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The din of the battle fades slowly from her senses. First, she becomes aware of colors beyond red-- the blues and beiges of her enemies' bodies and the dull browns of the planet beneath her come into focus just before the green of her own fingers, gripped tight around her sword. Then, it's the smells; the iron-like tang of blood and the sulfuric odor of the explosions and fires. She flexes her fingers on her sword's hilt and feels not tired, exactly, and certainly not weary, but there's an ache in her that goes beyond today's rapidly healing cuts and bruises.
Gamora, the deadliest woman in the galaxy, wrenches her sword's blade out of a man's chest and kicks his limp body away from her. She lets out a breath and closes her eyes, enjoying the retreating sounds of the fray.
"Hey! Want to go get a drink?"
She recognizes that voice, but almost wishes she didn't. She blinks open her eyes one at a time to gaze at Richard Rider, the human who currently holds the title of Nova Prime. He sets himself down a few feet away from her and pulls off his helmet, revealing unkempt brown hair and a sweat-streaked brow. She thinks, for a moment, that he looks better a little scuffed up from battle, less pristine and whole.
"He-llo? Gamora?"
He's still waiting for a response, so she walks towards him and grabs him by the front of his uniform with one hand. She takes her dirtied sword and runs it along the side of his chest, the flat of the blade just touching him. He shivers involuntarily, and she smiles.
When her blade is clean, she sheathes it and nods to him.
"Yes, Richard-human. Buy me a drink."
--
He picks out the spot and she lets him, since where they sit doesn't really matter to her. But when he points out a table there's a man already sitting there. He looks about as human as Richard, with lighter hair and a more crooked nose. He's wearing a blue-and-red uniform jacket that's unbuttoned to reveal a bandaged chest, and when he spots Nova Prime his worn face stretches into an ironic smile.
"Rich," he says warmly. "You live to see another day."
Richard steps forward as the man stands and claps him on the back. "As long as there's work left to be done, right?" he says, and Gamora thinks he must be joking by the way he guffaws out a laugh afterwards.
"Gamora, right?" the new man says to her a moment later. "The deadliest woman in the whole d'ast galaxy?"
She lifts her head and can see right over his, so she bares all her teeth in a fierce smile and barely nods at him.
"Right, right," Richard says all at once. "Pete, this is Gamora. Gamora, this is Peter Quill. Star Lord, if you're feeling fancy."
"I'm not." Her expression barely changes as she regards Quill. He doesn't have the build of a soldier but his eyes are dark and intense, and she's seen him more that once since this war has begun. Before that, too, though she can't care to remember the circumstances.
They all take their seats and Richard bounces off to procure drinks. Gamora leans her sword against the table and tries to decide whether she wants to scare this Peter Quill off.
"Guess you live to see another day, too," he says, and it isn't so much a joke this time as an assessment, a mark of respect.
"I always do," she replies without much inflection. It's true enough, except for the one time it wasn't. He doesn't need to know about that time, though, so she leans back in her chair and raises both her brows. "Your opinion matters to him."
Peter Quill scrunches his nose and shakes his head. "My opinion shouldn't matter to anyone," he says, and she can tell he believes the words. "Me and Rich are both from Earth, more or less. The least we can do is look out for each other in this flarking war."
She could say that she's looking out for Richard, too. But she isn't, really, aside from having drinks with him when time allows and sharing her bed with him even when it doesn't. He's warm, like white light, bright and easy. Sometimes he looks at her too closely until she no longer wants to meet his gaze. Sometimes he holds her from behind and kisses the back of her neck and she thinks that must be what it's like to feel cherished.
But most of the time it's like this, lukewarm beer and too-bright bars, their clothes still stained with dirt and blood smeared across their faces. It is nothing other than what it is.
"Sentiment like that will get you both killed." She lets the words fall like stones on the table between them, and though Peter Quill looks up like he's startled, he doesn't say anything else. A moment later Richard is back with three drinks, and he passes them around with a bright smile and Gamora can't help looking at him too closely.
--
Two weeks later, she sees Peter Quill in battle. He carries guns, which she's never cared for, but he uses them as often to point and direct as to shoot. Their rag-tag forces follow his instructions, ebbing and flowing like the sea around him.
She tries not to compare every man she meets to Thanos, and with Peter Quill it's easy not to. He is not large nor imposing. There is no depth of planning or purpose to him. He lives from moment to moment, acting rashly but often wisely.
The third time they pass on the field of battle, he points north-west and tilts his head to the side, miming a man with a broken neck.
Five minutes later she's on a hilltop, surrounded by corpses. If she's north-west of where she was before and the soldiers around her all have broken necks, well, it's not as if she actually took an order from Peter Quill. No, it's all merely a coincidence.
--
That night, water ebbs and flows around her in a pale mockery of the sea as she sinks into a bath and lets Richard Rider massage the kinks out of her shoulders. He has a light touch, and if she didn't know better she'd think that that would make him less of a warrior. He winds her hair into a damp twist and lays it over one of her shoulders, then digs the heels of his hands into her back until she arches up at his touch.
"Pete says," he murmurs at one point, "that we just might win this thing."
She hasn't really thought about the final course of this battle; she just assumes the side she'll be on will win. She thinks of Peter Quill standing on a ledge and shouting orders.
"If he doesn't get crushed by debris the next time he blows up a ship," she says bitingly, "he might survive to see that."
Richard laughs and she can feel it, leaning back against his chest.
