#dude steals your shit and you re-hire him? ok

[danvssomethingorother]

Summary: Digging through the Terran items they had been paid to deliver, Peter finds something he hadn’t seen in many years, not since his mother was alive. 

A03

For The 12 Days of Starmora

Ok, so some explanation, Peter’s child actor, Wyatt Oleff, starred in IT this year and he played a Jewish boy named Stan Uris, so since then I have watched the movie a few times and constantly call Stan ‘baby Peter’ since that is who he is to me, after awhile of doing this I just had this head canon that Peter is part Jewish. Specifically, his grandmother was and she died before he was born but his mother always set a Menorah out every holiday season to honor her mom.  

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His mother placed it over the fire place every year and Grandpa had put it up on the windowsill on Mom’s last holiday season. Peter didn’t really know what it was, it just looked like a weird candle holder to him and mom never gave him an answer just ‘it was very important to Grandma’ and left it at that.

He didn’t know who his grandmother was just as the people in his life didn’t know who his own mother was, they were just important women and it was left at that. Peter and his Walkman and mom and her family heirloom, that was all that was left of these important women. No words passed on who they were or what they were like, the only things left of them were the last things they passed their children before passing on.

Peter would stare at the candle and he asked if he could light it but he had only asked once seeing the sadness pass through mom before settling onto Grandpa. They glanced at each other and merely said it was old and they wanted to keep it the way it was. Peter understood a few years later as he stared down at the last gift his mother had left him, it wasn’t right to do it without grandma there to enjoy the holiday she loved and it wasn’t right of Peter to open the gift without mom sitting there, a smug smile on her face goading at him to open it already.

Seeing her after his own near death experience with the infinity stone had finally woke him up enough from his denial of her passing to open her gift. He wondered if his mother would have ever had the courage to sit him down and explain what the menorah was and what it stood for and why it meant so much to grandma if she had lived.

He found himself wondering all this after so many years of just pretending that was just a scare and the doctors got her breathing again after he had been abducted, as he sorted through the large cargo crate they had been paid to deliver. With so many sticky fingers on board, his included he supposed with a laugh, they needed to catalogue everything so the rich asshole wouldn’t be offended by their shitty job when they arrived.  

His eyes bulged at serval items, this guy had good taste he thought picking up an Alf doll followed by a still in the package Kit. He bit his lip, this stuff was for the rich A – hole who hired them, not the A – hole known as Star Lord.  

“I best not find a single item in your pocket,” he smiled glancing up to Gamora who stood at the door way, arms crossed and her best scowl in place.

“I wouldn’t hide it in my pocket,” he playfully groused with his most dramatic eye roll, “What do you take me for? An amateur? No best place is the cracks in the cargo bay, I can just come back for my junk after you have passed out.”

He began laughing at her glare and shook his head.

“Nothing this time, I swear, I’m trying to kick the habit,” he confessed, “I have to ‘set an example’, remember?”

Her glare twitch into a slight smile but she still had a serious edge to her that vowed she would end him if he was lying.

“Everything here so far,” he said turning his holo pad around for her to see the check list and tilting his head to the pile, “No need to go back to the smuggler, yet.”

He sighed loudly popping his neck making Gamora cringe and give him a concerned look at the loud crack that echoed.

“Three more boxes of shit to go through before I’m all done and we can set course back to the fifth galaxy. Then we get paid and then something else I haven’t planned yet from there.”

“See a doctor?” she suggested cringing again his back popped just as loud when he stretched against an unopened crate.

“Nah, its just sore from carrying the boxes, it will be fine.”

“Why did you not use the machine like I told you to,” Gamora said glare already settling back into place.

“Me and Drax had a bet ---”

“Stop, I no longer care,” she grumbled, why were they all such children?

Peter chuckled to that but didn’t really respond, picking up the crow bar to pop another crate open. Gamora stopped him taking the bar from him and popping it open herself with little effort making Peter smile her way in thanks.

“I do not want you harming your body if you do not need to,” she said firmly.

A naughty joke crossed Peter’s mind but he brushed it aside not wanting to ruin a perfectly fine moment with his friend.

“This guy is a major hoarder,” Peter grumbled pulling another Alf doll out of the new crate, “I thought I was bad.”

“He is a trader who specializes in exotic goods,” Gamora said simply reading their patron’s bio off the pad once more, “And do not go there, you are just as bad. No keeping any of this, it took forever to make this dump suitable for more then one person because of your ‘collectibles’.”  

