Archive of Our Own

JENO – NOW – KNOWHERE (song 1 – lucifer)

Knowhere hasn’t seen an attack since the Guardians made it their headquarters half a cycle ago, and Jeno is proud of that.

He knows Mark is proud of that too, because he keeps a counter up on the wall that says 205 ROTATIONS SINCE LAST RAID ON KNOWHERE. They’re all proud of what they’ve done to lessen attacks and acts of true violence on Knowhere, this outpost in the middle of the galaxy they’ve started to call home.

So it’s a surprise to all of them when a glowing golden man shoots out of the sky, crashing straight through three residential buildings to knock Donghyuck out of his apartment window.

Jeno sees it from the courtyard in the main square, because he’s sitting there growing flowers from his bark for the children to braid into bracelets and accessories. Few of the children here have ever seen flowers in real life, as Knowhere is made of little more than metal structures and neon lights, and seeing the joy on their silly little faces at what he has to offer keeps him from missing the lush greenery of home too much.

Today, the courtyard gives him a front row seat to the sight of Donghyuck flying through his window, gripped over the shoulder of Golden Man, and crashing straight onto the adjacent rooftop of the next unit.

Jeno is up on his stumps in no time, growing his branches out to hook onto the rooftop and pull himself several floors up to join them, as the children in the courtyard scream and scram. He lands with a thud, and it’s enough to distract the glowing Golden Man; Groot are not a species that often leave their homeplanet, and many people across the galaxy have never met a Groot, nor will meet another after Jeno in their lives. While he has the bipedal body typical of many species in the galaxy, his ‘skin’ of bark, his limbs that grow and retract and regenerate at will, and the dark green moss on his head are not what other species are used to seeing.

Donghyuck uses the distraction of Jeno to kick the Golden Man back and scramble off the side of the rooftop. His claws will get him down safely, but Donghyuck prefers to use his weapons to fight, and will armour up before coming back for his fill of action.

The Golden Man looks back, moving towards Donghyuck, calling out, “Come back here, squirrel-thing!” while grasping for Donghyuck’s stripy racoon tail as he disappears over the edge.

Jeno won’t have that. He leaps, a jump large enough to land him directly on the Golden Man’s back, sending him stumbling. Jeno immediately begins to expand and grow to cover him, vines crawling out from his bark to wrap the Golden Man up tightly, like a spider wrapping up prey in its web.

The Guardians are, first and foremost, defenders of the galaxy, even if he’d like to rip this man’s head off to stop him from attacking Donghyuck again. The first thing he should do, he knows after a hundred of Mark’s so called ‘rule’ sessions, is to control the situation and capture the threat.

For about ten seconds, rapidly growing over the target to root him in place seems to work. Then, Golden Man shoots away from the ground with his glowing blasty feet things, and flies them both up the side of a high-rise building. He’s dragged along the ragged metal of the building at high speed, and even as he tries to hit back at the man, the force breaks down Jeno’s branches and vines, parts of his body crashing to the ground below. Golden Man’s hands become similar blasty rays, which slice right through Jeno’s branches, still holding onto him.

He can’t grow fast enough to repair Golden Man’s damage. By the time they’re at the top of the high rise, the man has the leverage to turn around in Jeno’s hold, place his hands and feet on Jeno’s chest, and use all his blasty-limbs at once to explode Jeno’s trunk wide open. His limbs shatter and separate from his body, scattering everywhere and raining down on the courtyard below.

His head lands heavily and rolls not far from the armoury. As soon as his vision steadies, he’s got fresh vines feeling around for purchase. Re-growing his body properly will take at least one full rotation, but if there are any substantial parts to his branches or trunk left, he can at least stitch himself a temporary body to help the other Guardians right now.

He can hear Jisung and Donghyuck in the armoury behind him, and decides to keep his head where it is, to keep watch for the Golden Man. He seems to be here for Donghyuck, after all. Jeno’s remaining full limbs will have to work their way back towards his head.

“Who is this maniac?” Jisung is shouting, panicked. Jeno can hear her keying in the code for their weapons store.

“Some super-douche with laser hands? I haven’t got a fucking clue!” Donghyuck replies, which is not reassuring to hear. Donghyuck has made plenty of enemies in his life, and if he doesn’t know who this man is, they don’t have the upper hand here.

Golden Man lands down the street, and begins walking towards the armoury, honing in on Donghyuck again. Jaemin intercepts this time, hefting a blaster gun big enough to be a propulsion engine into her arms and strutting up behind him.

“Surrender, or you declare yourself an enemy of the Guardians of the Galaxy!”

The Golden Man turns to her, raising his hands. Before he can start blasting, she shoots him. The force of it sends Golden Man through the nearest wall. She approaches, gun trained on the hole in the wall.

“Give up yet?”

Golden Man shoots out of the gap so quickly, it’s like he took no damage. He lunges straight at Jaemin, taking her back through the wall opposite and what sounds like several units more.

Jeno goes to shout, then remembers he can’t do so without the use of the rest of his body. He urges his limbs to crawl towards him a little faster, but there’s no telling where they could have landed, and he’s still but a head on the ground.

He can hear Golden Man shoot through to the armoury, and tries to call out again. No luck. One of his branches has made its way into his peripheral vision, but that’s no good without a good chunk of trunk. There’s the sound of blaster fire, and Donghyuck cries out, and Jeno can’t lay here any longer being useless. He begins to scuttle away on his roots as he hears a sickening crack, and Jisung shouting in pain, because he needs to get back on his stumps and help, goddammit.

Renjun runs past him with her Godslayer in hand, Chenle shortly behind her. They’ll be able to help. Renjun is the best blade-wielding fighter he knows, and Chenle is much stronger than he looks, his Kylosian purple skin made to last in a fight.

Mark must have made it to the scene too, because just as a decent chunk of Jeno’s trunk comes into view on the path ahead, he can hear Jisung shout Mark’s name, the loudest Jeno has ever heard Jisung shout.

“Mark! Mark! We need medpacks!”

That alone is enough to spur Jeno on, but thankfully Jaemin appears above him, cybernetic parts of her blue body still clicking back into place after the battering Golden Man put her through.

“Here.” She presents one of his stumps and the other main branch, so it only takes thirty seconds from there for him to pull his body roughly back together, minus one stump. That’s enough to get him moving again, for him to be helpful, and he hops up to stumble after Jaemin towards the armoury.

He can hear Chenle and Renjun and the Golden Man grappling some streets further on, but focuses on following the back of Jaemin’s staggering form towards the armoury itself.

“Don’t do that!” she shouts, apparently too late, as Jeno hears Jisung exclaim No! in a blood-curdling scream. “Get them off him, now!”

“All we did was activate the medpack!” Mark’s voice says, and Jeno knows immediately what he’s done.

Donghyuck had once told him that if it ever came down to it, Jeno should never use a medpack on him. The medpacks use electromagnetic pulses to target and enhance the organic healing factor. They work on many organic life forms, but don’t work where other tech can intercept the signal.

Donghyuck is secretive about his cybernetic enhancements. He never talks about them, and switches the topic—casually, or with violence—when asked. But they’ve shared a ship for several solar cycles now, first the two of them, then with the addition of the other Guardians over time. It’s clear to everyone that he has them.

A medpack won’t work on Donghyuck. It’s more likely to hurt him worse.

When he comes into Jeno’s view, this much is confirmed. Donghyuck is alarmingly pale, with a bloody wound seeping through the front of his uniform. His racoon ears twitch rapidly atop his head, but his eyes are glazed, barely conscious.

“We need to get him to the medbay,” Mark says, scooping up Donghyuck’s body in his arms.

“It was destroyed,” Jaemin says, looking back at the building she crashed into.

“There’s one on the ship.” Jeno points to the KARA parked on the roof of Mark’s unit. Renjun and Chenle run over as he does, and his attention snaps to them. “Done?”

“He fled,” Renjun says, eyes on Donghyuck’s body in Mark’s arms.

“We’ll go after him when we know Donghyuk is safe,” Chenle promises.

Jeno leads the way to Mark’s unit, stumbling over now-dead limbs, strung together with living vines. Regrowing his body can wait until they get Donghyuck to safety.

-

DONGHYUCK – THEN – NOVA CORE SECURE PRISON (song 2 – 10 minutes)

Donghyuck has locked in on his accomplice.

His accomplice doesn’t know it yet, sitting six tables over in the mess hall and growing flowers from his fingertips to hand them out to the other inmates. Donghyuck doesn’t really know why, and most of the other inmates don’t seem to either—their reactions range from trying to eat them to plucking off the petals while singing rhymes from their homeplanets. One inmate tries to crush theirs up and snort it. Tree Guy watches with some befuddlement, but continues to hand out flowers from his bark.

This is why he’s exactly who Donghyuck needs. Nobody bullies Tree Guy for sitting in prison and growing the inmates some flowers, because he’s proven he’s plenty strong. Yesterday, he batted away a man lunging for him, and it actually looked like an accident. The guy flew through the air and dented the bars of the cell he landed against. No one is interested in messing with the guy who deals damage as easily as breathing and doesn’t care about limbs breaking off, because he can grow back new ones in a day.

He’s also one of the few inmates in here not required to wear the prison uniform shirt, and Donghyuck has realised it’s because Tree Guy naturally grows often—the flowers are just the start of it. Instead of taking the stairs, he extends his branch-arm-things up to the railings and simply hoists himself up, retracting his arms to a standard humanoid length afterwards. He’d ruin way too many prison uniforms if they made him wear it, and restricting him from existing in his natural state is illegal under the Nova accords. No one can stop him from doing so.

Basically, he’s perfect. Donghyuck can be out of here in less than ten minutes, if he can only bring his accomplice on board. He’s escaped twelve prisons already in his life—is this about to be the easiest one yet?

Donghyuck picks up his slop and moves over to sit opposite Tree Guy at the table. The other occupants turn to stare at Donghyuck for daring to invade their space unannounced.

Donghyuck pays them no mind. “Can I get a flower too?”

Most of Donghyuck’s knowledge about fauna is from Terra, thanks to Ayesha’s insistence that he understand human ways in order to surpass human existence, and become… whatever it is he is now. Hybrid, cybernetic freak of some sort. Whatever. Point is, he’s got a perfect memory, and can recollect everything he learned about the plants on Earth.

“I would love to see some gingko leaves.”

Tree Guy doesn’t speak, but tilts his head quizzically. Up close, his eyes are an endless hazy brown, unnervingly deep.

He lifts a hand and presents Donghyuck with the seed, then stem, then sprouting leaves of gingko. Donghyuck has never seen real gingko before, but when the smell hits his nose he knows Tree Guy has done it right.

The Kree beside him starts to cough, hand covering his nose and mouth. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

Further up, two Badoon swear, and all of them stand at the same time, grabbing their plates to find another seat.

Donghyuck has to admit his eyes are watering. The smell is rancid. But he needed a clear table without suspicion, and now he can’t afford to offend Tree Guy.

Tree Guy is looking around with wide eyes, looking none-the-wiser as to what drove them away.

“Thanks,” Donghyuck says through a cough, taking the gingko from Tree Guy’s hand and pretending to put it in his pocket. Really, he throws it behind him, hoping Tree Guy won’t notice. “So. Nice table you got here. What’s your name?”

“I am Jeno,” Tree Guy says, slowly, with a measure of confusion. Donghyuck has that effect on people.

