"This isn't going to kill you. Nothing can. It's just going to teach you a lesson, that's all."

Ego's voice welcomes him warmly back to the land of the living, but somehow it doesn't reassure him very much. Peter remembers nothing but the feeling of falling. He's crash-landed plenty of stuff at a high rate of speed before, no big deal, but not like that — the way the metal crumpled around him, the crunch of his own bones on impact and the planet's surface shuddering apart, the way the impact kicked up a cloud of spores. Smaller parts of the planet broken off in the collision — smaller parts of Ego, and Ego was pissed. After that, there wasn't anything.

He can't seem to get any air in his lungs; the only sound besides Ego's own voice is a kind of repetitive wheeze and it takes a moment for Peter to realize it's the sound of his own breathing.

Where he is now is bathed in yellow light — for a moment it's like he's suspended in it, hanging in midair like the particles suspended in the twists of energy that bind his wrists in place. Peter rolls his fingers by way of experiment and regrets it pretty fast.

"How do you feel?" His dad's voice from not far off, unconcerned, like this happens to Ego all the time.

"Like Luke Skywalker in the bacta tank," Peter says, spitting a rope of blood. Ego's laughter is full of affection.

When his eyes open more fully he finds himself gazing out past the vista of his own puffy cheekbone — his face is battered and split, Peter sticks his tongue into his cheek trying to figure out what's broken. Ego's still there, in the proverbial flesh, looking downright jaunty and undamaged with his cape tossed over one shoulder. They're in a naturally formed hollow under the ground that was more likely formed exactly for this purpose, and the rubble that surrounds them has the organic look of bone.

Mantis stands behind him, and her huge black eyes are even huger. Peter tries to lift his head to get her attention and something must be really wrong with his face, because she flinches. She's speaking to Ego now, but her shy small voice is unintelligible, piping. Like she's too scared to raise her voice.

Ego makes a disinterested gesture at her. "Now go."

Mantis turns to leave. Over Ego's shoulder, Peter watches her loping gait break into a run. .

It's just him. Gamora's not there, and neither is Drax, or Rocket, or anybody else. They're hatching the great Peter Quill Heist of the century someplace else without him and all he has to do is sit tight. Or they're all dead and floating through the vacuum of space. There's about equal odds. Peter's head lolls back, with a twinge of pain, but all things considered it doesn't hurt more than trying to keep himself upright here.

His wrists are bound, and his ankles — if he could rotate his ankles maybe he could shift some of the weight onto a hard surface, but he can feel something grind painfully inside his right boot when he tries and looking down to gauge how far off the blinding-white floor he really is just makes his eyes hurt. There might not be a floor to push off on. His coat is in tatters, and his shirt is shucked up somewhere around his armpits, a victim of fucked-up gravity or just snagged on his bonds when Ego strung him up.

At his leisure, Peter can start cataloguing what's wrong with him — broken ribs maybe, a bunch of surface cuts from twisted metal but nothing actually falling out of him, and a feeling like somebody's been pirouetting on his internal organs with steel-toed Ravager boots. Something wrong with his leg. Something wrong with his back. Gamora's gonna love this. She loves it when he gets crushed into a pancake. Something wrong with his…

He can't draw a full breath without a sharp gouge of pain. Ego reaches out a hand, and Peter's core stiffens. That hurts too.

The look on Ego's face is bleared by Peter's fucked-up vision, but it's unmistakably a great imitation of dignity, of sadness. This is how it fucking goes. "You're just like your mother, you know. She liked music. She loved movies — the most ridiculous things, she showed me. I confess I never really saw the point. There are so many things I want to show you, Peter."

Ego presses down, and the pain in his ribs magnifies sharply — Peter won't cry out, he's been hurt worse than this before for stupider reasons, but the sudden surge of hurt makes his breath skip.

"Like this. I don't like seeing you get hurt."

The bruises are mending under Ego's hands — Peter can feel the flash of energy running along his skin, pooling and rejoining. What he can see of his own torso is black and blue, but the places Ego's healing touch has been stand out yellow-white like they've been painted over. It's like watching the damage heal in slow motion, progressing through a whole spectrum of colors in a moment while the gashes knit together into scratches before fading to nothing.

"Cute trick," Peter says, through gritted teeth.

