5 Father Deprivation is Serious Business (II)

For Jason Quill, DMT trips now tended to push him down the memory lane of pasts lives in former times that no longer were. Or so Yao had explained to him when all was dreamed and done. This time, though, Yao somehow changed things to make him follow in the footsteps of his little girl's 'Star-Lord.' Literally. After the consciousness-expanding cosmic trip through color swirls and infinite eyes, the entire trip consisted of him walking after Peter two steps behind. For the entirety of his last life.

By the end of the first day he was actively wishing Yondu Udonta would come back to life so he could torture him to death with his bare hands. An urge that grew to levels he hadn't even fathomed possible as more of Peter's life played out with him unable to do anything but watch and listen like a ghost.

He'd been right. The people in the universe with more experience than him in being a bad father were precisely as few as he thought. Physical or worse abuse notwithstanding, thankfully.

Unfortunately, there seemed to be a lot of fake parents, step-parents, parental stand-ins and child abductors for whom physical or worse abuse was not notwithstanding. Who made even himself of past timelines seem like a total saint. More unfortunately, one of those child abductors and fake father figures happened to have successfully abducted and inflicted one of the most traumatising and crippling "child-raising" "styles" upon his grandson in the most recent undone time. Even more unfortunately, one of the fathers worse than him happened to be the biological father of his son. Grandson. Now. Here. Yet more unfortunately, that particular individual happened to be a literal god if anything was, for whatever that term was worth on this particular plane of the world. And worst of all, his son (grandson) Peter Jason Quill now remembered every bit of the life that he'd been led down before this one.

Jason Quill quickened his pace and turned his mind away from that downward spiral before he really got angry. Soon he was at his guest quarters and slipped quietly inside. The bedroom was precisely as colourful as he'd come to expect from Tibetan tourist brochures. The large bed was even covered with enough quilts, blankets, pillows and sheets to shelter a small army if this was any place other than a mountaintop in the Himalayas overlooking the Tibetan plateau in the middle of winter. He'd have expected there to be magic providing warmth throughout the estate. But the resident Sorcerer either chose not to for some reason, or he did do it but the temperatures he was accustomed to were lower than what an American from Missouri would prefer. Not that he was one, and his constitution was better equipped to handle rough climates than Terrans were as well, but it was something he'd noticed. And forgot to bring up on account of much more important things being on his mind.

Meredith was in a chair when he got there, but she had long since fallen asleep. The book she'd been reading had fallen to the floor and the candle next to her was almost depleted. He smiled sadly at the sight. If little Mer was the best thing that came out of this marriage, the lifespan difference between him and his wife was the worst. But he knew what he was getting into when he committed, and he always honoured his commitments. Or at least he was never one to break a commitment first. Not that Meredith had given him any reason to want to.

He put the book away and carried her to the bed, then tucked her in. She didn't stir.

It was just as well. It was not the time yet for him to join her in bed.

He leaned in to kiss her forehead, then left the room as quietly as he'd come in.

The Astral Overlook was far too large for a single person to live in it. Or at least that's what he'd thought before he crossed paths with various foodstuffs, bedsheets and other supplies being floated about by unseen servants. Whatever the landlord's policy relative to warmth, he did not seem to shy away from using magic for menial tasks or whatever else. It was the sort of utilitarian mindset he could always get behind.

Jason Quill looked in on his daughter next. Whatever miracle Peter had worked on her had restored her to the point before she contracted cancer. But it didn't do anything else, like removing the drugs she'd already taken or adding the healthy levels of nutrients to go with it. She had a long few days or maybe weeks of purging and bedrest in her future.

