Denial
After Stark finally succumbs to his exhaustion and falls asleep, Nebula is left alone on the Milano’s deck. She refuses to leave her self-appointed post, a reasonable choice seeing as Stark has no experience of spacecraft and therefore to avoid a brutal and sudden death it falls to her to man the craft. What is less easy to explain away is how she is steadfastly refusing to look back at one particular seat. Luckily there is nobody but Stark to ask, and he is too consumed with his own loss and potential loss to pay much attention to her.
The fingers on her mechanical arm twitch. A hang up of the poor initial setup of their neural-interface, she has long ago learnt to ignore it. Usually she can consciously supress the fault, but it takes a lot of focus. When she is distracted by strong emotions or too many thoughts, as she is now, the twitch returns. The thoughts to blame for the current twitch revolve around her sister. She has an inexplicable urge to go to Vormir, to see her body.
Unfortunately, in order to protect her, her sister never revealed Vormir’s location to her. She has never seen it labelled on any of the star charts she has studied (and with the cybernetic half of her brain granting photographic memory, she can be sure she truly has not seen it and not merely forgotten it). She has no idea where to even start looking, not even a group of quadrants to narrow her search to. Still, the map Gamora burned may have been replicated at some point.
In a moment of weakness, Nebula caves and plugs herself into the Milano’s on-board comsystem. She can use the systems to link up with local datanets and trawl through for any mention of Vormir… her thought train is halted by an internal warning. No connection. Confused, Nebula disconnects then runs through the steps again, slower this time, trying to avoid whatever mistake she must have made. Once again she is presented with the flashing warning, but this time she is certain she did everything correctly.
Her eyes narrow as she tries to ascertain what is going wrong. Maybe her systems retain some damage from her torture at Thanos’s hands? She’d admittedly done a rush job putting herself back together in her haste to face him again, but she is fairly sure she did not miss anything that would limit her efficiency (comfort was another matter, but it had never been one of Nebula’s priorities). Suddenly, it hits her. Thanos had murdered half the universe. Half the people employed to maintain the datanets were dead. Their sudden demise would almost certainly have led to catastrophic and total shutdown. The reason she cannot find a connection is because there is nothing left to connect to.
She sits there, still save for the occasional blink. She has no way to find Vormir. She has no way to find her sister. With a cry, she slams her fist into the comsystem control panel. She gets no satisfaction through destruction, nor any distraction through the pain that blooms as purple blood trickles down her split knuckles. She is just left with the emptiness within her. Later, when Stark returns to the console after his rest, he eyes the new dent warily. For once, he is wise enough to keep any thoughts he has to himself.
...
Later, whilst everyone recovers on Terra after the final battle with Thanos, Nebula’s thoughts return to Vormir. She could easily sneak away. She could go and access the technology of the Terrans and the Asgardians who arrived in the arkship just days ago. She could scan the entire galaxy. Simple probability dictates that there would be at least one intact datanet out there somewhere. She could perform the necessary searches and calculations and extrapolation. She could find Vormir. Depending on where the location turned out to be, she could steal a craft and be there by the end of the cycle. She could, but she will not. There is no point. She already knows her sister is dead.
She knew Gamora was dead the moment she realised Thanos had arrived alone on Titan. She does not retreat into denial over her sister’s death, not like Quill and the fox do at first. She cannot; to be in denial you need hope. Nebula has not had hope for years. It was ripped from her by Thanos then all memories of it beaten out of her still bleeding body.
Gamora had hope. She’d had so much hope. Some of it was her own, fiercely clung to since childhood. Some of it had come from others- from her band of idiots, from those they managed to help, and from those they didn’t have to. She’d offered her hope to Nebula, a whispered confession the last time they’d been together alone.
“I believe I can atone for what I did under Thanos. I can make a difference, I can save lives and ensure little girls do not suffer as we once did. There is hope for the galaxy, and me, yet.”
A pause had followed as Gamora turned to glance at Nebula. There was something in her gaze that had left Nebula unable to hold it. Gamora had laid a gentle hand against her shoulder. Nebula had only tensed slightly; she was beginning to learn that not all contact ended in pain, especially with her sister. Gamora had taken her acceptance of the gesture as a signal to continue.
“And there is hope for you too sister.”
Nebula had not understood her sister’s hope then, does not understand it now. It matters little in the end for her sister’s hope is lost, scattered like ash on the wind. Gamora herself is gone, is dead, and what little chance Nebula ever had of regaining hope died with her.