Otalgia

Nebula never wins, but she’s concluded that everyone expects it. Even Thanos – especially Thanos – perhaps that is the one thing going through her father’s mind every time he extracts another piece of her mind, body, or soul and replaces it with metal and circuits. Perhaps that is what makes his grin speak of dark glee whenever she is bested; she is there for his amusement, to torture and maim and make into a shell of a warrior.

Her mind is not so singular, however. She’s never been quite as focused as her father’s or even her sister, her opponent for all intents and purposes, Gamora’s.

Gamora always wins, and that should be enough – so says Thanos – to spur Nebula onward and let bloodthirst and ambition take control. He doesn’t understand, however. He can’t when Gamora’s throwing Nebula over cliff-sides and onto crushing beams that bend Nebula’s spine into irregular shape and punching her hard enough to shatter Nebula’s ribs.

He doesn’t understand Nebula’s determination to connect with Gamora outweighs her determination to make Thanos proud. To be as broken as he enjoys making her day after day.

He doesn’t understand how Nebula ponders the meaning of Gamora’s questions, when they are sleeping beneath artificial stars in their separated cots. Or how Gamora is inherently kind, giving her leftover rations to Nebula to ‘help her bulk up’ and offering her hand to help Nebula up, no matter how many times Nebula forces herself to reject that hand. Nebula has hope inside, still, somewhere, that if she could have anything at all, it would be mutuality from the one constant in Nebula’s life that doesn’t destroy her just for fun.  

It is easy to love Gamora. It is easy, and that is what makes it that much more difficult to fight her.

That, and the music that is almost always droning in her mind.

“Why are you always daydreaming?”

It is one of those nights where neither Nebula nor Gamora can properly sleep. They are both waiting and ready and anxious for tomorrow’s mission, and as she stares at the faux night sky above their “room”, Nebula tries her best to not be cynical. She is sure, deep down, that she will not defeat Gamora tomorrow – or ever, but she defies what is surely Thanos’s logic.

It is already difficult to think when she can hear music coming from all sides of the room. Quiet, but constant noise, like a blaring alarm that isn’t genuinely that unpleasant.

“I do not dream.” Nebula replies.

“Yes, you do.” Gamora insists, turning in her bed to look at Nebula from across their quarters. “When we fight, you are never entirely there. Today, you looked like you were going to cry before I even hit you.”

Nebula looks back, and glares in the dark. It was undeniable that during training, she had reacted much slower than she would have normally, and normal was still too slow compared to Gamora. The thoughts in Nebula’s mind, no matter what they were, coincided with the music that clouded all else, and with a sense of dread that wasn’t entirely her own.

She had not been feeling her best that day, it was true, but Nebula had no real explanation as to why. She cannot, in the end, find words enough to challenge Gamora’s thinking

Her mind fills up the uneven silence instead.

‘I’m not in love

So don’t forget it

It’s just a silly phase I’m goin’ through’

They’ve invaded many moons and planets in search of what Thanos has called “the ultimate pieces” of some grand puzzle that he does not elaborate on. Ever.

Nebula would not think to ask, but Gamora may have. She seems more confident on their raids, more specific in how she examines for whatever it is they’re searching for.

            It isn’t surprising in the least, even if it still sends a spike of jealousy and of hurt into Nebula’s chest.

They crash into a brothel and send everything from tacky decorum to loosely-bolted limbs of comfort bots flying in their wake. Nebula is the first to give up, certain that such a location for divine weaponry could not be this one whorehouse.   

The sounds of Gamora smashing a wide-glass wall onto two frightened individuals, one made of metal and the other in red rags, fades as Nebula hears the beginnings of a song in her mind.

Not again. She whispers inside her own head, to some entity that exists outside of her now enhanced sensory faculties. It’s futile to try and tune out those songs, ones that have been imprinted so thoroughly in her brain – organic or cybernetic – that she wonders if this has all been an elaborate technique of torture from Thanos.

She doesn’t officially know the names of the songs that play, but she knows this one and she knows that this is one of her least favorites.

Nebula returns to searching to try and focus on some other thing, but she isn’t appeased by blue and green blood coating her fists so much as she is intriqued when she finds a speaker in one of the brothel’s halls. The music from that speaker filters into her ears, and Nebula concentrates enough to successfully deter the other song from finishing.

They leave the moon of whores and mongrels, empty-handed. Gamora is beyond frustrated, but Nebula is silent as Un Deye Gon Hayd permeates her own little world.

 When Gamora is gone – gone for good – Nebula feels true anguish and rage course through her mangled body.

            She could have endured Gamora’s detached wins a thousand times over for a thousand more years, but to be left behind without anything more – it’s enough to join forces with a zealous fanatic and destroy an entire, militant planet against Thanos’s wishes.

The songs in her mind are often lighter now than they had been before, in the amorphous past between being young and being ripped apart. She is ‘free’ of Thanos, but not free of her new purpose – vengeance.

