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trashpandaorigins · 4 years

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The Body Keeps the Score Ch. 21

"You said it yourself bitch, we're the Guardians of the Galaxy." Gamora is finally a part of something. But the past always follows you, eats at you and she must come to grips with her deeds as she tries to build a future. Meanwhile Rocket has never cared much for anyone or anything. Together the two of them discover they are more alike than different and try to heal themselves by befriending the other.

*Content Warnings: Mentions of child/animal abuse, trauma, character death, physical torture/pain. This chapter contains torture, medical/surgical torture/shooting/guns being shot. I want to be super sensitive to folks who might be triggered by these subjects. Please take care while reading*

Title of this fic is taken from the book of the same title "The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma," by Bessel van der Kolk

There's a joke here somewhere and it's on me

I'll shake this world off my shoulders

Come on..., this laugh's on me

You can't start a fire

You can't start a fire without a spark

This gun's for hire

Even if we're just dancin' in the dark

Dancing in the Dark - Bruce Springsteen

“Peter. Get Drax and Groot...get them back to the ship. Now.” Gamora breathed through clenched teeth. Rocket barely heard her, eyes fixed on Groot who whined and scurried back to Quill. The mechanical thing in his heart hammered away, making his chest cinch with pain. His muscles tensed, claws tight against the trigger of Quill’s blaster.

“Gamora,” Quill pleaded, “I’m not leaving you here with these….these,” he turned to the Halfworlder’s, “what exactly are you? Because I picture you like mad scientists but you’re also clearly aliens so….mad scientist aliens?”

“Peter!” Gamora’s eyes stared unbroken at the two figures in the doorway. “Get them back to the ship, NOW!”

Rocket glanced down at Drax, still clutching his side and moaning on the floor.

“Do you trust me?” She hissed, the human man swallowed.

“I could kiss you right now.”

“Not now Peter! GO!”

The man nodded, moving over to Drax and helping the man off his feet. Groot hauled himself up on Quill’s jacket, looking over his shoulder at Rocket. The raccoonoid held his breath, watching the little flora’s eyes wide with confusion.

“Rocket…” Quill turned to him, mouth open trying to find the right words.

“Get out of here!” The raccoonoid sighed, reaching for the gun, and tossed it to him with a heavy hand.

The man caught it. “Go!”

“What about you?!”

“Yah heard Gams, get outta here! Take Groot and go!”

For once in his life, StarDork listened to him.

“I’ll see you later.”

He watched Quill take one last look at Gamora and moved quickly past the Halfworlder’s, daring them to make any move in protest.

“We aren’t here for them,” the female reprimanded her colleague, the male, who leered towards Quill as he snuck past. “You heard her orders. We are to get Subject 89P13 only.”

Something wet and warm trickled down the raccoonoid’s leg. If he’d been anywhere else, he’d be ashamed. But this place….it stripped all shame all confidence of you. Revealing only your deepest fears and insecurities to the point where you no longer cared about your dignity. Only your survival. The two, Rocket had learned long ago...were easily severed.

The female alien grinned, turning back to him, Gamora and Nebula.

“You really thought you escaped, didn’t you?” They rushed forward, revealing those all too familiar electric prongs.

Rocket panicked, scrambling for anything in sight.

“Quick try this!”

The ringtail swiped the device that the Halfworlder’s gave Gamora from her belt.

“Rocket no! Don’t!”

He charged ahead, pressing the center button on the device, aiming at their chests.

He dropped the device instantly. His back arching, scalding pain alit his small nervous system, sending off pain receptors everywhere, snapping and popping. He swallowed the animalistic whimper building in his throat, curling himself in a ball. His hair stood on end, white electricity snapping and crackling. Every hard stood on end even as he fell to the ground, body twitching.

Gamora ran forward, sword out, beating them back as best she could.

“Nebula get him….aaarrrghhhh!!!!”

The raccoonoid blinked slowly. Through his blurry vision he could barely make out the male alien, sticking one of the pokers in Gamora’s side, taking advantage of her momentary distraction. She crumpled beside him, her own cybernetics in her face glowing and sparking. If he hadn’t been in so much pain...and so furious...he may have felt a twinge of sympathy. Maybe.

“H...how...l..long have y...you b...ben holding on to ...t..th...that?” He panted through the burning in his belly.