He pulled a chair next to her bed and sat there for a while. Watching her. Thinking of the sort of father he was and wasn't. He hadn't raised no easy woman, admittedly. He'd taught her how to value herself relative to other people. He'd managed to instil a fairly adequate ability to read other people's intentions relative to her. He had even passed on some of his poise and charm. But he'd otherwise been too permissive of Mer's impulsive, feel-good lifestyle while she was growing up. Let her become absorbed in feelings and too easily dismiss logic and fact. Supremely ironic when considering that he only agreed to 'join' her on her DMT trips – the experiences that made him realise his failures as a father – because of how indulgent he'd always been of her requests of him.

An overreaction, he was starting to learn, to the overbearing and controlling bastard he'd been during his last dozens and some lives where Peter was his son as he always should have been. In a subconscious bid to make up for how overbearing and tyrannical he'd been with a son in a past life, he went too far in indulging his daughter in this one. Or that was his assumption. One which the Ancient One had carefully not denied when asked.

He really should have gotten a clue when his daughter started to care more about random shrubs and moths than for any person that didn't share her blood. Should have realised what he'd done by not actually contributing more actively to the development of her cognitive frame of reference. Maybe if he'd been more involved and even the slightest bit proactive in setting some manner of path for her early in life, she'd have grown into a different woman. Instead of the free-spirited but reckless hippie that fell in love and conceived a child with the devil incarnate.

To add insult to injury, she hadn't brought her sweet and perfect 'space-man' to meet the parents even once!

The father huffed and sat back in the chair, scowling at the girl. Woman now, except she wasn't really, was she? Her mindset had stalled at that point where she recklessly devoted 100% of herself to every favorite infatuation. Even as she matured out of that stage when her latest infatuation didn't live past the week. A dangerous combination if ever there was one. That's how obsessions were made.

He could see it seeping into her treatment of her family now, with the eyes of hindsight open wide. How she took them for granted not out of greed or spite – he hoped – but because she thought material support was indefinitely owed to her. He doubted she ever gave a second thought to where all their money was coming from, and he'd never tried to correct that. First it was because he was still bribing various bureaucrats to forge a paper trail. Then he was too busy buying rentable real estate with what money he got from selling rare metals and the few patents he could submit without raising any flags. Meanwhile, he'd wrongly assumed the public school system included economics in its primary curriculum, but that wasn't the case. Not anymore at least. Civics also seemed to have become a casualty of political reform at some point or other. Otherwise Mer would have at least had some idea of her rights, and more specifically where the other person's rights began and hers ended.

Then there was the way she raised her boy. How she doted on him. Shaped him. Smothered him with love and attention and kindness and her favorite this and thats. Her favorite tarts. Her favorite outdoor spots. Her favorite music. All the while praising him for every little thing, action and behaviour that fit her tastes and reminded her of her 'space-man.' While she laughingly dismissed or gently mocked him out of doing, liking and thinking anything and everything that didn't. She was manipulating her own son into donning a manufactured personality of her own design. Grooming him to become a replacement for the idealised version of her 'space-man' that only existed in her mind. And she didn't even seem to realise it. Even after all the DMT she constantly doped herself on, she didn't realise it.

It was a shipwreck mid-crash landing. A trainwreck waiting to happen, as Earthers would say. And it would happen if nothing changed by the time Peter reached early adolescence. Smothering single motherhood and a boy's struggle for attaining self-hood did not a good combo make.

At all.

They'd be lucky if their family broke to pieces without one or all of the rest of them dying of stress or committing suicide. And Peter was practically guaranteed to end up a criminal no matter what.

He was starting to understand what an evil alien space demon would see in his daughter, Jason Quill thought unhappily.

Standing up, the man bent over to kiss her on the forehead goodnight. She did stir, but not enough to awaken fully. Which was probably for the best, he thought as he left the room. He had a lot of work to do with her. Alas, it had to wait because there was someone who needed his full attention first. Someone whom the universe needed to receive Jason Quill's full attention first.

He found Peter asleep like his mother and grandmother, thankfully. But Jason Quill had also just spent 20-some years witnessing, emoting, judging and analysing him and his life. There was literally nothing left to ponder about him at this point. So the man again pulled a chair to the bedside, sat back on it and watched. Then, upon considering all the new information and implications thereof, rose and turned the chair so it faced the foot of the bed as much as it did the boy sleeping in it, before sitting back down again.

