The Quarrel

Here is a secret about families — real ones, the kind that stick.

They argue.

Not always about the big things. Mostly about ordinary things, in the way ordinary things become containers for feelings too complicated to say directly. You think you are arguing about who left the tools out. Really you are arguing about whether you belong here, whether this is real, whether it will last.

Three weeks after Xandar, the Milano flew between Berhert and the Sovereign system. Everyone had been aboard for three weeks in narrow corridors and shared space, and the things politely unspoken during a crisis were accumulating.

Peter brought up the Sovereign contract — legitimate delivery work, good pay. He said this with the brightness of someone who has decided and is framing it as discussion.

Gamora had thoughts. The Sovereign held everyone who worked for them to a standard of perfection, and given recent events — she didn't say out loud "given Rocket's explosion at the Collector's museum," but that sentence was present in the room — a professional review might produce complications.

Rocket said the Knowhere incident was caused by someone else's specimen breaking free, and furthermore he had holographic footage of four broken market stalls on Berhert that Gamora hadn't paid for.

Gamora said one stall. Rocket said four. Drax said he had caused no property damage, which was technically true if you didn't count Korath's warship, which Drax didn't.

Peter tried to say something useful. Nobody heard him.

But underneath all the noise was the real question. What were they, now that the crisis was over? A real team — with a future, with plans, with the kind of loyalty that means you stay even when nothing is holding you together? Or five people who had been aimed at the same problem at the same time, and now that the problem was solved, were simply five individuals sharing a small ship until their separate paths found different directions?

Nobody said that out loud. They said it sideways through broken market stalls and holographic footage and engine oil and who had or hadn't technically destroyed whose property.

Groot sat in the corner and grew leaves one at a time, with the patience of something that has grown in difficult soil and knows that slow growth is still growth.

Then Drax stood up. The ceiling gave him about two inches of clearance. He stood at a slight angle and did not care.

"When Ronan destroyed my family," he said, "I thought family was something that happened once and then ended. I was wrong." He looked around the table at each of them. "We argue too much. Rocket smells of engine oil. Peter plays music at sleeping hours. Gamora has a morning expression that concerns me. I am told by all of you that I am difficult to talk to." He paused. "None of that changes what is true. You are my family. All of you. I would very much like to keep you."

He sat back down.

Ten seconds of quiet in a small ship is a long time.

Then Peter said they were taking the contract. Gamora said they were reading every line of the terms before signing anything. Rocket said he had already read the full terms and made one small modification to the payment clause that everyone would appreciate when they understood it. Peter said "Rocket" in the particular voice that carried approximately seventeen feelings stacked inside one word. Rocket said "Trust me," which had never in the history of the Guardians immediately produced trust in anyone and which everyone at this point, in fact, genuinely felt.

Groot grew three leaves at once.

The Milano banked toward Sovereign. The argument continued — lighter now, and held together by what Drax had named: the thing that had been true for weeks, waiting for someone to say it.

Some families are born. Some are built through patient effort. And some crash together over a distant planet and find, in the wreckage, exactly what each other was missing — and choose each other from that moment forward, without always having the words for it.

Drax had found the words that the rest of them hadn't. That was enough. That was exactly enough.

Go to sleep. Your family is right where you left them.