he'd fight anyone who dared object to his verdict) on his soap-stained forehead for ten long precious eternities. And, no, they weren't seconds, they were ten eternities, because seconds were too short, seconds were too forgettable, too unforgivably unreliable because they were tooshort, while eternities, eternities were magical and memorable and unexplainably sublime. Which he felt all at once, just sitting there in the bathtub with his mother kissing his forehead, with only white frothy microbubbles keeping them company. He remembered that moment, of not knowing what to do with himself because the soft palms of her hands held his small cheeks captive and he couldn't move, he was so afraid to move, because if he did, he might break this fragile spell of a memory, one wrong move and she'd suddenly—
Suddenly pop like a—
Water ran in the background.
The sweet, sharp scent of lemon-scented soap and lavender shampoo wafted thickly through the air, warm steam densely enveloping them in a bright and mystical haze. It was like they were in heaven, except they were in the bathroom and the angel kissing his soapy forehead was his mother (or, maybe no, his mother was an angel, yes, yes that must be the only explanation why he felt like this was heaven.) It was as if a bubble had engulfed them in its peaceful womb, blocking out the entire world and encasing them in a dimension where only the two of them existed, its thin, transparent surface refracting whatever light hit it into all the colours of the rainbow and scattering it across its glassy skin to fill them up with the promise of, of, of colour and light and perhaps, one more eternity.
(of illusory hope.)
But…this was only a bubble. Because bubbles, bubbles popped, that's all they ever did, when you think bubble you always instinctively think pop, and he was stupid if he relied on a stupid bubble to give him one more eternity because bubbles only ever did one stupid thing and that was pop pop pop.
It just fit the beautiful and terrible fragility of life and everything it encompassed.
His mother broke the kiss.
She angled her head down so their foreheads were touching. (Was this real memory, was this invented memory, he couldn't figure out anymore and he didn't care, as long as his mother was here.)
He looked up and gazed into the intense magnets that were her eyes.
He wanted to look away, (because why, why did his mother make everything look like a finality, why) but with his face trapped in the cage that were her hands, he had nowhere to go.
Even when you grow up to be a big, big boy, she'd whispered, a dollop of that something managing to creep into the cracks of her voice, you'd always, always be my baby.
Always.
No, he didn't cry when she said that.
Honest.
(But he did surrender with a cough that sounded suspiciously like a restrained sob, grudgingly told her a shaky 'Okay' with a bowed head, maybe in a futile attempt to hide the fact that he was quivering in his own tears.)
He was in third grade elementary. Some part of him felt like he should feel intensely embarrassed because his mother still giving him baths was the social equivalent of still wearing diapers, but he didn't, he didn't ever want her to stop. Because she's right. He'd never stop being her baby boy. He wouldn't ever want to.
Until the day came that she did stop insisting on the baths.
And with that one constant in his life gone, like any other person would do, he flailed. Flailed for something to grab, to hold, for something to keep him from toppling over himself—a hand, an arm, the sleeve of her shirt, the hem of her skirt, really, anythingat all.
His mother…she had been hospitalized repeatedly through the past year, going to the doctor here and there and now and then for the occasional prescription, but he never asked.
This time, however, a month had already passed and they still hadn't released her.
He'd showered that morning. The water was warm, but it was bitingly cold on his skin once he stepped out of the shower. Last day of school before winter break. His grandpa insisted that he stayed home (maybe the way he kept snorting the mucus up his nose where it seemed to go straight to his brain was not as inconspicuous as he hoped it was) but he insisted anyway. His grandpa had sighed before ultimately finishing his breakfast and getting up, conceding to get Peter to school. He remembered his Mom saying, 'Go to school, my little Star-Lord. Please,' when he'd visited her on the cost of skipping classes for the fifth day in a row. Of course, he'd had full intentions to disobey at first, but it was when she'd smilingly tagged a sly 'For me?' when he knew he couldn't not do it.
Though today, he ended up regretting not to choose to stay at home.
His teacher thought this was the perfect day to discuss the holiday called Christmas. He tuned the rest of the class out for the most part, staring at the window and hoping this would be over, but then—
Miss Martha wanted them to write about the perfect plan that each student's perfect family had for celebrating Christmas.
—then his bubble popped.
He turned his attention away from the giggling girl and the Santa Claus mascot and the mothers at the benches and brought his brain from idly drifting in outer space and back to the classroom.
Sigh, he thought, thinking of the word rather than really sighing as his hand blindly fished for the pencil and paper from his backpack. He wished it was his Walkman and headphones he could use right now, but what could he do?
Christmas was so overrated.