When Peter stirred, it was nothing like he usually did. There was no sleepy mumbling. No eye-rubbing while half-asleep. Not a yawn or groan at the sun streaming on his face while he tossed and turned. None of the ungainly shifting of childhood on the cusp of pubescent growth. Instead, he twitched and made to remove the cover while his other hand sought under a pillow for something or other. And when he found nothing and the covers proved too thick and heavy to easily dislodge, the boy froze for a long moment, almost unmoving.

Then he suddenly twisted and threw the pillow, quilt, blankets and every other piece of bedding every which way.

Violently.

Jason Quill stopped his grandson from falling off the bed with a hand, then watched him jump away from him with a sudden cry all the way to the foot of the bed.

Sought comfort from a gun under his pillow. Accustomed to sleeping on austere bedding. Fight or flight instinct activated by unfamiliar surroundings. "It is nine forty-three in the morning of November 11, 1988. You are in your assigned guestroom at the Astral Overlook where the Ancient One resides, an estate located in the Himalaya Mountains overlooking the Tibetan plateau. Your grandmother is asleep two rooms away on this same floor. And your mother is in the room next-door, sleeping and well on her way to full recovery."

His slow, collected recital worked as he hoped it would, calming his grandson down from whatever flashback or dark expectations his mind had conjured up. Much like it had done to any number of traumatised soldiers when he had dropped by after a battle or other, for questions or praise or reproach or whatever else. Jason Quill did not allow his face to show any of the many misgivings he had with treating his young grandson like a traumatised casualty of war.

Peter Quill, who'd bumped his elbow against the bedpost, froze in the act of rubbing it and stared in surprise at the man. And his distinctly non-Terran garb of gold and red that he had donned. The child's voice, when he finally spoke, was baffled. "… Grandpa?"

"Grandson," said Jason Quill. "Peter Quill. The Greatest Pilot in the Universe. Peter. Pete. Star-Lord. Star-Prince. Star-Munch. Space-Lord. Mr. Lord. Thief. Legendary Outlaw. Honorless Thief. Humie with a Death Wish. Quail. Dipshit. The Biggest Idiot in the Galaxy. Orphan Boy. Companion. Flash Gordon. Moron. Titan Killing Long-Term Booty Call. Man Who Has Lain With an A'askavariian."

By the end of his enumeration of every last one of his tiles of the late undone past, Peter Quill was gaping and pale white. "What… where-how do you know-" the boy clamped his mouth shut and gave him a look that belonged more on a cornered animal. Or a criminal. An outlaw. Certainly not a child. "… who are you?"

"I am J'Son. Firstborn Son and Heir by Right of Singular Lineage to Eson, Fifth of His Name, of the Planetary Kingdom of Spartax and of His other Worlds and Territories Emperor, Head of the Spartoi Empire and Defender of the Realm. Your grandfather."

Peter boggled at him, open-mouthed all over again. He had no words. He had no words for quite some time.

"Oh," Peter said, finally. "Oooh!" He said as if attaining some great realisation, then rolled his eyes. "I get it now. I'm still dreaming."

"You are not." Jason chose not to react to seeing his grandson emote as a way to disguise scanning an entire half a room for weapons and exits.

"Right, pull the other one," Peter waved him away with a sniff, incidentally scanning the second half of the room like the first. "If this weren't a dream, you sure as hell wouldn't be dressed like that."

"Ah." Jason didn't look down at his Spartoi regalia lest he give Peter the semblance of distraction he needed to bolt from the room. He did smirk though, faintly. "But you have dreamed of me?" He would do almost anything to salvage the disaster of a person that his grandson had been reduced to. Even if it meant exploiting his coping mechanisms.

"Only in nightmares," the boy scoffed and almost entirely hid the surreptitious glance at the items that hung from Jason's belt. "And believe me, they were always the worst."