“Stunning to meet you, barky. I’m Donghyuck. What are you in here for?”

“I am Jeno,” Jeno says again, though shorter this time, as if that’s explanation enough.

“Yeah, I heard you. Did you hear me? I’m Donghyuck. Listen, whatever you’re here for, I bet you’re innocent, right? I know I am. What did those high priests need those fancy rocks for? Rituals and spells? Pfft, you don’t get magic folk that far into the Keystone Quadrant. They didn’t need them, but I needed them. How else is a guy supposed to earn a living? But listen—I know a guy who needs these rocks even more than me, and they’re supposed to be worth a pretty penny. I’m here to give you the best offer of your life, buddy, so listen up. I can get us out of here and to a pile of cash faster than you can grow another gingko leaf.

“You see the guard’s outpost up there? Yeah, it’s Nova tech, so this whole prison can be remodelled to increase security, or add cells to the layout, pretty easily. It means everything comes apart like Lego, you get me? Everything can work independent of the rest, and everything is centralised. The cell blocks, the hallways, but most importantly, the drone guns are all reliant on tech. Now, get this—the drone guns can also double up as propulsion engines, because you can attach them to the bottom of a cell block and move it along if you need to slot a new cell in.

“Now, I don’t need you to see the bigger picture here, because that’s my job. I know exactly how to get us out of here, the two of us together. I just need your help with two vital steps of the plan. One: I need you to do your growy thing and get tall enough to open that panel under the guard’s outpost, and pull out the cortex battery. I can use that to overpower the security systems and get us into the outpost control operator. Two, I need you to give me a leg up into the outpost itself, because even though I’m damn good at climbing, I’ll be shot down the second I try to scale it. I know you’re not so vulnerable to that kind of thing, am I right?

“There’s an optional third step here of clearing out the guards from the outpost for me, because it doesn’t seem too hard for you, but if you don’t do that kind of thing, no harm, no foul. I can deal with them. From there, all you gotta do is sit your sequoia ass into one of the seats, and let me do the rest. I’ll give you a hint: propulsion drones plus Lego cell blocks equals a one way ticket out of this prison. From there, we can get back into my ship and leave together, okay? I’ll drop you off wherever you like. I only came in one rotation ago, they won’t have moved it to a shipyard yet. So what do you say? Are you down for a prison break?”

He taps his fingers against the table eagerly, waiting for Jeno’s response. Just talking about it has him all fired up. This might be his quickest escape ever, if they can pull this off…

“I am Jeno.”

Jeno stands from the table, sweet brown eyes none the wiser, and Donghyuck’s jittery body stops moving as Jeno wanders away.

He slumps down, knocking his forehead against the table, then pounding a fist into the top of it.

That’s Jeno’s whole fucking vocabulary, the words I and Am and Jeno, exclusively in that order. For some reason, Donghyuck’s universal translator must not work on his kind, and he didn’t understand a fucking word Donghyuck was saying.

Great. What a waste of breath. Back to square one.

He raises his head, sighing. He’s never met a species before that isn’t compatible with a universal translator—nearly all species who go off planet tend to get one implanted before travelling. Maybe Jeno’s homeplanet don’t do that. Maybe where he comes from is all soil and trees and flowers and no tech at all.

Wouldn’t surprise him. Sounds kinda nice. Maybe he can visit when he escapes this damn place.

A loud spark fizzes from the centre of the room, and Donghyuck whips his head around. As the sirens begin to blare, emergency doors clamping down on all exits, he sees Jeno wave the cortex battery at him with a smile. He’s already growing tall enough to reach into the crevices of the outpost door and rip it open.

“Ha ha!” Donghyuck cries, and gets to his feet immediately, tail whipping behind him as he reaches Jeno’s form—now over fifteen feet tall—and begins to climb, bear claws gripping his bark with surprising ease. He’s never climbed a tree-person before, and it’s way too easy. “You understood me!”

The drone guns are already swarming the guard’s outpost. Donghyuck swings around Jeno’s waist—his trunk?—to shield himself from the rapid gunfire, parts of Jeno’s bark flying off in all directions.

“I am Jeno,” Jeno says, sounding rather insulted. All at once, he pulls his whole body up into the outpost, Donghyuck clutching onto him, until they’re all the way inside. Jeno’s limbs look a little worse for wear, though he doesn’t look bothered, simply shaking off his wood shavings.

Donghyuck hops down from where he’d been clinging onto Jeno, dusting himself off, though Jeno looks unbothered by his weight and proximity. “Sorry, man, I have no idea what you’re saying, but if you know what I’m saying, that’s what matters!”

There’s only one guard in here, and Jeno takes care of his gun before he can aim it at either of them, vines snatching it out of his hold with ease. Donghyuck takes care of him from there, gripping him by the shoulders and flinging him through the outpost door. The outpost is, of course, bulletproof, so the rattling gunfire of the drones do nothing to them in here. Reinforcements will be on their way, but Donghyuck is quicker than that.

“I am Jeno!”

Jeno hands him the cortex battery, and Donghyuck kisses it before setting it down on the outpost worktop. Then he cracks open the worktop, and hooks it into the central panel to overpower the security systems.

Within seconds, and a few well-placed commands, the guns power down, reprogramming themselves to their propulsion settings. In one movement, they gather around under the base of the outpost, securing themselves together in a ring, before pushing upwards.

Shakily, the outpost begins to rise, and Jeno exclaims an impressed-sounding “I am Jeno!”

“Didn’t believe me? I’ve escaped twelve prisons, you know; this is nothing,” Donghyuck scoffs with a grin.

They crash straight through the glass ceiling of the prison, and Donghyuck pilots them straight into the processing unit he’d come through not twenty hours ago, crashing through to the upper decks where he knows his ship, and by extension all his worldly belongings, are stored.

“Come on!”

They both crash through the outpost door, and Donghyuck leads the way towards his ship. He’s used to being amongst the fastest in situations like this, thanks to his hybrid physiology, but is pleased to find that Jeno’s long strides match his pace.

He can hear reinforcements approaching, footsteps and shouting audible down the hall, but the two of them are way ahead. Jeno straps himself into the secondary seat of his ship as Donghyuck returns to the old comfort of the captain’s chair, chuckling to himself as he gears his ship up for take-off. He can crash straight back out through the deck they came through.

“Strap in, Jeno. We’re about to take a bumpy few jumps away from here.”

The ship lurches, and Donghyuck turns his head for a second to see Jeno clutching the armrests.

That gives him the nerve to make another lurching blast forward, taking off quicker than he should to keep the engines in good condition, but hey, time is of the essence here.

He gears them up for a good fifteen jumps away from Nova Core, laughing to himself as the first guard ship just comes into view as they jump away. Pathetic, really. Can they even reasonably call that prison ‘secure’?

After fifteen jumps, he does another ten just to be safe, even if it feels like his head is being compressed by the time they land on the edge of Asgardia. This seems like the kinda place Jeno might be from.

He catches his breath, then turns his seat to look at Jeno. Despite not having real hair, just that green mossy stuff, he somehow looks windswept.

“Thanks for your help back there, buddy. Couldn’t have done it without you. Do you want dropping off somewhere? Where’s home, to you?”

“I am Jeno.”

Donghyuck shrugs, then hands Jeno his navipad so he can input a location. Jeno looks at it for a moment, then hands it back. It’s still showing his ship, and the empty space around it.

“Nowhere, huh? I’m the same. I suppose I gotta live up to my promise of splitting the shares for those rocks, right?”

He stands up from his chair to go to the concealed safe under the generator. The rocks tumble out into his hands, glittering in the dim lights.

“But hey, you can’t leech off me forever. We’ll go meet my buddy, I’ll give you my share, and we’ll go our separate ways, okay? I don’t do people, I don’t have friends. We’ll be acquaintances who once shared a good prison break and a bit of rock profit, ‘kay?”

Jeno is smiling at him oddly for such a statement. “I am Jeno,” he says.

“Alright, I guess that’s as good as I’m gonna get. Let’s go get a meal first, I’m starving.”

-

JENO – NOW – THE KARA (song 3 – total eclipse of the heart)

Donghyuck’s eyes are bright yellow, with black pupils. He had let slip to Jeno once that they were the eyes of an eagle, while his claws are that of a bear, his ears and tail of a racoon. Even the hair that grows on his head isn’t characteristic of a typical human—it’s dark grey, with white tips, showing his racoon DNA.

Donghyuck doesn’t like to talk about what he is. Not the human part, not the animal part, not the cybernetic parts that sit under the skin of his back. But, not for the first time, Jeno is wishing he’d put more pressure on Donghyuck to be honest with them.

Right now, they could really do with a lot more information.

“A killswitch? What do you mean, a killswitch?” Mark sounds horrified, and has been pacing up and down the medbay as Jaemin has been taking readings from Donghyuck. She can hook the computer panel on the side of her head straight into their medical kit, and see exactly what the X-Ray is showing them.

Sitting here and waiting for Jaemin’s answers has Jeno on edge, truly. Every breath Donghyuck takes is laboured and rattling, and he’s afraid each one might be his last. They’ve hooked him into the life support tech on board, but they daren’t do much more that could affect his cybernetics.

As it turns out, said cybernetics are exactly the problem.

“The killswitch is a device by his heart that is set to destruct if anyone goes poking around inside him. It didn’t just react wrongly to the medpack—putting him in this condition was deliberate, because of the medpack. Because we tried to help him.”

“Why the hell does he have that inside of him?” Renjun asks faintly, as if she’s already imagining the answer.

“Apparently, someone considers him proprietary technology, and sent that golden lunatic to come and get him.” Jaemin’s eyes are white as she reads the code through her internal systems. Her voice sounds steady, but Jeno can keenly feel the pain behind them.

She knows what it’s like, after all, to be considered nothing more than a weapon.

“So he’ll die if we operate on him?” Jisung says, aghast.

“And he’ll die if we don’t,” Chenle says, standing with his arms crossed in the doorway. From him, too, Jeno feels a great vulnerability, a sense of preemptive grief. They’ve all lost people here, but that doesn’t make the prospect of losing someone else any easier.

Jeno won’t allow himself to think that way. He turns back to Jaemin.

“There must be some way to bypass it,” Mark is saying, fingers tapping his arms rapidly.

“It looks like there is a passkey to override the killswitch,” Jaemin says.

“What do we know about where Donghyuck came from?” Renjun asks, and everyone in the room turns to Jeno.

He shakes his head. “He would never talk about it with me, either. It’s not hard to tell he was mistreated, experimented on. But I don’t know any specifics. I’m not sure he even knows.”

“Much of the tech was developed by a company called Orgocorp,” Jaemin says, and that snaps Mark into action, marching away down the ship’s deck to the pilot’s cabin.

“How long do we have?” Jeno asks, because it’s clear Donghyuck isn’t going to get any better until they can fix this.

“I’d say he has less than 24 hours before his injuries kill him,” Jaemin says, and Mark’s voice comes over the ship’s comms.

“Everyone strap in. We’re breaking into Orgocorp to get that passkey. There’s no time to waste.”

Jaemin begins to unhook herself from the medkit and strap Donghyuck firmly into the cot. Jeno comes up beside her to check the straps and put away loose items, to make sure Donghyuck is secured as safely as possible. The engine of the KARA rumbles to life under them, and he takes a seat beside Jaemin in the medbay pull-down seats. They’re not ideal for a takeoff, but neither of them want to leave Donghyuck here alone.

