[ Nebula isn't good at this. At any of this. She's not good at patience, kindness, or gentleness. How could she be when every inch of her was trained to be as deadly and sharp as the knife that can take a life? Quietly, resolutely, in a mantra that has become more important in the years she tells herself: You can be a knife or you can be a guardian. ]

[ And for Rocket - with him especially - she wants to be the latter. ]

[ She only half knows who he's talking about from some message in that headache inducing form of communication. Or the heavy way she thinks the others walk in this treehouse and the vague feeling of being a replacement - always a replacement. It's funny that way. She listens and she thinks before exhaling: ]

Then you do something for him, in the way we couldn't have for Gamora.

[ Because he separates them: those who were Snapped and those who were lost. Because at least for them, Gamora had really been gone - dead, at the bottom of Vormir for the sin of trying to be a good sister. Nebula's fault. For once, she does not let herself dwell on it. ]

You do something and you remember, because he's someone you can do that with.