…

“Hey, uh… can you leave us alone for a sec?”

“I am Groot,” he replied, and headed for the gardens.



Rocket stepped closer to the otter, who was now busy at what looked like a database computer, her tail neatly inserted through a hole in the back of the swivel chair.

“C’mon, Lylla. Just talk to me.”

Lylla stopped typing. From behind, Rocket could see her head droop and her shoulders slump. She was quiet for a moment.

“You left, Rocket. You left and didn’t even tell anyone. No message, no warning. You just up and disappeared one day. If it weren’t for the fact that you’d taken the Rakk ’n’ Ruin, we might have thought you were kidnapped or dead. Even then, you could have died later and we’d never have known it.

“…We were supposed to explore the galaxy together. Just you and me. Well, Blackjack and Uncle Wal too, but you know what I mean. There wasn’t anything keeping us here after the Toy Wars. You always said, ‘we’re gonna chase after that last measly speck of dust in the sky, just to see where we wind up. Even if we never make it, we can still have a hell of a time on the way.’

“But no,” she continued, her tone shifting towards the cynical. “You couldn’t be held down, even if it was me doing the holding. You always had to be the wild, rebellious one.”

She became quiet again. “Ironic. That’s why I fell for you in the first place. You weren’t like the rest of us, content with our lot in life. You never accepted just being some nutjob’s security blanket, just being a pet. You always questioned why you were here. ‘Why here? Why me?’ You made me believe that we could be something else, what we wanted to be, not just what we were made for.

“But when you left without us, it was like you didn’t really mean what you said. If you didn’t mean for all of us to go, could we believe anything you told us? So we just went back to the daily grind, pleasing crazies who didn’t really appreciate us. We lost our ambition. We lost hope.”

Lylla swung her chair around. Rocket jumped. Her face was fierce, hurt. “And now you just suddenly come strutting back and expect everything to be the same as before?”

“I-” Rocket started, but Lylla cut him off.

“Why did you come back?”

Rocket couldn’t think of anything to say.

…