"Because I was in them or because they ended with you being taken away?"

That finally seemed to take Peter aback. But he rallied pretty fast though. "I knew it! If this were real, how would you know that?"

This time Jason rolled did roll his eyes skyward. "It's called deduction, Pe-" and suddenly he lunged from his chair, grabbed Peter around the waist before the kid was even a third of the way through kicking a pillow at his face, and carried him kicking and screaming towards the door other than the one his grandson had been preparing to make a break for.

"Ah! Gah! No! Leggo, letggo of me yeARGH!-"

Pushing the door open, Jason Quill hauled his grandson into the biting snowstorm of the Himalaya highlands. Peter flinched so violently that another man may well have dropped him. Then he curled on himself from the cold lash of the snowpeak blizzard. Just in time too, the kid had a nasty bite even though he hit like a girl. Of course, the kid was his grandson, so it wouldn't be long until he noticed that the bite of the cold wasn't really that bad. Best not to waste time.

Changing his hold from one arm to both hands, he held the boy up high from under the arms that he may be looked upon by the whole of nature. A feat of cultural re-enactment that wouldn't make sense for six more years, and that's a fact. Jason hoped he'll still be around for Peter to show him the cartoon when it came out and the penny dropped. Even if he'll have to deal with the inevitable histrionics once he explained scene for scene everything that was wrong with that particular piece of Earthern propaganda.

Peter made a valiant and not entirely inept attempt to claw, punch, bite and kick his way free, but his eight-year-old body was nothing before the length of a full grown warrior's arms and skill gathered over the course of a hundred years.

Jason Quill stepped back into the room and pulled the balcony door shut while wishing the pirate was alive for him to burn alive.

Then he set Peter on the ground.

"Let GO of me!" Peter lurched back so far and so fast that he crashed back into the side of the bed.

Jason let him. That should be enough to make his point. He needed a moment to himself anyway. A moment and distance to push down all the disgust he felt at having had to imitate Yondu Udonta even that little. But Jason Quill would do almost anything to rebuild the shell of a person that his grandson had been turned into. Even if it meant poking and exploiting his many complexes and issues on account of Peter having no other way to relate to other people in anything resembling a productive way.

"Have you had many waking dreams where you were so helpless, grandson mine?"

"Stay away!" Peter yelled with frozen crystals at the corners of his eyes, pulling a quad blaster on him. His quad blaster. "Stay away from me, whoever you are. Whatever you are."

Jason Quill stood and pondered his grandson's teary eyes. Probably just the sudden gust of cold air to the face, he decided.

Peter Quill backed away towards the door, not leaving him out of his sights.

Jason Quill stood and watched.

Peter turned his body sideways as he neared the door to hide the breaching charge. His breaching charge.

Jason stood and waited.

Peter suddenly hurled his shock net at him, armed the charge and took cover next to the wall by the door, covering his ears as the charge went off.

Jason stood, ignored how the net broke to bits half-way to him, and watched as the breaching charge sputtered and gave off the poorest, saddest whine.

Peter Quill looked at the door in disbelief. The disbelief got worse when he whirled around to hold him at gunpoint again only to see the scattered remains of the 'net' he'd tossed. The look on the boy's face would have been a most comical sight in any other situation. Doubly so when he pointed the gun at the ground and fired. Or tried. But of course, nothing happened. It was a flash-printed dud.

Peter Quill looked at Jason Quill in outraged disbelief.

The man crossed his arms and looked down on the boy with complete parental condescension. "You didn't really expect me to put live guns where my 8-year-old grandson could palm them, did you?"

"Ooooh!" Peter dropped on his behind and groaned dramatically. "Jesus. Fuck me, I'm dead aren't I? I have to be, because this is hell!"

And here he'd thought he was the idealised version of himself, meant to expose Peter's issues from living almost his whole life entirely deprived of father figures worth a damn.

