Return

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/22297099.

Rating: General Audiences

Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Category: F/F
Fandom: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Relationship: Mantis/Nebula (Marvel)
Character: Mantis (Marvel), Nebula (Marvel)
Additional Tags: Post-Endgame, Healing, Communication, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Slow
Romance, Feelings, Getting to Know Each Other, Character Study,
Drax appears briefly, Learning to people, Don't copy to another site
Collections: MCU Space Ships 2019
Stats: Published: 2020-02-01 Words: 1800

Return
by Nununununu

Summary

“Trying is useless,” Nebula turns her head forwards again, the line of her back turning her
into something straight and sharp. She adds after such a long pause it seems disconnected,
“You are not.”

Notes

Written in a double drabble style - two hundred words per section.

Mild tw for the past trauma that is Endgame, Thanos and Ego and the upbringing of both
characters. Both incarnations of Gamora are mentioned and there's mildly implied
Gamora/Peter.

(Date updated to match author reveals; originally posted 18/01).

Please don’t go alone, Mantis thinks. Nebula stands at the ramp of the ship, a solitary figure ready
to board.

“Please let me go with you,” Mantis ducks her head and hunches her shoulders, preparing herself to
be refused, “I know I’m useless and can’t fight very well, although I would like to.”
Nebula doesn’t turn around to face Mantis, although she glances slightly over her shoulder at her.
Her face is lit up in segments by the dim glow coming from the interior of the ship, overlaying her
implants, light and dark.

“If you want to fight, then you should learn how,” she says.

Will you teach me, Mantis doesn’t dare ask.

“I will try,” she agrees, hesitant.

“Trying is useless,” Nebula turns her head forwards again, the line of her back turning her into
something straight and sharp. She adds after such a long pause it seems disconnected, “You are
not.”

“Oh!” Admittedly slightly confused, Mantis nonetheless perks up at the brief gesture the other
woman makes, indicating for her to climb onto the ship. She scampers up the ramp in Nebula’s
wake.

It takes her a long time to realise that Nebula was saying she wasn’t useless.

“Vormir,” Nebula’s voice is a monotone. They’re sitting on her ship, looking through the
viewscreen down at the unwelcoming planet.

“You want to see where your sister died,” Mantis states without touching her, before realising such
a remark isn’t appropriate. She bows her head, huddling into herself, “I’m sorry.”

The silence that stretches out between them is heavy. It lasts so long Mantis eventually peeks up at
the other woman, her antennae lifting questioningly.

“Did your father teach you how to apologise,” Nebula doesn’t ask this as a question, although it is.

“My father –” Mantis stalls. She has no idea if she even had a father. “Ego took me as a larva.” She
remembers her conversation with Drax, “He raised me as a pet.”

“My father raised me to be a killer,” Nebula says, “He tore me apart and replaced everything that
was weak. I am a monster because of him.”

“You’re not a monster,” Mantis is absolutely certain about this one, “You’re very strong.”

“Not as strong as I could be,” Nebula doesn’t quite look at her in their reflections superimposed on
top of the planet upon the viewscreen, “And you aren’t weak. Nor are you a pet.”

Mantis thinks on this while Nebula strides ahead across the forbidding rock. The cliffs both alarm
and intrigue her. There is no one living for her to touch, to sense, but her antennae are tingling,
aching – the very air is rich with regret, agony, sorrow, fear.

Nebula is a startlingly small figure surrounded by dark and cold. Mantis approaches her quietly,
carefully, as the other woman stands at the top of the cliff, looking down.
“I wish he wasn’t dead so I could kill him a thousand times for this, in a thousand different ways,”
she murmurs.

The drop is awful. Mantis’ head aches and her eyes hurt. The air is thicker up here somehow,
although it should be the opposite. It brushes over her cheeks and shoulders like icy hands trying to
drag her down.

“But it still wouldn’t be enough,” Nebula laments.

“I think – she is pleased to see us,” Mantis’ antennae glow very softly. She speaks without realising
at first, “I think she is sad but. Determined. We are alive and she is glad.”

“Gamora is alive,” Nebula swings around to look at her, abruptly fierce, before deflating, “In a
sense.”

“We could find her,” Mantis suggests.

“I don’t think she wants to be found,” Nebula admits, when they are back on the ship and eating
noodles. Mantis had not expected the other woman to make them for her. They are the most
delicious thing she has ever tasted.

“Maybe not yet,” she agrees.

“What was it like for you,” Nebula asks suddenly, her gaze intent, “During those five years.”

No one has previously asked Mantis this.

The other Guardians have gone with Peter to his homeworld, to spend time with the Avengers.
Mantis wanted to go there to see Kevin Bacon and eat ice-cream, but when they landed she saw so
many children, families, and suddenly she couldn’t bear it.

“I remember feeling,” She stares at the box her noodles are in, “I think I felt – everything.”

“Everything?” Nebula’s eyes are very dark.

“Everything that – everyone who disappeared felt. Although I don’t remember it,” Mantis can still
sense it in a way though, like an echo.

“What did you feel,” Nebula asks, in that way of hers that makes it sound like a statement.

“Oh, I never know what I feel,” Mantis laughs.

“Ego didn’t teach you how to lie, did he,” Nebula shakes her head.