Jisung and Chenle must be at the deck seating, which is just next door to the medbay, but they’re quiet. Only Mark is audible, talking to Renjun in the cockpit. Usually Donghyuck co-pilots with Mark, so he’s talking her through using the navipad to locate the Orgocorp headquarters.

“I spent two years alone with him,” Jaemin says, from nowhere.

Jeno looks at her quizzically. She’s leaning forward in her seat, staring at the floor, voice low.

“That time we got stuck in a time-loop, just the two of us. Two years passed. Because we were the only two trapped, we felt alone even when we were with you all. We learned things about one another. We thought we might be stuck together for eternity. He talked to me, then, about being made, taken apart and rebuilt. He talked about how angry it made him. He talked about how he tolerated himself on good days, and wanted to tear himself apart on bad days.”

Jeno never knew any of this. Though Donghyuck had let things slip, he always seemed to think of Jeno as an innocent being he couldn’t burden with such information. There was also the sense that Jeno would never understand, being the furthest thing from what Donghyuck is.

That much may be true. Groot have a huge capacity for empathy, but that doesn’t mean much to someone who has been through the unthinkable. Jeno is glad Donghyuck talked about it to Jaemin, truly. They’re alike in more ways than they would usually dare admit.

“In all that time, he never told me specifics. Never who he would kill if he got the chance. Never where he spent his childhood. Never where he came from. Nothing that would be useful to saving his life right now.”

“You couldn’t have known you’d need it,” Jeno says, consoling. He knows how she feels, but trying to pry that sort of information out of Donghyuck is impossible, and unkind.

“Do you think he didn’t, either?” Jaemin asks, raising her head, endless black eyes boring into him. “Do you think he didn’t know he had a killswitch inside him, all this time? Or do you think he felt it, found it, and pretended he didn’t know?”

It’s hard to say. Donghyuck is Donghyuck. The second scenario could well be true.

“We should kill them together,” Jeno says eventually, as the ship hums, preparing for a series of jumps. “The people who did this to him.”

“Agreed,” Jaemin says, leaning back with a thump as the ship goes to jump.

-

DONGHYUCK – THEN – THE COLLECTOR’S MUSEUM (song 4 – step)

Somehow, Jeno ends up sticking with him. He becomes impossible to shake off, in fact, but maybe it’s because Donghyuck doesn’t try all that hard.

Jeno is a good listener, and someone who doesn’t nag Donghyuck about keeping his explosives in loose storage boxers or ripping a hole in all his pants to accommodate his tail. Well, if he does nag, Donghyuck doesn’t understand it, which works fine for them both. It’s good to have an accomplice on jobs who is larger and stronger than Donghyuck, and it’s nice to have company on the ship. Someone to share meals with. Someone who won’t sneak off with Donghyuck’s share of the money at first opportunity. They work well together, and Jeno is up for anything.

Even when they’re hired for random shit, like infiltrating the Collector’s Museum and extracting some ancient relic their client wants back.

The Collector’s Museum is infamously high security. He’s got all sorts in there—not just artefacts, but living exhibits. People who didn’t read the fine print and signed their lives over to the Collector. He’s meticulous about how things are kept inside the Museum.

It takes Donghyuck a few days to come up with a plan, because he needs it to be airtight. Both he and Jeno are somewhat rare finds, and he wouldn’t put it past the Collector to try and collect one or both of them. More likely Jeno than him—cyborgs and hybrids are seen as freaks of nature by many cultures, and thus not ‘high quality’ goods. Groot, unlike most developed species in the galaxy, are rarely found out of their own solar system.

The Collector gets regular shipments of all kinds of food and bedding for his specimens to the Museum. Rather than trying to infiltrate the locked-down building by force, Donghyuck builds their plan around stealth: infiltrating the company that compiles the Museum’s shipments, and sneaking into whatever containers they can fit into.

“You got that? Now, finding containers with enough space to take us is the big question. I’m good at squeezing into places, but you don’t exactly get smaller, do you?”

“I am Jeno,” Jeno says with a shrug.

“How did I know you’d say that? I’ve picked out the container of straw for you; that’s your best bet. I’m going to get in with the soft fruit, maybe have a snack on the way, eh? They’ll probably be shipped to different parts of the Museum, since it’s so big, but that works for us since we’ll wanna split up and find where this damn relic is anyway. The plan is, you scope out your bit, I scope out mine, and eventually we’ll meet in the middle somewhere. Sound good?”

“I am Jeno,” Jeno says, and Donghyuck claps him on the shoulder.

“My man. Let’s get this job done.”

The container part is a doddle. Donghyuck is yet to make a plan that goes wrong. The transport is a little bumpy, and his tail is matted with bugleberry juice by the time they arrive, but no one suspects a thing. His box is left unattended once delivered, and Donghyuck slips out into the wide space of the Museum that houses various species of birds and bats, to much squawking and chattering from the inhabitants.

“Be quiet, all of you, quiet. I might let you out when I leave, if you are.”

As expected, he’s separated from Jeno. No problem. He’s straight into action, walking through the hallways on the hunt for the relic. If Jeno is too, they should be in and out in no time.

There are many, many rooms on galactic history and culture, but thankfully they’re arranged by quadrant and solar system in planetary code order, and Donghyuck knows it off by heart. It doesn’t take him long to narrow down the Skrull section of the Museum and skip through the cases. Dozens of relics here, but in a case mounted on the wall, the shield he’s looking for gleams under a spotlight. Clearly a prized treasure, but more prized by his client than the Collector.

Donghyuck takes a device of his own making out of his pocket. It’s essentially a fancy lockpick, but he’s added a few bells and whistles which also detect cyberlinks and signals that will be triggered by his picking of the lock. If the device can’t deactivate them, it will beep to let Donghyuck know he’ll need another way in.

He grins to himself when the cabinet opens without a hitch. The endless, complicated inner workings of his brain come up with some handy gadgets, sometimes.

“Aren’t you a beauty?” he says, slinging the shield from the display case and over his shoulder. It’s heavier than expected, and he staggers back a few steps, stopping himself just before he knocks into another display case. He laughs to himself before turning to leave the room, quickly and quietly stepping back down the hall. Now he just needs to find Jeno and leave.

He heads towards the other half of the Museum, peeking into doorways, keeping an eye out for a good escape route as he does. He was least concerned about that part, because once they’re running out the Museum, they can be gone. It’s the security inside that’s airtight.

Case in point: he turns a corner into the main gallery, where all the prize pieces of the collection are displayed.

In the middle of the room, Jeno stands in a glass cage, with the Collector in front of him.

They both turn to look at Donghyuck, and surprise freezes him stock still. The Collector doesn’t seem all that shocked to see him, simply raising an eyebrow at the shield on his back.

Jeno looks mournful, and afraid, a sloping curve to his pale brown eyes. “I am Jeno,” he says urgently, placing a hand to the cell wall.

“You may be on your way, little cat,” the Collector says, waving a hand at Donghyuck. Cat? “This is more than a fair trade. Skrull battlewear is easy to find. A Groot, living and uprooted from its homeplanet… that is, frankly, singular.”

The Collector continues to circle Jeno’s glass cage, admiring him, muttering to himself. The white furs he shrouds himself in make him look like a preening swan.

Donghyuck swings the shield into his arms, looking down at it. The shield for Jeno’s life? Is that even a question?

Looking at Jeno in there—he can’t stomach it. It reminds him all too much of—he’d be condemning Jeno to—

He’s not that person. Is that the kind of reputation he has? Does the Collector not fear his wrath at all, trapping his friend in this hellhole?

Well, damn. Maybe he should start making a new name for himself.

Donghyuck is not particularly powerful. Nor is throwing his strong suit. But this shield was designed to move in a way that decapitates enemies on the battlefield.

He takes the shield in both hands, grips it, and swings all his power into flinging it towards the Collector.

Admittedly, it doesn’t curve through the air like he intended. More plonks the Collector on the head, but hard enough to put him on the floor.

Donghyuck runs up to the cage, and slams his picker in through the lock. It blares a warning of security systems set off, but he doesn’t care. Jeno steps out of the cage, picking up the shield from the floor.

The two of them look at each other for a moment. Then a siren rings out through the museum, and they set off running to the closest exit - in time with each other, as always.

“You came back for me!” Jeno says, as they barrel straight out of the front doors and into some poor fella on his motorbike.

“Sorry, we need this more than you!” He pushes the guy off the bike, leaving him spluttering and stunned, and climbs onto the seat, ready to high-tail it out of there.

“Of course I went back for you!” he shouts over the roar of the engine as Jeno climbs on.

The turrets on the Museum have fired up, but Donghyuck takes off at speed, gunfire following as passersby scream. The shield resting on Jeno’s back keeps them safe as Donghyuck swerves through the streets towards their ship.

“Who do you think I am? Some shitty kind of friend? And hey! Since when do you speak words that aren’t I and Am and Jeno?!”

Jeno just laughs behind him, and wraps his arms tighter around Donghyuck’s waist, paying no mind to Donghyuck’s hair whipping him in the face.

Donghyuck chuckles incredulously, shaking his head, as the ship comes into view.

-

JENO – NOW – ORGOCORP HQ (song 5 - vogue)

Ironically, the break into Orgocorp is made possible by a piece of Donghyuck’s tech, designed to cut through materials such as the dead matter that Orgocorp is built into. The huge centre is as long as a standard space station, built into something organic that likely would’ve grown into a Celestial if it hadn’t been hijacked by corporate greed playing at being Godly.

It takes them a bit of time to figure out how the device works—they nearly slice through the floor of the KARA as they do—but once they get it, all they have to do is suit up, use jetpacks to fly closer to the centre, and set the device to work. Renjun stays on board with Donghyuck as the rest of them break in, radioing back their success as Renjun monitors the space around them from their ship.

“I’ve pulled up a blueprint of the building,” she says into their comms as they slip, one by one, into the hole cut into the building, protected by the malleable shield popped up by Donghyuck’s device. Even back on the ship, unconscious, he’s crucial to their team—he’s the one making this mission possible, as well as necessary. “It’s from when it was first built, so let’s hope everything is still in the same place. You’ll want to go down the corridor to the right.”

“Let’s change first,” Mark is saying, the first to get his space suit off, rifling through a chest for some standard Orgocorp uniform. The room they’d broken into must be a storage room of some kind, because it only just fits all of them inside. “We want this to be stealth, if possible. Yes, use force to get into the archives if it comes down to it. But if we can do this without drawing attention, great.”

Once they’re all kitted up, they follow Renjun’s directions down the hallway, trying to look like they know where they’re going. The centre is busy with other Orgocorp employees going about their day, so no one looks at them too hard, though Jeno doesn’t exactly blend in. Still, the workers are weary enough not to give him more than a glance as the team passes through the hall.

“Now, you want to find the door three from the end of this corridor. This will lead you into another corridor, where you’ll find the entrance to the archives.”

Sure enough, the corridor leads them to a polished, empty hallway with a large arched door at the end. Mark picks up the pace when he sees it, peering into other rooms down the hallway.

“Jeno, Jisung, you stay outside,” he says when he reaches the large doors, peeking through into the archive. It looks like a huge hall, with a woman waiting at the desk. “If anyone else tries to come in, tell them it’s off limits. If any threats approach, come and warn us, okay? Jaemin, Chenle and I will get the file.”