For a while, they just stood or sat there. Peter because of whatever was going on in his mind. Jason because he didn't want to spook him into a run.

Eventually, Peter climbed to his feet and looked at the fake breaching charge on the door.

Jason didn't move.

"I want to see mom."

"The door's not locked."

There was an awkward silence.

Then Peter went utterly red-faced in embarrassment. Embarrassment which he tried to escape by dignifiedly walking out of the room as fast as he could.

Jason followed sedately and cleared his throat once he was in the hall. "Wrong way, Pete."

Peter stopped in place, stiffly turned around and walked the other way without looking at him.

It should have been funny. It was funny, but Jason didn't have it in him to laugh. "First door on the right."

Fortunately, Peter didn't barge into the room, choosing instead to open the door quietly and slip inside on silent feet.

When Jason followed him in, it was to find him stood at the bedside watching Meredith. Stood and watched her for a long time, making to reach for her at points only to stop. His breath hitched ever other time he did, even though he didn't say anything at all. What could be going through his mind? Eventually, Peter managed to make contact. Laid his hand on hers. Held it for a time. Then he let go and slowly reached up for her face. Meredith sighed softly at his touch but didn't wake.

Then Peter staggered away, turned around and ran out of the room, hall and building entirely.

Jason followed at a regular walk. He caught up to Peter just outside, at the top of the long staircase leading down along the mountainside. The boy was staring around in bewilderment that probably had almost nothing to do with the unfamiliar vista. He was also rubbing his arms in a vain attempt to generate warmth. Perhaps his human side had predominated relative to tolerance of extreme temperatures. More likely, though, is body was just having trouble initiating thermogenesis due to the vast divergence exposure to the cold air. The local sleepwear was fairly sturdy, but it did lack coverage for the hands, feet and head.

With a sigh, Jason Quill strode forward and wrapped his suddenly sputtering grandson in his semi-cape, all the way to the soles and back until he looked like a cocoon of red and gold. Then he took off his mantelet, dropped it over the head of the boy to lie around his neck, and activated its transformation function from mantle to helm. The end result was a small lump of human smothered in lattice-weave with a crested helmet on top so large that he looked like a bobblehead.

Jason Quill then sat down next to his grandson at the top of the stairs, carefully not cracking a smile at the controlled crash that Peter underwent on account of having his legs all rolled up.

Soon, though, Peter must have reached the conclusion that he could live with it if it gave him back some warmth, so he settled down.

Jason wanted very much to reach out and pull him near, but he refrained. Best to wait until he knew where his grandson stood, what with his remembered experiences and whatever strange mix became of his manchildish memories and prebubescent mind. Probably something frail but bold. Because neuroplasticity, don't you know.

But the kid didn't say or do anything besides sit there huddled down with his head bowed, looking wherever he might be looking behind that opaque helmet front.

The man wondered about his grandson's position. His emotions. His thoughts right now. What it would be like to effectively time travel to the past, realise your unique position and assume to be the sole possessor of unspeakable secrets, only to then wake up to someone who already knows everything you do. Cheated, J'son suspected. That's how he must feel.

But that was alright. Life was unfair. Learning that truth was just part of becoming a man.

The real issue was the monumental responsibility that was now on his shoulders. Jason's own shoulders, that is. Somehow, he now had to turn this boy into a god in time to mitigate the latest attempt by the universe to go to hell in a handbasket. Preferably one capable and willing to take some time out of whatever he'll be doing in the interim to eliminate the threat posed by his father. All while hopefully not going the same way as said father over it being just so hard and lonely to be the universe's special snowflake that there is no other choice besides becoming cancer.

Gods, honestly. It was things like this that got him in trouble back when youth and idealism made him share his thoughts on the cults of Sharra and K'ythri back home. And didn't that ever cause the motherlode of all overreactions. It was the first time that made him wonder if people really were generally dumb. They thought he was a heretic and then an atheist just because he called their churches and temples a bunch of money-laundering confections. Honestly! It was called "being right" not "being a heretic" and certainly not "being an atheist." It wasn't rocket science. As someone who understood it and religious sentiment both, he could fully attest to that truth.