Many were not as dispirited as he was about the writing activity, though. They were actually excited, bragging out the plans their family had for the winter break, especially the 25th, which was a couple of weeks from now. Some were certain they were going to have super awesome gifts and that they're on Santa Claus' nice list, because their parents said so. Others will go on a vacation. A few were planning for a grand, spectacular dinner.
But most, they were going for the simple night out to enjoy a little bit of snow, maybe witness the annual fireworks display or see the giant Christmas tree by the plaza be lit up, just like what most everybody does in this town preferred to do.
He quietly began to work on his little essay.
As he wrote in his usual scrawl, though, he couldn't help but look back at last year's Christmas. ('Wrote', ha, he only stared at the blank paper on his desk and let his pencil do whatever they wanted with generic statements like Christmas is fun, etcetera etcetera.)
Joy of all glorious joys, Christmas 1986 was composed of eating the cold spaghetti his grandpa supposedly cooked for their Christmas dinner.
A dozen other relatives he never even knew existed repeatedly asking him 'You okay, Pete?' or some other variant of it while he waited in the waiting room.
His bottled-up anxiety slowly fermenting into silent panic when each second passed and the doctors didn't come out of the stupid ICU room and, fearing that the moment they did, they'd string words together that should never ever be stringed together in a sentence and use it to wring it around his neck so he suffocated.
Christmas reminded him of bad things.
He didn't want Christmas to ever happen again.
By the time he'd finished writing, the classroom had already become a full-blown circus. Kids chasing each other, paper planes soaring through the air, snowball fights with crumpled paper, boys picking on the long pigtails of this other girl, a group of girls gathered around and chatting about the essay they wrote, a pack of boys blowing raspberries and horseplaying at the back of the room where they had more space, and the Christmas tree on the corner of the room dangerously beginning to teeter at an angle before it finally gave and crashed to the ground, boys laughing and yelling 'Timber!' as the girls shrieked at the top of their lungs.
Peter looked. He saw that Ben—no, Bryce, was the culprit behind the Christmas tree disaster. He was laughing and holding his stomach and was literally behind the where the tree once stood. The boys joined in on the laugh, but the girls were not so easily appeased.
The teacher walked in, and there was this incredulous smile on her face even as she obviously tried her best to tone it down and sound more angry than amused. The kids ran to their respective places as if they were being chased, shouting and laughing and tripping over their own feet.
"Children! I'm gone for five minutes and you make a disaster out of this poor classroom?"
The class laughed. It took them a while to calm down, but then Miss Martha went on to announce that this will be their last school activity for the year and they better get to it—only increasing everyone else's hype.
Well. Mostly everyone.
They helped her prop the tree up again. After that, Miss Martha officially initiated the class activity by telling Alyssa to go first. Alyssa was seated at the front on the leftmost corner of the first row. Then the girl next to her, Tina, would follow. Then Judy, then Chelsea, and so on and so forth until they got to the last kid at the back of the class, Robert. They were going to read what they've written to the class.
Every time a kid finished reading their plans, the class would erupt in applause. It went on and on and Peter swore he was going to pass out because of utter boredom then and there. He did close his eyes, though, once again tuning out the noise.
After a while, he had the vague sense that someone was calling for him. But he didn't want to break through the surface. It felt nice. Just being immersed in the depths of the void of his mind. Thinking about nothing.
"…ter?"
(Actively blocking out everything.)
A boy seated beside him nudged him on the shoulder.
He opened his eyes then flashed the boy a look. He tried to put a name to the face—class nerd, recent transferee, thickly-rimmed glasses parked snugly on a plump nose, bushy eyebrows matching up the bushy black hair—but his mind came up blank.
"Peter," the boy further insisted. It took him a second to realize that Peter was him, Peter was not this boy, yes, Peter was his name, stupid him, how could he forget that. He did forget this boy's name though. Peter's brain snatched a letter T, but then the rest flew out of his grasp before he could curl his fingers around them.
The boy pointed his chin at the person in front of the class.
Peter automatically followed the direction he pointed at by swivelling his head to the left, only to meet the kind, expectant eyes of their teacher, Miss Martha. She stood in front on the platform, her smile so motherly sweet it could've transformed her formal teacher's attire into something domestic—perhaps something with an apron, but he was derailing.
"Oh, uh…" He felt heat creep up to his cheeks. Everyone was staring at him.
The teacher gently supplied him the details he missed as if she sensed his quiet pleas of help from his uncooperative classmates (kids were cruel, kids were so, so cruel.)
"Can you tell us about what you have planned for Christmas?"
