Villain Collector

Once upon a time, there was a man who wanted to own everything.

His name was Taneleer Tivan. But most people called him the Collector.

He lived inside Knowhere — the ancient space station built inside the hollow skull of a dead Celestial — and in the deepest part of Knowhere, he had built his museum. It went on and on, corridor after corridor, lined with cases of glass and shelves of polished stone. Here was a weapon from a civilization that no longer existed. Here was a creature from a planet whose name no one remembered anymore, preserved forever in amber. Here was a Chitauri soldier, frozen in a column of pale blue light. And in the cages — because some of the Collector's prizes were alive — were creatures from every corner of the galaxy. Each one rare. Each one alone. Each one kept perfectly still because the Collector had decided it should be.

The Collector walked his museum every morning in his purple robes, his white hair swept neatly back, his long fingers clasped behind him. He had a particular, satisfied smile that he wore when he was surrounded by his things — the smile of a person who believes that ownership is the same thing as love.

Now. Into this museum walked the Guardians of the Galaxy.

They had come to Knowhere on business — to sell something, not to be inspected. But the Collector had heard about a living Flora Colossi on Knowhere. Rarest botanical being in the catalogued galaxy. He sent a polite invitation. His assistant Carina delivered it to the Milano with a slight bow.

Rocket read it and immediately wanted to leave.

Groot put a gentle bark hand on his shoulder. "I am Groot" — meaning: we should probably see what he wants first.

They went in.

The Collector welcomed them with great warmth — the warm kind that is really just a cold thing wearing a costume. He walked them through the exhibits in a smooth, pleased voice. A Symbiote specimen in a sealed case. The wing-casing of a Brekk-spider, six feet long and iridescent. The frozen Chitauri.

And then he paused and said, very pleasantly, that he would pay anything they named. For the tree.

Groot had been listening politely. But his eyes had drifted to the cage beside him. Not the elaborate cases. A small cage. Inside it was a bird-creature — small as a child's fist, with grey morning-sky feathers pressed flat against its body. Its wings were folded tight. Its eyes were the largest, most miserable eyes in the room.

Groot looked at that little bird for a long moment.

Then he reached out — gently, carefully — and snapped the cage latch off as easily as you would snap a dry autumn twig.

The cage swung open.

The bird sat perfectly still for one breath, not yet believing it.

Then — WHOOOOSH — it burst upward, wings wide, and the museum filled with song. It looped and spiraled up to the high vaulted ceiling and kept singing, joyful and free.

The Collector stopped smiling. Three guards stepped forward and raised their weapons.

Groot rose to his full height and spread his arms until his branch-tips nearly touched both walls of the corridor. He put himself between those guards and every single one of his friends.

"I am Groot."

Quiet. Certain. Unmovable.

Rocket, without taking his eyes off the guards, said to the Collector, "I built the weapons on our ship myself. I could describe what they would do to your ceiling, if you like. I enjoy describing it."

The Collector looked at Groot's spread arms. He looked at Rocket's expression. He looked at the open cage. He put the guards away.

The Guardians walked out with everything they came in with.

Behind them, high in the rafters, a small grey bird sang from the ceiling. It would sing there for a long time. And the Collector stood in his corridor, surrounded by all his things, and felt — perhaps for the first time — something quite like small.

Some things in this big universe cannot be put in a cage.

Some things — kind things, living things, things with warm bark arms and violet eyes and a deep and instinctive need to free whatever is imprisoned — are simply too alive for any museum.

The Collector kept collecting. He always kept collecting. But somewhere in the rafters of his vast and extraordinary museum, a small grey bird sang every morning, uncaged and unreachable, and that song echoed all the way down through the bone corridors of Knowhere.

Some things you cannot collect. You can only know them, if they choose to let you.

You are that kind of thing, too.

Goodnight.