Living with Rocket 3

By Strega

It wasn't Peter, for a change, that convinced Rocket to do something the little raccoon didn't want to do. It was Drax and, to everyone's surprise (maybe even hers), Gamora.

They were collecting a bounty on a particularly violent group of renegade Kree when it started. As usual Drax waded into melee with Gamora while Peter and Rocket picked off stragglers from a distance. The last few Kree charged Drax and the Destroyer, being all but invulnerable, went after them with his knives. Rocket used the giant as cover and as the two sides closed he shot two of the three dead.

But the last one had a surprise in store and rather than shoot Drax he dropped his weapon and pressed a control on his wrist. Rocket knew all about traps and bombs and instantly dived behind some rubble, not quite fast enough to avoid the edge of the searing blast wave as the Kree exploded. Drax was thrown fifty feet but shook off a hit that would have likely killed any of the other Guardians. Rocket on the other hand climbed to his feet with parts of his fur on fire and his back smoldering and beat out the last sparks as the others approached to make sure he was all right.

Rocket's tail was a sad shadow of its usual fluffy self, little more than a fleshy whip covered in shriveled fur, but he came out of it more or less unscathed save for a nick in one ear, some minor cuts and having his armored backplate shredded. He waved away the suggestion that he needed first aid and darted from Kree body to Kree body on all fours, scanning them for further traps and liberating various weapons and bits of tech. His damaged armor kept catching on things and so engrossed was he in his work that he stripped it off and cast it aside.

It was the first time Drax and Gamora had seen him naked from the waist up, as he normally wore a light ship-shirt even when sleeping, and Drax's eyes went wide at the sight. The heat had penetrated the raccoon's armor and scorched some of what little fur he had there, but the few small burns and blisters were nothing compared to the horrific scars and protruding cybernetic implants.

"Rocket, your back," Drax said, and Gamora just shook her head. Rocket's back was better than it had been a few months before, with less signs of infection and fewer areas of reddened, inflamed flesh, but it was still an ugly sight.

"What?" The raccoon looked up, his hands still disassembling a Kree energy rifle. "Oh yeah, right. Didn't mean to make you look at that." He glanced around, so engrossed in his task he'd forgotten for a moment where he left his vest, only to find Drax holding it inside-out so that everyone could see the blood and fluids staining the padding where it had stuck to Rocket's back. Some of the stains were new and some months-old, dating back to him getting the new outfit after Xandar.

Gamora knew cybernetics well, being the second most augmented Guardian. Her implants were top-end and barely showed, though. "Rocket, that looks bad. You have to get someone to look at it."

Rocket turned to face them in an all too familiar defensive reaction, covering up his injuries and denying everything. "It's fine. Been that way forever."

"It's not that bad, guys. I've been putting antibiotics on it a few times a week." Peter was to instantly regret taking Rocket's side.

"You knew about this?!" Gamora snapped at him. "Why didn't you say something? I've seen neater work on homemade Ravager cybernetics!"

"Hey! If I could get at it I'd fix it myself," Rocket growled. "And it's my business." He yanked a bloody and far too large shirt off a Kree Drax had eviscerated and draped it over himself. "There. Problem solved."

It wasn't, of course, and Drax was the one who wouldn't let it drop. Since Rocket's emotional breakdown a few months back the giant had come to regard the little raccoon almost as his own child. Between Mantis's empathic therapy and the strong support of his friends Rocket had healed a great deal in a short time, but occasionally the night terrors still came on him and he'd taken to leaving his little padded bed by the end of Drax's bunk and synchronizing his sleep to that of the giant. When Drax, once a parent and easily woken by small sounds, heard the raccoon whine in his sleep or claw at his bed a great hand would come down off the bunk and stroke Rocket's fur until he relaxed.

Everyone had petted a sleeping Rocket (and lately, when he was awake too) and suddenly there was a sinister significance to how he always turned when petted, even when asleep, so a hand did not stray onto his upper back. It either hurt to be touched there or, just as bad, he didn't want them to feel how mangled he was.
And so later, when Rocket was sitting stiffly on a bunk so Peter could treat the burns and apply universal antibiotics to his back, Drax and Gamora appeared in the doorway to the little cabin.

"Rocket," Drax said firmly, "You need to let someone look at that. Gamora says there's a cover missing off one of those bolts. It's not healthy to leave it that way."

Rocket's ears went back as they always did when he was confronted about something he didn't want to talk about. Six months before he'd have laughed it off or told Drax where to stick it. Six months ago he hadn't had a family, though, and Drax and Peter were the closest things to father figures he'd ever had. Just the same, he balked.

"It's fine," he mumbled. His furry little hands found the medical kit Peter had brought and unconsciously began to sort the contents. "Don't like doctors."