"Oh! Oh yeah. That…" He didn't want to meet anyone's eyes. He picked up the paper on his desk and stood up, then made sure the paper covered his face so he didn't have to get looked at by everyone else, and vice versa.
"Christmas," he began, his voice small and nasally, "is a special day with family." He said it mechanically, without being aware that his mouth was actually automatically translating his handwriting into speech. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he thought it was cool he could just switch his mind off and his body would function just as usual. "Christmas is nice. Christmas is when we eat food and watch movies and exchange gifts together. And hang decorations. And put up a Christmas tree. And the gifts would be under the tree. And a couple other stockings on the wall. And there would be lights everywhere, people singing carols. And everyone looks so happy because they're with…" He squinted his eyes, trying to understand that ugly scrawl he called his handwriting. "…with family. Yeah. That's it. The end."
He did a subtle eye-roll he thought no one saw as he plopped back down on his hard seat.
There was a silence in his class following his speech that made him feel like everyone was once again staring at him.
Eventually, Miss Martha spoke.
"Ah…so that's what you have planned, Peter?"
Plan? What was a plan? He snorted a blob of mucus up his nose, and he cringed when it got too loud in the too-silent classroom. So instead, he opted on swiping it against the sleeve of his jacket, though even that was an epic fail too, because when his arm came away from his nose, a sticky transparent substance has stretched like glue over the distance.
The girls and boys around him made faces.
He felt a strange sense of anger roil from within him. (Anger, yes, that's it—he felt angry, and he felt glad that he could objectify his feelings in a single word.)
What, these idiots never seen mucus before? What, like, they never caught a cold their entire life?
Ugh, whatever, just get this thing over with! Everyone's staring, say something, say something—
"…Peter?"
"U-Uh," he floundered. "Yeah—yeah. I…guess?"
A few more seconds of that same, indiscernible silence. A few laughs coming from a group of boys on the far corner of the room broke it though, muttering 'Boy Snot' amongst themselves and flashing him smug smirks.
He forced his fists to uncurl.
Mom told him not to get into fights again.
Miss Martha smiled again, but to Peter—Peter, who knew what true smiles really looked like—it was so, so fake. "Okay, that's great, Peter! Everyone," there was definitely a strain in that word, he heard it, he could see it, in the way she widened her eyes a tad at the class and seemed to be nudging everyone with a silent listen to me under her tones, "give Peter a round of applause, please!"
One kid clapped. Then another. And another. It was a scattered applause so it was easy to die back down.
She sighed. "You're next, Timmy."
The boy next to him—yeah, he remembered now, Timmy was his name—gave him a sympathetic smile before he took his paper and stood up.
Peter propped his elbow against his desk and squashed his cheek flat against the palm of his hand, back to turning his mind off and tuning everybody else.
At least he got that over with.
But it was when Timmy spoke those three words—
"My mommy's sick."
He snapped back to himself.
Peter blinked. Then looked up.
Confused.
Huh? Timmy's lips were curled upward, but that can't be what he thought it was.
Why the hecking heck was Timmy smiling?
"…nd she's in the hospital, and I thought we wouldn't ever be able to do Christmas again the same way," he rambled on, an excited note in his words. "But then Papa had an idea—because, because he's awesome and he loves mommy and I do too, so we wouldn't let anything get in the way of our family Christmas!"
Peter moved his eyes so they landed back on his paper.
Christmas is a special day with….
"So what we did, what we did is…"
He knew what those words were supposed to mean, but really, only as a concept. Nothing more than that.
"…we bought a small Christmas tree, stockings, candy canes, cookies, gifts, lotsa lotsa gifts…"
After all, the sentence was a stock-Christmas-sentence in the first place, and he saw it plastered almost over every inch of the planet—in movies, songs, those Christmas cards that the supermarket would display on their SALE! rack right after Thanksgiving—but the meaning (family, what was family?) never really sunk in.
…a day with family.
"—and decorated her hospital room, so it felt just like home. Papa even invited some relatives, so it felt just like every time." Timmy then looked up from his essay. "And that's how we're planning to do it this year again. That's all, thank you!"
The class gave him applause, and Peter was only vaguely aware of Miss Martha gushing over Timmy and how sweet he was to his mother and calling on the kid next to him.
When Timmy sat back down, though, Peter, without really the control of his brain and his stupid body mechanically moving on its own, blurted out to him in a whisper—
"I thought your mom died."
He thought it was too blunt. But before he could apologize, Timmy laughed and patted him on the back. "She's in heaven, silly. Dad says she comes down here on Earth from heaven during Christmas, so that means we still get to spend Christmas together. Papa said that family always finds a way to be together. Even if it isn't Christmas. No matter what."