“Okay,” Jisung says, and her voice wobbles. Jeno can see why Mark put her out here—it will blow their cover if she starts to cry, and neither she nor Jeno are good with numbers anyway.

Jaemin, Chenle and Mark slip into the archive. Jisung and Jeno stand in front of the doors together, looking down at the quiet, empty hallway.

“Jeno,” Jisung starts after a long moment of silence, in which Jeno fidgets, pretending not to notice her anxiety. Her voice is quieter now, thin. This is the first chance she’s had to catch her breath since the Golden Man hit Knowhere.

“Yes?” he says, turning to look at her. Her dark eyes are watery, and the tears spill over when their gaze meets. Her antennae are drooping. Jeno sighs, turning to bring her into a hug.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” she cries, her tears dripping onto his uniform as she buries her face in his shoulder. Though Jeno is tall, Jisung is the tallest amongst the Guardians, her narrow, long body reflecting her insect-like physiology. Jeno is the only one who can give her a sturdy, encompassing hug in the team, and often does so when he can sense she’s feeling down.

“Why are you sorry?” Jeno says gently.

“I—I gave him the medpack, me and Mark—we didn’t know, but we should’ve thought about it—I was just so scared he was going to die; the blast hurt him bad…”

“It’s not your fault. Donghyuck knew that might happen one day. He should’ve warned the team long ago.”

“Jaemin told me a while ago that medpacks don’t work with cybernetics. I—I just wasn’t thinking, Donghyuck doesn’t ever talk about his cybernetics, but—but that feels like a shitty excuse…”

“Jisung,” he says, softly taking hold of her shoulders to move her back. He places his hands to her cheeks to gently wipe away her tears. “This isn’t your fault. It’s the fault of the people who did that to him.”

“Jeno, if he dies—” Jisung hiccups, cutting herself off. “What will we do?”

“He’s not going to die, Jisung,” Jeno says, though the same anxiety simmers through his body. How can he not worry, with Donghyuck in the state he’s in? But he can’t admit defeat, and he can’t show weakness.

They need to do whatever it takes to save him.

“You know Donghyuck, don’t you? Does he seem like the type of person to roll over and die after one hit?”

“No,” Jisung admits weakly, scrubbing her eyes before wiping her hands on her uniform. “I know he’s fighting right now. And we will do everything we can to help him. But even then—I don’t know how I can apologise enough for this. It was the medpack that triggered the reaction, more than the shot he took. It’s my fault.”

“Donghyuck is going to forgive you. He won’t even hold it against you in the first place—you know that. He loves you, Jisung. He’s going to be the one reassuring you when he wakes up.”

Jisung chokes on a laugh. “You’re right. I miss him already.”

“I’ll tell him that when he wakes up. He’ll like that.”

Jisung doesn’t even fight back, but Jeno is glad to see her smiling.

They stand there for a minute more, in comfortable silence this time, Jisung’s heavy mood lifting into something more determined.

Then, the sound of footsteps echo through the archive behind them.

Jeno takes Jisung’s hand, and pulls her back away from the doors right as Chenle bursts through, Mark and Jaemin right behind him.

“Go, go, go!”

The Orgocorp security guards are racing out behind them, in huge organic matter suits, quad blasters in hand. Jeno takes Jisung’s hand firmly and takes off towards the exit, blaster fire at their heels.

-

DONGHYUCK – THEN – XANDAR CENRTAL (song 6 - abracadabra, song 7 - i am the best)

“This client is taking the piss,” Donghyuck says, throwing the Orb up into the air and catching it again.

They’re sitting in the square of Xandar Central, the meeting place their client had identified for the exchange. Said client was supposed to be here an hour ago, but they’ve seen nada.

“Do you think it was a set up?” Jeno muses, sitting back and enjoying the sun. Being able to sit in the sun is like his equivalent of having a big box of chicken and a crate of expensive beer. Donghyuck is glad at least one of them is enjoying themselves.

“A set up? Hell no! We nearly died picking this thing out of that temple! I know it looks like a hunk of metal, but I bet it has something else inside, free with the right passkey. Oh boy, I’d love to know what’s in this thing. Clearly the damn client doesn’t value it that much, if they can’t be bothered arriving on time.”

Jeno extends one of his wiry branch arms to point ahead wordlessly. A green-skinned woman is walking towards them at pace in leather pants and a cool-ass top with mesh along the sides, eyes on the orb in Donghyuck’s hand.

“Finally, damn,” he says, getting to his feet with arms crossed. Jeno stays sat on the steps, enjoying the sunlight for a few moments more.

“Donghyuck?” the green woman asks, glancing between Donghyuck’s tail and Jeno’s—well, everything. Jeno doesn’t seem to care much, squinting back at her half-heartedly.

“That’s me. You’re the one who commissioned us to retrieve the orb?” He throws and catches it again, and the woman watches with gritted teeth.

“Yes. Renjun. I’ve heard about your tenacity to find things like this, and I have to say I’m impressed.”

“What can I say? We’re professionals.” He turns back to look at Jeno, only to find he’s scooped up a handful of soil from the patch of grass next to them, shoving it into his mouth and chewing leisurely.

In the split second he’s distracted, the orb is swiped from his hand.

He whips back around to see Renjun running full-pelt across Xandar Central, clutching the orb to her chest, dark hair streaming behind her.

“Hey!” he shouts, sensing Jeno getting to his feet behind him. He holds out an arm to stop Jeno from running forward, unclasps the electric rope from his belt and slings it low across the ground.

It catches around Renjun’s ankles, tripping her up. Donghyuck fist pumps as she falls, taking his hand from Jeno’s chest to run after her.

But as he moves, a human-looking guy approaches along the walkway Renjun is wriggling on, yanking at the electric rope and swiping the orb right out of her grasp.

“Hey!” Donghyuck shouts again, this time indignant. Renjun double crossing them wasn’t too shocking—he’s had plenty of clients stand him up before, skimp on payments, or try to kill him to avoid paying up. But he’s never had a third party crash their arrangements. Just what is this damn orb?

The man hops down off the walkway and runs for Xandar’s transport central.

He doesn’t get far. Renjun leaps to her feet, producing a small blade from her pocket. She throws it with precision and nicks the new stranger’s hand. He drops the orb, which falls away, rolling down the slope.

Donghyuck passes Renjun, glancing back to see Jeno encompassing her before she can follow him, roots encircling and restraining her.

“Get off me!”

Donghyuck laughs to himself as he catches up with the stranger running after the orb below, taking a flying leap off the walkway after him. This is why it’s great to have a partner.

He lands right on the man, cushioning his own fall and slamming his quarry into the ground while he rolls off and continues running after the fallen orb.

It’s rolled to a stop by the fountain in the middle of the square. Unsurprisingly, their commotion is starting to draw attention, not half because Renjun has now produced a much larger blade and has begun hacking at Jeno’s roots. As much as a bit of action excites Donghyuck, breaking out of prison again will be a pain, and he’d really rather avoid being arrested if possible.

Plus, every time he’s arrested, he worries that a system somewhere will pick it up, that a message will be sent back to the place that made him, that someone made of gold will arrive to take him back…

It’s why he’s so good at escaping. All he’s doing, all the time, is running from that possibility.

Orb in hand at last, he skids to a stop and unsheathes his gun, raising it in warning at the stranger, now back on his feet.

The man comes to a stop, his own blaster pointed at Donghyuck. They’re at stalemate, but Donghyuck has what this guy clearly wants.

“Hey,” the guy says, and to Donghyuck’s surprise, puts his blaster up in surrender. “Look, I know you found this thing. I’m not trying to steal it from you—I can work with you. My name is Mark. I’m a traveller with connections to the Ravagers. Listen, we need to keep the orb from that lady up there—she works with Thanos, and I happen to know that a friend of Thanos is looking for this. If she delivers it to him, it’s over for us all.”

Mark is looking at the orb with the same anxiety that the woman had shown. Now Donghyuck needs to know what’s inside it.

Donghyuck shrugs. “I don’t care what either of you do with it, man. I just want the eight million units we were promised for acquiring it. Are either of you our real client, or what?”

“I am not working with Thanos!” Renjun is dragging Jeno with her down the steps beside them, taking the dignified path down the walkway. “Don’t talk of things you don’t understand, little man. Now, give me the orb, or I’ll take apart more of your friend here.” She pulls Jeno around in front of her, holding onto him by the vines at his back, her very shiny blade pointed at him. His arm-branches are hacked off, and he’s too busy looking mournfully at the spaces to fight back, it seems.

“They’ll grow back; don’t look so mopey,” Donghyuck says, trying to get Jeno to snap out of it. They need an escape plan, dammit! Both these people are crazy.

“Don’t give her the orb!” Mark says, moving his blaster to aim at Renjun instead. “Let the tree guy go, alright?”

“Am I supposed to believe you want the orb for good?” Renjun sneers. “You Ravagers, all you care about is stealing and selling. I’m trying to save the damn galaxy here!”

“So am I!”

“Do you think I would be here alone if I were retrieving this for Thanos? I left him! I hate him! He enslaved me, and now I’m doing everything I can to stop him from destroying the whole damn galaxy!” Renjun shouts, shaking Jeno with every emphasis.

“Look, are either of you going to pay me for this thing?” Donghyuck says.

“No!” Renjun has fury in her features.

“Dude, I’m sorry, but I don’t have the money to give you. This is more important than that—it’s about saving everything. If—if what you’re saying is true…” Mark looks at Renjun hesitantly, and Renjun scowls at him.

“Renjun.”

“If you’re being honest about that, Renjun, then maybe we should all work together on this. I mean, we all want to stop horrible things from happening with this, right?”

“I don’t know! No one is telling me what this damn thing is!” Donghyuck exclaims, shaking it in hand.

Mark puts his hands up at the same time Renjun steps closer. “Stop that!”

“Stop, man, jeez! It’s—it’s an infinity stone, okay?” Mark hisses.

“An infinity stone?” Donghyuck exclaims, looks at the orb anew. He should’ve charged way more for this—they could’ve been pulverised at any moment! “No fucking wonder you’re all after it!”

“I’m not going to sell it!” Mark emphasises, as Renjun scoffs in disgust.

“You people think of nothing but yourselves, do you?”

“Donghyuck,” Jeno speaks up at last. “If they’re telling the truth, we should work with them to make sure this thing stays in good hands.”

“Why would I care about saving the galaxy?” he asks, and all three of them look at him incredulously.

“I don’t know, because you’re one of the unlucky fools who lives in it?” Mark says, waving his blaster around.

Donghyuck groans, long and loud and high. “Fine! Let’s go somewhere to talk about what the hell we’re doing with this. But we’re holding onto it—and heads up, my idea of stashing this away from evil people means finding a buyer who will pay us well and then keep it in the depths of their vaults for the next millennium.”

“We’re going to die because this damn racoon only cares about money,” Renjun says, looking to Mark as if for backup. The cheek!

“Don’t call me a racoon! And let go of my business partner! I’m charging you for each arm you chopped off.”

“Let’s take a holiday after this,” Jeno says grumpily.

“Does he say anything other than that?” Mark says, and Donghyuck’s smile returns at the question.

Though he’s learned to understand Jeno now, he’s realised it’s not thanks to Jeno’s change of language—the words he speaks are still limited to I am And and Jeno. But somehow, some way, Donghyuck’s brain has learned to interpret the meaning Jeno has each time he speaks.