Gamora twisted her neck around, glaring daggers at him from under a messy tangle of her hair.

“About as long as you were spying on me.”

Rocket snarled, teeth bared a nasty reply formed but never delivered. Rough hands grabbed him by the scruff, jerking him up with an agonizing pinch in the back of his neck.

“What are you going to do with them?” Nebula’s rough voice cut through the sound static sparking through the bolts in his back.

Rocket tried to swipe back at them, legs and tail thrashing madly, every move met with flaring stinging agony.

“That is no concern of yours.”

Nebula’s gaze found him, Rocket struggled to keep his eyes open.

“It’s a pity,” the alien woman holding him continued. “Thanos never sold us any of his projects. Even a defective one.” She ran her oily eyes over Nebula with a dehumanizing appraisal Rocket knew all too well. Nebula winced. The alien woman turned back to him, tightening her grip on his fur. “But alas, vermin were free and expendable, so vermin is what we worked with. Luckily Terra had vermin to spare.”

Someone grunted, Rocket clenched his teeth, twisting to see Gamora drag herself up once more, clutching her side. The cybernetics in her face glowing with electricity. She tensed, adjusting her grip on her sword and moving forward. Nebula grabbed her shoulders, steadying her, whispering something he could not hear.

“Come, she will be waiting for him.”

This time, he could not stifle the whimper coming from his throat.

---

“P….please,” he tried, vision swimming.

Where the flark are we?

His mind was sluggish, limbs and tail heavy. He’d been stripped down. Someone was inserting tubes into his back, his ears twitched at the click as it locked into place. Arms hung suspended, head low.

This isn’t a lab...a ship? No. We’re not on a ship. Where’s my fucking gun? Where’s...Gamora? Groot? GROOT?

Rocket tried to struggle, only to stumble and sag with the weight of the tubes fixated to his back and into the front of the bolts of the cybernetics in his clavicle. Thick fluid syrupy and cold made its way from the machine and into his body. He could feel it moving through him, doing who knew what. For all his genius and awareness, for all his sentience, they’d made sure he knew very little about his own making. Rocket, who knew every type of gun on every planet, who could replicate a resecian bomb and could pilot even the most ancient of Esselian crafts….knew nothing of his own biology.

“Please,” he whispered the shadow of the alien Halfworld woman falling over him. She crouched down to him, slit pupiled eyes staring into him.

“Please...d...don’t take me apart again. I...d..don’t want to be put back together.” The very thought of enduring that again made his body tremble, tubes and wires rattling with his movement. They pulled on him, tearing his skin.

“Oh you won’t be,” she smirked, revealing yellow fangs. “Not this time.” The raccoonoid’s belly sunk with icy dread.

No….stop it… claw her eyes out! Too tired….can’t move freely...what are they putting inside me? Whymy….dizzy?

“Your creator has no interest in her failed experiment.”

Failed.

Failed Gamora

Failed Groot

Failed the new version of Groot

Hurt Gamora

Betrayed Gamora

Hurt Groot

Failed

He couldn’t make the words right, thoughts came slow and jumbled and when they did come to him...he couldn’t...couldn’t make his mouth move to form the words.

“F...faile...faild?”

Through blurry vision, he could see the Halfworlder nod.

“You are a cruel and tempestuous wretch. Your existence to an affront to all who breathe. You were given life by the hands of your creator because she wanted to make something beautiful.” The alien continued, words reaching his ears in slow motion. Rocket swayed, closing his eyes. The chemicals coming through those tubes...they were putting things into his blood, but somehow….sucking him dry of any awareness. His mind tried to go through the rolodex of toxins, poisons but couldn’t name any.

A monster….

A monster who betrays their friends

A monster who hit Groot

He tried to flex his paws but the movement was clumsy.

“We will be getting on our way soon enough. By the time we get back your cerebral deprograming will be complete and hopefully she will be able to harvest what’s left.”

What’s left?

GET A GUN YOU IDIOT! FIGHT, CLAW THIS BITCH TO PIECES! TEAR THESE FUCKING TUBES! RUN! RUN! RUN!

Rocket tried to move, to swipe weakly at the woman before him. She only smirked, standing. Eyes looking over his vulnerable twitching form for a moment, making him want to claw her insides out. But his chest only sunk with an invisible weight. She sniffed, and departed. His eyes closed to black before she left the room.