"He won't die," he says with certainty. "There's still work to be done."
--
In the end, all three of them almost die. It happens at different moments-- a lucky shot that hits Richard's left shoulder; a blade cutting through Gamora's stomach and then her leg; and finally the chunk of space debris that falls onto Peter Quill after a brilliantly-executed strategy to bring down a whole fleet.
After the last, Richard paces back and forth in her rooms like a man possessed. He pays her no attention and she doesn't particularly care, not until he starts mumbling under his breath.
She sneers at him when she says, "You're useless like this. Go wait at his bed, if you're that worried."
What she doesn't expect is for him to turn on his heel and do just that.
--
She does not love Richard Rider. She doesn't know if she's ever loved anyone. Adam Warlock was a case unto himself; she found peace with him. Thanos raised her and guided her; she owes him something for that, even if it isn't affection.
Sometimes Richard Rider makes her feel happy and sated. When she has her bare feet against his shoulders and his hands are on her thighs, she looks over the top of his head and at his helmet, sitting in the corner of her room. She thinks, this man has both power and kindness in him. She doesn't know which one she values more.
Once, when a woman lashes out at Richard-human and manages that blow to his shoulder, Gamora screams with rage and pulls the offender back by her hair. She doesn't need a sword, just chokes the woman until she can feel the last breath squeak out of her. She wants to protect him, but that doesn't mean anything.
She puts up with Peter Quill at their table at the bar. She listens to his jokes even if she does not laugh at them. And she watches the way that Richard watches Peter Quill, with adoration is his wide, young eyes.
She knows what love is, because she sees it every time Richard looks at the Star Lord.
--
She tells him this.
He laughs. "What are you talking about? Pete and I, we're--"
"Bring him here," she orders. "I will prove it to you."
After he's left, she isn't sure why she bothered. What does she care for the love of humans? The love of anyone, really?
In the end, she decides she wants to prove that she can recognize it. So the next time she says it isn't what she feels, it will be only the truth.
--
His cheeks are pink, the entire time. His heart beats too fast when she can feel it, her back against his chest. His breath comes too often, hot across the back of her neck. He doesn't talk much, which is out of character, for him.
Peter Quill takes some convincing, but when he agrees he is gentle rather than timid. He kisses Richard on the brow, and then she kisses him on the lips. He isn't unattractive, but she wouldn't choose him for himself.
Richard gets to her first with his lips and his tongue, and she's still basking in the aftermath when Peter Quill approaches Richard. She watches them from one end of the bed, their slow movements and shy smiles. Peter Quill leans forward to push the hair back from Richard's brow and the spell breaks; they both laugh and laugh.
She wants to laugh, too, to share some of that happiness. But they are too concerned with each other and she is too concerned with watching them, assessing.
She doesn't expect them both to turn towards her with matching smiles. She doesn't expect them to spend more time on her than each other, for Richard to whisper time and again how beautiful she is into her hair. She doesn't expect Peter Quill to kiss her throat and murmur thanks against her skin after he has.
It isn't the worst way she's ever spent a night. They curl up on either side of her afterwards, and though she lies awake between them something feels calmed inside of her.
She doesn't know if she loves them, either of them. But she knows that with them she feels a sense of belonging.
--
She loses them both in the same day. The irony of it is that Thanos and Adam Warlock are gone, too. The others remain but their presence itches her skin and grates on her nerves.
"Call me if they ever make it back," she snaps at Mantis one day. And then she leaves.
--
Peter Quill returns from the Cancerverse with haunted eyes and a broken spirit. He spends long hours awake, drinking coffee and hunched over a console, typing out frenzied words that amount to nothing.
She knows, because she watches him. She knows, because he came back alone.
She's upgraded her armor-- it's deep green and black and none of the colors she associates with the now-broken Guardians. She pulls the hood of her long cloak down as she enters their old bar, and finds Peter Quill sitting at her-- hers and Richard's and his-- table.
"What are you doing here," she says, and it's hardly a question.
"You're not going to welcome me home?" he responds, raising his glass and not looking at her.
"Your home is Earth," she says flatly. He looks her in the eyes now and laughs. There's almost some humor in it, and she can almost mirror the sentiment. Flarking Earth.
She takes a seat beside him and puts her feet up on the table, uncaring. He turns his chair to face her and sighs, elbows against his knees and head in his hands.
"I'm sorry," he says, and he sounds so defeated she can believe him.
"Why did you come back," she asks without inflection.
He gives her a twisted smile. "I'm sorry."
She doesn't think about it before she punches him, straight in the chest and back into the wall. The barkeep and patrons know better than to interfere, so she hits him again and again. He slumps against the wall and takes it, doesn't even raise his hands to defend himself.
She shoves him away after long moments, disgusted.
He rises to his knees and shakes his head. "I know, Gamora," he says. It's the same ironic, self-deprecating tone he's been using since she's known him. There are layers to it, guilt and humor and cynicism and hope. She knows them well, now, and she wishes she didn't.
She knows Richard, too. His too bright presence and too hopeful words. Telling her to make something of herself, to be better. What a joke.
"I know," Peter Quill says again, and she doesn't even know what he's talking about. He's on his feet, now, and putting a hand on her shoulder. She doesn't push him away. "I loved him too."
She doesn't bother to correct Peter Quill. Instead she just shakes her head and says, "There's work left to be done."
Until Richard Rider returns, the two of them-- who loved him and who he loved-- will have to do it.