Others don’t have that privilege. They’ll get it when they do, if they ever get to know Jeno like he does. Until then, it’s up to him to barter for things such as Jeno’s hacked-off arms.

“Nope. I’m the brains of this operation, he’s the brawn. So one of you better show me to your ship right now, or I’m going to set a six-foot tree man on ya.”

-

JENO – NOW – THE KARA (song 8 - pokerface)

Jaemin slots the file chip into the KARA display, and plugs herself in to navigate the files quickly and efficiently. They watch on the monitor as she scans through the hundreds of documents stored on the chip.

Each one pops up for half a second before she moves onto the next. Jeno can’t take his eyes off the screen. Every so often, a photo will show up, or a video fast-forwarded about a hundred times the speed as Jaemin assesses it.

None of it lingers. But so much of it leaves an impression. Many of the videos look to be of surgery, or experimentation. Jeno sees enough to understand that Donghyuck was cut open dozens of times, sat through what feels like hundreds of tests and experiments. Was kept in a glorified cage, was studied and dissected like he wasn’t a living, breathing person.

They were trying to make him into something, but it’s not clear what, if even they knew.

The final file that opens, the one left lingering on screen for a long beat before Jaemin minimises the files back into the chip, is a headshot of Donghyuck. Jeno isn’t too familiar with the progression of human ages, but he looks to be pre-pubescent. He doesn’t have his racoon ears, or yellow eyes.

He just looks like an ordinary boy. A scared, ordinary boy.

“They put him through hell,” Jaemin concludes, the six of them silent witnesses on the KARA deck to the years of torture Donghyuck has been running from. “And now, they want him back. The passkey isn’t here.”

“What do you mean?” Mark asks urgently. “Look again, it must be somewhere.”

“The file was recently removed,” Jaemin says, voice level. “By someone we know.”

On the screen, a scan appears of the Golden Man. It’s a short clip that simply shows him accessing the file before leaving the archive. A data tag pops up with it, which shows his last known location, on a planet called Sovereign.

“It’s clearly a trap,” Renjun says, lowly. “He’s luring us into bringing Donghyuck to him.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Mark insists, capturing the coordinates of Sovereign and dragging them to the navipad. “We need that passcode.”

“We can’t barrel into a trap and demand him back. We don’t know what we’re up against. It would be suicide,” Renjun insists. “What we need is a real plan.”

“We don’t have time for a plan, or Donghyuck will die on our watch,” Chenle says. “Let’s go to Sovereign and show them who they’re messing with.”

“Again, how are we going to get anything done if we walk straight into a deathtrap, Chenle?”

“It’s not a trap if we know it’s a trap,” Chenle insists. “It’s a face-off.”

“It’s not a face-off if we simply decide it’s a face-off, you idiots,” Jaemin says cuttingly. “It’s still a trap. And we can’t help Donghyuck if we’re dead.”

“I don’t really care what it is,” Mark says, already setting coordinates. “They’re dickheads who dissect children for a living. We can take ‘em.”

Jeno turns away to walk back to the medbay, leaving the others bickering. They’ve left Donghyuck alone for too long.

Donghyuck doesn’t look any better when Jeno arrives at the medbay. He’s still breathing erratically, skin pale, oxygen mask half-hiding his face. It feels like it’s been days since he’s seen Donghyuck in good condition, when in reality it’s only been a few hours.

He takes the seat next to him, watching him breathe. In, out. Alive, barely.

“Please hold on,” he says quietly, reaching out to take Donghyuck’s hand in his. It’s not a normal Groot way of showing affection, but it is for humans. It is for Donghyuck. All he wants is for him to feel okay. “We miss you.”

“He won’t let anyone take care of him until he’s nearly dead, will he?” Renjun says from the doorway, and Jeno looks up at her without moving. “If that mentality kills him, I’ll hunt down every last person who did this to him. I’ll make them suffer.”

It’s a promise rather than a threat. Jeno releases Donghyuck’s hand to sit back in his seat as the KARA hums, preparing to jump. Renjun pulls down the emergency take off seat beside him, and buckles in.

“He let me pet his ears once, you know.”

Jeno looks over at Renjun, questioning. It’s not that he thought Donghyuck wasn’t close to the rest of the Guardians before now, but he’s learning today that his best friend has many sides to him, when it comes to the other members of their team.

“When was that?”

“When we were escaping Ronan. The time you encased us so we would survive the ship crash, and it tore you to pieces. It took you months to grow back an adult-sized body. I know memories from before your rebirth are patchy to you, but when we realised what was happening, Jeno… Donghyuck was so panicked. None of us knew if you could grow back the way you did. We thought we might lose you forever, to protect the rest of us.

“After the fight was over, Ronan was defeated, and we were catching our breath in the rubble… Donghyuck sat and wept for you. He dropped his guard and cried, and I sat with him and cried too. He… he let me pet his ears, then. It seemed like the natural thing to do to comfort him. I think he knew it meant I cared. I wondered, then, if anyone had touched him kindly before. Maybe that was the first time someone had touched his ears without the intention to hurt or tease or inspect him. I realised then how much he needs us, and how much more growing he has left to do.”

The KARA whines as she readies herself to jump. Jeno sits back and considers Renjun’s story as they warp through solar systems, keeping an eye on Donghyuck all the while.

Jeno’s rebirth has always been a point of stress for Donghyuck; that much has always been clear. He never talks about his actual death, and always seems to recall Jeno’s sapling months as a time of desperately trying to stop Jeno from getting squashed at any given opportunity. It’s true that Jeno’s memory from before his rebirth isn’t what it used to be. Memories come and go, and Donghyuck sometimes sighs when Jeno can’t reminisce about a job with him, or recall a fond memory together.

He remembers the important things; how they’d met, and the first time Donghyuck had understood him. He knows they were close. But he’d never known Donghyuck had cried so openly, and grown closer to the other Guardians, during Jeno’s rebirth process.

The ship comes to the end of the jump, and Mark announces Sovereign is up ahead. Renjun unbuckles herself, and Jeno follows, slow, thoughtful.

“He took good care of me, then,” he says. “Now, we’re going to take care of him, whether he likes it or not.”

Renjun nods at him. “I’m going to talk Mark into some plan we can come up with in the next five minutes to stop us all from getting killed. Then we’re gonna save his life. Suit up—we’re going to need you out there.”

-

DONGHYUCK – THEN – EGO (song 9 - gee)

Being on Ego is hard.

He’s truly happy for Mark, being reunited with his dad and finding out he has a half-sister in the form of Jisung. Yeah, that must be great, especially since Mark has only had the Ravagers since he was a kid. Donghyuck can’t blame him for wanting to spend time here.

And there doesn’t seem to be anyone on this planet aside from them—Mark’s dad owns the whole place, so it’s not like being on Ego is physically hard. It’s luxury, even. Jeno in particular is enjoying rooting down with the local nature.

But it’s tough to watch Mark get what Donghyuck has always wanted for himself and not throw out snippy comments or backhanded compliments. He doesn’t mean to be a jealous dick, but fuck, does his heart ache to have that kind of blood connection he can fall back on sometimes.

He’s had people before, sure, if you count the early days of survival in that hellhole that holds his earliest memories. Not blood, but family all the same. Only none of them are alive today, and  remembering them feels like a stab to the gut. Remembering them reminds him how easy it is to get your loved ones killed for the sake of self-preservation.

So he removes himself from the reunion entirely to stop ruining Mark’s moment. He’ll get over it. He probably just needs to shoot some things to remember what it is he can rely on in life (guns and explosives), who he is (a fucked up little thing belonging to no species, no family, no home, nothing but himself), and how he doesn’t need anyone else to affirm him or what-the-fuck-ever.

He climbs to sit on the roof of Mark’s dad’s fancy home, all covered in greenery and ferns, and looks out over the lush planet below, pink skies, deep green landscape. It’s with the intention of watching Jeno frolic through the woods or whatever he’s doing, but he only gets to spend like, three minutes on the roof before something more eye-catching comes crashing through the atmosphere.

Jaemin’s ship.

She’s been following them ever since she located Renjun on the KARA a few rotations ago. The two of them have some complicated sisterly dynamic from their time living with Thanos, and Renjun has casually confirmed that Jaemin is likely waiting for the prime time to attack, and will appear when she believes Renjun is alone. He can see Renjun exiting the house below, now, headed towards where Jaemin has made a rough landing further afield.

Great. Another fucking family reunion, even if theirs might be of the more interesting, sword-clashing kind. Just what he needed to see.

“Why are you on the roof?” Chenle asks, and Donghyuck turns to see him picking over the roof fauna delicately.

“Why are you on the roof?” Donghyuck shoots back, turning back to the view, Renjun hacking through ferns, headed for Jaemin’s smoking ship. “Can’t a guy get a bit of peace and quiet?”

They’d picked Chenle up a while back, not long after meeting Mark and Renjun, and Chenle had been the one to make them feel like a proper team for the first time. Maybe it was the common enemy, as Chenle had been looking for revenge on Ronan at the time. Maybe it was the simple bulk of numbers. But Chenle brings an energy to the team that keeps things feeling fast-paced and forward-moving, and they need that sometimes, to avoid biting each other’s heads off.

Chenle comes to sit beside him heavily. His physiology is very dense for his size—it makes him strong, but also puts him at risk of going through things like delicate rooftops not made for his weight. Donghyuck tenses for a second, preparing to jump away, but the roof holds.

“I’m not a huge fan of the family reunions myself.”

Donghyuck takes a moment, then sighs. Of course he isn’t. Donghyuck was too busy thinking about himself to consider it, but it’s not like he’s the only one who has lost people.

Unlike Donghyuck, Chenle is very outspoken about the loss of his family, back when Ronan attacked his homeplanet. He will talk about his partner and baby and how much he cared for them to anyone who will listen. Donghyuck prefers to keep what he’s lost locked deep down inside himself.

Maybe it’s because Chenle fought for his family’s lives. It’s not his fault they were killed, and he did everything he could to keep them alive.

Donghyuck can’t say the same.

“I would’ve loved to come here with my wife and daughter,” Chenle says quietly, admiring the view with him.

The only noise from below is the faint grunts and shouts of Renjun and Jaemin fighting, the clash of blade against blade from somewhere further in the trees.

“It’s nice that I was able to come with my new family, instead.”

Donghyuck looks over at him incredulously. “What, you mean us? Jeez, you think this is a family? We can barely keep each other alive. I’ve seen you passed out drunk more often than I’ve seen you eat a decent meal. We’re sat here watching the view while Renjun is about to get speared by her crazy sister.”

“And isn’t that what family is all about?” Chenle says serenely. In the distance, Renjun screams, and there’s the great crash of a tree falling in the forest. Jeno won’t be happy about that.

“If you say so,” Donghyuck says, swinging his legs over the ledge.

Chenle is blatantly looking at him, even if Donghyuck pretends not to see. “You don’t have to be so dismissive. We’re not all so lucky to have our lovers watching our backs every step of the way. The family we’ve found is everything, to some of us.”

The back of Donghyuck’s neck prickles. “I’m not saying it doesn’t mean anything. It’s just… scary, the way you think that about us. And I know, watching Renjun and Mark together is enough to make anyone barf.”

Chenle frowns. “What’s so scary about it? Family is the best thing in the world.”

“Exactly. It’s easy to fuck up and lose the best thing you have, isn’t it?”