Ego's hand clasps Peter by the back of the neck, and the twinge of pain is gone — he passes his thumb over Peter's busted mouth and mends that too. He doesn't have to do it like this. He's got phenomenal cosmic power, he doesn't need to patch him up piece by piece except to prove a point.

"I wish I could say you look just like her. But out of all of my children, you're the one that looks the most like me."

"What the fuck does that mean?" Because Ego's a planet, he's just a brain in a planet-shaped jar who thinks looking like a stately older man with a kickass beard is the way to get in Peter's good graces. The two of them are nothing alike. Peter doesn't give a shit about self-propagation, or taking over whole solar systems, or — anything, all he cares about is getting the fuck out of here before Gamora finds out about Peter's biological father touching Peter's naked chest like he's feeling him up. Like he's enjoying that he got hurt, or he's amused he doesn't know how to automatically heal himself, that he needs help to do it. Like he's enjoying the feeling of Peter's bare skin. Like he's planning something really bad.

Ego makes a gesture, and Peter is horizontal — both of them are horizontal, Ego isn't standing in front of him while Peter hangs from the wall of an underground cavern like a nice tapestry but he's clinched on top of him while Peter's on his back, and the head rush from the sudden reorientation nearly makes Peter black out for a couple seconds. He's naked now, naked and shuddering, all the muscles in his stomach contracting convulsively like a fist — and it's true that it doesn't hurt any more but Ego is still touching him, still touching his chest, his arms, the chisel-line of his hip where a blue-black bruise from a metal beam on impact dwindles away into nothing.

"Remind me some time to show you the others. They're here with me too, Peter, and they remind me of all my failures. Just not in such an important place."

"You just stashed them away someplace? For what?"

"Maybe I'll keep you here for a couple thousand years, until you learn something about humility. Until then, you should try to enjoy this."

Peter is nauseated.

"If fucking people made them like you more, life would be really different." So much for wanting Peter to access his abilities — Peter tries to summon up something in his mind that'll help him here, some big fucking blasters or a falling anvil or something, but all he can generate is an impotent stir of sparks. It might be easier if Ego's hand wasn't shoved between his legs. His father's hand is between his legs, where nothing hurts at all thank you very fucking much, just a dispassionate pass as if that's the normal thing to do, just a Celestial thing.

"I'm not trying to change your mind. You've got plenty of time to do that yourself."

"If you want to be my dad, this isn't a great way to start off with that—"

"You're already a part of me, Peter. I've been a part of you for thirty-six years. I only wish I'd found you sooner."

He's not even going to undress. He's not even going to get naked. He's going to do it all just like this, dressed up like the king of space. Peter grimaces. "This is sick, it's really sick—"

"I could look like someone else. Would that be better?"

Just flashes, little sideways flashes of other people — different eyes, narrower faces, a split-second of green skin or sandy hair. Peter jerks back, twisting. "Worse! Way worse—"

"All right, then. You're like me, Peter, you'll sleep with anything that moves. There's a purpose behind it. It's by design."

Ego's mouth is on his, and Peter sees star-fields, whole galaxies — more points of light than he can count, all rushing at him like the first time. Peter doesn't even notice it when his lips come apart, when his teeth un-grit — he's plunging through light, drunk on stars

Is this what she saw? Is this what Ego put in his mom's head — a rush of heavenly light, when he didn't even have it in him to kill her fast? He's drowning in starlight, suffocating.

Peter is completely boneless now, helpless, unresistant — like the aftermath of the best sex of his life except it sucks, it's horrible, it's killing him. Drowsy, away from his body — he can't do that now, he needs to focus. Ego's wet fingers are moving inside him — except they aren't really wet, and they aren't even really fingers, they're something for Peter's benefit alone.

Peter's been fucked before. This isn't really the time or the place to deny that. But it wasn't like this — it wasn't like this at all. It's one thing finding out some kickass space chick has some fun bonus features, but then there's this — all kinds of sick, all kinds of confusing.

His breath comes in short, choppy snorts and if he breathes too deeply something really bad is going to happen — the throb of pain is back somewhere underneath his lungs and Peter focuses on that as if it's a thing he can see behind closed eyelids, a red center, until Ego's warm voice prods him back to reality. Peter bares his teeth at him, straining.