"If it stays that way, sooner or later that bolt is going to pull back into your skin and get stuck," Gamora said. It was only around the scars that you truly got to see how extensively Rocket was modified. Besides the bolts and apparatus protruding from his skin there was a visible bulge where some sort of cross brace changed the whole shape of his chest. Between that and the bolts atop what were probably artificial collarbones the marks where they had turned a four-legged animal into a biped were all too evident. That left out whatever other scars hid under his fur. Even his hands had bolts and screws that sometimes showed.

"Happens," Rocket mumbled. He had sorted the contents of the kit by size and was absently taking a pair of surgical scissors apart. "I just flex my arm until it pops back out."

"Man, that has to hurt," Peter said. "You gotta stop that from happening."

Rocket's ears went down and his fangs came out as he dropped the scissors. "I told ya," he snarled. "Everything hurts! I've got it covered, okay? I don't like doctors. Don't like needles. I can live with it."

Peter shook his head and stuck a smart bandage on one of the stubborn areas around the big implant on Rocket's back that never seemed to heal. The raccoon's body was still trying to reject some part of the cybernetics and at the same time Rocket's enhanced immune system kept trying to heal it. The raccoon's pain tolerance was incredible yet he still winced sometimes when Peter worked on his back but what could you do? It was his body.

You could be as stubborn as he was. "No," said Drax, the voice rumbling up out of his barrel chest. "You won't 'live with it.' We're going to find a doctor, a cyberneticist, and we're going to have him look at it. And if he does the tiniest thing that worries me, I will break every bone in his body."

"And if he somehow gets away," Gamora said, "Then he will have to deal with me."

The already tense raccoon went rigid on the bunk and Peter put his hand on Rocket's shoulder from behind. "I'll be there too, buddy. You won't be alone."

Rocket looked down at little Groot, who had sensed the tension and was rubbing the raccoon's nearly furless tail. The stiffness slowly went out of his little body.

"All right," he said softly. "Just as long as you're there." It was an admission of frailty they'd never heard before from the raccoon. He didn't want to be alone. Not any more.

Naturally Rocket immediately and conveniently forgot about the agreement but a day layer he found Drax clumsily typing in searches for cyberneticists with his thick fingers. With a long-suffering sigh Rocket elbowed him out of the way.

"No," he said at once. "Not on that planet. Or that one. No, not that guy. Only works on things with tentacles. No, not him..."

"Sounds like you've done some research yourself," Peter said over his shoulder.

"Shut up." Rocket flipped through a dozen more doctors, then began typing in searches so fast they could hardly make out the words on the floating screen. It was no surprise he was as good with computers as any other technology. It was only when dealing with people that he stumbled.

Five minutes later he found something he liked. The face of a blond human or human-like alien hovered on the screen as Rocket did increasingly elaborate searches about him. Finally the rapid-fire clatter of claws on keys stopped and the little raccoon took a deep breath.

"Okay," he said, and pointed a claw at the screen. "Him."

"Foster, Paul," Peter read. "That's an Earth name!"

"You aren't the only one from that rock out here," Rocket said. "Buncha races have been there, taking specimens, people. Slaves, whatever. This guy was one of a dozen or so got picked up and used as researchers. Some of them were forced, some did it 'cos it paid well. They couldn't go back to Earth, there's a treaty. You can take from low tech worlds but you can't bring back, right? That's why you had to do all that paperwork just to go back there for music. Watchers brokered that treaty, long time ago."

"Watchers," Drax said. "-The- Watchers?"

"Yeah, them," Rocket said. "They gave some planet tech a few billion years back and the guys they gave it to promptly blew themselves up. That's why they are Watchers now. 'Bout all they do is watch and act as mediators these days."

He typed briefly, waited. "Okay. Got an appointment tomorrow at his office on Gumwalt, southern continent, Spire City. It's only ten jumps, so we can head there after we get some sleep."

"That was quick," Peter said, but Rocket didn't reply. He just made his way to his little round bed to curl up, and if Drax noticed how many times he had to pet the sleeping raccoon to calm him down that night, he said nothing.

Most of a day, a few jumps and a maglev train ride later the Guardians, minus Mantis and Groot, sat impatiently waiting for the doctor to arrive. The mismatched foursome were the only ones in the office aside from a pink-skinned nurse, or maybe she was just a receptionist. Rocket sat, ears down and his little hand on Drax's forearm, not reacting even when a voice came out of the intercom.

"Only one appointment this morning I see, Cleva," said the voice. "Animal Uplift with cybernetics problems?"

The receptionist nodded to thin air. "Yes doctor. I don't know the species, but he's mammalian."

