MYSTERY OF LOVE || MARVEL AU

| three |

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My eyelids are so heavy, but I feel the intense need to just keep them open. I blink furiously trying to make the feeling go away. A week we’ve been in space, and conditions haven’t gotten any better. I look to my left where Peter sits in a chair. He’s slouched over, eyes closed, leaning against his arm. 

“You okay Pete?” I ask, he groans in response and I grimace. Hopefully he’s just tired. I hear light footsteps come from behind me, I turn to see Nebula pass me and motion for Quill to follow her. He gets up, stretches for a moment, and then follows her to the ration storage. 

“You guys have to cut back on water today,” My heart sinks, “You can check my count but I don’t see another option,” she finishes.  Quill pinches the bridge of his nose, unresponsive. 

“I know I said I’d rather go without water than freeze to death, but now I’m not so sure,” I quietly confess. Peter stirs next to me, sitting up and rubbing his eyes.

 “What?” He groggily asks. Nebula speaks before I have time to start explaining our predicament to Peter.

“If we half the water intake we can last another week. If we quarter it, two weeks.” Nebula continues explaining. A quarter, that can’t possibly be enough to survive on, right? I think back to the normal amount of water we have every day. It’s barely 8 cups. 

“Can we survive on a quarter?’ I ask.

“Well, how long until we can phone home?” Stark asks at the same time as me. We both look at Nebula, awaiting her answer.

“We have a few more days of fuel, I’m not even sure if that’ll be enough to be in distress signal range to Earth,” She says, she’s said it a few times before, but it didn’t really sink in till now. “We may have to hope for another ship to come in contact with us.” 

The ship is silent for a few moments, the gears start turning in my head. A quarter may be enough to barely survive but it seems like-

“We need as much time as we can get.” Peter seemingly finishes my thought. I stand up, trying to seem as unwaveringly confident as possible, more for Peter than for myself. 

“Then we’ll have to go with a quarter,” My hands shake and I hide them behind my back, “What about food?” I ask Nebula. She crosses her arms and thinks about her response for a second. 

“The food is a little more forgiving,” I let out a small breath of relief, “ but not by much,” I frown, “To match with the water we can start thirding it and last 2 more weeks.” She informs all of us. 

Two weeks to wait for a miracle. Well I guess it’s better than nothing. I shift in my seat a little.

“Then let’s do it, I mean it’ll suck but at least we have a better chance of being rescued.” Peter says, nobody disputes it thus finalizing our decision. Quill closes the storage door and stumbles back over to his pilot seat. I watch him return before focusing my attention on Tony. 

“How’s your side?” I ask him. The only time we really move him is to take him to the bathroom, otherwise he’s pretty much just been in that chair. He strains a smile before replying.

“It’s not unbearable.” He says. I walk over to him, bending over to check his bandages. Nebula did a great job of patching him up, probably saved him from infection with whatever she used, but we should change the bandages if we can just to be cautious. Nebula’s still standing at the opposite end of the ship, I turn to her.

“Nebula, is there anything else we can use for Tony’s wound?” She swiftly walks over to the cabinet that Peter got the glycol from last week when we were fixing the heating system. She walks back over to me with fresh bandages in her hand.