Those words rang and rang and rang around the empty place that was the inside of his skull until the class finally ended.
Family always finds a way.
The kids continued talking to each other, parents peeked through the door to get their kids, Miss Martha busied herself in erasing what was written on the board.
Peter himself stood up when he saw his grandpa peek through the door, gesturing to him that they should go. He shrugged his almost-empty backpack on.
But as he moved to the front door, he heard Miss Martha call, "Mr Quill!"
He turned.
That smile again. "You're going to attend the party tomorrow, right?"
Party, what party?
It probably took him more than a few seconds before he croaked out his answer.
"…What?"
"The Christmas party tomorrow! You know, the—"
He ducked his head. Ran for the door.
"W-Wait, Peter!"
In the middle of last year's Christmas party he had a call from his grandfather that his mother—
Mom—
He was glad his grandpa was there waiting. Peter buried his face into his grandpa's shirt. The older man burst out in an amused, "H-Hey, Pete!" and Peter only buried his face into his shirt deeper, his small hands clutching onto the thick synthetic fabric of his grandpa's jacket.
"Home," he demanded softly, though he supposed the demand in his voice was undermined by the fact that he spoke it so wetly because of his clogged nose.
Darn this stupid nose.
"Miss Martha!" his grandpa said instead of agreeing, and Peter only stubbornly hid his face out of sight even as both Miss Martha and his grandpa tried to peel him out of his jacket.
He waited until they finished talking. Small pleasantries. How are you? Merry Christmas to you and your family. And to you too, Ma'am. Oh, Peter's not attending? Huh? Attending what? The kids' Christmas party tomorrow. He didn't tell me about any party. Hey Pete, you heard what she said, are you attending? No? Why? You sure? Don't you think it'd be fun?
No.
No.
But Santa's going to be there, Peter!
No.
Oh. You wanna go visit your mom instead?
Ye…
…No.
I…wanna go home.
He heard his grandpa expel a breath of air in a sigh of defeat before finally exchanging farewells with his teacher.
They trudged on their way home without another word. Peter had his hands shoved into his pockets, his nearly-empty backpack thumping against his back with each step as he walked side-by-side with his grandpa. Eventually, they emerged from the school premises and went to the direction of their home, a subdivision where they had rented a small and cosy apartment. They entered the street that led to their small neighbourhood. Cars and motorcycles only occasionally passed by, but the strollers were more frequent, and his grandpa had to pause numerous times waving at someone he knew before they continued walking. The two-way road was divided by a long ditch cut in the ground filled with dirt, where skeleton trees stood and spread their bony hands up to the sky as if to praise the pale winter sun. Garlands hung from their branches like a bunch of limp asparagus, and unlit Christmas lights twined around their trunks up their branches like vines. Dirty snow patched the road, the rooftops, the bushes that lined the pavement. Houses were decorated with stockings or Christmas wreaths on their front doors, and he even saw one moving van stop in front of someone's porch where a woman was waiting with her children gathered around her, who squealed when the men moved out a huge Christmas tree from the back of their van.
Peter gritted his teeth when they passed by the plaza. This, this was another thing he loathed about this town. The plaza, on his right, just right beside the road right after the rows of houses stopped and a huge, grass-filled space began—it was a wide public square with enough space for kids to play tag and parents to run after kids, and benches on the side where couples could sit and chat after an hour or so of strolling with their dogs. Everyone who was anyone in town gathered here during the year's major occasions. Independence Day, Halloween, Christmas, New Year's—the mayor would expend money to have it bedecked with decorations fitting the theme of the holiday. In this case, Christmas.
There was a huge 15-feet Christmas tree standing right in the middle of the plaza, and Peter recognized it as the same one from last year. This was the second time the town was using it, so it was fairly new. Rather than the usual green foliage that made up the body of the traditional ornamental timber tree, this one was made of thick neon tubes that coiled into themselves to form the shapes of yellow bells, pink candies, green leaves, and red poinsettia flowers anchored onto the tree's internal frame that made up its outline. He never saw it lit, though. They only lit the tree three consecutive nights before the 25th until New Year's. The tree made a conical shape from base to the tip where a white star overlooked the town. People took pictures of themselves standing in front of the tree, fretting over what pose they should do in front of the camera, while some settled on just admiring it from afar while seated on their benches.
This town was so irritatingly happy.
He locked his eyes to the ground. Envy roiled in his blood. (Maybe it wasn't anger after all.) He watched his feet do a mundane dance of trying to get ahead over one another, step after step after step
after step.
…Why?
He stopped walking.
