fiction | Part of the journey is the end

3. Counter-earth

Cut to a flashback of young Rocket with his friends in their cages. They were lying on their backs, looking at the ceiling. "Is sky?" Floor asked. "No. That's not the sky; that's a ceiling," Lylla kindly corrected.

A tear rolled down Rocket's face against his will. His friends would never get to see the sky; they would die without ever seeing it after spending their entire lives in a lab or cage.

"But sire's making a new world for all of us, and when we get there, there will be sky, and it will be beautiful and forever," she continued. The other three were amazed.

The Avengers and Guardians felt a wave of sadness because they knew that Rocket had lost his friends at some point. It wasn't hard to conclude that his friends had never reached the new world.

Teefs announced that he'd been thinking and wanted to tell the others that they might have been interested in knowing since they were his closest and only friends.

Rocket had a watery smile. He was interested in everything Teefs had to say; he wished more than anything that he was still alive today to listen to him ramble about absolute nonsense.

Lylla said she'd been thinking that they would need names once they moved to the new world. She declared her name to be Lylla. Rocket said it was a pretty name.

The prettiest, Rocket thought.

Teefs giggled as he said his name would be Teefs, as his teeth were the most prominent.

Rocket snorted with laughter.

"Me be called Floor, because me is lying on floor," said Floor. "You're lying on a floor, so your name is Floor?" Lylla asked. "Yes!" Floor giggled.

The group smiled fondly. Teefs and Floor were too innocent for the place where they were kept.

"What about you, friend?" Lylla asked Rocket. "Someday, I'm gonna make great machines that fly, and me and my friends are gonna go flyin' together into the forever and beautiful sky. Lylla, and Teefs, and Floor, and me...Rocket," said Rocket.

The Guardians sucked in a breath when they realized Rocket eventually did end up flying into the forever and beautiful sky with his friends, just not the ones he thought he would do it with.

"You named yourself," Bucky said.

"89P13 isn't a great name," Rocket said.

"No, it isn't," Bucky agreed quietly. The Asset wasn't either.

"It really is good to have friends," said Lylla.

Sadness flitted across everyone's faces, and Rocket's face contorted as though he was struggling not to cry. He wished he could've introduced his old friends to the Guardians.

Cut to the present. The Guardians were in a circle as they viewed Rocket's file, which revealed the experimentation and torture he underwent at the hands of the High Evolutionary. They looked away at hearing Baby Rocket's screeches, and none of their eyes were dry.

The group's eyes darkened, and anger rushed through them at seeing the torture Rocket experienced, especially Natasha, Bucky, Tony, Gamora, and Nebula. This situation was all too familiar to them.

Rocket squeezed his eyes shut and clapped his hands over his ears to block the sounds. Quill, torn between sobbing and wanting to throttle the High Evolutionary, unclipped the Zune from his belt and gave it to Rocket, who put the headphones in his ears. Quill looked at Rocket with haunted eyes.