Incidentally, if your god can be corralled by temple walls your god is a cuck.

"This is real, isn't it?"

Or maybe he was giving his kid too much credit when he was still lagging twenty steps behind.

"Yes it is."

"… Are you sure?" Peter asked, voice muffled, hoarse and shivery. Probably from the cold. "Because time travel is a bit out of left field, even for me."

"That's not what happened." He carefully didn't react to the sudden spike in Peter's attention that he could somehow feel. "What happened is that the Ancient One of around six hundred years ago recalled the doomed timeline you remember, when your mom died of cancer and never got into psychedelics and you were taken away from us." By those piles of trash, but he didn't say so. He also didn't overtly react to the dread summoned up by that thought either. "So he's been doing things in the background to prepare for it. Which apparently includes getting your mom into psychedelics so she'd get you into psychedelics. Which culminated in you going on a DMT trip and remembering your last past life last night."

Peter was probably gaping inside the helmet. It was adorable.

"Time travel does not work the way you implied by the way, apparently." Jason made sure to turn his voice casual and slightly puzzled for Peter's benefit. "To hear the Sorcerer say it, the time you remember was undone entirely save for the record of it in the underlayer of reality. As well as people's spiritual memory. Which is the case for pretty much every 'alternate' timeline ever apparently."

"… Wait the many-worlds theory is real? Every choice possible ends up being made?" Peter sounded strangely sore about it. "Oh I so call bullshit!"

"You call truly then, because according to him that's not the case, no." Jason actually agreed with Peter's sentiment here. If Free Will was a thing, infinite parallel timelines were indeed bullshit. "However, there was a time when things and choices went a different way. Many such times actually." For most of which he was Peter's actual father and an asshole. "But all those times were looped back to an earlier state for various existence-ending reasons."

There are varied Dimensions. There is the Now. There is no foreordination. There are no alternate timelines.

"… That sounds suspiciously contrived."

"Supposedly it's not entirely uncommon." The Three Principles of the Cosmos are Substance, Motion and Consciousness, and we are at that point in the Cosmic Day when each wanes and waxes. "Sometimes the universe just goes sideways so badly that the only way to fix things is to roll everything back to the earliest state where there was a more than even chance for things not to go sideways." What else other that Chaos could possibly happen when just one waxes too much? "And sometimes, if an entity or other has a sufficiently developed spiritual sight, and if the shadow cast by the possible futures and times undone is big enough, they can get an even bigger head start." Like, say, if time failed to sort itself out fourteen million six hundred and five different times.

Jason Quill was paraphrasing heavily, but that was the gist of it all as far as he understood. Which was quite a bit if he did say so himself.

"Head start?" Peter echoed. "… Sideways is right," He then muttered, falling silent.

They were both quiet for a time.

This time, it was Peter who broke it. "How much do you know?"

More than you by a factor of a couple of hundred. "Everything you remember and then some."

"… How?"

"DMT. The Sorcerer hijacked the trip so I could watch your life."

"… What?"

Jason didn't repeat himself.

"You-why… how much!?" Peter squeaked.

"All of it."

"All of it?"

"All of it."

"What do you mean, all of it!?"

"I mean all of it."

"That role-stealing, privacy-invading geriatric prick!" Peter screamed, immediately thereafter devolving into a lengthy litany directed at the Ancient One's gall, looks, goatee that was obviously overcompensating for something and his entire family bloodline. It took a long while for him to tire himself out and for Jason to get a word in edgewise.

"Do you resent it?"

"You think!?" Peter hollered without even thinking about it.

"Do you resent me too, then?" Jason said, completely self-controlled even then.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Do you resent me for being here for you now?"

"You're not my dad!"

"I wish I were though."