Why was the world so happy when his was falling apart?
"Grandpa," he called, then sniffed.
(Family always finds a way.)
The older man turned and stopped walking when he realized that Peter had fallen behind in step.
"Pete?"
His grandpa retraced his steps and knelt before him, then put a heavy yet reassuring hand on his tiny shoulder that disappeared completely under the warm umbrella of his palm.
These were no longer the days when he had to rely on his mother. His mother, who always seemed to find a way to make their little family of two work out so wonderfully.
No.
The days when he was the one who had to find a way had come, perhaps a little too early, but there was no escaping it.
He had to stop denying that wasn't like any other kid in his classroom.
Envying them would do nothing but make him more miserable.
He had to do something about this.
"What's wrong, Peter?"
Everything.
"Nothin'." He sniffled again, then turned away. "I think I wanna go visit mom after all."
"Oh! Oh, sure then, let's go—"
"No, grandpa."
Peter mustered up a smile, albeit it felt shaky and unreal.
It felt so unreal, deciding on making things happen without his mother suggesting it first.
It didn't make him feel like he was a boy anymore.
"I think I have an idea."
Then he ran back the way he came from, his backpack thumping against his back all the way to the hospital.
When he arrived, the receptionist questioned him. "Meredith Quill," he answered readily, and then proceeded to walk down the hall where her room was, but then the same receptionist told him to wait a second—she'd go check on his mom first to see if she was awake.
It didn't make sense to Peter, because even if she was asleep he was willing to stay by her bedside listening to his Walkman. And this was the first time the receptionist stopped him from going straight to her room, which he found odd. But since he was dealing with grown-ups, he guessed he had no choice. They made him sit and wait in the lobby for several excruciatingly long minutes—these doctors, always with these doctors, he hated doctors, what was taking them so long?—until a nurse he'd become familiar with now as Nurse Emma emerged from the hall and flashed him a smile that said, Come on, Peter! Your mom's waiting!
He immediately bolted from the hard chair and ran down the hall, having memorized the location of his mom's room by now that he never needed to look at the number to know which door to barge into.
"Mom!"
The room was small but homey. The pale amber walls gave it a touch of soft serenity, and the lack of décor (save for the lone curvy vase by the window) was what made it look elegant. Like his Mom.
Meredith Quill sat elegantly on her bed with her flowing—he didn't like to think thinning—brown hair glinting against the pale light shining from the pane of glass behind her. She smiled that smile he always so loved to see, then spread her arms wide so Peter can jump on her and give her a hug.
"My little Star-Lord," his mother laughed softly as she caressed his fluffy head of hair, "your grandpa told me you wouldn't visit!"
"Well, I'm here now."
"And I'm so, so, so happy you are," she said, pulling away so she could look at her son's face. "How was school?"
"Okay," he responded dully, eager to push the topic of school aside for more important things. He moved to obtain a chair so he could sit by her bedside. "We spoke in front of the class."
"Really? What about?"
"…not important," he dismissed, then sniffed wetly. Ugh. "The thing is," he continued nasally, "we should do something for Christmas."
His mother gave him an amused smile. Because of him sniffing or because of what he said, he couldn't be sure.
"Of course we are, Peter, it's a family tradition! It's in the next two weeks, Friday, right?" She'd glanced at the calendar on the wall to check briefly. "And hasn't your grandfather done something about that cold yet?"
"He did. Made me take this syrup. Nasty stuff." He sniffed again and the blob seemed to shoot straight up his brain and—ugh. Instant headache. Thanks, blob. "I don't seem to be," he said with a blocked nose, "getting any better."
She sighed. "Well, that's medicine," she agreed. "But wait for two or three days, maybe it'll be gone by then if you regularly take your dose." Then she gestured at the fabric of her blanket.
"Blow your nose."
"What?"
"I said blow your nose," she repeated. "I don't have any napkins here, so make do with the blanket. Don't worry," she continued, amused at the incredulous face he made at her, "the nurse will have the blankets replaced next week."
He hesitated, but then he also wanted to so desperately discard the sticky material inside his nose, so he did exactly just that.
"Oh, and about our Christmas dinner," she continued as he did his thing, "I think your grandfather already had it planned. All our relatives—"
"No, Mom," he interrupted quietly, his voice sharper now that his nose was clear. His mother openly expressed her surprise (he never was the assertive one between the two of them), but then the surprise on her face quickly morphed into intrigue.
"Hmm? What is it?"
"I…I'm thinking…" He rubbed at his nose with the sleeve of his jacket. "I just thought of something. Really cool. I think we should do it."
He didn't speak afterward.