Chenle shrugs. “Not if you care for them, and stick with them. And I wasn’t talking about Renjun and Mark, though they are as equally smitten as you and Jeno.”

Donghyuck chitters in surprise. He usually hates when he does that, but he’s more focused on Chenle’s random-as-fuck statement right now. “Me and Jeno? What the hell are you talking about? He’s my partner.”

“Exactly,” Chenle says, deadly serious. “You are lovers.”

“No! Dude! He’s fucking Groot, they’re asexual. Don’t you know anything about basic plant biology?”

“Why should that mean a Groot can’t be a lover?” Chenle says, and Donghyuck blinks a few times.

“Alright, I guess it doesn’t. But Jeno and I aren’t like that. He helps me steal shit and get into high places and shoot people I don’t like.”

“And grows you flowers when you’re grumpy. Brings you food when you forget to eat. Watches out when you get too paranoid to sleep.”

There’s a muffled bang as part of Jaemin’s ship falls off the rest of it. The sounds of the fight have quietened now.

“We’re not like that,” Donghyuck says quietly. He doesn’t have much more of a defence.

He wouldn’t know love if it hit him in the face. He’s spent his whole life curating his interactions with others to avoid the inherent risk of family, the vulnerability of love.

But maybe those things come to catch up with a guy, one way or another. He can’t ever really admit to the other Guardians what they mean to him, but that doesn’t change the fact that they’re his everything. He’s never thanked Jeno for doing any of those things, but it doesn’t mean he’s not always grateful.

He’s never stopped to think about why Jeno might do those things in the first place—it’s a can of worms he’s not ready to open.

“You should be,” Chenle says, ever to the point. “I’ll admit you don’t look well matched, but you already behave like a wedded couple.”

“Speaking of,” he says, eager to change the subject as they see Renjun and Jaemin approaching the house, surprisingly neither with loss of limb. Mark is coming out the front door below, arms crossed anxiously. “I feel like we should go to witness the drama. This might be the most fun thing to happen since we arrived.”

He can feel Chenle’s eyes on him, the knowing smile on his face. “Family drama is the most fun kind.”

“Shut up, man.”

-

JENO – NOW – SOVEREIGN (song 10 - spice up your life)

Sovereign looks a lot like the Golden Man, from outside the atmosphere. It’s very shiny. Very gold.

“Sovereign are an artificial race that believe themselves to be the perfect creation,” Jaemin says as they orbit the planet, preparing to enter the atmosphere. The Golden Man’s location is exact—because of course, it’s a trap—but chances are, they’ll be shot down or boarded as soon as they enter the airspace. Mark is finding them an entry point that may get them in undetected, at least for a little while.

“And who made the Sovereign?” Renjun asks.

“Their queen, Ayesha, was the first Sovereign,” Jaemin says, eyes white as she reads her internal data.

“Want to bet it’s her who wants Donghyuck back?” Mark says, getting a lock on their point of entry.

“I wonder why, when their people believe themselves to be perfect?” Jisung says.

“Maybe Ayesha has changed her mind,” Jeno says. “Donghyuck is smart, and fast, and has survived this long on nothing but his wits. Maybe they want to study him more.”

“Take him apart for pieces,” Chenle supplies.

“Chenle,” Renjun scolds, and Chenle just shrugs.

“What?”

“Doesn’t matter what they want,” Mark says, pulling back the thruster. “Queen Lifesize Oscar Award isn’t getting her hands on him. Hold on, everyone.”

Jeno watches the stars rush by as they enter the atmosphere, and the vast gold city appears in much closer view.

Their plan is barely a plan. The plan consists of Mark, Renjun and Jeno heading to the palace to ‘confront’ Ayesha and demand the passkey from the Golden Man, while Jaemin, Chenle and Jisung sneak into the huge data processing building that runs the whole planet of Sovereign. They’re hoping that the passkey has been uploaded there for safekeeping, and Team Mark are essentially the distraction team to keep all attention away from Team Jaemin. It’s a plan that relies on a lot of guesses and hopes and optimism.

But it’s the best they’ve got, as time ticks away for Donghyuck.

Jeno fixes Donghyuck’s hair over his forehead before he leaves the ship behind Mark, guns packed in between his roots, hidden from sight. He tries to believe they will be back with the passkey, and escape together before the sun sets on Sovereign.

It’s the only thing he can believe.

Team Jaemin leave at the same time, in a different direction. They’ll arrive at their location a little after Team Mark show up with the KARA pod ship, right at the front door of the Sovereign palace.

They’re not shot down before arrival, thankfully, docking at the front gates while a few dozen golden people stare daggers at them for landing in the middle of their pristine, shiny street. This whole planet gives Jeno the heebie-jeebies—where’s the life? Real life, mud and flesh and things that grow?

“The Sovereign Queen is expecting you,” a guard at the gates says, and Mark puts his hands on his hips.

“I should sure hope so, after the trail of breadcrumbs that led us here. What’s the big occasion? Little Timmy’s birthday party?”

The guard pays him no mind, leading them through the gates, down the golden-paved path to the palace doors. Inside, as he might’ve guessed, everything is gold, pristine, empty. Lifeless. Every servant and staff passing them inside shoots them dirty looks, as though they’re anticipating cleaning up every step they tread.

They’re led up a spiral staircase that takes so long to climb it has Mark huffing and puffing. They must ascend ten floors or more. Even Renjun is flagging and trying to hide it. But they all straighten their backs when they come out to the throne room.

The room is lined with soldiers who blend into the walls. Upon entry, the guard leading them announces, “Queen Ayesha of the Sovereign!” and all of them stand to attention at once.

The queen wears an extravagant headdress and richly patterned robe, and sits on a wide and sleek throne that is built into the wall and floor. Beside her, the only other person in the room who doesn’t appear to be a guard is the Golden Man.

Fury burns in Jeno. Emotion doesn’t overcome him often—but this is the person responsible for putting Donghyuck in this position. Other than, presumably, Ayesha.

When it comes to Donghyuck’s life, it doesn’t take much to get him riled up.

“The Guardians of the Galaxy,” Ayesha says slowly, with relish, looking between them. “Have you brought the subject?”

Mark and Renjun both tense up at the same time, Mark clenching his jaw. “If you mean our friend, who has been close to death for half a rotation thanks to your pathetic guard dog here, we haven’t brought him to you. We’ve come for the passkey.”

“Guard dog?” Golden Man says, sounding offended.

“What do you want with Donghyuck?” Renjun asks, brow set, her usually soft voice carrying across the room.

“It came to our attention recently that the subject survived his little escape act all those years ago,” Ayesha says stiffly. “He was one of our best. The closest we came to a genius species—his intellect far surpassed the other subjects. We don’t want to harm him!” She laughs, an empty, demeaning thing. “We want to work with him!”

“And you had to steal the passkey to his damn killswitch for that, huh?” Mark says, voice hard. “We need that passkey now, or he’ll die. Hand it over, and we’ll ask him if he wants to set up a meeting with you, how about that?”

“No,” Ayesha says. At the same time, the crackle of Jisung’s voice comes through their comms.

“Guys,” her soft voice says, high and pitchy. “This place isn’t a data centre. Oh, Gods. They’re all here.”

“The passkey,” Mark says, and his tone is different now.

If Team Jaemin are having trouble getting the code—if the data centre isn’t what they thought it was—the three of them are suddenly Donghyuck’s best bet of making it out here alive.

Ayesha stands from her throne in one swift move. “Bring him to me.”

Mark shrugs, like he can’t help what happens next. “If you’re gonna be like that—Jeno!”

Jeno opens up his trunk, roots revealing the two dozen guns he had stashed in his body. He rolls a grenade across the floor in front of them as he hands two guns to Renjun, two to Mark—it explodes right at Ayesha’s feet as they start shooting, and the golden guards start shooting back.

Renjun takes it on herself to run through the chaos straight for the Golden Man. They should only need to prise the computer plate off the side of his head to get access to his recently downloaded information and then make their escape.

Jeno typically takes no pleasure in shooting and killing. Not in the way Donghyuck does (or seems to, at least). It’s a necessity, sometimes, in their line of work. It’s better than being killed.

But here, now, knowing these are the people who tortured and sliced Donghyuck open to reach their own useless, pitiful ends—knowing these are the people who put technology in him specifically designed to kill him, who lured them here while he lay dying just to get their hands on his body—well. Jeno relishes every shot, shoots to kill, and barely notices when he’s hit. It doesn’t matter. He could do this all day if it would make life safer for Donghyuck.

He puts up a protective layer of roots for Mark when the smoke from the grenade starts to clear. Renjun has the Golden Man on the floor as he screams, prising the computer from his head with her blade.

“Stop that!” Ayesha shouts, though her prim dress stops her from running to them. Instead she shuffles awkwardly along her golden walkway. “Stop!”

But Renjun has the computer plate in hand. She stands to aim and shoots. It doesn’t kill Ayesha, but it downs her long enough for Renjun to run back to the team.

“Let’s get out of here!”

Many of the guards are out of action now, because Mark is no bad shot and Jeno means business, but there are more running up the very tall staircase.

Jeno points to the window. “I can take us out this way.”

“Okay,” Mark says, beginning to shoot out one of the large, floor-to-ceiling windows.

“Oh no, I hate this way,” Renjun says, clutching the computer.

“It’s the quickest,” Jeno says apologetically.

“And much better than facing that!” Mark says, pointing at where the first of the reinforcements are coming up the top of the staircase and aiming their weapons.

“Let’s go!” Renjun agrees, and the three of them run for the shot-out window.

As they’re right on the edge, Renjun and Mark jump out of the window, just ahead of Jeno. He finds pride in the knowledge they trust him so much, to jump from such a height with no backup plan.

He grabs each of them around the middle as he jumps too, and from his back roots expand to form a wide wingspan.

He can’t fly, exactly, but he can soar right over the golden rooftops on the wind, taking the quick route back to the KARA. Back to Donghyuck.

-

DONGHYUCK – THEN – CONTRAXIA (song 11 - houdini)

After they royally explode Ego, stop Mark’s dad from remaking the galaxy in his image, and rescue Jisung from a life of servitude, the seven of them stop by Contraxia for some grub. All this saving the galaxy business is hungry work.

They follow Mark into his Ravager clan’s regular bar haunt. Once Donghyuck has his drink, he spots Jeno in the back yard. He’s the only one out there, dancing to the music playing over the speakers.

Donghyuck sighs with a small smile, and flags to Renjun that he’s going to sit outside. It’s not so bad, having the space all to himself out here, kicking his feet up on the opposite chair as he watches Jeno’s goofy moves, flailing his arms and bopping from side to side as he enjoys some Terra-sounding music.

He only seems to spot Donghyuck once the song is over. A smile breaks over his face as he lumbers over to sit with Donghyuck.

“You’re in a good mood,” he comments, though he’s grinning too. “Happy to be alive after that shitshow?”

Jeno nods, looking down at the thin roots that make up his fingers. “More than that. Mark understood me for the first time today, as we were leaving Ego.”

Donghyuck sits up a little straighter. Though they’ve been travelling with Mark and Renjun for nearly a full cycle, Chenle only a little less than that, they’ve never understood Jeno before now. Donghyuck himself had taken several months to pick it up, but it’s been so long since then that he kind of forgot he could ever not understand Jeno.