The silence that fell after that exchange was half horrified and half resigned. Peter was either regretting his outburst or trying to trace back its origin, that's how much he'd curled up and how quiet he'd become. For his part, Jason was only glad he'd stayed on the ball and replied as immediately and seemingly naturally as he hoped he would when they inevitably reached this point in their conversations.

"Fuck, didn't mean to say that. Why did I say that?" Jason's earpiece relayed Peter's muttering from inside the helmet. "Forget Star-Lord. My name should be Daddy Issues Galore."

Mr. Daddy Issues Galore. Dig. Mister Dig. Certainly carried a certain charm, Jason supposed. In a what the hell is wrong with you kind of way.

"Didn't mean to say that," Peter eventually said for him to hear. "No, no, fuck this crap! You know what, actually forget that! Why would you say that!?"

"What, that I wish I were your dad?" Jason asked incredulously, and not because he'd been his dad in every other one of his past lives. "You mean you don't? Kid, your dad's Satan." Peter flinched. Jason pretended not to be watching for it. "I am clearly the superior option."

"Th-that-s not what I meant!" Peter shrieked with all the flimsy strength of his sharp, eight-year-old lack of vocal pitch.

"Oh, so it's Yondu Udonta you're comparing me with," Jason scoffed, deliberately misunderstanding the question. "Don't even get me started on that reprobate. Not only did he take you away from me, he also went and turned you into… this!"

"And what's that supposed to mean, huh?" Peter said, becoming automatically defensive of the man who'd ruined him and everything about him and almost falling over like an embalmed mummy from his outrage. "What the hell was that? You just motioned to all of me!" Or maybe just defensive of himself.

Probably both though. Stockholm Syndrome was a bitch that way. "That pirate was a one-trick pony if ever there was one," Jason scoffed. "Or did you never wonder why he never trained you to be more than mediocre in anything?"

"Hey, I'm a great shot!" Peter almost fell on his side from agitation.

"No, you're decent," Jason said dismissively. "And don't think I didn't notice you not making claims of expertise about anything else just now. The only thing you can make a claim to mastery of, and just barely, is dirty fighting. And that's something you picked up entirely on your own because otherwise those fucking pirates would have eaten you alive. And even there you have a blind spot as big as Shi'ar, considering how often and easily you get blindsided by a poke in the eyes or kick to the balls by a pretty face."

The surrealism of telling something like that to an 8-year old was only outshined by the pique radiating from Peter Quill in almost visible waves.

"So what? As if you'd have done such a better job!" the boy finally exploded, seemingly at a loss for what else to say.

"I am the Prince of an Interstellar Empire who's mastered every profession in known space since I went on my Accession Training Peregrination a hundred and ten years ago when I was thirty-three." J'son of Spartax flatly declared. "Of course I'd have done better. Not just better, exceptionally. In every possible way I would have made you Great."

That, finally, seemed to startle Peter enough for words to fail him utterly and completely and not speak up again.

Son, Jason Quill imagined himself saying. I'm here now. I'll make you Great. But it was too much too soon. So even if it pained him to hold himself back, hold back he did. Held back from talking and looking and reaching for the curled up frame of his grandson. Who seemed to be shaking and not shaking with unsaid words and too much feeling that he hadn't the brain and body to handle like the fish out of time he had become.

Which was when sparks opened up into a portal right behind him.

"GAH!" Peter yelped, tried to jump away from the Sorcerer that was suddenly there, tangled his feet in the cape he was still tightly wrapped in and fell on Jason's lap.

"If you will come out of the cold, I will gladly provide you with further explanations and means."

The man shamelessly took advantage of the mishap to hug his high-strung grandson. Then he rose to his feet with Peter held close to his chest while pretending not to register whatever strong feelings were surely twisting the manchild's face into ungainly expressions inside his helmet.

Because plausible deniability don't you know. Always a wonder.

He'd have to do something nice for the Sorcerer later.