Gamora...she was asleep during her enhancements...no. Not asleep. Gone. Gone during her enhancements and brought back after. Where did she go? Where was he going? His brain liquidating in his skull, his body pumped with unknown substances.

How did Gamora do it?

How did she stand it? What did she cling to when she was falling away?

Failed.

A failed subject. A failed friend.

Rocket hung suspended from the wires and tubes that created and would now destroy him. The worst thing was….he didn’t mind. The ringtail smiled to himself, letting his eyes close again. Chemicals rushing through him in a tumult of nausea and spinning. The dark behind his eyes was different from that of sleep...somehow even that blackness was unnatural.

It’s better...like this. ...G...Gamora will...what are they doing to me? Gamora will...get the others back to the….to the...the thing that will let them get away. RUN! CLAW! TEAR! TEAR OUT THESE THINGS AND GO! She’ll get em to safety...Why’d you come here? Didn’t I escape Halfworld? No. Never left. Groot...Groot where’s Groot? Did I….GET OUT!

Rocket’s mind drifted from one fractured thought to another

Earthen smells…other smells. Gamora….repairing her arm.

Her words.

What did she say?

GET OUT OF HERE! KICK, CLAW, SCREAM! SHOOT! SHOOT THE GUN!

He was drowning….drowning from the inside out. The buzzing and clicking around the room now sounded funny. His tongue tasted salty in his mouth,

Flecks of wood chips from the blast on Xandar.

Groot. Dead.

His own claws tearing through wood...scratching the new Baby Groot.

“Cerebral deprogramming 55% complete.” Voices...far away...like they were muffled underwater.

Rocket clenched his fists, trying to concentrate on the reality of his surroundings. Claws digging into the sensitive pads of his paws. He sniffed, trying to recall what was around him. Chemicals, metal, blood.

GET A G….

What was that word?

The thing that fired bullets that stopped people in their tracks.

The woman with the green skin. The woman he hurt. The tree creature, small and crying for him. Him. What was him? A cruel tempestuous creature.

He tried to move, but only flung his head backward in a coordinated effort. Sending more shocks of anguish through his own skeleton.

I’m sorry…..

I’m sorry….

I never shoulda….

IThing went too far…

I’m sorry…

I’m….

I’m…

I…..I...I...

You, you, you…

You ...the tree thing….you, the green woman

The green woman who hurt as much as he did.

G...m...Gmora

S...ry...Gaamo..r...a

Friend.

Rocket’s mind lost words….vision long since having gone black. He was slipping. Falling… dimly aware of the throbbing in his neck and throughout his cybernetics. He went stiff, straining against whatever the aliens had injected into him. But that battle was lost the moment they’d hooked him to the tubes. Still the raccoonoid went rigid against it. Until he couldn’t. All that bravado and zeal for nothing.

“Deprograming is at 63%.”

“Good. Come, we’ll prepare the ship to leave. By the time we get back it’ll be done.”

“Hang on, these outputs are outrageous! It actually bonded with Subject FC616! Oh look it’s crying! You gotta see these images! 89P13 certainly tried to make a life for itself.”

“Good. She’ll want to see it all upon our return.”

“Regret...sorrow...grief...joy...music…? It makes no sense.”

“It was responding to stimulus from the outside environment. It’s programming filled in the gaps for what it believed it should “feel.” It was designed to do that.”

“Huh. Alright, let’s go.”

The doors slid closed, Rocket’s consciousness ebbed. Sinking away. So heavy.

Gmra...Grot…

---

“Rocket!”

Something warm and rough cupped around him...around his...shoulders?

The ringtail fought back the darkness as soon as he became aware of it. Being dragged up from wherever he’d been. An endless void of black nothing.

A voice.

He blinked, slowly, colors of green and pink?

“Rocket look at me,” the thing before him spoke fast. “I know you're scared, I know you’re in pain. I know how that feels. You know I do.”

Focus….

Can’t….tired...

FOCUS!

“I know this is the most horrifying place in the galaxy for you.” Rocket swayed from side to side, trying to rock himself awake. But the dark void place he’d been beckoned. Pulled at him. So nice, so blank...so devoid of everything.

