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dawnquafam · 6 years

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"Immortality sucks.” - Peter Quill

So, like I said, in honor of my Spidey death post getting 12k notes, I decided to murder someone else. Except I decided to murder everyone. I have this headcanon that Star-Lord can get his powers back if he gets his hands on the seed Ego planted on Earth, which would once again make him immortal. So here he is, outliving everyone he loves. It’s about 1,600 words, give or take a few (and it took hours... I didn’t mean to let it get this big), so I’m putting it under a cut (with potential IW/Avengers 4 spoilers below), and if you’re on mobile trying to scroll past and the cut doesn’t work... I’m sorry.

Peter knows what he’s signing up for when he agrees to regain his Celestial powers. Part of the way he coped with losing them was to remind himself that, after a while, immortality would suck. After maybe a century, tops, he would lose everyone he had to protect. But now it’s necessary, otherwise he’ll lose everyone to Thanos within a day.

He knows, yes, but it doesn’t really hit him until the post-immortality deaths start, right there in that battle.

First is Captain America. As a kid, before everything went wrong, Peter had had some of his trading cards. Cap had been a symbol of the happy part of his childhood. And then Peter watched him get struck down, killed taking a hit for Bucky. That single moment, the brutal crunch of his bones that echoed through the comms, would haunt Peter forever. Literally.

Next to fall is Tony. Peter vaguely remembers overhearing his family ranting about his family’s weapons business, but the Tony Peter met was like the friend of his dreams. The man was pure sass, enjoyed Peter’s music like none of the Guardians really had, and even promised to upgrade the Zune to something more durable and with more memory without compromising the precious object itself, when Thanos was dealt with.

He didn’t make it that long. Without hesitation, he threw himself in front of the other Peter, and his final words to the kid sounded happier than Peter had ever seen him, even as the boy sobbed and screamed over his body. That moment, too, would haunt him till the end of time.

Third was Natasha. One moment, the battle was coming to a close, and she was joking with Clint. Then a stray energy blast hit her in the back and she was sprawled on the ground, her last laugh etched into her expression. That was how Peter always thought he’d go out – mid-battle and laughing. Looking at that expression, it was in that moment that Peter finally realized he would never die.

Thankfully, the battle took no one else. The funerals were rough, but the other Guardians willingly accompanied him to all three. Gamora held him close, knowing that his new curse hurt him. Even Drax and Rocket got a little touchy-feely around him – maybe there was something in his expression as he hovered at the back of the crowd, seeing Rhodey and Bucky and Clint and the others crying and knowing he would be that man far too often, far too soon.

A few years passed peacefully. The Guardians made frequent trips to Earth after the war, all the while growing closer to Earth’s heroes and the Asgardians. Peter reunited with his grandparents a couple days after, his Guardians at his side, and the odd family spent all day exchanging stories and eating wonderful food. The Guardians made sure to get Peter back to Earth for every holiday, every birthday. Then they passed, his grandfather from cancer and his grandmother from old age, and Peter was left the only person in the universe who remembered his mom.

Rocket’s short lifespan came to a close next. He went in his sleep, and the others discovered via Groot’s early morning wails. With trembling hands, Peter packed his ashes into a firework, and they blasted him into space. They huddled around their heartbroken tree to watch the pyrotechnics that Rocket would’ve loved.

Peter made sure to befriend any kids his friends had. Soon, he was known as the beloved but eccentric Uncle Peter to the Bartons, the Starks (Pepper discovered she was pregnant with twins shortly after Tony’s funeral), Thor’s kids, Loki and Val’s kids, and the Langs. Peter didn’t call him uncle because they enjoyed cheesy name-twin nicknames like Peter 1.0 and Peter 2.0. When their parents started passing, they turned to him for comfort, and he turned to them. After that first generation stopped wondering why he wasn’t growing old and dying like their parents, no one really questioned his presence – he was just there, a constant visitor throughout the decades.

He and Gamora never had biological kids of their own – between Thanos’s alterations and their different physiologies, they couldn’t. They mostly just went around adopting lost souls and helping them find their places in the galaxy. While she still lived, he didn’t mind. But when she passed, taking the entirety of her species with her, Peter broke. He screamed and cried and raged that it wasn’t fair. He had given so much to the universe, and all it did was take his soulmate from him. He missed her smiles, the way she made him feel just by being beside him, curling up with her every night. He missed her in a way he had never thought possible, because it hurt so much.