"Yes…?" his curious mom prodded gently.
Peter fidgeted with the hem of his jacket.
"…I-I'm thinking we should have something…spend Christmas…you know," he gestured wildly with his hands.
"Just…just the two of us."
It took her a moment before she understood what he was trying to say. "Ohh. Well, well, well," she said, propping herself up and straightening her back, folding her hands elegantly on each other and smiling wide. "What do you have in mind, Peter Jason Quill?"
Okay, here goes.
"Do you think they'd allow you to…go out? So we could…celebrate together?"
Her face fell.
"Oh, Peter…you know they wouldn't," she lamented. "But since it's Christmas, maybe I'll see if I can convince—"
"No," he said again. "No need for that, Mom."
He spoke firmly now. More loudly. Again, he had rendered her surprised.
He gripped at his knees and took a breath of air.
Then, gathering his guts, he blurted it out.
"I'd sneak you out of this place."
His mom, she was, she was, she was the cool kind of mom. So when he thought this up, earlier when he was walking with his grandpa, he was confident that his mom'd agree to do something, you know, not-exactly-right, because sneaking out of the prison that was this annoying hospital to spend a little time with his son wasn't exactly wrong either. His mom had always been cool like that, she let those little things slip for a little bit of fun, like playing in the rain or pranking his grandfather by replacing the socks on his sock drawer with his mom's pink polka dot ones. He'd often been told that he got his bold, rebellious streak from her, a badge he wore on his chest with pride and made sure to display every time he could. Of course, his mom would tell him to tone the mischief down a tad, but he knew it never really made her really angry, because even when she tried to look it, there's still that amused glint in her eye that told him—
'You make me so proud in ways I never knew possible.'
And, yeah, she even told him that out loud once.
So, so, that was why, that was why he knew his mom would definitely agree once he told her his plans on sneaking her out.
But when several seconds passed and his mom still spoke nothing, Peter began to fear that he might have a gone a little too far.
"Okay, that was stupid, mom," he said, immediately ducking his head as shame filled him up inside and making it hard to breathe. "I—forget it, let's just do something else, what do you think, I'm open for anything, or maybe we shouldn't—I mean, I want to, but if you don't, it's perfectly—"
"…I can't believe it."
Peter stopped rambling those meaningless words and let his eyelids fly open.
What did she just say…?
Slowly, slowly, he lifted his head to look at her.
And he found her eyes brimming with tears.
"I can't believe it," she told him again, and it made him feel terrible, so terrible, that he was the one who caused his mother—his brave and strong and unbreakable mother—to cry.
"H-Hey, mum," he began, and he immediately angrily bit his lip because his voice shook because the sight of her crying was making him want to bawl too. "I t-take it back, it's not—I didn't mean it—I mean—"
"My little baby's a man," she exclaimed, and he didn't understand, why was she smiling? Why? How can you cry yet still smile so happily?
"Is this true? Is my little Star-Lord really asking a woman out on a date?"
"Y-Yeah…?" Peter said uncertainly in what almost sounded like a sigh of relief, and he felt the widest smile tugging at his lips even as his eyes welled up and his nose felt like running a marathon again and darn it, he thought, darn this stupid cold, as he swiped at his face with the sleeve on his upper arm where it wasn't yet drenched with mucus.
"A date. Something like that."
"I thought I'd never see the day," she said, putting a fist over her lips as if to prevent a sob from escaping. Then she recovered, she recovered like she always did, and she motioned for him to get up from his chair and come closer to her. "Come here, Peter. When are we doing this?"
He obeyed and crawled over the sheets and sat beside her on the bed, making himself comfortable by leaning back on the pillowed headrest. She put an arm around his head and felt her hand unflinchingly hold his snot-drenched jacket sleeve so she could pull him closer to her. After pretending to think over it a while, he twisted his head so he can look up at her, that radiant smile a hopeful beam of sunshine parting the dark storm clouds that had been looming over him ever since his mom got hospitalized a month ago.
"Two days before Christmas day," he decided with a grin.
"Hmmm, so you want Wednesday," she said, contemplative eyes locked on the calendar, and for a moment Peter thought he saw that dreadfully familiar something flash over her face again before it vanished a moment later and he was convinced it was just a figment of his stupid imagination.
She smiled. Put one hand on the side of his face so he could lift it up as she bowed her head down, letting both their foreheads kiss. Peter couldn't help but be so magnetically drawn to her intensely vigorous brown eyes, so full of life that in that one moment, he believed, truly did believe, that no gushing river could ever quench his mother's blazing fire.
"It's a deal, my little Star-Lord."
