i am sure, in the main mcu timeline, that there's a storming phase as far as “group development” goes. rocket and nebs are both shit at communication, relationships, and grief — so like, honestly it's a miracle they both survived. early in their new partnership, there's probably a resurgence of unhealthy survival/coping mechanisms (getting intoxicated, breaking shit, threatening to shoot people/each other), and a lot of fighting.

and then someone gets injured, or gets too drunk, or needs a repair done to one of their many prosthetics, and eventually, rocket and nebula begin to move beyond simply trying (and failing) to navigate the shared trauma of the snap. i like to think that while they are in touch with the avengers pretty regularly and willing to help out on terra occasionally, they actually spend most of their time starside. kraglin's still piloting the third quadrant and they often use that as a base of operations, and they're trying to help as many people as they can in the sky while still making some money on the side. not because they feel an intrinsic urge to help — not yet. any impulse to do good for goodness' sake might be present, but both of these two morons like to bury it under layers and layers and layers of cynicism and general assholery.

no, the reason they're doing this is simply because it's what their friends would have wanted. nebs has always identified with rocket in some ways (she did save him on berhert — probably saw herself in his prickly behavior toward the others) and she knows her sister would want her to look out for him. meanwhile rocket thinks he’s the one doing the adopting: taking nebula under his wing because it’s what gams would have wanted — then trying to continue the spotty legacy of the guardians because it’s what she and pete would have thought was important.

however — despite that drive to honor their friends — i think they're both a little listless, a little chaotic in their approach to being guardians/a family. they don't have a whole lotta direction. and they don't really want anything outside of the bubble of the two of them (three, if you count kraglin). sure, maybe they start liking some of the avengers — one or two of 'em, and just a little — but the connection isn't the same.

how could it be?

then scott lang pops outta the quantum realm with some new ideas about how to fix things, and suddenly, both nebula and rocket have a renewed focus. there are goals. there's possibility. there's hope.

and it drives them forward.

now let's say we’re in a timeline where you exist.

i like to imagine you met rocket when he was still the crankiest jackass, just an absolute piece of work. let's say you run into the guardians just after volume two, when he's finally gotten used to the other idiots, and he's feeling very protective of his new little family. he does not frickin’ like interlopers.

and yet here you are: an intruder, fucking up the dynamic. why are you here? what do you want? are you even trustworthy?

he's so fuckin’ resentful of you just showing up and fitting in, of everyone just loving you. meanwhile, he's had to put in all this work to be less of a jackass. to make amends.

for fuckssake, you didn't even have to put up with the gory early days, when there were only two cots on the milano. they’d all had to rotate through those two nasty mattresses, both of which had smelled like quill's rancid spunk. you weren't there for the loss of groot, and you didn't help kill a planet, and you never had to deal with rocket inciting a war with the sovereign.

and what exactly the fuck do you even bring to the table, anyway? sentimentality and sparkly eyes?

useless.

hell, you're still getting your space legs the first time you step foot on the third quadrant.

… all of which is to say that the two of you get off to a challenging start. but at some point, after he stops picking on you and you stop taking it personally (and who knows which happens first, or how), you start to ease into each others' company. maybe… maybe you’d saved his life. maybe you’d saved groot's. maybe you’d done something reckless but brilliant, or maybe you’d made him laugh so hard one night that he’d shot blubber ale out his nose (which had burned with every breath for the next two cycles), or maybe it's a hundred quiet and unassuming kindnesses that had chipped away at his hard-candy coating until you’d managed to get to the sweetness inside.

either way, once you're in, you're in.

still, he has to figure out that you’re not so bad before he can figure out that he likes you. and he has to figure out that he likes you before he can take any action, or welcome any from you. i like to imagine he figures out all his feelings right before the benatar stumbles on the distress call from the statesman. right before you find all those dead asgardians and the grandmaster's slaves, floating loosely amongst the stars.

right before it all goes to hell.

i like to think he realizes that you've actually been flirting with him lately — brashly or bashfully — and that he should respond. that he wants to respond. that he needs to respond. maybe you even get a few rotations together: testing out what this means for each of you, figuring out who's allowed to know, deciding what to call each other and what your relationship will look like.

lots of cuddles — though probably still in the secret darkness of your bunk. or his.

maybe lots of orgasms, too. if you get that far.

then it all falls apart.

if you're snapped—

—well, rocket won't let himself think about it at first. thanos is still out there somewhere and the avengers seem to think that if they can find the mad titan, they can undo all this shit. rocket only half-believes it himself, of course. no amount of wishful thinking ever undid any of the losses he's lived through before.

but for you, he's willing to try.