The planets and moons that she rips apart now may lead her to a new weapon made perfectly down to the last golden detail.

And maybe, if she finds her sister out there and kills her, the contrast between her pain and bright, happy music playing every day will no longer be worth pondering.

 She hears the sounds growing louder and louder – but it isn’t the battle on Planet Ego that she’s hearing – it’s the constant refrain and accursed melody that she remembers from childhood better than she would her original body that she’d been born with. It deafens the destruction around them until all she can sense are an array of instruments and the visage of Peter Quill coming toward her, with words like ‘batteries’ and ‘tape’ dying from his mouth amid the din and fray.

‘To the spirit in the sky

That's where you're gonna go when you die

When you die and they lay you to rest

You're gonna go to the place that's the best’

Peter stops in front of her, and his expression is comical.

“Do you hear…?” He talks with his hands, gesturing at thin air. “Is it loud to you?”

“All is.” Nebula answers flatly while the ground shakes and rumbles – while her stomach turns. “My hearing is far superior to yours.”

“No, I mean, do you hear music?” Peter exclaims, practically shouting. He’s not afraid to stand right in front of her, and acknowledge her like she isn’t a daughter of Thanos, but an actual person.

This is the man with whom Gamora joined forces to stop Ronan. And he is an idiot. A now fully-mortal and reckless and annoying idiot that would die a thousand times over for his friends’ behalves.  

This is her soulmate.

Of course, even her soulmate would prefer Gamora – would prefer to team up with her and become a family with her – over Nebula herself.

 No one is happy with the epiphany. But there’s no time to further explain it when they prepare Yondu’s funeral.

Peter Quill is so distraught and devastated that his musical mind is silent all throughout the ravager captain’s eulogy, and Nebula is just as silent – although she’d never been that inclined to go looking for a song to fill their minds with in the first place. It doesn’t last long however. Peter has some new musical device and plays it so that the sound dwarfs the explosion of fireworks outside of their shell of a ship. A thought comes unbidden into her cacophonic mind as she prepares a shuttle to make a getaway. She knows, now, that Peter always sought music for comfort.  

Nebula is poised to leave. To fight Thanos and – she is willing to accept it – to die trying.

Still, Gamora takes her defensive posture and throws it to the wayside. She envelops her sister in her arms and embraces Nebula for what is truly the first time. Gamora calls Nebula her sister, and means it.

Nebula’s lips twitch into something like a smile.

She stays, but the idea of being a garden – Guardian of the galaxy leaves a bad taste in her mouth. As does walking around without a purpose in their humdrum Quadrant, around the talking fox and the moronic bore of a destroyer, and around the painfully adorable sapling and the insect woman, and her sister. So, Nebula finds a silent corner of the ship to seek refuge in.

Until a song begins playing. And the song is Peter himself, come to stand near her alcove and shift from foot to foot with his musical device clutched in his sweaty palm.

“I want… I mean...” Peter says, trying to sound confident even when there’s that audible ache in his tone. “I know you don’t care about what I want, but… I wanna get to know you.”

“There is nothing about me that you need to get to know.” Nebula states. “You have been told all there is, by my sister no doubt.”  

“Well, sure, I guess.” Peter scratches the back of his head, eyes creasing as he stares at the tectonic floor below them. “I mean, you hear my music all the time, so… I could make the argument that there’s nothing else about me that you need to know, either.”

 She stares at him shrewdly, looking fierce perhaps, as Thanos had wanted her to, judging by Peter’s nervous expression. She looks him up and down just… because. There was never any precedent or anticipation when it came to finding her soulmate, not for Nebula. She wonders if Peter felt the same way, or if his upbringing drove those thoughts away too.

There was only ever the faint constant of music droning in her mind.

“I don’t care for the Pina Colada song.” Nebula looks away, then her head swings in his direction, but she falls just shy of meeting his gaze. “It is terrible. Their relationship was built on nothing.”

When she does gather enough curiosity to combat her own apathy, Nebula’s dark eyes focus on the face of Peter Quill while he’s sitting beside her. He’s smiling, happily, almost childlike because she deigned to share her opinion on one of the songs in his arsenal – even if that opinion is negative.  

“Yeah, I figured that out a while back too.” He laughs quietly, goofily, while sweeping a hand through his undulating reddish hair.

Nebula can hear something playing faintly then, and instantly recognizes the chorus of ‘I’m Not In Love’ repeating like a broken record inside of herself. She doesn’t know if the song is coming from Quill or if it’s because of her, but looking at him now she dreads how her vision lingers on his soft smile and how whatever’s left of her that is organic relaxes beneath the gaze of those laughing green eyes.

“We should find one you like better.” Peter says, somewhere in the distance, behind the soothing synth and strings that is no doubt playing in both of their heads.

_

It is easy to love Peter. It is easy, and that is what makes it that much more difficult to not tap your foot to the beat.