“One step at a time,” he chuckled winking at her before pulling out a bundle of records clamped together in sealed plastic and he had to force himself to put it back.

“Sooooo if I be good and not steal anything, can I buy some of this shit off the dude?” He asked giving Gamora his best puppy dog eyes he hadn’t successfully pulled off since he was eight.

“Maybe…”

“Saying no keeps my hopes from going up, ya know,” he chuckled.

“Then no,” she said smoothly stepping up to another crate and popping it open and scowling at the hundreds of troll dolls clumped inside.

She popped open the final box and Peter let out a sigh of relief that they were almost done here for the day.

“Is the hot water working again? I could really use a shower after this,” he asked loudly popping his wrists making her cringe once more.

“Stop doing that!” she hissed at him grabbing his arm before he could do it again just to be annoying like he often did, “You are causing damage to your body, do you want to end up with cybernetics?”

“It would make me a little more useful according to Drax,” he chuckled trying to make light of her warning making her scowl deepen as she held his wrist harder making him squirm.

“It wouldn’t,” she snarled griping harder at his wrist making him hiss in pain, “Its not something to be taken lightly, take care of yourself.”

She let go and Peter just stared at her with concern but she didn’t say anything. She was caught up in a memory she had tried to keep buried, remembering pulling her own wrist on accident. It was a sprain from pushing herself too hard and the pop had been just as loud as Peter’s. Thanos had deemed her birth given bones weak after that and forced her to get cybernetics, it was a long and painful healing process she didn’t like to think of and didn’t want Peter making light of.

“Oh wow,” she heard Peter gasp bring her back to the here and now, folding her arms tight against her midsection to hold back the memories and re bury them with a scowl directed at Peter’s childish behavior.

“Its Christmas stuff. I haven’t thought about Christmas since…” he cut himself off at that not elaborating he was thinking of his mother once more but Gamora saw it in the way he scrunched his face to re bury his own trauma.

He pulled out brightly colored orbs, holding them up one by one with a gentle smile on his face letting himself remember there was good in his life before the passing of his mother and the forced assimilation into ravager culture.

The smile dropped as he pulled out an odd-looking candelabra with eight holders and just stared at it.

“My ma had one of these,” he said taking Gamora by surprise with the honesty and sincerity he was presenting to her. No jokes, no redirection, just a small glimpse into his past before the ravagers he often denied them.

“It was my grandma’s, she had died a few months before I was born and ma took it really hard. I guess I get my grieving process from her…neither of us could really accept it I guess.”

Gamora didn’t say anything, having nothing to say. Death was a concept she understood and could not deny or run from, she simply accepted it for what it was.

“She put it out every year, right above the stockings, probably waiting for grandma to come home and light them. I never really knew how to celebrate the holiday or what it represented or even the religion behind it, it was never mine, but it was ma’s and it was grandma’s.”

Gamora could understand that, she stared past Peter and even past the walls of the cargo area remembering something that was less then a blur to her now. Her mother and father and their beliefs of strength and valor that came from their gods, she couldn’t remember their names or why they prayed to them but maybe a part of her wished she could. She wished she could remember her own culture, to be a part of it instead of it only belonging to the dead.

“Do you wish to know more about it?” she asked, voice hollow as she continued to stare off knowing the question wasn’t really for Peter.

“Maybe,” he finally said pulling her into a hug that she found she didn’t want to pull away from and she sank into him and let him be her anchor until she could compose herself enough to pull away.  

It was strange for Peter to give her the silence she needed but she accepted it pulling him closer. It was only a moment but it was enough. She pulled away and silently told him to go away, she needed a moment. He smiled and patted her arm before disappearing.

She picked up the strange candle and stared sadly at it, the culture Peter didn’t know and thought of the culture she would never know. The parents she didn’t remember and the planet that mashed together in her mind with so many others she didn’t remember what it really felt like.

She had promised to deliver everything but she didn’t want to give up the piece of Peter’s culture his mother and grandmother had shared without him.  

That night in her private quarters she set it on her dresser and stared at it, it was almost like a representation of two cultures neither she nor Peter would know. Peter not ready to return to his home world, maybe never recovering enough to go back and her having nothing to return to. She wanted to know what this thing was and vowed to learn someday.

Then at least one of them would understand a little more of who they were and maybe she could pretend that was her culture as well. Something she and her best friend could share together.

[layton-opinions]

well you certainly showed him!