Adaliah
He woke up with a knot in his back, something stiff which pulled at the rest of his aching bones with it. His head was pounding and the lights were too bright. A groan fell from his lips.
Someone... someone was touching him.
Pepper?
No, the thoughts which followed Pepper's name were too harsh to consider. A sharpness in his head pulled him from such dark thoughts. There was a painful ache behind his eyes. They kept the lights at bay, but barely. Warm air puffed against his eyelids.
A soft hand ran down his chin.
He opened his eyes, analyzing his surroundings. Someone gasped and the hand disappeared. Thin, carbon and ceramic tiles mixed with titanium alloys covered the walls.
A group of blue, red, and green individuals sat together on the opposing metallic bench. The families huddled on the small seat, all of them reassuring one another. Long, flickering lights shone down upon him.
His bench was empty.
“Where will you go?”
“To Thanos,” Nebula whispered bitterly, glaring at the emptiness in front of their ship.
She hadn’t seen another planet since they’d left Titan. Raaguleh turned away from the blackness of space. She frowned at Nebula before returning to her piloting.
“You do not know where he is.”
“Exactly. What better time to start looking?”
He was lying on something hard, a thin blanket draped over him. Nebula was here. They were safe, for now.
Ha, safe. Their safety was as certain as him winning the lottery. Well, actually, he knew enough people that he could pull some strings...
But no amount of money could fix this problem. His influence, his suits, his friends... His chest rattled with inhaled dirt of Titan and something wet, a truth he dare not name.
A falsity, a lie, an impossible illusion of nothing more than fear.
He had fallen victim to nightmares and false memories of a frightened mind. This was nothing new. One of the boys began bickering with the woman holding; his red skin was dotted with large bruises.
Actually, this was the definition of new. He had left earth- he had worked alongside aliens. There were creatures which could feel others emotions, a wizard who manipulated reality, someone hateful enough to kill-
“Have we met before?” He asked softly, smiling at the little girl.
She gasped and pulled away, her approaching blue hand shrinking back to her waist.
He chuckled, before slowly sitting up. The blanket fell to the floor as he propped himself against the ship’s wall. The girl was small, just a head higher than their seats.
Her eyes widened as she walked back to their bench.
She joined a small group of children and adults. All of them were bruised and dirty, and all of them were staring at him. He thought of the village he had saved all those years ago, and the boy who cried out to his father as a gun was pressed to his head.
It seemed like a lifetime ago.
A tired woman smiled at him as the children focused on this addition to the ship. Who was this man?
“I know, I know,” he said with a nod. “I’m gorgeous.”
They all laughed. The blue girl hid her mouth as she smiled. He felt himself relax with their giggles and hopeful eyes. Okay, this he could do. He placed a hand over his chest plate in mock offense.
“Excuse me, blue man girl?”
Her nose scrunched up as he spoke, crinkling the freckles dotting her blue skin.
“Ever seen them on broadway? I guess... blue woman’s group in your case,” he mused.
“But it’s true. Where I come from I am the beauty standard.”
He stuck his tongue out, staring down at it as the children laughed. He raised his eyebrows.
“See? Perfect quality,” he moved his hand across the room as he spoke.
“You could cover the entire galaxy and you’d never find one even half as good. “
34 pairs of eyes blinked back at him. He raised his eyebrows. Nebula watched the interaction silently.
“You guys speak English? I mean you’d have to speak to English or you wouldn’t laugh at my jokes and boundary breaking as I am I can only speak so many languages. So either everyone here understands English or everyone is susceptible to peer pressure.”
He raised his eyebrows as a child began to speak. “Actually, never mind I’ll teach you.”
“You,” he pointed to the blue girl as he smiled.
He waved her over.
“Come have a seat,” he said with a grin, patting the spot next to him.
“And I will not hold you accountable for stroking my beard as I too am impressed by its punctilious shape.”
The girl smiled at him.
She wore a thick, red scarf which hung from her neck to the floor and a pair of dark goggles which rested below her... were those ears? She had long, blue tendrils at the top of her head which curled and bumped her arms as she moved.
She looked at the floor when he spoke, her hands wrapped in the tendrils.
“But we’ll save that word for another day. I’ve gotta say I’m impressed. I’m sure you know this one, do you know hello?“
She nodded, still looking at the floor. A shy student, he could work with that. He graduated from MIT after all.
“What’s your name?”
She shook her head, remembering her mother’s advice. Before the soldiers had invaded and her father had grabbed her and her brother into his arms, she had warned her. Her name was her identity. The other children stared at him, worried this would be the end of the game.
But she nodded again before stepping forward.
She placed a blue hand on his cheek, mumbling to herself. He said nothing as her soft hand danced over the dark stubble. She pulled her hand away with a pout.
He laughed as she rubbed a hand over her own cheek.
“Not good,” she said, placing her hands on her cheeks.
He laughed. “Should mine be like yours?”
“Yours- yours too...” she frowned, “too messy.”
His grin widened. “That’s amazing! So you speak multiples languages.”
She smiled, her brown eyes meeting his.
Oh.
“I speak all kinds!”
Her shyness disappeared with each word. “I want- I want more of yours. Your words.”
She grinned, “I want to be like you.”
“I was just trying to be like you,” Peter sighed.
His brown eyes were filled with hurt and sincerity. He frowned at the kid, crossing his arms. He’d regret his next words.
“I wanted you to be better.”
“Adaliah.”
The memory stopped. The lights flickered, voices in foreign language murmured questions he could never answer. Questions he could never answer-
“Mist Tark? My name’s- my name is Ad-Adaliah and I brought my brother here.” She pointed at a child with color like the ocean who had fallen asleep on a green man.
“Raaguleh brought us- she brought us here.” Her eyes widened with the story.
“Cause the sky was losing its puzzle pieces and- and we couldn’t stay in a puzzle with missing pieces cause- cause nothing would fit. Right?”
Her big, brown eyes stared back at him. Something in his chest ached, as if his arc reactor was still a part of him. Something in him was crumbling to pieces with those brown eyes staring back at him.
He smiled. “Yes?”
She stuck out her tongue, her eyes bright.
He laughed, his head falling backwards with the noise. “Top quality, Adaliah. You’ve beaten me.”
She grinned.