…
From that day on, when Peter visited his mother, the usual dread in his heart had been replaced by a spark of excitement. He couldn't wait till the day arrived. He made sure everything was going to be in working order, that everything would be perfect, that no one would ever catch them from sneaking his Mom out of the hospital and executing his master plan, not even Nurse Emma who always checked on his mother in what he swore was every single freaking hour. He'd stolen one of the foldable wheelchairs from an empty room he found somewhere in the hospital then hid it under his Mom's bed. He found a way out of this place through an inconspicuous back door so he didn't have to be seen by the receptionist if he went through the lobby. He took his mom's advice and told his grandpa that he had a date on December 23rd so he wouldn't be home for dinner that night—and no one would be the wiser.
(Although, of course, he didn't see his grandpa hide an amused conspiratorial smile behind his hand once Peter turned his back to him.)
The days went by, (his cold disappeared just like his mom said it would,) more snow fell from the sky, and their planned outing grew ever so closer. Just a day before the day, though, he was struck by the realization that he had no gift, which was most atrocious, so immediately decided he should buy her one. He immediately knew what the perfect, most absolutely awesome gift to give her. Even after his grandpa insisted he take his money, ('For your date,' he had said, accompanying it with a knowing wink when Peter voiced out his confusion,) Peter refused. Instead, he took a hammer, slid his piggybank out from under his bed, and shattered it to smithereens, determined to buy his mother her gift with his own money, earned through saved allowances and sales of his old toys. (Well, technically it still wasn't his money because he didn't work for it like the grown-ups did, but that was missing the point.)
The day came.
He went to her room as usual. Ate food and exchanged stories and chatted about the little, insignificant things like usual. Spent a couple of hours or so just lying on the bed beside each other, holding his headphones so the two of them could listen to their favourite pop music together. Then, when the visitor hours ended, he made sure to hide under her bed just beside the foldable wheelchair as Nurse Emma entered the room to check if 'little Peter' had already gone home.
The two women chatted a little more (and Peter wondered why Nurse Emma seemed spend more than her usual five minutes in here—was she suspicious?) But then, before he knew it, she wheeled her cart of medicine out of the room and he knew it was time. He was signalled by his Mom with a conspiratorial 'All clear, Peter, initiate second phase of the plan!' just like how they'd rehearsed it. He'd insisted this would only be perfect if his Mom said that, and she had no choice but to concede. He gigglingly pushed the wheelchair out from under the bed and crawled out himself—now all dressed in winter attire, complete with a bonnet and a pair of mittens and a jacket with a pocket large enough where he could keep his secret gift so he could surprise her with it later. (Regarding his outfit though, his mother, no matter how cool, was still a mother, so she just had to fret over the fact that he wore the bonnet the wrong way, that his jacket looked dusty, that his mittens looked too big for his small baby hands even after he'd repeatedly insisted that it fit inside just fine.)
He then unfolded the wheelchair. His mom held out an expectant hand which he unhesitatingly took and squeezed tight as she gingerly stepped down from her bed, her sock-covered feet feeling the floor for her boots before sitting down on her place in the chair. She, too, had already been dressed aptly for their outing, with only two things left missing. So Peter reached for the mittens and bonnet hidden inside her bedside drawer and handed it over to her. He watched as his mother fixed them on herself, and finally, when she was done—
"Now, we match," she said, her eyes alight in the darkness, and Peter couldn't help but wonder if it had been her eyes all this while that made the dark moonless night still look so splendidly bright.
Having trouble keeping his face straight, Peter, grinning so wide it hurt, wheeled her out of the door, looking left and right when he emerged out the corridor, and immediately went for the path he'd long memorized that would lead out the back door.
To his utter pleasure and surprise (he was an eight-year-old trying to trick full-grown adults here, but hey, maybe he was just that awesome and fated to someday become a legendary outlaw,) he'd successfully snuck his date out for the night of their lives.
…
He remembered vaguely how last year's Christmas went.
It was, in a word…
Noisy.
He and his mother had just been walking across the snow-patched pavement along their neighbourhood when they passed by the mayor's new project for the town—that gigantic Christmas tree.
He said he wanted to see it lit up in the night.
So what she did was promise him to take him there, and they'd see it lit up together.
…she'd promised.
After the Christmas party, his grandpa had called.
Told him his mother fell down the stairs after passing out from an extreme headache.
Christmas 1986 felt so, so thick, remembering it was like swimming in jelly. Reliving it was worse. Like the air itself coagulated into a semi-solid mass and he felt like drowning because he couldn't breathe it in properly. It made him see the world as if through frosted glass, all the shapes and colours blending into each other so they formed amorphous blobs that made so, so much noise.