Jeno’s clearly over the moon about it, so it won’t help anything to be a jealous prick about it (even if that had been justified when it came to Ego). But he’s become accustomed to being Jeno’s interpreter, being the only one who truly understands him. What does it mean that Mark is picking up that trait now, too? Will the rest of them follow?

Will Jeno not need him anymore?

“He apologised to me. He thanked me for saving his life. And when I told him that’s what family is for, he teared up. I don’t think he’s even realised he understood me yet.”

“A lot was going on,” Donghyuck says mildly. Here goes Jeno with the same family shit Chenle was on about. Is this some unspoken thing only Donghyuck didn’t pick up on? “How does that work, anyway? Why is it people can only understand you after going to hell and back with you?”

Jeno’s smile softens, and he tilts his head in surprise. “I never told you?”

“No! I thought I just got smart to your language, but if Mark can pick it up, anyone can.”

Jeno laughs, looking bashful again. “Groot don’t have spoken language like most species. When I left my homeplanet, I had only learned one spoken phrase.”

“I can take one good guess what that is.”

Jeno nods. “With other Groot, we communicate through roots. We use the soil and our connected bodies to understand each other’s feelings and intentions and thoughts. Our language is built on shared experiences and bonds and a sense of home. It’s why the universal translator doesn’t work on us—each Groot communication is unique, because each of us and our experiences are unique. So when you speak to me, I understand your feeling and intention more than the words themselves. When I speak to you, you have to listen with our bond in order to understand it. You have to truly want to know what I’m saying to you, and care for me, and listen to my soul the same way I listen to yours.”

Donghyuck grips his drink, staring at Jeno. “That’s intense.”

Jeno smiles. “Other cultures call it love.”

Donghyuck inhales a sharp breath. He’s not emotionally equipped for this. “The time we first met, escaping the Nova Core prison… I told you I don’t do friends. But you were smiling at me like a weirdo. What did you hear then, through your roots?”

“I understood that you needed someone, even if you wouldn’t admit it,” Jeno answers quietly. “I understood that you could use someone like me around, if I were inclined to stay. I heard your longing for companionship before you said a thing, Donghyuck, but I also heard how much that feeling hurt you, and how much you resented it.”

“Christ, you’ve really been looking into my soul this entire time,” he says, feeling furiously embarrassed. Fucking hell, maybe Chenle was right, and they are kind of married. “You could’ve told me, man.”

“You didn’t understand me, then,” Jeno says with a sweet smile. “But you do now.”

Other cultures call it love. Fuck.

Donghyuck is only going to put them all in danger if he cares this fucking much.

Jeno is still smiling, mood still high. Donghyuck downs his glass, looking for something to say. Does Jeno know how he feels already, through his soul-listening bullshit? Should he say something?

It’s easier to pretend, to push away any more intimacy. He can’t stand the thought of holding someone so close only to inevitably lose them.

“I’m going for another drink,” he says, and stands from his seat with haste.

Jeno doesn’t follow him inside, and Donghyuck doesn’t look back.

-

JENO – NOW – THE KARA (song 12 - beat again)

Renjun runs straight into the KARA when they come to land, computer plate clutched to her chest, and begins wiring it into the medbay system. Jaemin had pre-programmed it to search for the passkey and begin running it immediately, for the sake of efficiency. It’s a great relief to see the code start to run as the three of them surround Donghyuck.

“We’re back on the KARA; we’ve got the passkey,” Mark says into their comms, not taking his eyes off Donghyuck’s ragged breaths. “Come back–we can go.”

Jaemin’s voice crackles through their earpieces. “We can’t.”

“Why?” Renjun asks sharply. “We attacked their queen. There will be forces after us in no time. We have to leave.”

“There are more of them,” Jisung says, voice shaking. “So many more like Donghyuck. We can’t leave them here.”

“Donghyuck,” Jeno interrupts, watching the screen processing the passcode. Something is wrong—it’s not moving fast enough.

A second later, Donghyuck flatlines.

“What?” Mark says, releasing his comm.

“Donghyuck,” Jeno says again, and surges forward to unplug the wires hooking him up to the medbay. “Don’t go.”

“Jeno, don’t,” Renjun says sharply, but he knocks her hand away. It isn’t working—he’s slipping away. He needs them.

“Start compressions,” he says to Mark, who moves into action without question, two hands over Donghyuck’s chest, pressing hard enough to crack a rib. “Renjun, give him oxygen.”

“You just took his oxygen mask off!” Renjun says, frantic. “What are we doing?!”

“We’re saving him,” Jeno says, extending his roots out. Jeno is still comprised of pieces of his old body from the fight on Knowhere. He hasn’t had enough time to properly form a new body since, but he’d gladly give any pieces of himself to Donghyuck over and over. “He needs to know we’re here—he’s never trusted medical equipment, don’t you see? But he trusts us.”

This is a Groot belief, he knows. That soul trumps tech, that their hands are more likely to bring Donghyuck back than the medical bay equipment designed to do exactly that.

But who could that be more true for, if not Donghyuck? The boy made by invasive hands, but guided by loving ones?

He extends his roots out, curling around Donghyuck’s legs, his back, his arms, his chest, coming up to caress his head. He calls out through his native language, connecting with every part of Donghyuck he can reach, singing to his soul.

We’re here. We love you. Let us catch you.

DONGHYUCK – NOW – DEATH’S CLUTCHES (song 13 - nobody)

Donghyuck is back in the cage on Sovereign, packed in with a dozen other kids that look like him. Not exactly like him—everyone got a different combination of ears, tail, eyes plucked out of their skull and replaced with foreign ones. But at their core, they’re just like him.

He’s holding one of the other boys close, talking about escaping, about flying out of this place together. It’s more babbling, really. He can’t even remember his name—Donghyuck never forgets anything, but he does lock away details that threaten to tear him apart.

Then he’s on the operation table, about to be cut open to pieces, another part of his body replaced with tech, another scan to figure out why Donghyuck is so beyond his peers in knowledge and skill.

He completes his tests because they’re the only way to be fed. He answers their questions because the only time he gets out of that cage that’s full of shit and death and sick friends is when he’s being asked to solve equations and build machines and shoot a bullet into the centre of the target.

“This is the breakthrough we’ve been waiting for,” Ayesha’s voice says, stroking his hair as he sits and has his cybernetics examined. “He’s the one.”

“He’s ready,” the man behind him says, as if Donghyuck isn’t even there. “We can incinerate the rest and extract his brain for testing.”

Donghyuck is fear, running through his veins. He’s the claws on his hands, slitting the man’s throat.

He’s an escape on pure adrenaline, running as far as possible, knowing he was leaving so many like him behind to be incinerated.

He’s… he’s seeing a white light. An endless sky.

He is…

Held back.

The sensation of roots ground him. The feel of Jeno—Jeno. Where is he?

Why won’t he let him go?

It’s not your time.

What if I’m tired of running?

Then stop. Stay with us.

I can never escape what I am.

No. But you are more than what they made you. You are one of us, and we love you.

He looks to the sky. He feels love in his veins—in his roots—in Jeno. In all of them.

A guy can’t even die in peace around here?

No. You’re not meant to die here. We’re going to help you finish this.

Damn. Alright.

He could live with that.

He comes to with a gasp.

Mark’s face is above his, mouth round, as is Renjun’s, who cries out with relief when she sees his eyes.

Then there’s Jeno. His roots retracting, but still lightly holding onto Donghyuck, bringing him back to life, pulling him up against Jeno’s chest.

Holy fuck.

He coughs and wheezes, and tries to focus his vision on the interior of the KARA, on Mark and Renjun’s faces looking amazed and relieved, traces of terror fading.

“How long have I been dead?”

Mark chokes, and Jeno pulls him in closer, though not too tightly.

“Too long,” he says, and Donghyuck feels comforted by the soft bark, by the second and third pair of arms wrapping around him from either side. He’s alive, and in their hold.

“How the hell did you just come back?” Mark asks, words high and stunned.

“I felt you,” he says, then coughs as Mark blinks a few times. “Not like that! God, I felt Jeno’s weird root thing.”

He turns in Jeno’s arms to meet his soft, endless brown eyes, a beaming smile that speaks to understanding, to love, to patience.

“I love you too, buddy.”

Donghyuck turns further and reaches up to cup Jeno’s cheek, conveying how thankful he is as best he can. When the hell did he earn a family like this one?

Then his other hand comes to rest on Jeno’s shoulder, and a chunk of his trunk falls off.

“Jesus!”

“That’s not you,” Jeno explains quickly. “I haven’t regrown properly since Knowhere.”

“Are you strung together with dead limbs right now? Christ, Jeno, you’re gonna get root rot like that!”

“I had no time! That fight was only half a rotation ago!”

“Damn, really?”

“We’ve been running around trying to keep you alive!”

“How the hell did you do that?” he says, turning back to look out the KARA doors.

Everything beyond it is golden.

Oh, hell.

“Oh my fuck—”

“Don’t freak out. We’re about to leave,” Mark says. “We’ve just got one small problem.”

Jaemin’s voice comes over the ships comms. “Mark? Come in—we need help. We’re rounding them up, but we haven’t got anything to get them out with.”

“What are they doing?” Donghyuck asks, and there’s a stunned silence over the radio for a second.

“D—Donghyuck?”

“Yeah, he’s okay,” Renjun responds, striding over to the display to pick up Team Jaemin’s location. “Jaemin, we can fly over to you.”

“Donghyuck—” Jisung’s wavering voice comes over comms. “I’m so glad you’re alive.”

“Yeah, me too,” Donghyuck says softly.

“The KARA won’t be enough,” Jaemin says after composing herself. “We need a big ship—we need to get all of these kids off this planet.”

Mark and Renjun look at each other before looking at Donghyuck.

Donghyuck knows what they’re feeling, because he can feel it through Jeno’s roots, still loosely wrapped around him. Torn between their duty as Guardians, to get those in captivity off this planet, and their duty as Donghyuck’s family, to get him to safety and away from this hellscape that made him.

He can appreciate the sentiment, really. But he already ran from this place once before, leaving death in his wake. He’s a better person, now, and he has his team to rely on. To run now, knowing what he knows about this place, would be the coward’s choice.

“I lost a lot here,” he says, and all eyes in the room snap to him. “I thought I’d only come back over my dead body. I guess I came close, huh? But I’ve got to stop running. We’re Guardians of the damn Galaxy. Let’s get those kids out of there.”

“You and Jeno can go,” Mark offers softly. “We’ll handle the Sovereign.”

“Nah,” Donghyuck says, slipping off the medbay cot and groaning as he stretches, Jeno’s roots retracting as he comes to stand beside him, hand supportively on his shoulder.

His smile is proud.

“Let’s burn this place down instead.”

-

JENO – NOW – SOVEREIGN (song 14 - sugar free)

The data processing centre is not a data processing centre. It turns out it’s actually a huge prison, a gigantic cage built into the middle of the city.

Their plan is simple—they’re going to land in the field of military ships just twenty clicks to the south of their landing spot, and Donghyuck and Mark will each hijack and fly an extra ship to the prison, to get all the children out and on board. Knowhere can take them in, or the Guardians can fly them to anywhere they’d like once they’re off Sovereign.

But to do so, Donghyuck has to leave the safety and comfort of the KARA to stagger between the golden ships, still with a fresh blast wound to his side, barely back from the brink of death. Though he’s putting on a brave face, Jeno can see the shake to his hands, the frantic look to his eyes as he steps off the deck. This place is his personal hell, and Jeno thinks he might be the bravest person he’s ever known for facing it again.

