Avenge the Fallen • Endgame AU

Two

Drax walked up to Quill, who had been sitting in his seat silently for a few hours.

Every single morning, as soon as he would wake up, Quill would check their coordinates, their map and then their fuel as if something big had changed overnight. Then he would collapse into his seat as if simply doing that had exhausted him, and he would do nothing but sit there with his headphones on, listening to the same song over and over again for hours on end, like a stuck record.

Lonely Boy by Andrew Gold. It was more upbeat than the title insinuated, so Drax guessed that he was listening to it to cheer himself up. However, his facial expression suggested nothing of the sort.

The general energy of the group seemed non-existent compared to how it used to be. No jokes were being exchanged from person to person. Nobody laughed. Even a smile was rare. And although each of them had lightened some of the seriousness they usually held about them, they still barely talked to each other.

One of the few times they interacted was to pass around what little food they had left. In three days, they would run out, and in another seven, their water would be gone too.

"I tried using the radio again," Drax said to Quill. "Nothing happened today either, but I just thought you should know."

Ever since the snap, Strange had lost his ability to make portals, as well as every other aspect of his powers. Their first response to his realisation was a frustrated "Great. Just what we needed."

But as the days went on, they worried about him more and more. He would sleep for sometimes twelve to fourteen hours at a time during what they presumed was daytime, and no matter what they did to try and wake him, nothing would ever happen. When he was awake, everything he did seemed almost robotic. He felt hopeless, and everybody knew it but none of them were able to do anything about it.

Honestly, they preferred him when he was sleeping.

Because of this, the radios in the ship were their only chance of communication to the rest of the universe outside the Benatar.

For the first few days it was all everyone could think about and work on - it was the perfect way to contact somebody to get help, and if they could find a way to connect it to the map there was even a small chance that they could send out their coordinates.

But as the days went on, they slowly lost connection to the rest of the world altogether, and their enthusiasm faded.

If anyone in the various locations Peter Parker had suggested recieved their coordinates, nobody was making any move to come and save them.

"You know, playing the same song over and over again isn't going to get the ship anywhere," Drax said to Quill, stopping a few feet away from him.

Quill glared up at him as he took off his headphones and put them around his neck.

"What did you just say to me?" he demanded.

"I said, playing the same song over and over again isn't going to get the ship anywhere," Drax repeated, making hand gestures to try and exaggerate his point. "It's true."

"And what is going to do something, exactly?" Quill snapped, standing up and squaring his shoulders as if to prepare for a fight.

He smiled sarcastically at Drax's silence.

"That's what I thought. Please don't criticize me if you're not the genius."

"You're not the genius," Drax said. "If anyone here was the genius, I think it would be me."

"In your dreams," he scoffed in reply.

"We're going to die, Quill," he said matter-of-factly after a pause, changing the subject.