"I don't know what I'd have done if you were a girl, Peter. I'll admit, I hadn't really thought about that." Another warped rope of light twists itself into a point, nudging between his legs — Peter would smack it away if he could but his knee jerks sharply trying to shake the tendril off. The whip of light tightens sharply around the bony part of his knee, forcing his leg back down. Peter exhales hard through gritted teeth and tries to straighten up with the last of his strength — and Ego forces him back, with spine-bending force like the squeeze of a massive fist.

Peter screams, thrashes, screams again.

Ego's hands bracket Peter's hips in place. "I hope you can appreciate how much it pains me to do this."

Drax just had to ask if he had a dick or not, right?

Peter bites his lip, wheezing through his nose as the surges of energy come quicker inside him, finding their focus point — he can feel it, like somebody reaching into his stomach and rearranging his guts. Somebody is. His body is responding, it's just his brain isn't — his brain isn't listening to whatever signals Ego is trying to blast him with, not with the rage and indignation burning so hot in his brain.

His own power is so close to the surface here — enough power to go full Celestial and blast Ego's face off his skull, if Peter could only get at it, like it's been locked up inside his own body as punishment. Ego's face is a placid mask, not a hair out of place, no red in his cheeks from exertion, nothing. Black eyes, like the galaxy staring back. Voice dreamy: "Meredith called you her Star-Lord."

Peter is breathless, choking on anger. "I don't want to hear you say her name."

Ego is pressing him into a spooning position, hard on the edge of his hipbone — the tendrils are like an extra set of hands, positioning Peter exactly where he doesn't want to be.The animal fear sets in, the cerebral part just shuts off. He's not thinking about Gamora or Drax or anybody coming to save him now, or what happened to his coat and if he's ever going to get it back — he's just a thing that's there, a body that can't feel, and nothing else exists.

Ego starts fucking into him with the tendrils first, like it'll be easier, or he doesn't remember how this species does things — Peter is panting hoarsely, and that's the only sound he makes, he won't give Ego the impression that he wants this even a little. He has to focus on the pain, focus on the alien scrape of somebody else's skin where it shouldn't be touching or he'll come completely undone, just go sinking into starlight — and Ego's hands are on him, he's inside him and it doesn't even hurt, just feels dreamy and strange. Everything that isn't being slowly and methodically fucked raw feels fine. Peter wants to choke.

Ego is fixing him. His whole body is flushed with health, tingling with weird energy, impaled in place on those tendrils — tentacles — they go impossibly deep, impossibly invasive when there's nothing there but the push of raw energy Ego is martialing into shape to violate him. There's nothing left to do.

"I don't want this," Peter says, uselessly. Ego isn't paying attention — propped up on the heel of one hand, still thrust deep inside him but on a lazy survey of Peter's best features, the backs of his fingers caressing along Peter's jaw — like Peter is something wonderful and strange, like he's looking for resemblances.

So these are his prospects: getting fucked for the rest of his life and milked for energy by the same guy who killed his mom, who probably killed all his friends, who'd kill him too if he didn't have an even bigger hard-on for never being alone. Pierced full of tentacles that could just as easily go right through his body, and do. Peter is facing down the prospect of a thousand years — like this. Or worse.

"You like this, don't you? I knew you would." Changing how he touches him, tugging a sure steady response out of Peter's useless body. Peter tries to answer him but his choking hate makes it come out like a wordless snarl.

Ego's climax hits him in one sickening surge and eclipses Peter entirely, so shattering that his own is of no consequence at all, just a shred that's been forcefully ground out of him — and the one after that, and the one after that. Like grains of sand, particles in a nebula.

*

Ego's gone, but Peter's not alone. He doesn't know if he's upright, or on his back, or upside down. It must be upside-down, because when he opens his eyes to blink away stars the smoke is sinking down in plumes and he sees a whole bunch of other people's legs. Someone is hacking at his bonds with something, sending electric shocks coursing down his arms, but if the jolts hurt Peter barely feels it.

Someone is shaking him — the whole cell is shaking, jolts like death throes as the yellow light flickers on and off. Peter opens his mouth to speak, but it's like he's forgotten how; all that comes out are raspy sobs.