“I know you’re scared. I’m scared too. That’s why we need to get out of here but I need your gun. Where is it? Can you point?”

Rocket gestured vaguely. The woman...he could tell it was a woman now. But who? She looked in the direction he indicated. Only to return her gaze to him, her eyes. Her eyes were somehow soft and hard at the same time.

….Gmmmm….m...or...ra?

Ga..mora?

Gamora?!

“Rocket….I need you to tell me where they put your gun.”

“...G...mora?”

His chest tingled, his limbs and tail still lead weight. He could barely move. Trying to clear his head of the dense fog inside his skull.

She shook him, his cybernetics fizzing painfully. The fire in his nerves jolted at him.

“Ga...Gamora?!”

“Yes! Good! Now, where is your gun?!”

Something behind her crashed. Screamed.

The ringtail roved his eyes over the room, to the right, then the left. Counters, buttons, monitors.

“Rocket!” She hissed urgently. “Look at me! Do you trust me?”

Rocket blinked in momentary recognition, then nodded.

Gamora leapt upward, grunting as she collided with the figure who’d barged into the room. He watched them wrestle, each grappling for the other. The green woman’s sword came down, again and again, trying to strike, stumbling back, striking again. She twisted, running the butt of her sword into the other woman’s head. The Halfworlder grunted, curling into a ball. Gamora ran forward, yanking the wires and tubes from him. They released with an agonizing twist, the liquid chemicals leaking out clear and congealing. Rocket’s legs flooded, tail trying to find balance but failed.

“Where’s your gun?!”

“G...gun?”

A second figure tore into the room, this one larger. The rushed for Gamora who lifted her sword just in time to fend him off. They sprung apart and she grabbed a handful of tubing in her fists, swinging it towards him. He cursed, stumbling back,wiping the liquid from his face.

Rocket let out an involuntary squeak, the alien woman regained her footing now aimed at him, clawed hands ready to seize him. He tried to spring out of the way, but his body wouldn’t follow direction and he flopped to the ground, only to be caught up in her iron grip. He kicked, clawing.

“Rocket!”

He turned, Gamora backed away from the alien man, eyes searching for anything she could use as a weapon.

“Th...there!” Rocket managed to nod towards where he spotted his jumpsuit any other items, tucked away by one of the monitors. Gamora crouched just before the Halfoworlder punched. She slid on the ground running to the counter, madly rifling through his belongings.

“How does this work?” She screamed, letting out a cry of anger and lifting her blade over her head with her spare arm, she brought it down on the male Halfworlder. He screeched, stumbling back clutching his arm.

“Sh...shoot...e..em w...with the...not handle part!”

“I know that much!”

The alien who held him tightened her grip, Rocket’s vision spun. His mind and body had not fully returned to him.

“You insufferable animal!”

Claws dug into his back, around the tender skin grafted around his cybernetic paneling. Digging into his flesh and yanking at him. The wiring beneath the skin pulled at the veins and tissue

“Rocket hold still!”

Gamora shouted, holding the gun with ready arms, she peered through the scope, trying to get the accurate aim.

“Gamora!”

The male alien lunged for her, knife out and ready to tear the gun from her hands. She turned, instantly and shot.

Rocket watched with wide eyed shock as the alien’s head jerked back and his body collapsed, twitching and went still.

The sharp tear in his skin, raw and stinging brought him back to the face of the Halfworld alien. She sneered, tugging at the panel in his back. The ringtail panicked, this time his body obeyed, more or less. He lashed out with his claws, ears pinned to his skull, mouth foamed with blood and saliva. He buckled and wriggled, ignoring the fiery shock ravaging through his body.

“Hold still!”

“C...can’t!”

Rocket strained to shout, throat rasping.

The alien pulled again, this time eliciting the ringtail to vomit in pain. He pinched his eyes shut against the wrenching in his spine as she tugged at the panel again.

No...no...no...no!

BAM!

Rocket dropped to the floor with a hard thunk, his insides quivering with the impact. His tail twitched, electricity around the panel in his back fritzed out. He reached one arm up slowly, trying to message the area around the damaged panel.

Gamora stormed ahead, past him, to where the alien woman crouched, one hand to her shoulder. Black blood bubbled up from the surface of her wound.

