I'm High on Believing.

@ peter quill.

"What?" There was an honest air of confusion behind the word, it wasn't like she'd actually managed to pull a blade on him, right?

Gamora kept quiet for a few moments then, swimming through the viscous sea of her recent memory to try and figure out what had actually just went on, before she finally felt the cool sting of unsheathed metal against her side somewhere nearer to her original position: she'd must have dropped it in her stupor. She grabbed it instinctually in a slow, methodical motion to be drug up without destroying the bedding and without looking up (what was this, shame or nausea?) she offered it over to him. Maybe this was a hint that she needed to stop sleeping armed.

@ The God of Mischief.

Peter didn’t hesitate; he snatched the knife of her and dropped it as though it were burning him. With a small but well-aimed kick he knocked it under the bed. He didn’t say anything. Not a thank you, not a get out, not a never talk to me again, not an assurance of it wasn’t your fault. He just stood there in silence unsure of what to do. One thing was clear: he needed to sit down. He was trembling, probably the excess adrenaline, and his breathing was all over the place again. He sat on the edge of the bed, his back to her, bent over almost double as he placed a hand over the side of his chest that Yondu had managed to puncture, as though he was checking it hadn’t caved in on itself again, that nothing had burst. He could feel a horrible sensation there, a fluttering tingle but he put that down to his initial panic.

Ages seemed to pass before Peter felt he was calm enough to speak again, though God knew if what he was saying was rational, was right. He took a deep breath despite the protest his ribs gave him. “I’m not mad at you,” he told her evenly. “Unless you meant to do that, in which case I am.”

@ peter quill.

"Right. Thanks." Gamora's speech slightly improved as she began to come back to a solid reality with a small ray of embarrassment reigning control over her cheeks.

Gently she pulled herself up onto her knees, leaning her head against Peter's shoulder, and sighed off the last of the backflips her stomach kept doing. She'd had violent dreams before, lucid ones even, and once or twice she knew she'd sleepwalked but it had been almost literal ages since something like that had happened to her: let alone near all three at the same time. With a silent curse to Thanos', apparently somewhat shoddy, handiwork she placed a small kiss on what was exposed of Peter's neck.

"What time is it?" The question seemed to evaporate from it's whisper around the room, mingling with the sheer flecks of dust that floated around the windows.

@ The God of Mischief.

Peter stiffened when he felt Gamora’s touch, but he didn’t mean it, it was a reflex and he hoped like hell that she’d realise that. He lifted his head and twisted his neck as best he could to look at her. “Time I got back to the Milano,” he said with a small smile.

@ peter quill.

"What really needs done to it?" Gamora tried to reason with him, doing her best to pass off the clear paranoia that Peter carried on his back, with the knowledge that getting pissy after something like this wouldn't help her cause. In all reality she merely hoped that it wasn't some vy to leave her behind after what had just happened.

[sorry gotta run off to work because lame, leave me something emotionally traumatizing]

@ The God of Mischief.

Which given what had happened, was exactly what this was. He reached behind him and grabbed her hand and gave it a squeeze. "Stuff," he said unhelpfully.

[laaaaaaame]

@ peter quill.

Quizzically an eyebrow went up at him as she tried to prevent her face from falling into the feeling of despair she felt blow out her chest. Of course, stuff and things, it was always stuff and things when he was trying to escape situations. For all the charismatic qualities that Quill had about him, original excuses were not his strong suite.

"Well. Hop to it, then." She cracked her best smile with the whisper, debating on taking a shower to try and wash off the situation. Or would that only wake her up more? Regardless, she needed to shed some skin and she tried to fix her deflated emotions.

[fast forward to the morning in a post or two and gamora freaking out trying to rally the troops when she sleeps through two of nova's "Where the fuck are you" calls? and the rocket and peter whining because jackasses?]

@ The God of Mischief.

[agreed]

So Peter snuck off to the Milano (he did give Gamora a cute kiss on the top of the head as he left though to show he really wasn't mad) and got to work calibrating things that had been neglected lately.

At some he took some medication and fell asleep.

And then it was morning!!

@ peter quill.

Sometime after Peter's departure Gamora convinced herself to finally get off of the mattress and shower for her own damn good despite the time that the clock rung out in LED upon the small desk. Steam in the early hours of the morning turned out to be a small luxury that she hadn't expected, she even lingered in it with the excuse that she should braid her hair in an attempt to ease the worry of his absence out of the back of her throat. After a while she left the small sanctuary in trade for the bed, knowing that no one should have a cause to go looking for her, and snuggled into the pillow/up against the smell of Quill for the rest of the night.