he focuses in on finding thanos, ignoring the knot in his belly that tells him that it won’t change a goddamn thing. he doesn't eat. he doesn't sleep. the only thing he pays attention to is getting those stones back, getting thanos to undo this, getting you and groot and the others back. rocket’s eyes feel like sakaaran sand and knowhere skulldust, and the only thing he’s consumed in days is shitty terran coffee.

but then they find 0259-S, and he's taking everybody up to outer space under nebula's guidance, and he thinks maybe — maybe—

and then thor fucks it all up.

maybe that's unfair. it seems likely that everything was already fucked up, and that rocket — just like always — didn't let himself believe it until it was too late.

i think there's a different intensity to this rocket, unseen in the main mcu timeline. i think his anger burns brighter than we've seen it before — he's meaner than he's ever been — but i also think it burns out faster. rocket has spent so much of his life in this particular stage of grief, after all. no, i think after — oh, let’s say a quarter or two — he moves firmly into bargaining.

and stays there.

he doesn't realize it, of course. after all, rocket's always been a superstitious guy. in the comics, i'm told he's even sometimes represented as a bit compulsive. so i don't believe he consciously thinks, if we save ten planets every year for ten years, i can get my family back. it's nothing as obvious as that. no. instead, i think he just imagines that he's continuing the guardians’ legacy because it's what you'd want — what you and gamora and pete would want.

and then, at some point, the work becomes all-consuming. he’s constantly scanning the transmissions for distress-calls, sleeping less and less, acting more recklessly with every new mission. the guardians’ account grows fat with units because it’s not like he’s stopped charging people — he just doesn’t turn any jobs down.

some of the less self-involved avengers begin to take notice. cap tries to get rocket to come to one of his support group sessions — even offers to do private circles just for rocket and nebs and krags. rocket refuses, of course, despite that kraglin and nebula are both — worriedly and willingly — receptive to the idea.

meanwhile, kraglin is trying to use the third quadrant as an excuse to slow things down, saying the old ship can't keep up with the benatar so maybe they should take fewer jobs this cycle. nebula gets into yelling matches with rocket: telling him between insults that he's running himself ragged, that he's going to end up getting killed. he only yells back to tell her to stay on terra if she's going to be a big baby about the workload on the benatar.

she ends up drugging him a few times, just to get him to sleep.

then they get into a fight about that, too — the worst fight yet. poor kraglin is hiding in his bunk, scared to come out. and the thing is — they’re not even fighting because of the violation of rocket's bodily autonomy, which would normally have him furious. and they’re not fighting because the four shifts of uninterrupted sleep he got this last time have thrown off their whole saving-people schedule.

no, rocket tells nebula raggedly, once he's calmed down enough to sound broken instead of enraged. he scruffs the inside of one wrist angrily across his eyes, furious at a universe that forces him to cry over the loss of you.

no. he's pissed because when he's drugged, he doesn't dream.

and when he doesn't dream, then you're really gone.

maybe he mellows out eventually. maybe not. maybe it gets worse and worse until scott lang shows up like a frickin' quantum-angel, divinely drenched in subatomic light, bearing glad tidings and great news. but as soon as the snap is undone, finding you is the first fucking order of business. after escaping the flooding wreckage of the compound, anyway. rocket thinks you better still be in wakanda — you better not have wandered through one of those portals and back into a battlezone.

but of course you did, and when he gets his hands on you, he's furious and shouting and running his palms greedily all over you.

because you feel the same. he’d spent that last cycle before the snap memorizing you in all the ways he hadn't permitted himself before, and he’s spent nearly every rotation since calling up that memory in his palms and the pads of his fingers. and now here you are — perfectly unchanged and perfect — and it seems so impossible when he's so much more grizzled and scarred-up and ragged. hell, he’d gotten clipped by an ion-blast in a fight on Arago-7 last circ, so he's down a full quarter-of-an-ear since you saw him last.

but you — you're the same and you're perfect and will you even want him anymore once you realize what he's become?

will you?

he buries that particular insecurity down deep because, he thinks, you don't need to worry your gorgeous head about it now. besides, there's pete to deal with, and his gamora is still — gone. and there's a new gamora now too, and what the fuck is up with that? plus, he and nebs bought knowhere, and there's a lot to do there — a lot that needs to be done so rocket can move you right into his crappy apartment, so he can make it a place worth living with you.

he's — oddly, gruffly, almost-clingy at first. moreso than you ever would have dreamed, and it lasts for a long time. maybe forever. he doesn't want to clip your wings, but he wants to make sure you're flying with him. it's similar in how he treats groot, too — can't take his eyes off his kid, or he starts getting panic attacks. but you're no stranger to those, and you're patient with his grief.

after all, you have your own, too.

some nights on knowhere, you lay on the fresh mattress he'd actually bought from somebody, and you run your thumb back and forth across the crescent punched into the edge of his ear. and you see what the last five years — three-point-six-two circs, you remind yourself — have cost him, all alone in space. sure, he’d had nebs and kraglin, and they matter — you don’t want to diminish that — but he’d lost everything else.

