#*throws all of them to therapy* leggo

[bi-sakura]

My type: they're shipped together, also they're mentally ill

[woozletania]

Living with Rocket 4 (GOTG slice of life)

Off all the people Rocket might bond with, Nebula seems the least likely.  But hey, monsters gotta stick together, right?

*****

Things soon settled down to a routine on the Milano. After Ego, many bounties and assorted interpersonal dramas the crew were learning to live and work as a family. Mantis was proving surprisingly useful in many ways; Rocket was teaching her the rudiments of equipment repair, she was useful as a non-threatening negotiator (valuable in a crew full of thugs) and of course there wasn't a single crew member who didn't need therapy of some sort, even if that was sometimes just a sympathetic ear.

Everyone was learning, in fact. Of them all only Star-Lord was what you'd call "reasonably well adjusted" and his impulse control needed a lot of work. Rocket had his little furry hand slapped enough times that he at least tried to control his maniacal impulse to take things apart and make them work better (or build bombs out of them), Drax was getting better at understanding admittedly basic social cues and even swiftly growing Groot, who took after his “father” Rocket in all sorts of unfortunate ways, was slowly turning from an angry little tree to something a bit more like formidable but gentle Old Groot.

So it took something out of the ordinary to throw a spanner into the works. Something like a visit from Nebula.

Gamora's sister still had the Ravager fighter Kraglin gave her from the Quadrant's hangar and after the contact request the two ships met at Challenger Station, little more than a floating fuel depot way out in Varnax sector. She showed up, exchanged an awkward hug with Gamora and then sat in the Milano's common area to negotiate trade. She needed repairs and Units and she had a shipload of supplies to trade. Best not to inquire too closely where she got the stuff, everyone agreed.

"Why didn't you just sell the stuff somewhere? Why come to us?"

Nebula shrugged at Star-Lord's question. "You know the answer to that."

"There are places even outlaws can go to trade," Gamora ventured.

"And this is one of them," snapped Nebula. "Now do you want these supplies or not?"

Rocket sat in the corner, teaching Groot how to use the Yo-Yo Quill had found in a junker store. In an hour of haggling he spoke up only once to say he'd pay for the crate of random spare parts Nebula was lugging out of his own pocket. Anything that kept his dangerously clever hands out of the Milano's guts met with Peter's approval and ultimately the raccoon paid for half and Star-Lord the other on the basis that most of what Rocket made benefited the crew in some way. Discounting the weaponized coffee maker that shot Drax through a bulkhead last week, anyway.

Though the raccoon seemed disinterested in the whole affair his furry ear twitched every time Nebula moved and no one missed it when he slid from the chair, handed mini-Groot off to Mantis and followed Nebula out of the room. Peter and Gamora shared a look but shrugged. It was none of their business and Mantis spoke up at that moment, asking Peter something about Nebula. Never the most focused individual Quill slipped easily into the conversation and didn't much note when Gamora left as well, followed by Drax.

It wasn't that Rocket tried to be stealthy. His guns-first manner made that impossible most of the time anyway. It was just that when you are less than three feet tall and maybe forty pounds soaking wet you don't make much noise walking. Nevertheless Nebula noticed.

"What do you want, fox," she said, just off the Milano's boarding ramp and halfway to her own ship.

"Your cybernetics are fucked up," Rocket said with his usual tact. "I can hear 'em whining. Three blown servos in your left arm alone. And a joint grinding. More stuff elsewhere."

"So?". The cyborg shot the smaller, cuter (but equally angry) one a look. "Why should you care?"

"Because I can hear them," Rocket said. "Fucked up machinery bugs me and the whine is driving me crazy." A cup-shaped furry ear flicked as Nebula turned to face him. "Lemme have a look." His little clawed hands twitched as he repressed the urge to just run up and start working on the problem. Rocket's need to fix thing bordered on the manic sometimes, a product of 'programming' he couldn't easily shake off.

"Don't you have a dog bed waiting for you somewhere, fox?"

"A what?" Rocket tilted his head to the side.

"I've seen that thing you sleep in."

