Chapter Text
Gamora wakes up in her small body, after not dying and seeing much more than should be possible. Will be possible.
She saw the stories of almost all the people who tried to stop Thanos, and failed just like her. She saw the story of her not yet family, with the Guardians. Of her family, Nebula who was trying so hard to be her sister. It feels like it happened to her in a dream. You are dreaming, but when you wake up you feel like you were just an spectator in the dream. She knows things her future self learned, but still feels like a kid. And scared. So scared, because now she knows that Thanos will win, if this continues.
But she is in her small body, and nothing she knows could help her for a few years yet. Steve Rogers should still be in the ice. Tony Stark has yet to begin fearing the threat that represents Thanos. The Sorcerer Supreme is not yet the Sorcerer Supreme. Thor of Asgard should still be an arrogant prince, not yet as worthy as his future self. Her family, the guardian, should still be young like her. Peter still with his earth family or maybe just recently taken to space. God knows where Rocket and Groot came from, but it can’t be a nice place. Drax should still be with his family, or maybe Thanos slaughtered them already. Nebula is with her, but she is a kid like her, much younger, and despite knowing she wants them to be sisters, she is spiteful already because Gamora already is winning everything. There is not much she can do.
She feels more alone than ever.
She forces herself to think more, because Thanos is more important right now. She can’t change much things for the others, no matter the hardships they faced even if she feels bad about it, because then they will not rise up against Thanos, and that is the worse outcome. She already knows they will come out alive at the end, even if not in one piece. She now knows the location of every infinity stone, even if she will never speak about it like she was supposed to not speak about the soul stone (if she closes her eyes for too long, she can hear the wind of her fall before a quick pain overtakes her, and then the darkness she sees is not that of her eyelids) and she can’t go take the stones because Thanos will know, and will want them, and if she refuses or runs away, then she will probably end up dead and Thanos with the stones once more.
So she thinks.
She can go to earth and warn them when they already are The Avengers, but she doubts they will believe everything she says. And going to earth to warn them is a sure way to make Thanos more aware of the planet, failed invasion aside. So the best plan she has right now, is preventing them from splitting up. She has no more ideas that won’t end in inmediate failure or death. But she can’t do much about the Accords thing they had going on that split them, and again, she can’t interfere with them much at all without alerting Thanos. What more could she do to keep them together without interacting with them?
And then it hits her. The Soldier. James Bucky Barnes. In the end, they could have resolved the issue about the accords, but the conflict wasn’t about the accords at the end of it all, was it? So resolving the issue with the Soldier should prevent them from splitting up. Hopefully. But from the easiest solution it would be to take him out permanently, the possibility of Steve Rogers finding out and it preventing him and his team from working together with her and the Guardians is too high. It split his own team, after all. So removing him but not killing him should be the option, but him staying on earth without the rest of the avengers to take care of hydra is just asking something to blow up on all their faces. And she doesn’t have any way to remove the trigger words from his head, nor could she ask the Wakandians to do it just like that. It would just be easier to disappear him from earth until everything in on path. He was there during the hydra with their government, but Steve Rogers was already on the track to discover Hydra on SHIELD. It would also make it easier for them, not having James fighting them. Steve Rogers should be able to find what Hydra did to his friend anyways, in that underground base with the Zola machine.
The more she thinks about it, the more convinced she gets. She wouldn’t want this on anyone, but she is desperate to change anything and not change everything, but with enough influence to change everything. She steels herself and apologizes in her head to him, because he had it bad and it’s gonna get worse, but she needs to do this.
She will take The Winter Soldier from earth and have him here with her, and with Thanos.
She waits a bit before going, because she needs to make sure Thanos is in a good mood to let her go where she wants without becoming suspicious, and that he won’t inmediately kill The Soldier when she returns. In the end, she tells him he wants to go and bring a pet of some sorts, and he agrees while looking at the next planet to invade. He warns her to train it, or he will have her kill it. She agrees without hesitation. She won’t let herself be seen by him like that, because he is not her family. She knows who her family is now more than ever.
She still wants to tear up in her bedroom alone because being a kid with adult thoughts it’s becoming to much for her. She misses her family.
So she goes to earth on a single ship, on the date she knows The Winter Soldier kills Tony Stark parents. She doesn’t know when or how to find him otherwise. She doesn’t have the time to look any other date, and she’s still too small to take a whole Hydra base guarding the Winter Soldier right now.
She finds him preparing to leave in his motorcycle, returning to his captors like she returns to hers everytime. But not this one. She sees him looking at her, preparing to kill her as well for becoming a witness, before she utters the words she knows are accented and awkward, but practiced enough to serve their purpose.
“Желание.” She starts, and he becomes so still she wonders if he breathes while she continues “Ржавый. Семнадцать. Рассвет. Печь. Девять. Добросердечный. Возвращение на Родину. Один. Товарный вагон.”
Silence is the only response, and the two of them wait.
“Солдат?”
“Я жду приказов.” He responds, and she feels she should breathe easier with that done, but she still feels awful. She doesn’t look at the car or at his blank eyes.
“Get rid of that serum and the motorcycle. Nobody should be able to find that serum even if they search for it for the next few years, not even SHIELD or HYDRA alright? Then follow me, we don’t have much time.” The Soldier follows her instructions in silence, and before long the two of them are back in space.
When she returns, she makes sure to order The Soldier to put her orders as the highest priority, but if she doesn’t contradict it, that he should follow Thanos’ orders without fail, even if it’s to hurt her. But always making sure she can make him stop with a signal, if it feels she, he or Nebula could die. It’s the only way they can survive for now. Even if she doesn’t want to have blood in her hands again, and more in his hands. Then she presents him to Thanos, who makes sure she trained him and won’t become an obstruction in his path of genocide. He finds her “pet” trained well enough and praises her for it, a smile that should be indulgent and amused but just makes her want to run and forget about the universe for a second to feel safe. Instead she just accepts it and returns to her bedroom with The Soldier, where silence reins. She sits in her bed and hugs one knee, while he just stands and observes quietly in a corner of her room. She realizes she doesn’t know what to do next except wait.
And so the two of them wait in silence.