he’d been heartbroken, with no-one who knew how to comfort him the way you do.

tears drip down your cheeks, and later — when rocket wakes up from the recurring nightmare where everyone he loves is gone, again and again and again — you can still taste the ocean on your lips.

but it's okay, you tell him, holding him close and cradling his head, thumbing his whiskers so he can't see you crying too (even though he knows; he always knows). better days are coming, you say.

and it takes a while to get there, but eventually, you're right.

if you stay —

— if you're never snapped at all — things are going to be rough for the first few quarters. all that progress you made with rocket before the snap? gone.

well, okay. not really gone. the lessons are still learned, but rocket can't really see them right now. or at least, he can't feel them, and we all know that feeling makes up the biggest part of a raccoon's sensory cortex.

and what he does feel is guilt and shame, and fury at himself.

as i've said, rocket is a superstitious sort. he had that one blissful fuckin' cycle with you before everything turned terrible, and even if he consciously knows this ain't how the universe works, it still feels like a message. like it's his fault. like how dare he try to have something he never frickin' deserved.

the snap had taken every single one of the guardians — except for you.

as if to tell him that he'd traded all their lives for a few precious moments of happiness.

you stay with him at the avengers compound until nebula shows up — but he won't talk to you. he gives you flat, implacable eyes and bared teeth whenever you try to ask if he's okay. forget trying to approach him with tears in your own eyes or wobbly lips, seeking the comfort of his company. if he says anything at all, it'll be to sneer at you to get a hug from one of the humies.

it's harder still when nebula comes back. he sits with her. he gives her awkward hand-pats at a time when you would do anything for an awkward hand-pat. he listens to her talk about thanos, and the garden — as if he values her thoughts. and even if he doesn't come out and say it, he treats her like a guardian.

and he's treating you like a curse.

when it's time to go back up in the stars, he's surprised to find you already buckled into the benatar, waiting. some wild inexplicable impulse had you making sure to board early — terrified he'd leave you if he got here first. you have nothing on terra worth sticking around for — not even before the snap. your only home now is with him.

you don't need to be here, he sneers at you, and you just want to cry. you're as bruised as anyone by the past few weeks. maybe even more than some, because they'd all had somebody to rely on. but you don't answer him — can't answer him. you just huddle up in your seat and stare dully ahead, till nebula climbs the ramp and freezes, her dark eyes flicking between the two of you like she's already clocked the tension.

she says nothing, though. she's surprisingly polite.

fine, rocket grumps when you make no move to disembark. he slumps in the pilot's seat, and the benatar begins to hum as the lights on the console flicker on.

the trip to the third quadrant is painfully stilted. kraglin's still alive, at least, which is nice. the four of you sit on the flight deck, and you explain as much as you can to kraglin. nebula corrects you from time to time, but rocket only broods and sulks. drinks a little, but not as much as you might have expected. apparently, he doesn't want the anesthetizing quality of the booze right now.

maybe he doesn't think he deserves it.

kraglin mops tears from beneath his eyes and proposes a ravager wake for everyone lost in the snap. nebula cocks her head in interest, but rocket storms off, muttering only, they ain't dead before he disappears for the sleepshift. you try to go after him, hovering in the corridor outside his bunk, wringing your hands as you ask if he needs anything.

he only holds your stare flatly while the door swishes shut in your face.

when you go back to the flight deck, nebula's gone. exploring, probably. you stay up with kraglin for a while, answering his questions and trying to offer comfort, before giving him a brief hug and turning in for the night. it's an awkward hug, but warm, and the closest thing you've had to comfort since everything happened.

you wake up midway through the sleepshift — a dream, maybe, or a sound. certainly it could be the latter. you can hear nebula and rocket in the corridor just outside your bunk. everything echoes in this old ravager ship, and you can't quite make out the words, but you know they're fighting.

they're both gone by the time you rise with the wakeshift. embarrassed — worried, for you — kraglin tells you they left about three hours earlier, and that he's got orders from rocket to drop you off on any planet or space station you might like.

they'd left you.

rocket had left you.

your mouth flattens with the effort of not bursting into tears, but kraglin blurs in your vision anyway.

joke's on rocket, you tell the former ravager shakily.

i'm not going anywhere.

it's not that rocket's trying to be a jerk. and he's not trying to punish you, either (though he's definitely punishing himself). but it's clear to him that he'd had the right of it all the way back on sovereign:

he's bad fuckin' news. he's a dangerous guy to like.

if anything, he reasons to himself furiously — if anything, he's protecting you. keeping you on the quadrant, out of harm's way. out of his way.

