Yondu The Real Father

There are some stories that are funny, and some stories that are exciting, and some stories that are exciting and funny at the same time. And then there are stories like this one — stories that are a little bit sad, and a little bit beautiful, all mixed together. This is one of those.

To understand this story, you have to remember a few things about Peter Quill.

You have to remember that he was eight years old in 1988 when he was taken from Earth, on the same night his mother Meredith died in a Missouri hospital.

You have to remember that the person who took him was a blue-skinned Ravager captain named Yondu Udonta, who had a sharp red metal fin on top of his head, a yaka arrow he could control with a whistle, and a crew of rough space pirates as his family.

You have to remember that Yondu had been hired, originally, to deliver Peter to his real father, an alien named Ego. But when Yondu looked at the small, sobbing eight-year-old standing on the deck of his ship, he changed his mind. He kept Peter instead.

For thirty years, Yondu raised Peter the only way Yondu knew how. He taught him to steal. He taught him to fly. He yelled at him a lot. He called him "rat" and "boy" and never once said the word love out loud. The Ravager crew threatened, jokingly, to eat Peter for dinner about once a week. It was not the gentlest childhood. But it was a childhood, and Yondu had given it to him.

And then, many years later, Peter finally met his real father, Ego — and Ego turned out to be much worse than Yondu had ever been.

Ego was a Celestial, an old and powerful being, and he wanted to use Peter's body to take over the whole galaxy. Peter had to fight him. The Guardians had to break the seed at the center of Ego's planet. And when that seed cracked open, the whole world Ego had made started to fall apart.

Which brings us to this story.

Peter Quill was stranded on a hillside of golden, breaking ground. Pieces of the planet were rising up into the sky. There was nowhere to run.

And then, out of the sky, fell Yondu.

Just one Ravager. Just one rocket pack. Just one spacesuit and one helmet, and the bravest, gruffest, most loyal blue-skinned pirate the galaxy had ever known.

He scooped Peter up under one arm — the same way he had scooped him up off a Missouri lawn thirty years earlier — and fired the rocket pack. Up they went, through the cracking sky, through the layers of golden cloud, up toward the cold black space above.

Peter felt the cold first. Empty space is colder than anything else in the universe. It would freeze a person solid in under a minute. There was only one helmet between them. There was only one way this could end.

Yondu knew it.

He pressed the helmet onto Peter's head. He sealed it. He pulled a thin Ravager flight-jacket up around his own shoulders, knowing it would not be nearly enough. And he smiled at Peter through the visor. His sharp crooked teeth, his red metal fin catching the very last of the starlight, his eyes warm in a way Peter had almost never seen them.

Peter understood. Too late.

He shouted into the helmet. He pounded on the glass. He tried to give the helmet back. Yondu held it down with one strong blue hand and would not let him.

And then, very quietly, in a softer voice than Peter had ever heard him use, Yondu said the words.

"He may have been your father, boy. But he wasn't your daddy."

And he let go.

Peter floated up alone through the broken pieces of Ego's world, holding onto Yondu's small drifting shape with one hand, the silence of space humming in his ears. He had spent his whole life wondering who his father was. And in that one terrible, beautiful moment, he finally understood that he had had a father all along, and he had not noticed.

The Ravager funeral was the largest in a hundred years.

You see, Yondu had been exiled from the Ravager code long ago, because of something Peter had eventually learned was very painful. The other Ravager captains had refused to honor him for many years. But when they heard how Yondu had died — saving the boy he had once stolen — they came from every corner of the galaxy to send him off.

A dozen Ravager ships rose up around the Eclector. They fired their colored exhaust streams across the night sky. Red and blue and gold and green and orange, twisting together into the longest, brightest ribbon Peter had ever seen. It was the highest honor the Ravagers gave. Yondu had earned it back, in the very last act of his life.

Kraglin, Yondu's first mate, stood next to Peter on the deck. He held out a small object wrapped in cloth. He unwrapped it slowly.

It was Yondu's yaka arrow.

"He'd want you to have it," Kraglin said quietly.

Peter took the arrow. He held it on the palm of his hand. He tried to whistle, the way Yondu used to. A short, soft note.

The arrow did not move. Not yet.

Peter smiled, just a little. He would learn. It would take time, but he would learn. And every time the yaka arrow lifted from his palm, he would think of the blue-skinned pirate who had picked him up off a Missouri lawn in 1988 and decided, against everyone's advice, against his own gruff nature, against every rule the Ravagers had — to keep him.

Yondu Udonta had not been Peter Quill's father. But he had been his daddy. And in the end, that turned out to be the only word that mattered.