“I think Ego wanted me to be like a puppy,” Mantis confesses when they are on their way to meet
up with the others, streaking past the stars on Nebula’s little ship, “Although he liked it when I
didn’t question him. He never let me play with the other children when I was young, even when
I’d been very good.”
“My father kept me in order to provide my sister incentive,” Nebula stares out of the viewscreen as
they near a black hole they must navigate past. It would have been easier to avoid its reaches, but
Nebula plotted their route deliberately, and her fingers spread out now to make some minor
adjustments with ease. “I was useful to him only as an example and a tool.”

“Was he truly your father?” Mantis dares to enquire.

Nebula blinks slowly, “I have no idea why I kept wanting him to be.”

“Here,” Mantis passes her a cup of the tea Nebula favours and stands next to her, her hand on the
armrest of Nebula’s chair.

“Thank you,” Nebula doesn’t protest.

“You’re welcome,” Mantis has never seen anything as impressive: the other woman, effortlessly
piloting them past this massive nothingness in space.

When they re-join their teammates, Nebula surprises Mantis by taking issue with Drax.

Or perhaps her problem with him is more specific. He breaks into a crooked grin on seeing Mantis
and opens his mouth to loudly denounce –

Something about her appearance, most likely. This does not especially bother Mantis, given she
similarly finds his type of thing off-putting in many ways. He is easy to talk to and she appreciates
his bluntness, when almost everyone else she ever touches rarely feel and say the same thing.

“I will thank you for refraining,” Nebula stalks past the large man, her words so icily polite they
could almost be used as a weapon, “From insulting my friend.”

“I don’t think he means it to be insulting,” Mantis hurries to correct, while Drax’s mouth opens and
shuts a couple of time.

“Intent doesn’t matter,” Nebula swings around to give her an unfathomable look.

“She called you her friend,” Drax points in the other woman’s direction as she leaves.

“She did,” Mantis is so pleased she can barely draw breath.

She doesn’t acknowledge the part of her that points out it is not friendship she wants from Nebula –
or not just.

Not yet.

Mantis makes Nebula soup and Nebula gives her a small blade. They drink from warm mugs
together while Nebula shows her how to angle her wrist.

Mantis hits the target on her third try and nearly spills her soup as she jumps up and down,
overjoyed.
“It must seem very pathetic to you,” She realises belatedly that her pleasure must seem ridiculous
to the other woman.

“It baffles me why, when you are so strong, you think yourself weak,” Nebula doesn’t look at her.
She simply sets her mug aside, crosses over to pick up the knife, and returns it to Mantis so she can
throw again.

“I’m not strong,” Mantis starts to protest, and then Nebula is touching her suddenly, her fingers
closing firmly around Mantis’ wrist.

Her dark eyes are alight with emotion Mantis can’t feel in the metal grip.

“You sent my fa- Thanos to sleep,” Nebula says intensely, “You have no idea how big an
achievement that was.”

“You kick ass beautifully and I think you’re amazing,” Mantis replies before she can stop herself,
grateful Peter sorted out her muddle about ‘names’.

Nebula looks so surprised Mantis can’t stop smiling throughout the rest of the day.

They don’t find Gamora in the end; Gamora finds them.

Peter is fidgeting, inching over to her, while Nebula awkwardly folds her sister into an embrace.
Gamora moves more stiffly than the version of her they lost, wary, but she relaxes into the hug
eventually.

“I’m so happy for you,” Mantis enthuses later, when they’re eating fruit together late at night in the
ship’s kitchen, when no one else is awake.

“I am,” Nebula starts, and then pauses for a long time. She bites her fruit, chews it, swallows, and
finishes, only then looking away, “Happy.”

Her gaze, when she glances at Mantis, implies a smile.

“I’m happy for myself too,” Mantis takes out the little blade Nebula gave her and admires it. She
has taught herself to hit the target now on every throw. “I’m going to spend some time on Earth and
on some other interesting planets.” She gives Nebula a smile of her own. “I expect you will want to
be with your sister.”

“Yes,” Nebula says, but then amends it to, “Not yet. Gamora will spend some time here, with the
other Guardians. Getting to know Quill. She and I will spend some time together afterwards.”

“What will you do?” Mantis asks as they step outside to see the stars. From the moon they’ve
landed on, they look like nothing more than little lights.

Like the glow of Mantis’ antennae perhaps, seen from a distance.

The air is clear and nothing like Vormir. With Ego, Mantis was always tucked up out of the way
when night fell. She breathes it in greedily now.

“Do you plan on travelling alone?” Nebula answers the question with one of her own. She rests her
flesh hand close to Mantis’ when they sit on a fallen log.

Their knees are close together as well.

“You are welcome to come with me,” Mantis decides to be brave, “I would like that.”

“I think,” Nebula pauses for a long time as is her way, but there isn’t tension in her for once. She
moves her fingers very slightly, so they overlap with Mantis’ own, “I would like that too.”

Mantis feels her then for the first time, feels what Nebula is feeling. An emotion terribly new to the
other woman; one that matches with Mantis’ own.

“It’s a deal then,” Mantis nods, smiling helplessly, basking in the warm wonderful sense of –

Hope.

Fin.

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