It was a faint beeping sound that finally woke Gamora from her second tangle with the sheets of the bed. Slowly she rolled over to grab the com. that was somewhere in the pockets of her pants. She lept from the bed when she finally saw the notification that was bright upon the screen, nearly tossing the poor piece across the room, and scurried to put on her boots, to grab her shit, and to run into her own room to gather up whatever little things she'd originally brought in from the Milano. It was well into the early afternoon, and she'd already missed two other calls from Nova requesting their baby-sitting escort asap. With the small hope that Quill didn't have anything of his own left behind, she wasn't going to collect it for him, she fled out into the hallway to make as loud of a ruckus as she could pounding on walls and doors.

"Get your shit together, we're late!" It was less of a command and more of a frantic ramble as she rushed over to request the elevator.

The sounds had only just barely roused Rocket from his hungover state on the couch of his room but the tone of them suggested something serious was about to go down. Pantsless, his vest halfway off, he popped groggily from behind his door to loo over the scene.

"What the hell is going on?" He asked between a yawn as he tried to fix the fur of his face.

"We're late." Was growled through Gamora's lips against the ding of the elevator as its doors opened.

"For what?" Rocket snapped back as his ears rung with her loudness, it was too early to be this active let alone with a hangover to match it.

"It doesn't matter, come on." She did a little dance as she motioned through the elevator with her arm, jumping from her toes to her heels with anxiety beaming out from somewhere behind her.

"I don't have pants on."

But there was little concern on Gamora's half of exactly what Rocket was wearing as she stalked over and snatched him by his wrist to be carried over, writhing the small bit his vertigo would allow him to and threatening her life, to the elevator.

@ The God of Mischief.

Peter woke up in very different circumstances; Rich was on the Milano shaking him awake.

“What the fuck?” He yelled, his voice groggy. He scrambled into a sitting position, narrowly avoiding bashing his head on the top of his bed. “How the hell did you get on my ship?”

“We need to go. Now.” Rich’s voice was cold, his tone serious. “The others are on their way.”

“How did you get on my ship?” Peter demanded. He scrambled to his feet as Rich headed to the cockpit.

“You left the doors unlocked,” Rich shrugged. “I knocked but you didn’t answer.”

“So you just barged in?” He was fuming. It was just plain rude.

“Had to. We kind of have an emergency on our hands.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Nebula raided a civilian vessel. She has hostages this time.” Rich explained quickly as he sat himself down in what was usually Peter’s seat. When Quill pointed this out to him Rich shot him a small, almost spiteful smile. “With the strength of your pain killers do you seriously think I’m going to let you fucking fly this thing? No. Now go make yourself useful and call Gamora. Tell her I said to hurry the fuck up.”

Quill disappeared to call her, making sure he was well out of of Rich’s earshot.

@ peter quill.

To top things off between the writhing quadruped trying to gnaw off her arm at the elbow and the other two not even bothering to appear Gamora felt her com come to life in her pocket, again. That made four times now within the past few hours, and how many more were to come between this point of limbo and the rush over to the ship? With a frustrated growl, coincidentally as Drax finally came from his room to inspect the the scene, she shook Rocket off of her arm and answered the call.

"I'm working on it!" Growled from her overlapped with a, "She's lost her fucking mind!" hissed from Rocket over his shoulder as he cleaned up his fur and started to make his way out of the doorway that she held open, only to be caught by the collar of his vest.

@ The God of Mischief.

Peter exploded down the line to Gamora. “Why the fuck is your buddy Rich on my ship? He won’t let me pilot, he won’t leave, he let himself in… He reckons we have to go or something because Nebula has a civilian vessel. Just why the fuck is he here?” He demanded again without letting Gamora get a word in.

Groot appeared from his room. He looked terrified. “I am Groot?” He asked Rocket. What’s going on? Why is she holding you like that?

@ peter quill.

"I don't know." Gamora spat vehemently in reply as Rocket, again, tried to rip her arm from her torso before looking up and offering Groot a half assed smile accompanied by a fakely sweet, "We have to go, come on."

She motioned again, this time with Rocket in tow (his jaws taut somewhere on the skin between her wrist and elbow), for the other two to hurry into the elevator as she released the "Hold door" option and instead selected the ground floor option. Hurriedly Drax sauntered over to the tiny movable room and fixed his shoulders into it squarely, not daring to ask what they were so late to do.

