Archive of Our Own ^beta

It’s not that Nebula doesn’t have feelings—actually, there’s not a single day that goes by upon which she doesn’t operate under the intrinsic conviction that just the opposite is true… because, honestly, sometimes (or all the time, really), it seems that those—her feelings, that is—are really, truly, all that she has (or ever will have, for that matter).

Is that scary?

Not really; Nebula really isn’t scared of much anymore—well, besides galactic wrenches and losing Gamora and being unmade time and time again beneath the brusque amethyst hands of a monstrous creature she loathed to call ‘Father.’

(She thinks that perhaps she was not so much angry at him, because, if she’s being honest with herself—which she seldom is, mind you—she thinks that the reason she could literally feel her synthetic blood boiling beneath her skin when she looked at him had a hell of a lot more to do with herself than it did him, with the hatred in Father's icy-blue eyes she knew was reflected near identically within her own, with the undeniable reality that everywhere she goes she carries traces of him that aches and burns so deeply within her very core.

What’s more, it doesn’t seem to matter what she’s doing, whether she’s soaking her hands in the technicolored blood of the innocents or showing a rare display of tenderhearted mercy to the wild fauna who cross her path amidst her travels or just existing, period; it doesn’t seem to matter that she’s making every effort to be different, to be her own, even if that merely means becoming an entirely new brand of cruel—anything to separate herself, to make herself free, like maybe she can be more than a mangled sum of mismatched parts assembled by rough hands that threatened to break her for daring to exist, even if she’s not quite sure what in the world it’s all supposed to mean anymore, or even if there’s any hint of meaning to be found at all in this endless cycle of pervasive violence that holds her hostage far better than the Mad Titan himself ever could.)

He’s gone, now.

Not missing, not exiled, just…. gone. Gone, scattered across what remains of the planet Earth in swirls of ashen dust, every last larger-than-life piece of him reduced to infinitesimal cinders gracing the grounds of the one dark-horse realm he failed to conquer.

(Nebula doesn’t quite know how to feel about that.)

Nebula hates to admit it, but she misses him—misses the man who made and unmade her at the slightest provocation, who reached deep inside her chest and ripped what little remained of a heart from beneath her battered ribcage only to replace it with cold machinery and scrap metal and a sense of self-hatred so poignant and overpowering Nebula’s convinced it’ll never leave.

She misses him, because she doesn’t know who to be without him—without the ever-burning hatred coiling in her gut, the bitter spite that drove her to betray the only man she ever called ‘family' for the very first time, the intrinsic need crawling at her insides to be better in his eyes than the long-time rival she latently yearned to call sister (the very same one whom Father flung into the depths of Vormir and is never coming back to tell Nebula what the actual hell she’s supposed to do now that she’s all alone for the very first time in all her splintered remembrance).

The ferret (the creature that calls himself ‘Rocket’) helps, she supposes, though she’s hard-pressed to let him know that. Ever.

It’s like… she doesn’t know who she’s supposed to be anymore, if not a mangled extension of the Mad Titan that once ruled the cosmos with a fist of iron (in both a figurative and literal sense): she doesn’t know how to be a contrast to everything he was without him here, too; she doesn’t know how to be the antithesis to a man that doesn’t exist any longer, because, really—who is she without something to oppose?

She doesn’t know, but there’s a tiny little voice inside her head that’s telling her the answer is ‘nothing,’ and that scares her a hell of a lot more than anything else ever has.

— —

“Hello! I am Mantis!” the peppy bug-eyed empath jovially informs her, those characteristic fleshy antennae (either stem protruding from just before her hairline) bobbing sparsely with each syllable.

(Nebula refuses to find it even remotely endearing.)

“I know,” she hears herself reply, short and crude and noticeably lacking in any degree of warmth—all in all, displaying her typical degree of standoffish indifference: arms folded rigidly against her chest, jaw clenched tightly, the ghost of a scowl upon her features even as she feels the strangest fluttering sensation in her stomach and her head starts to feel just little bit lighter, like maybe she doesn’t want to scowl any longer… like maybe she wants to smile instead.

(She’s well aware that that’s probably the craziest thought she’s deigned to have since… ever, really.)

Mantis doesn’t seem to mind, though—instead, she merely nods her head energetically up and down (causing her antennae to sway hypnotically with each jerky movement), something like genuine interest showing in those alluring eyes of cosmic obsidian.

“You are Nebula,” she says then, eyes wide and earnest as she sounds out each syllable slowly and with palpable deliberation, like an A’askavariian child learning to read the language of earthly men (otherwise known as English) for the very first time.

(Nebula loathes the way the sound of it has an entirely unfamiliar—not to mention downright terrifying—kernel of warmth growing deep in her chest right beneath her ribcage, where Father ripped her very heart from her being.

She hasn’t felt anything there in a very long time.)

“Yes,” Nebula answers, flat and monotonous. (She isn’t really sure what else she’s supposed to say.)

“You are very beautiful.”

Wh—

What?

“I—You—" Nebula sputters, sure that if she had the capacity to blush she’d be doing so horribly right now, because, "What? "

“Your skin is blue,” Mantis continues blathering on, entirely oblivious to Nebula’s rather spectacular bout of internal panic, her voice airy and light.

Eventually, Nebula realizes that Mantis is just staring expectantly at her as if waiting for a response—and, really, she doesn’t know what in the world she’s meant to do here. “Um… It is.”

Mantis nods again, a smile quirking the edges of her pinkish lips. (Nebula wonders briefly if they’re as soft as they look.) “Like the countenance of Neptune in orbit—" The what of what in the what now? “—radiant and divine.”

“… Thanks.”

“I like you, Nebula.”

Nebula blanches. “… Okay.”

Still, Mantis breaks into a wide grin at that as if Nebula had just given her the most flattering of compliments, all white teeth and pink lips and gently dimpled cheeks—Nebula fears she’s in danger of, quite literally, passing out on the spot.

(And the best part?

She doesn’t think of her Father, the coldness in those soulless eyes of his, the endless torment she was made to endure at his destructive hands.

She doesn’t think of Gamora, the fallen sister she never had the chance to love to the extent that she wished.

She doesn’t think of anything, really… except a bubbly empath with bobbing antennae and a smile brighter than the moons of Xandar.

She thinks Gamora might have liked her—Mantis, that is.

Nebula most certainly does.)

— —