Noise. Yes. That was it.
Noise was the only thing he could remember of Christmas 1986.
People asking him if he was okay, doctors shouting at each other, his brain, screaming screaming screaming—
The noise.
It was so thick.
And tonight, he thought, as he clutched at the gift hidden inside his jacket and continued to push his mother across the pavement on her wheelchair—
He was determined to clear it up.
(*)
His mother gasped as they emerged from the darkness and entered their subdivision.
Their neighbourhood was filled with chattering people. Houses glittered with decorations. Kids huddled together making snowmen. Adults seated together and laughing. Cars and motorcycles passed slowly by, because none could possibly resist the ethereal beauty this place seemed to emit. A row of skeleton trees stretched in the middle of the two-way road, little gold-stained stars raining down from their hand-like branches as more spiralled up their trunks. The bright yellow-orange streetlights hung over the pavement glowed like little suns in the night, the slowly descending fresh snow reflecting off their golden light.
It looked like the stars themselves have decided to fall from the sky to join them.
Her eyes widened as he wheeled her further into the neighbourhood, and he felt a smile of unbridled pride tug at his lips, stretching them almost painfully over his face which he currently felt was too small to hold all the giddy and explosive energy he was trying his hardest to withhold.
The Christmas tree was lit up.
All its colours—its rainbow of colours—made a fresh splash of promise over their faces as he wheeled his mother closer to it.
(And he thought that that rainbow was the promise, perhaps, not of illusory hope, but of one last eternity.)
The white star placed atop its peak seemed to dare replace the moon itself.
The night, it sparkled.
And so did she.
"This…this is…"
This was how he wanted his mother.
Happy.
She turned to face him, and he felt all the world suddenly burst in a shimmering tintinnabulation of glitter when she smiled.
"Peter…" she exclaimed, her voice drenched in emotion.
"Oh, and I almost forgot," he said as if he did almost forget, grinning because he loved that she loved this, no matter how simple it was. He moved so he could sit on her lap, then took out the gift he was hiding in his jacket.
A cassette.
And written over it were the words Star-Lord's Christmas Mix Vol. 1, in that scrawny scrawl he called his handwriting.
But his Mom didn't care that his handwriting sucked. His Mom always saw past what everyone thought was disgusting and embraced him so fully, so unflinchingly, so unhesitatingly, that even if he was full of snot she didn't care.
She did that thing again, putting her fist over her mouth so she could hide a sob.
(…and she never recovered, because the tears had already fallen.)
"For me?" she said, and he knew it, he knew it, as light shone on her tear-stained face, her eyes were definitely like stars.
"Mm-hmm," he proudly declared, then put the cassette in his Walkman. He pulled out a pair of earphones and plugged them into the Sony device, then offered one of them to his mother, who gladly accepted it and plugged it into her ear.
He didn't know how long it was they spent, just sitting there in his mother's wheelchair beside the rainbow-coloured Christmas tree, enclosed in a bubble, that same bubble, listening to music.
Slowly, as the people chattered around them and continued to make their noise, he felt his envy and anger and frustration at this town ebb away.
Maybe it was his soul being healed, the music washing away the noise that had filled his head this entire year.
He wished, so desperately, if Santa Claus could hear him, that this music healed his Mom's, too.
"Merry Christmas, Mom," he said, drifting into a dream-like state, not quite asleep yet not quite awake either. Later, all he'd remember was falling stars and the soft music singing in his ear.
"I love you."
But maybe he was asleep, because he didn't feel the single tear that fell on his cheek.
"I love you too, Peter."
I'm so sorry that you had to grow up so fast, Peter.
I'm sorry.
Sun shone the next morning, the light glinting against the cassette that she'd placed on her bedside table.
"So," said Nurse Emma as she gently took Meredith's hand and felt for a vein. "How was the date, Meredith?"
"It was the greatest ever," she beamed back at her, not at all feeling the slightest pain as Emma injected medicine into her bloodstream. "It was every girl's dream come true."
Emma chuckled and went to retrieve a cotton ball on her cart so she can swipe it over the small wound.
"When do you want to reschedule your therapy?" the nurse asked in the silence.
Meredith bit her lip as she looked at the calendar on the wall.
She had an agreement with her dad to make sure he brought Peter to the amusement park or something after Christmas Day.
Peter was, by all means, not to come here and see those tubes attached to her body.
He'd almost seen her in that miserable state, the day he'd 'asked her out'.
That was not going to happen again.
"The 26th."
She didn't realize that a heap of hair got caught in her fingers as she combed them through her golden brown mane.