@ The God of Mischief.

Groot stepped into the elevator, shooting Rocket a concerned look. What was going on? Why was she manhandling him? This was confusing.

"Well when you get here you need to get rid of him!" Peter snapped. He disconnected the call and headed back to the cockpit to see with horror that Rich had managed to fire up all of the Milano's systems. He was about to ask how he'd done that but stopped, remembering Dey had had Nova rebuild the Milano after they'd defeated Ronan. They must have kept the details for it filed away somewhere. The outright violation of what he viewed as his privacy made him feel sick.

@ peter quill.

After several awkward minutes of a violent, spitting explanation of the situation/a plea with Groot to take Gamora out for good from Rocket and one stop on a floor for a family who reconsidered even requesting the elevator they finally hit ground floor. Ignoring every stare that got thrown at her Gamora stalked forth, walking until she hit the doors and then running, with Rocket still trying to eat her alive because loosing an arm was better than leaving the half naked, definitely hungover raccoon on Xandar. The two/three city blocks took her no time to conquer even with her arm being compromised, she'd considered grabbing him at his nape like a kit but figured it'd only worsen everything when she finally set him down, and even opening the main doorway to the Milano proved to be trivial: she was, unfortunately?, getting used to this kind of life style.

"We made it." She declared breathlessly as she crawled staggered into the main area of the ship, trying to shake Rocket from her. "I'm sorry we're late."

@ The God of Mischief.

Rich reached for his own com and informed Nova Prime that he, and the Guardians, would be taking off within the next ten minutes. He ignored Quill’s shout of protest as he began to fiddle with the control console once more.

Fuming, Peter went over to Gamora. “He needs to go,” he muttered. “Right now.” He glanced down to Rocket and informed him he had a message on the com from someone named Lylla before he switched back to talking to Gamora. “He’s in my seat and won’t let me touch anything what the hell did you agree to with him anyway?”

@ peter quill.

"Hold this for me." Gamora grumbled, furious with the overall situation, as she took Rocket by his scruff and threw him at Peter's chest.

She did her best to not stalk over to where Rich sat, trying to keep an air of professionalism around her and failing miserably at it, to try and sort things out before they left the atmosphere with an unexpected guest. She stood behind him with a hand on his head rest, leering over the controls with a critical eye (praying that Quill had managed to close everything up in the engine room before falling asleep) over the readings.

"This wasn't the plan." She spoke almost sweetly, impressing herself even with how well she was able to bury the anger in the center of her throat.

"What the fuck is going on here?" Rocket spat from somewhere behind the other two as he helped himself off of Quill's shirt, fixing his vest as he did so. "Has she lost her damn mind?"

@ The God of Mischief.

Quill followed Gamora, he shouted over his shoulder that Rocket had a message from Lylla on the com.

"No," Rich agreed. "It wasn't, but things escalated. We're the advance guard so to speak, Nova will be sending reinforcements once we've scouted Sanctuary II out." He casually took the Milano off the ground and into the atmosphere.

[terrible post but worried internet will die if i type too long ]

@ peter quill.

"Well," Gamora sighed, her mind only slightly changed with the new information, "That escalated quickly."

She knew in the back of her mind though that it was still a poor excuse for basically stealing a civilian vehicle on Rich's behalf, let alone a good enough excuse for Peter to calm down. She only hoped that the two wouldn't fight to the death, or eject one another out of the airlock: whichever came first. With a small shrug she seated herself to his right, not terribly content but enough so that she was willing to grapple the situation.

Behind Gamora Rocket's ears perched up at the sound of Lylla's name escaping Quill's mouth, quickly he rushed over to the main com of the ship and leafed through the messages (some of them older than he knew Quill and most of them from angry women) until he found the one that he'd been searching for. Eagerly he selected it and awaited the reload on the tips of his toes.

@ The God of Mischief.

Peter stood just behind Rocket, acting like he wasn’t listening in on the message. He couldn’t help but be nosey about it: it was his ship and if Rocket had managed to pull a girl, he wanted to see what she looked like. He didn’t know what to think when another rodent sprang up on the screen.

Lylla was smiling in her message, albeit shakily. On the whole, she looked terrible. She hadn’t been kidding when she’d said about being a bad flyer. Her message was short but sweet as she thanked him for the night before and told him she hadn’t lied when she’d said she’d call him. With a quick goodbye and a promise to call back unless he called her first the message cut out.

“So she’s a weasel?” Peter asked. “A stoat?”