If Nebula thought to enrage Rocket and get him to drop his interest in her cybernetics, she underestimated him. "I know what it is. I know where Quill got it too. But it's comfortable. I don't need a whole you-sized bed and space is tight on the Milano. I can drag that thing anywhere and sleep where I'm working."

Nebula was genuinely curious now. "It doesn't bother you to sleep in a pet bed?"

"Lady, I got lotsa problems. A comfy bed ain't one of them. Now let me look at that arm."

It was the longest conversation he'd ever had with Nebula and almost to his surprise she shrugged and sat down on the metal decking. "Fine."

He'd never been within arm's reach of her before and she was sure he'd never gotten a good look at her cybernetics but in five seconds he had her upper arm half disassembled. One furry hand dragged a pouch around that had previously hung above his tail and the handles of specialized tools popped out as he lifted the flap. Many of the tools looked homemade and some were definitely made expressly for working on cybernetics and bionics.

"You should have got this worked on by now," the raccoon grunted as he examined the guts of her arm. He sniffed and grimaced. "Got burnt connections all through here. No plasma burns on the outside though. How'd it happen?"

"When the Sovereign attacked on Ego I had to power the drilling lasers with my cybernetics."

"Oh yeah. Good job. Mine don't have the power to do that or I'd have tried it. You have high-power cybernetics, go through power cells like crazy, mine all run on chemical energy they get from my metabolism. Means I have to eat a lot and they're a lot weaker than yours but all I need is food and it all keeps working."

"You're strong enough," Nebula said, remembering how the little raccoon hefted weapons as large as himself.

Rocket grunted an affirmative and tossed a burst servo module into the corner. Somehow it didn't surprise Nebula that he had spares in another pouch. Over the course of ten minutes he painstakingly disassembled her arm and then rebuilt it. Externally it appeared unchanged but when his clawed fingers snapped the last panel shut and she swiveled her elbow there was a smoothness and a strength to the rotation she hadn't felt in months.

"Lemme see your leg. Left leg."

"Watch where you put your hands, fox."

Rocket grinned cruelly. "Why? Do you even still have..." he trailed off, looking away. "Sorry. Forget I said that. Just need to see the knee, I can hear a bearing grinding in there."

Nebula hadn't been around Rocket much but she knew he didn't say 'sorry' unless he meant it. "Why are you really doing this, fox?"

Rocket had her knee partly taken apart and his hands kept working even as he talked. They knew what to do with no input from his brain. "Because when I had to stun Gamora and order the ship off Ego, you were right there. You coulda stopped me. I had to get us off that rock. I didn't want to, but someone had to give the order. Had to save as many lives as I could."

"Even if it meant leaving some behind."

"Yeah. Try the knee." The difference wasn't as dramatic as the arm but her leg bent without a catch in the movement he hadn't even noticed until it was gone.

Nebula remembered the scene in the Quadrant's entry bay. Giving that takeoff order had crushed Rocket emotionally and she was amazed he'd recovered at all, much less so completely. It would have been simple to walk over and break his neck then and there but she needed to get off the exploding planet just like the rest of them. The fact that he'd stunned Gamora to protect her was part of it too, of course.

Rocket was...sniffing her? His whiskers twitched as he looked her over from uncomfortably close range, his little clawed fingers poking and prodding. The raccoon had no sense of personal space at all when he was working on something, and Nebula supposed she was his current project. He touched her in indelicate places but she bore it as she would bear a doctor's examination, which was what this was. A furry, less than three foot tall cyborg genius of a doctor, but a doctor nevertheless.

"Lotsa internal faults. Look, I can do the stuff on the outside, but I can't do flesh stuff. Someone's gonna need to cut you to get at some a this and I know a guy I trust."

“Not interested."

"Suit yerself. I didn't wanna get worked on either, but the crew leaned on me." Somewhat to her surprise Rocket didn't flinch away when her only partly cybernetic right hand slid up his back until it stroked the fur of his neck. That made it simple to grab a handful of scruff and yank him off the ground.

"Ow! Leggo, leggo!" Rocket's fangs came out and he clawed hard at her arm in the beginnings of what looked like a violent panic attack, but even that arm has half mechanical and he barely scratched her.