"That's not a lot to go on," said the doctor conversationally as came through the door. The raccoon didn't look up but everyone else saw the blood drain from the man's face and heard his smart pad hit the floor as he saw Rocket.

"No," he whispered, backing toward the door. Gamora was on her feet in an instant but the raccoon's hand darted out to grab her wrist.

"I'm not here to hurt you," the little raccoon said, still not looking up. "You can go if you want, we won't stop you, but I really need your help."

Drax and Peter shared looks but Gamora split her attention between the doctor, who was deciding whether or not to run, and the receptionist, who had her hand out of sight on what must be a panic button. Eventually the doctor relaxed.

"It's all right, Cleva," he said. Color had begun to return to his face. "We're old friends. Go prep examining room one, please. And clear my schedule for the rest of the day."

A moment later the doctor sat himself on a nearby chair and studied Rocket with a mixture of wonder and barely repressed fear. "You talk better now," he said.

Rocket let out a harsh little laugh. "Kinda necessary, doc."

"I heard you were working with a, well, a tree," the doctor said, looking at the Guardians one after another. "And you had something to do with stopping Ronan, along with these 'Guardians'. And in stopping whatever that was that happened a few months back. That biological attack all over the galaxy. Seems like you made a name for yourself."

The doctor fiddled with his recovered smart pad, looking uncomfortable. "You're so much more than I thought you'd ever be."

"So much more than what you started with?" Rocket looked up at last, and Peter was surprised to see tears in his eyes.

"89P13, " said the man, and then paused. "Rocket. You know I didn't agree with what we did. Uplift, yes, I can live with doing that. But the rest...." he fiddled with the pad, and Peter could see scans of Rocket flicking by, skeletal structures, cybernetics. Some of the images showed the little raccoon, partially shaved, restrained, cut open. One showed a plastic gag in his mouth and his wide-open eyes as someone, visible only as hands, worked on an arm - probably more of a foreleg at that point - that had been physically ripped from his body. Only a few tendons still connected arm and torso and someone else was trying to staunch the bleeding from the stump. "I tried to get them to not do it that way."

Rocket's emotional moment had passed quickly. "That's why you are still alive, Doc." He said it matter-of-factly, and Foster could only nod.

"The examining room is ready, doctor," said the nurse, and the little group rose and went in, Rocket shuffling awkwardly along with Drax's hand on one shoulder and Peter's on the other. They were just there for support, not to push him onward, and a little furry hand came up to rest on each of theirs as they stepped into a room packed full of examining tables, autodocs and full-body scanners. Doctor Foster gestured for Rocket to undress and Drax spoke up.

"Doctor," he said. "Before we start. You had something to do with all this," he gestured at the scars exposed as Rocket shucked out of his tunic. "I think he trusts you. But if you hurt our friend -"

"It's all right, Drax," Rocket mumbled. "It was a long time ago. It's all over now."

The breath hissed out of the doctor as he saw Rocket's back. "Oh god. They were supposed to graft over that. But then..." he shook his head. "Step into the scanner, please."

It was a long and painful visit for everyone, not so much physically, for the doctor used a nerve deadener on each part of Rocket he worked on, but simply because it was discomfiting to watch the little raccoon sit there, quite conscious, and let himself be cut open. He refused anesthesia even when Doctor Foster and the nurse flayed open his chest to repair a damaged cross-brace on his ribs. He could see it all happening and he lay there eerily calm save for the grip he kept on Peter and Drax's hands.

At least, he seemed calm until you saw his heart rate spike on the monitor every time the doctor approached and felt how his grip tightened. Or saw how many times the nurse had to deaden nerves to relax the muscle-cracking tension in his limbs so they could make another cut. This was the nightmare that woke him screaming and only the presence of his friends kept him from coming up off the operating table with a scalpel in his hand or collapsing into shrieking terror.

"Man, you have to let them put you under, " Peter said an hour or so in, but Rocket just shook his head and clung all the more tightly to his hand. If they hadn't deactivated most of his cybernetics in the first few minutes Rocket's desperate grasp would have cracked the bones in Peter's hand. Every so often Drax would gently pet the raccoon's nape and he'd relax a little, at least until the doctor approached once more.

Mantis had volunteered to come along and soothe his fears during the meeting but Rocket had turned that offer down too. He needed to be awake and in control for this, he'd said. The next time he was unconscious and unaware in an operating room would be the day they put him in a box.

Somehow the doctor kept his own composure despite Gamora watching him like a hawk, ready to kill him in an instant if he did anything she questioned. In a room full of dangerous people all too ready to use lethal force to protect their friend he and the nurse worked quickly, professionally, and made no mistakes.