“Can I come with you?” he asks as Donghyuck starts to hobble over the smooth, spotless ground of the airfield.

“Sure,” Donghyuck says, without looking back. Jeno follows after him—Renjun is set to pilot the KARA over to the prison, but Jeno’s skills have never lent themselves to spaceflight, so he’s stuck as a passenger regardless. Being with Donghyuck is about as much use as he can be.

“We always need you, Jeno,” Donghyuck says as he takes up the hatch of the Sovereign ship they’re stealing.

Jeno stands still for a moment as he takes that in. Jeno hadn’t said a thing out loud—which means Donghyuck had picked up those feelings the Groot way.

There’s been a shift. What changed? Donghyuck’s honesty? Him finally accepting their love for him? Maybe simply being dragged back to life by the roots did it.

Doesn’t matter. Jeno is grinning to himself widely as he climbs into the ship, Donghyuck powering it up. The airfield guards have noticed, of course, and are scrambling to get into their own ships to shoot them down. But Jeno can only focus on Donghyuck’s acceptance of Jeno’s feelings, and on his own feelings, and what it all means.

“Stop smiling, you idiot, and get in the gunner’s seat! We’re going to have to fend them off while Renjun and Mark get folks on board.”

Jeno climbs into the gunner’s seat as Donghyuck takes off, speaking to Mark over comms about protecting them from above. Donghyuck has always been special, but he’s exceeded even Jeno’s expectations with this—he’s never heard of a non-Groot who could listen so deeply and surpass the need for verbal cues, understand another soul the true Groot way.

Donghyuck swerves the ship sharply, hovering over the roof of the prison as the other airfield ships start to take off. “Sappy stuff later, my guy! For now, shoot down those damn ships, pronto!”

Jeno laughs, and presses down on the trigger, firing away at the oncoming enemy. Donghyuck dodges and swerves the ship as he does, keeping them out of the line of fire for a good few minutes.

“You’re not going to last long up there,” Mark says through comms. “Renjun, as soon as the KARA is full, you need to swap places with them. Donghyuck’s ship has more space, and the KARA has more reinforcements against gunfire.”

“You bet she does. And who’s that thanks to?” Donghyuck says.

“Alright, don’t get cocky because you died just now,” Renjun says, and there’s a choking noise from Jisung over their connection. “Jaemin, come on board to help me fire, the KARA is nearly at capacity. Jisung, Chenle, stay and help Donghyuck and Jeno. Mark, you should get out of there as soon as your ship is full; we can’t take any chances.”

“They’re sending in reinforcements from the palace,” Jeno says, spotting some golden figures marching down below the ship. At the head is none other than Queen Ayesha.

“We’ve got guns, and these guys aren’t half as good as they think they are,” Chenle says. “Renjun, you can take off now.”

They keep covering the prison until the KARA is in the air behind them, and then take a hasty landing in the prison courtyard. There are hundreds of children and young adults in ragged clothes, more than can fit into Mark’s ship, watching as they descend.

“Jesus,” Donghyuck breathes when the doors open and they start to pile in.

Jeno feels the deep wells of Donghyuck’s complicated emotions, seeing these children who look like him. Many are in surgical gowns, some have two sets of ears or surgery lines in their shaved heads. Some don’t seem to be able to speak, some are limping on artificial legs. All look underfed, underloved.

Right now, there is no time to dwell on the pain of it all if they want to get everyone out alive.

Donghyuck knows it, too. “Are there more we need to get out?”

“One last room!” Chenle says, pointing them to the courtyard door. He’s occupied lifting toddlers from the hands of teenagers, so when Donghyuck charges in the direction Chenle pointed, Jeno runs right after him.

They run down a corridor with several busted-open doors leading into rooms that are empty and smelly and vacant, and Jeno feels every shaking breath Donghyuck takes in his soul, and stays only a step behind him the whole way.

The last remaining room is more like a huge cage. The kids inside it all shout at once when they nearly run past the door in the dark. Donghyuck skids back, produces his trusty self-made lockpick, and lets it work its magic on the cage door.

“You know, this isn’t the typical experience of going back to your childhood home,” Donghyuck says, as they watch the cage crack open, and swing open the door. Jeno comes out into the corridor to direct the stream of children towards the ship. “Most people visit their homeplanets for some home-cooked cuisine. To celebrate something with family. Typical that we’re here to do this.”

“This place isn’t your home,” Jeno says. “It never was. Your home is with us.”

Donghyuck looks up at him, and the two of them meet eyes over the rush of heads passing them by, the small humans running flat out along the concrete floor.

“How sentimental,” Ayesha’s voice says, and without looking back, Jeno expands his roots to form a barrier in front of the children.

The guards with her begin to fire, and Donghyuck shouts as parts of Jeno begin to come apart and explode under blaster fire. The old limbs don’t stand up well, and he’s exhausted from all the growing he’s done over the course of today.

“Stop, stop!”

Jeno looks up, frozen as he sees Donghyuck run out behind him. Jeno stays in place, because the last of the kids are still running out, and he can’t let any of them be caught in the fire—but his roots reach out for Donghyuck’s stupid ass, placing himself in the line of fire.

He’s always been clever, though. He knows the Sovereign must want him back—why else go to all the trouble to lead them here? The blaster fire stops as soon as Donghyuck throws himself forward, arms out in front of Jeno, while Jeno’s bark protects the young lives they’ve come to save.

Family, Guardians, all of it comes together as one. It’s what they are—this is what they do.

“It’s me you want,” Donghyuck says, as Jeno stands, ushering the last of the kids down the corridor. “Isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Ayesha says, and Jeno turns to see her eyes gleaming. “You’ve come back to us. Our perfect subject. We made you to fill the missing gaps in our DNA, to manufacture and achieve excellence in every aspect—”

Jeno opens up his chest, presenting Donghyuck with his latest invention.

It’s one big ass gun.

“Yeah, yeah,” Donghyuck says, taking aim and charging up. The guards raise their guns defensively, but look to their Queen rather than firing. “Whatever.”

He shoots, and the whole corridor is filled with a blast of fire.

“Let’s go!” Donghyuck shouts, taking Jeno’s arm and dragging him down the corridor, leaving Ayesha’s screams behind them. “Stupid shiny people!”

Jeno laughs, coming out to the courtyard and picking up the last wayward children as they run on board the ship. Mark, Chenle and Jisung have been waiting for them, but quickly go to take-off when they see Jeno and Donghyuck running on board.

The now partially-on-fire prison is probably motivating them, too.

“Hold on, kiddos!” Donghyuck shouts as he begins to take the ship off the ground.

“I thought you’d want to stay and make sure she was gone,” Jeno says, and Donghyuck shrugs.

“The kids are more important than that. And you—all of you. I can’t lose anything else to that place.”

The ship whines as it prepares to leave the atmosphere. Jeno studies Donghyuck’s face as he looks up to the stars, and launches them toward safety.

-

DONGHYUCK – NOW – KNOWHERE (song 15 - dog days are over)

Getting the kids off the ships and into new homes doesn’t hurt as much as he’d expected. It doesn’t feel like ripping his heart out and sticking it in a blender, the way thinking of Sovereign sometimes feels.

Seeing them away from those cages makes the difference. So many are young, and so, so many take long looks at him as they leave. When he gets back to his place later, and looks in the mirror, he will try to see what they see.

Do they see a betrayer? Someone who had left Sovereign and never looked back, never tried to stop what was happening? Perhaps a survivor, someone able to escape as they’d all dreamed and actually live a life of his own.

Or maybe they simply see someone older, stronger, and freer than them. Maybe they see what they’d like to become.

The sense he gets of Jeno’s gut-wrenching pain while helping every one of them out of the ship is harder, actually. Through their bond it’s clear Jeno feels for each one of them, but more than that, he sees Donghyuck in every one of them. He’s over the moon, though, that they could save them and give them new homes. He’s relieved that Donghyuck is back with them, and distraught at what he had to go through, and excited for what comes next.

How Jeno can feel all that at once, it’s hard to say. Donghyuck can sense it, and understand the complexity of it, as much as it baffles him.

Small steps. To start with, they need to celebrate being alive.

Jaemin runs to him when she spots him, pulling him into a bone-crushing hug. He pats her on the back with understanding. He would do the same for her as she has for him, today.

Then Jisung comes up to him, in tears, and Donghyuck embraces her gently, stroking her back. It’s not her fault, none of it, and she can only help so many of these kids ease their pain today.

Then finally, Chenle encompasses him wordlessly.

His family stand around him, each celebrating the fact that he’s alive.

If only younger Donghyuck—the one who looks like these kids, scared and alone and beat down—could see him now.

Yeah. The kids will be okay.

-

A few days later, they hold a party upon receiving the news that the Nova Core are investigating the Sovereign for crimes against sentient life in this quadrant of the Galaxy.

It feels like the first time he can breathe properly—in his whole life, maybe.

Jeno has grown a new body by now, which he’s successfully stretching out on the dancefloor—AKA, Knowhere’s central courtyard—surrounded by a crowd of the children who have decided to stay on Knowhere. Donghyuck has somehow found himself parenting half these damn kids as they work through the slow job of finding them all communities and families to stay with. Knowhere is made up of outcasts, so it’s not so hard here, but so many of them trust Donghyuck in a way they don’t seem to trust anyone else.

He gets that. And he’ll do whatever they need, to keep them free and happy. But man, this was not in his retirement plan.

Jeno does what he can to share the burden, though. Even dancing, they look up to him, laugh and squeal at the sight of his awkward, silly moves, and are encouraged to dance too. Some of them have never danced before in their lives. Many have never seen a real tree or flower, so they’re delighted and enamoured by Jeno and the magic he can do.

Donghyuck is grateful for that. They can rely on each other in this, just as they have in so many other things.

There’s just one big thing left for Donghyuck to do, after the mess of the whole week they’ve had.

The song switches to something upbeat, sounding suspiciously like had Mark slipped it on the playlist, and the lights strung across the Knowhere courtyard make everything glow. Jeno glances at him with a smile before he even starts to move, because he knows what Donghyuck is coming to do, can feel the moment Donghyuck decides to do it.

Donghyuck dances his way through the crowd of kids, as more and more residents of Knowhere come to join them. Mark and Renjun dance together not far away. Jisung leads the crowd of young girls that have insect wings or antennae or pincers. They’ve taken a keen liking to her.

Chenle and Jaemin are the worst dancers among them, their kind not coming by it naturally. But it makes Donghyuck smile the most, seeing them trying for the sake of the kids. Making an effort to be with their team, their family.

“So,” Donghyuck says as he sidles up to Jeno, speaking up over the music. “I don’t know if I said thank you.”

“You don’t have to,” Jeno smiles, continuing to sway and dance freely. Like a tree in the breeze, ha. “I know.”

“I know you know. You seem to know every damn thing about me, weirdo. But you know, humans have a way to show these things too, it’s not all about telling or feeling. I don’t know if your kind do this, but it felt pretty intimate in your roots back there, so I’d say we’re way overdue this stage of our relationship now—”

Jeno, ever smiling, leans in to kiss him.

It’s rough, of course, against his skin. It’s brief, and safe, because yeah, it’s not hard to guess that Jeno’s kind don’t really do this.

But hell, it makes him feel alive. He laughs, and Jeno grasps his hands, spinning him into the rest of the dance.