"How many bombs did you just put in me, fox? Why are you really doing this?"

In the entryway Gamora put up her hand as Drax reached for his knives. The last time anyone manhandled Rocket this way he'd panicked and bitten Peter but the raccoon was stronger now. She saw the flashed hand signal for 'wait' even as he squirmed and growled theatrically. Naturally their presence twenty feet away was no secret to his senses, even if Nebula missed it.

"All right!" Rocket yelped, hanging limp from his scruff now. "All right. I didn't put any bombs in ya. Word of honor. And I did it because I know what it's like!"

"Know what, fox?"

Rocket looked away. "To be someone's toy."

Nebula winced and dropped him. He landed easily on all fours, rolling back to sit cross-legged next to her. He rubbed his scruff for a moment, then spoke. "See, whoever did Gamora did top-notch work. I hardly have to help her with her cybernetics at all. Me, I'm a rush job. They didn't care if everything hurt all the time. I'm just a project. Someone's little monster. Sound familiar?"

"Yes." Nebula leaned back against the bulkhead. "So you could tell."

"You got it. I could hear ya wince, smell the bad connections and where the flesh is trying ta heal same time it tries to reject the implants. I know how much that hurts. You're even worse off than I was, lady. I can do a little, but you need to see a doc."

They were silent for a moment and Rocket idly traced circuit diagrams on the dusty floor. "I know what it's like to be a thing. Not a person. Just a thing someone makes. They don't care who you are, what you want. Just how they can use you. And then when they're done," he drew a resistor-squiggle in the dust, "They just cut you up and use the parts in their next project."

This time when Nebula reached out she didn't grab his scruff, but gently stroked his fur. It didn't keep his fangs from coming out as he savagely erased the dust diagram. "But sometimes their little toy gets loose and kills 'em all, like I did. Or gets away, like you. And then you gotta live your life, and that means takin' care of yourself and even maybe making some friends. We're both monsters. We just hafta be the best monsters we can be, okay? Specially if you wanna kill Thanos. That ain't gonna be easy.:"

"So you know a guy."

"Yeah. Real cybernetics expert. One a the team that made me and the guy I saw when the crew made me have my back worked on. Best stupid idea they ever had. I never realized how much it all hurt until he fixed me up. I'll take you ta meet him but you gotta promise not to be jumpy. This guy's a friend and I don't have so many a those."

"I thought you said you killed them all."

"'Cept him. Only good one a the bunch. Weren't for him I wouldn't be here. So you be nice to him, okay?"

"Okay." Nebula stood, stretched, and swiveled her arm again as she tested the repairs. "All this after I shot you?"

"Prob'ly saved my life when you did that, lady. Just took me a while to realize it. And again later. Weren't for you I'd a been floating frozen in space like, like happened to Yondu." For the first time there was a catch in Rocket's voice. "But he died doin' good. I woulda just been dead for nothin'." He paused. “Can't just die for nothin' any more. Groot needs me.”

"All right, I'll be in touch." Nebula took a last look around, still not spotting the other two Guardians lurking in the shadows, and headed down the hanger toward her ship. When she was out of sight Gamora and Drax finally came out of hiding.

"That was surprisingly diplomatic of you," Drax said.

Rocket shrugged. "Monsters gotta stick together."

"You're not a monster, Rocket," said Gamora. "Maybe you were once, but not any more."

"Oh, I'm a monster," the raccoon said with a grin. "But I'm your monster." He slipped the last of his tools back into their pouches and rose to his feet. "I need a drink. Drax, you still got that bottle a blue stuff?"

"Indeed," Drax rumbled.

"So Rocket," Gamora said a few minutes later as Drax poured glowing blue liqueur into shot glasses, "How many bombs did you plant in my sister's cybernetics just now?"

"You wound me," said the little raccoon with a grin. "Told her the truth. Didn't put one bomb in there."

"What about kill switches, cybernetics disruptors, trackers, remote control access points?"

"Well," said the raccoon after slugging back a shot, "Maybe just a few."