yeah. he's an idiot. and he's gonna be so surprised when he comes back to the quadrant to refuel and re-supply, only to realize you're still there: harder-eyed, with a pinch of anger at the corner of your mouth and a mutinous tilt to your chin. it reminds him of something, though he isn't sure what, and it makes him uneasy. with gritted teeth and a narrowed glare, he tells himself that if he just leaves you alone long enough, you'll get the message. you'll have kraglin drop you back on terra, or wherever you want to make a better life. so next time, rocket and nebs stay away a little longer.

and then a little longer.

nebula’s pissy about it — not that she even knows you, so why she’s so bent outta shape on your behalf is beyond rocket. and kraglin keeps almost-expressing concern: darting his eyes around the flightdeck while he whispers into the comms that you’re not eating the way you did before, that you’re burying yourself in unnecessary work around the quadrant, that he doesn’t think you’re sleeping.

that you’re usually so nice to him but now you haven’t spoken in three rotations.

and rocket hears all this. and he remembers your sweet smile and the way you’d felt against his fur, and how vulnerable and soft you’d been under his callused-leather palms. he remembers, and with a tight chest, he flatly says,

leave it alone. take ‘em home when they ask.

it takes a few more times of seeing you — of getting annoyed at how sulky you look the first couple visits, and then worried about the slump in your shoulders the next — and finally terrified by the hollow sorrow in your eyes — before he figures it out with a sickening lurch.

you look like a broken bone that never got properly set.

you look like an open wound.

you look like he left you bleeding somewhere, and never bothered to patch you up.

you look like you're dying, piece-by-piece.

and nebula must see it too, because the cyborg seeks him out after Kraglin goes to bed. she's cursing rocket, hissing at him — furious. there seems to be something about you that just elicits other peoples' care, he realizes distantly, as he lets nebula verbally eviscerate him — yet again. he supposes he should be grateful that she doesn't actually just destroy him.

but then, he's always done a fair job of destroying himself.

enough, rocket thinks, once nebs has stalked off to her own bunk in a fury.

enough feeling sorry for his stupid ass.

the plan had been to leave in the morning, but those intentions have dissolved. he seeks you out instead, finding you settled quietly in the oversized gutter of a starboard viewport, staring out at moondust and glittering spirals of distant galaxies.

hey, he says, his voice low and heavy on the grated catwalks. i thought — look. m'sorry. i thought you'd go back home by now.

you slowly turn your head from the stars — to look at him — and his breath catches behind his prosthetic flexi-rib extensions because now he can really see it.

what he did to you when he left you behind.

his lungs go shallow, the air in them thin. your eyes are glittering with unshed tears but you try to narrow them anyway, hands shaking when you clench them into fists against your knees, lips trembling with rage or brokenness. his heart speeds up in his chest, the thudding muscle loud and painful against his sternum.

you were my home, you tell him, and if your voice is a little hoarse, it might just be because you haven’t spoken to anyone — even kraglin — in well over a cycle.

you were the only home i had left, you tell him. and then you were gone too.

the words carve into him, so much more brutal than your voice itself.

normally, he’d lash out. i was out trying to make money — somethin’ we still need, in case you forgot while you were sitting on your pretty ass, he might have snarled. or, i was tryin’ to be a frickin’ guardian, to honor the rest of our crew — or don’t they matter to you anymore? even, what — you jealous of nebula now? don’t you know she lost her frickin’ sister?

but the place inside him that’s normally reserved for defensive anger is only—

empty.

his head swims. his vision blurs. everything that’s left of him just feels so.

fuckin’.

sorry.

tears pinch at the corners of his eyes. his knees wobble, then give. they crash down into the grated catwalks and you startle, jolting upright as his head hangs low.

m’sorry, he mumbles again, and the words splinter, shot through with starlight. i’m — i didn’t mean to leave you alone. i thought — fuck. i’m sorry.

he can’t say exactly what happens next. you’re already on the catwalk beside him: grates biting into your knees, fingers tangled up in his fur, cuddling his face into the soft skin joining your shoulder to your neck. you’re crying too — he swears he can feel each tear dampening the crown of his head — and he grips fistfuls of your shirt in his claws and hangs on as tight as he fuckin’ can.

i’m sorry, he repeats. the words are broken and he knows he’s pulling too hard on your shirt, knows you’ll have abrasions from the seams — but he can’t stop trying to crawl inside your ribcage and curl up with your heart in his arms like something precious. he’s weeping. so are you.

i’m so sorry, baby, he says again. you’re right. it was fucked up for me to leave you.

it won't be fixed in one rotation. he's gonna have to earn your trust back. he's gonna have to show you he deserves it.

but hey. for better or worse, you've got time.

i won’t ever do it again, he tells you. the words scrape against your collarbone, warm and rough. i won't leave you behind again — not like that.

and he fucking doesn’t.