Yondu's best liquor was a treasure no one among his crew could ever find, no one except Star-Lord.
When he finally dug it out, the two of them didn't even bother going outside. Star-Lord sat on an overturned crate, Arthur in his wheelchair. Each held a bottle, cracked it open, and drank straight from the neck.
Arthur took a long pull, exhaled deeply, and grinned. "Magnificent. I need to snag a few bottles of this for myself later."
Star-Lord gave him a flat look. "You should be grateful I even let you drink it. And now you're planning on taking some home?"
Arthur chuckled. "What can I say? I've been raiding Tony's private stash for too long. Honestly, I feel a little guilty about it. So if I grab a couple of bottles of this cosmic brew for him, maybe that counts as compensation. Elder's privilege, right?"
"You know what?" Star-Lord smirked. "Then maybe you should steal a couple of Tony's vintage bottles in return and gift them to Yondu."
Arthur nodded absentmindedly, then frowned. "Wait… then what does that make me?"
"A professional thief," Star-Lord said with a laugh. "You've got the habit down already."
Arthur shook his head, ready to retort, but then he noticed Star-Lord staring into his bottle, strangely quiet.
"What's wrong?" Arthur asked.
"You know something?" Star-Lord shrugged. "I used to think I was clever. The only one who could ever find this stash, sneaking drinks right under Yondu's nose. But now… I'm starting to realize maybe it wasn't that I was smart. Maybe… he was just letting me."
"No," Arthur said with a soft smile. "It wasn't tolerance. He just didn't see anything wrong with you having it. His acceptance of you went further than you ever imagined."
Star-Lord gave a wistful laugh. "If only I'd realized that earlier… Still, I guess it's enough that we're both here now. That's something worth celebrating."
Arthur nodded in silence.
In the films, Yondu had given his life for Star-Lord. But here and now, both of them still lived, and that alone was something precious.
Arthur's mind drifted back to Odin's words from long ago.
The future, good or bad, would always come down to his own choices. And in those visions of what lay ahead, the path had always split in two.
A fleeting thought struck him: 'If Odin hadn't placed his trust in me… would I have turned out differently? Someone arrogant, untouchable… like one of those overpowered protagonists from the pulp novels back home?'
He shook his head at the thought and gazed into the golden liquid swirling in his bottle. His eyes softened with remembrance.
Now, that old man and his wife were enjoying their twilight years quietly on the shores of Norway. When Arthur had last left, Odin had asked him not to return again…
But after so much time apart, Arthur found himself missing him.
Odin truly was doing well, aside from his constant attempts to introduce his daughter to Arthur, at least.
"Tell me…" Star-Lord's voice cut through the silence, low and raw. "If I didn't exist, would my mother still be alive?"
Then he spoke of the truth that had once driven him into a frenzy of rage.
Ego had admitted he loved Star-Lord's mother. But precisely because of that love, because he feared it would tie him down, he had placed the tumor in her brain.
"You're overthinking this…"
Arthur didn't know why, but somehow he'd ended up playing the role of someone else's spiritual mentor. "That was nothing more than an excuse. A flimsy one at that."
"An excuse?" Star-Lord frowned.
"Of course. Let me ask you, how long has this universe existed?"
"…No idea!"
"And Ego?"
"He claimed millions of years."
"And your mother? By the natural span of human life?"
"No more than a hundred… usually seventy or eighty counts as a long life, right? Though honestly, with people like you flying around and throwing shields, it feels like humans could live for centuries."
"Normal humans," Arthur said quietly, "live seventy, maybe eighty years. A rare few reach past a hundred. But that century, what is it to someone who's lived millions?"
"…Nothing," Star-Lord admitted with a bitter smile. "It barely a nap."
"Exactly. Yet he wouldn't even spend that fleeting nap with your mother. He abandoned her in the name of his so-called great design, his grand ambition." Arthur clapped a hand on Star-Lord's shoulder. "That isn't love. He's never loved anyone. Truth be told, I don't even consider him a real lifeform."
Arthur wasn't just speaking from the gut. The Disassembler itself had confirmed it, Ego was nothing but a counterfeit existence.
Whatever emotions he displayed were no more than a mask.
Star-Lord exhaled slowly. "So you're saying… he lied to her? Lied to my mother? Then… does that make me a mistake?"
Once a man locked himself inside a dead-end thought, words could only reach so far.
Arthur considered, then pulled a handgun from his Disassembler space. "Want me to help correct that mistake?"
"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Star-Lord's hands shot up. "Don't joke like that! I've got Celestial powers now, remember?"
"Oh?" Arthur arched a brow. "And what can you do with them?"
"I can conjure a glowing orb with my mind. Pretty impressive, huh?"
Arthur blinked. "You can still do that?"
"Of course. I did it just this morning." Star-Lord lifted his hand, and a sphere of radiant light bloomed in his palm.
Arthur watched silently. He felt no disturbance within himself, but he couldn't help wondering, after Ego had been completely disassembled, would there be consequences? Could this power truly last?
"What's wrong?" Star-Lord asked, sensing the shift.
"Nothing," Arthur replied. "For you, this is good news. Means the next time you're raising hell in the galaxy, your odds of survival just went way up."
Star-Lord went speechless. 'Raising hell? This was supposed to be for protecting the galaxy!'
And so the night stretched on, two men, two bottles, and endless rambling. The alcohol loosened their tongues, stripped away restraint. And while Star-Lord might have inherited Celestial might, his alcohol tolerance hadn't leveled up one bit.
Before long, he was blubbering like a child, sobbing that he should never have been born, that from the moment his parents met, everything had been one giant mistake.
This time, not even Arthur brandishing his gun could snap him out of it. Only when Yondu himself burst through the door did the chaos settle down.
In the end, Gamora hauled Star-Lord away by the arm, while Natasha claimed Arthur and pushed him back down the corridor.
And even then, Arthur insisted with dead seriousness, "I'm not drunk. Really, I'm not drunk. I was just about to grab a few bottles for Tony!"
End of Chapter
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