Bit by bit he went over the little raccoon's body, tweaking servos, replacing some, tightening connections. Only now did the Guardians learn how extensive Rocket's cybernetic systems were. Every limb, even his neck and jaws, practically every bone had an associated servo or brace, and the doctor knew where each was before he picked up a scalpel. Rocket had come to perhaps the one man in the galaxy who know how he ticked.

Later they would learn he'd kept all his old files on Rocket and updated them as technology improved, to be ready just in case Rocket came by not to kill him but for help. Or perhaps as a bargaining chip if it was the former. It amounted to the same thing.

Unlike Peter he was able to do more than smear antibiotic or stick smart bandages on Rocket's back and when he was done the bolts were smooth and polished, the skin around them still reddened but much healthier. He even had a device that regrew most of the fur around them, leaving just a half-inch ring of exposed skin around each implant. He used the same device to repair most of the fur he'd shaved off over the course of the day and the raccoon's threadbare tail. When it was finally over Rocket stepped out of the shower, the last traces of blood rinsed from his fur, he stood and stretched, twisting his arms, flexing his knees.

"Hadn't realized how screwed up I was," he said, and went through a series of small motions to to test his joints. "Thanks doc, that's a lot better."

"Before you ask," the doctor said, his voice thick with emotion, "This is all on the house. Not because you could hurt me. You could have done that years ago. Because I'm proud of you, Rocket. You're more than I ever thought you'd be, not because of us, but despite us. I'm so sorry it was like that. It should have been better, back then. Better for you, better for us."

Rocket nodded wordlessly as he turned away.

"Rocket," the doctor said, and the raccoon paused. "Come back anytime. You're always welcome."

Rocket stood frozen, then turned to face the doctor. He took the man's hand in his little furry ones for a moment, then spoke. "I'm sorry about your friends. I wish... I wish it'd been different too."

Rocket didn't say another word all the way back to the Milano, just occasionally flexing his fingers or bending a joint wonderingly. He'd never said a word about it, but it was obvious now he'd been in constant pain. Exhausted by the operation, he spent the last hour of the trip curled up in a ball between Peter and Drax. Fellow passengers in the car glanced in amusement at the sleeping "pet" and one approached with his hand outstretched but the frosty glare from all three of Rocket's companions and the way hands slid easily toward weapons at the merest hint of a threat to their friend chased him away long before he touched fur.

When they reached the ship he went straight to his locker and brought back a pouch. At his gesture the whole crew gathered, there around the common room table. Groot sat on his knee and Mantis put her hand on his shoulder as he opened it.

First to come out was an animal collar, crudely cut through, bearing the legend 89P13. He slid that to the side and unfolded a bit of the old-style plastic news scrip still used on a few worlds.

HALFWORLD RESEARCH CENTER DESTROYED BY REACTOR EXPLOSION, read the headline. 'Sole survivor fled when alarm sounded, authorities baffled.'

There was more, but Rocket folded it and set it aside. Next out of the pouch was a ID badge on a lanyard, then another, another, three more. One had a bullet hole, others were stained with old blood. One was scored by cuts from some blade and so saturated with blood the plastic was permanently discolored.

"Randolph", he said, and held up the badge. PROJECT DIRECTOR, it said below the name. "Ernst." That was the cut-up badge, blazoned CHIEF SURGEON. "Tschu." PROGRAMMER. "Osterman," CYBERNETICIST. "Chang," "Kinkaid," SURGEONS.

He shuffled the badges, then lay one atop another until only the first letter of each name showed. ROCKET.

"Could have got Foster too," he said so softly they strained to hear. "But he wasn't so bad. Told him to run. Then I blew the place. By then," he looked down at the badges. "I had all the letters I needed." His surprisingly expressive muzzled face twisted as he remembered, then slowly relaxed. "All this time, I was sorry I could only kill them once. That I couldn't make them suffer more. They were just things to hate. Now...if they were still out there, somewhere, I think I could live with that. As long as they weren't still doing what they did, I could leave them be."

Drax put his huge hand on the raccoon's where it lay atop the badges. "Eventually you have to stop living for hate, and just live." Drax had learned hard lessons during his own monomaniacal pursuit of vengeance.

Slowly, deliberately, Rocket gathered up the badges, the collar, the news scrip. There was a sense of formality to it as he let go of the long remembered pain, the hatred. "I don't need letters any more," he said. "Or a number." he slid the collar into the pouch with the rest. "I have a name." He paused. "And a family."

Peter put his hand on Rocket's shoulder and they watched, silent, as he dropped the pouch into the Milano's incinerator. And somehow, that night, despite the endless horror of that day's operation and for the first time anyone could remember, Rocket slept the whole night through without a single nightmare.