Drax was gone at that point, dying with a smile on his face at the thought of reuniting with his wife and daughter. Nebula, too, was gone, finally free of all her torment. Groot and Mantis had settled on a planet, with Groot needing more and more sunlight in his old age. Somehow, drunk out of his mind, Peter flew the Milano to them, and they took care of him for a while. Mantis had to wear gloves to touch him, so powerful was his grief. But, not too long later, old age claimed Mantis and Groot, too. When he awoke one day to find Groot curled up in a patch of sunlight, unmoving, Peter fell to his knees and cried. All of his friends, all of the people he had become immortal to protect, were dead.

He was alone.

As he sobbed in the grass, a small shuttle landed nearby. It didn’t look too different from the quinjets of old, but it was more streamlined and painted with fine lines of gold. Out of it stepped Loki. It was then Peter noticed the tablet beside Groot, still stuck on the “Your call has been disconnected” screen. Carefully, Loki approached the grieving immortal. Somehow, he convinced Peter to pack his things and board the shuttle while he laid the tree to rest. After that, Loki flew him back to Asgard, which was still stationed on Earth, still unable to find a suitable, uninhabited planet to settle on. Bucky lived there, too, but outside of him, Loki, and Thor, battle, illness, accidents, and old age had claimed all the other originals. Even Peter was dead – his grandson now bore the moniker Spider-Man. Bucky didn’t survive much longer after Peter’s arrival.

If Peter had expected the Asgardians to be gentle with him, he was wrong. Thor and Loki, already intimately familiar with the concept of outliving their friends and loved ones, gave him a lecture and put him to work. Peter resented them for it – didn’t he deserve to mourn?

But their tactic worked. The work distracted him, and regularly hanging around with the brothers and their families reminded them that he wasn’t alone. The originals’ descendants visited Asgard often, too, and their questions helped Peter retain his memories of his mortal friends. Peter found hope again for the first time since Gamora’s death, and he even figured out a new purpose in life. Working with Thor and Loki, he found a suitable patch of empty space at reasonable traveling distance to Earth, and he started building a planet. Unlike Ego’s planet, this one would be full of life, home to the Asgardians and any other refugees who needed it.

It took a couple thousand years, and it felt really weird, having this mental connection to a planet full of people and animals, but he enjoyed it. He didn’t stop visiting Earth, giving advice to every new generation, but everything that he needed was on his planet. He even built an ever-growing museum as a tribute to the heroes he’d lost. When he wasn’t busy taking care of planet business, he led tours there. Gamora, Rocket, Steve, Tony, Yondu, and all the others would never be forgotten.

He settled into a routine, but even Asgardians weren’t immortal. Valkyrie was the first to go. Thor followed her gratefully, having already outlived his half-human children. Their deaths hurt, the companionship of thousands of years lost, but Loki’s was the worst. Peter and Loki had spent a lot of time saving lives and getting into trouble together, and losing your best friend of four thousand years was just as bad as losing your soulmate of a century – worse, in some ways.

But this time, Peter didn’t go on a rampage. After four thousand years, loss was an old friend. More importantly, his weird connection to this planet was a constant reminder that Star-Lord was forever loved and needed. And Peter Quill was a fixture in the life of many families, even as their bloodlines grew more and more distant from the friends who started them. Their features faded, their last names disappeared, some families died out entirely, and even Peter stopped trying to make connections to the originals, but he helped them out anyway.

Everyone Peter knew and cared about grew and died, over and over and over. The thousands of years stretched into tens of thousands and then hundreds of thousands and then millions. The universe changed around him. Sometimes, Peter thought he would go insane. He could ease his pain by having immortal children of his own, but he wouldn’t wish this life on anyone. Being immortal was harder than he had ever imagined, but in every life he saved, he found happiness, and knew he was doing exactly what all of his long-dead friends would want him to.

For them, he lived happily. Even though it was forever the hardest thing he ever had to do.

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