“L….Lady...G...Gamora, pl..please. W...we can compensate you for it. How much...d..do you want? Units? Esken gold?”

Rocket tried to heave himself up, swallowing the blood in his mouth. His whole body ached. Vision still blurred around the edges. He faded in and out of awareness, recurring shocks of stinging pain waved over him every few seconds, bringing him back to consciousness.

Gamora bared her teeth, looming over the Halfworlder, gun at her head.

“Ga….Gams,” he tried.

“N…..n….name your price….D...daughter of T...Thanos.”

“Shut up!” She hefted the gun, squeezing the trigger.

“Go on…” the Halfworlder grinned. “I’m hardly the first person you’ve killed….y...you enj...enjoy it...don’t y...you? He...he raised you well.”

Rocket stood on shaking legs,

“G...Gamora!”

The woman ignored him, leering at the injured alien woman. Her whole body shaking.

“W...what's it worth to you? We’ll double it. N...name your price.”

She turned over her shoulder, looking at him. Rocket froze, staring at her. Gamora adjusted her grip on the gun but did not look away, her eyes boring into him. The ringtail steadied himself under the crushing weight of her gaze.

She wouldn’t….she said she wouldn’t before...even when she was angry…

“I’m not like you.”

“Go on...d..daughter of Thanos...what will you trade for it? We’ll give you anything you want.”

Gamora looked at him, eyes narrow with contempt. He watched her bite the inside of her cheek. His own stomach turning.

“....well?”

She took a breath, held it. Still staring at him unblinking. He watched her turn her stance, pointing the barrel of the gun squarely between his eyes.

Rocket’s guts squirmed, tail sticking up, hairs prickling.

...Gamora….

She glared at him from above the gun, barely breathing.

“G...gams...I…”

Her brows narrowed,

Do. You. Trust. Me?

Yes.

Her wrist flicked, he flinched, going on all fours instantly. Then blinked, her fingers no longer held the trigger, but rotated the weapon around handing it to him.

It dawned on him too late.

The Halfoworld alien screeched in rage, making her move, leaping upward. Gamora spun, gun still in hand,

BAM! BAM! BAM!

The alien dropped instantly going still, blood pooling under her.

“We have to go,” Gamora ordered, monotone.

The ringtail opened his mouth but the words were still slow.

“Put this on,” she ordered, throwing his jumpsuit at him. “Can you walk?”

“Tsch...of course I …”

She didn’t wait for him. Dropping the gun, turning on her heel, and out of the lab room a limp in her step.

“Gams! W...wait!”

He tripped up, not expecting her to stop. She looked down at him, skeptical.

Flark me,

Rocket reached out, shaking paws grabbing at her boot. He hoisted himself up, crawling his way up her back and purchasing on her shoulder. She shifted her shoulders, glancing at him, waiting for him to secure himself.

He only nodded and held on as she took off, down the dark halls, up the stairs, through the halls. Surprisingly light on her feet, sword in hand, body tense and ready to fight at anything that might leap from the shadows. From his hand on her head, Rocket could feel the nerve tremors beneath her skin, hot to the touch. Her own cybernetics were damaged, the lines of facial enhancements in her cheek no longer seamless but broken and cut between flesh and metal.

Gamora rounded the corner, through another set of doors and out into the open.

Wh...where’s the...Benatar?

“HALT! By order of the Nova Corps, Subject 89P13, Gamora Daughter of Thanos you are under arrest for murdering an officer, lying under oath, and gross endangerment of your crew.”

Gamora let out a cough, chest heaving. She sheathed her sword. She reached up to him, Rocket expected her to throw him off, but she only pulled her hair back from her face.

“Gamora!”

Quill ran down the ramp of the Benatar,

“You got him! C’mon we gotta…..Nova’s here we have to…!”

Rocket couldn’t help but smirk, a pain twinging in his side as he laughed.

“Th...thank you..c...captain obvious.”

“Wow really?! The ONE time you acknowledge I’M the captain you…”

“B...bigger problems here Quill!”

From his place on Gamora’s shoulder, he thought he heard her huff in satisfied agreement.

It wasn’t much, but it was something.

#the body keeps the score fic #my writing #gotg #gotgfanfic #groot #baby groot #gamora #rocket raccoon #peter quill #starlord #drax #drax the destroyer #halfworld #rocket origins

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