Brittle Steel And Empathy

Summary: Mantis' life with Ego had been pathetic and meaningless in every way. Nebula knew this. So did Mantis. So how was it that she could still be so infuriatingly nice to everyone?!

Or: Nebula doesn't do feelings. She'd rather stab someone. Preferably each and every miserable creature who dared to make Mantis feel anything but extraordinary.

There were many, many things Nebula hated about her current predicament. Being forced to stay on the same spaceship as the Guardians was by far the worst one. It felt like they were made to push her over the edge of her fragile sanity, and Nebula found herself questioning the decisions that had brought her here almost daily.

Then there was Mantis. The newest member of the team (useless, banding together as a team of misfits, so called family, Nebula wanted to gag), picked up from Ego's planet in the same way that Nebula had been picked out of her solitary quest for revenge. Perhaps she wasn't as insufferable as everyone else on the ship – especially including her pest of a sister and Quill – but some moments with her came close.

Nebula didn't understand how she could act so unbearably nice all the time. She had grown up being exploited for her skills and treated like a slave. She had no reason to believe that people were anything other than selfish, cruel beings who let her stick around for her abilities and would throw her away as soon as she was no longer useful to them.

Nebula's arm ached, the metal a cold and heavy reminder of one of her many failures.

Of the things she hated the most of being on the ship, the inside jokes had to be at the very top of her list. She hated the references. She hated that she couldn't tell if she was being insulted, mocked or looked down on. The first time Quill had called her 'smurfette', she had come close to shooting his brains out. (She still didn't know what it meant.)

She found that she hated it even more when Mantis was the target, for the simple reason that in contrast to Nebula, she didn't have the spine or basic sense of self-worth to stand up for herself.

It started as the usual pointless banter, this time concerning Quill's lack of tact.

"It's not like we can't go back," Quill said at the pointedly frosty glances the other Guardians kept sending him. "We just gotta wait a bit so they can forget about us. A few weeks. Maybe a couple of months."

"You mean forget about you," Gamora gave back. "And I think it will take more than just a few months."

"How was I supposed to know those stick-thingies were sacred to them?"

Rocket didn't look up from the controls. "Their rapidly changing face color the longer you were talking would have been a clue, if you'd bothered to use your eyes instead of your mouth."

They were so incredibly annoying. Nebula clenched her teeth, scowling as she sat stiffly in the back of the cockpit.

"I can't read minds, okay?" Quill said.

Rocket threw a glance at him. "You wouldn't have needed to read their mind, if your emotional range was even slightly bigger than Nebula's."

Nebula growled in warning. "Careful."

"We can't all have empathy mojo like Miss Spock over there," Quill said with a shrug towards Mantis.

Nebula's patience snapped with the noise of her blade being drawn. "Don't call her that!"

"Woah!" Quill threw up his hands in surrender.

"Put that down!" Gamora snapped, throwing her a murderous glance.

"What's going on back there?" Rocket said. "Do I have to land this thing so you can talk it out, or can we go fifteen minutes without murdering each other in here?"

"It is alright," Mantis said, her voice soft and kind and her typical, slightly shaky smile on her face. It was disgusting. "I do not mind being called a… Spock." She said the word carefully, copying what Quill had said. Of course she didn't mind. When did she ever?

"Chill, Nebula! It doesn't mean anything bad."

"We wouldn't know," Nebula hissed. "Keep your Terran nicknames to yourself." With that she stormed off, needing to blow off steam. She could feel Mantis' eyes on her back.

Before the door slid shut, she heard Quill ask, "What's with her?"

Another cause of frustration was Mantis' annoyingly cheerful enthusiasm. Whenever they visited a new planet or space station, be it for a prolonged vacation or simply to refuel, she was the first to go outside and get excited over stupid, pointless things. She wanted to try and explore everything. Food and candy, games, customs, planets, her curiosity never wavering.

Even worse: Sometimes she tried to share her excitement.

"Try this!" she said, beaming as she showed Nebula an odd looking, purple fruit. "The merchant assured me it was the most flavorful delicacy of the entire planet!"

Nebula was sure that they'd said that. Could Mantis not see that she was being taken advantage of? What was the point? Nevertheless, she took the fruit.

"It's fine," she said, just to appease Mantis.

It was delicious.

Mantis' naivety did not end there. Nebula found her talking to some lowlife on a new planet they had docked on, coerced into the conversation with some sob story. Nebula could already see them attempting to empty her pockets.

Her lips twisted into a snarl and Nebula drew one of her blasters, shooting the ground in front of them. (They kept telling her not to go around killing people for "no good reason", whatever they meant by that. Annoying goody two shoes Guardians and their moral superiority.)

"You. Scram. Or the next blast will melt the skin off of your skull."

Nebula did not need her reputation as a daughter of Thanos to instill fear into the hearts of her enemies.

And then, of course, there was Mantis' empathy. Nebula was aware that on some level, she could not help it. It was a part of her, just as her technology was to Nebula. However, it did not explain why Mantis let the Guardians use her for her abilities. It didn't explain why she willingly listened to their whining, let them drag her down with their own negative emotions.

"You're not changing anything," Nebula said when she couldn't manage to stay silent any longer. She'd found Mantis after a conversation with Drax, wiping away tears out of her wide, dark eyes. "What's the point in being miserable with them?"

Mantis avoided her gaze, as she did so often. She fidgeted were she stood, nervously tugging at her sleeve. "Perhaps I cannot take away all of their pain. But sharing can help, too. Besides," she raised her eyes, giving Nebula a shy smile, "they also share their happiness with me."

Nebula didn't know what happiness felt like. The closest she could get was her determination. Determination to rip apart the one who had made her life a living hell, living from one mutilation of her body to the next. Happiness? What good was a useless sentiment like that?

Mantis must have read her expression, because she tilted her head in that caring, pitiful way of hers.

Nebula growled, looking away. She was weak, letting someone see her vulnerable like this. Pathetic. Nebula was pathetic.

She looked up when a hand reached into her field of vision, and narrowed her eyes. Mantis couldn't possibly mean…

"Would you like to try?"

The sneer fell onto her face naturally. "You don't know what you're asking for."

"I think I do." Mantis smiled, earnest and kind and how could she care so much, Nebula was nothing to her, nothing–

Nebula's hand shot forward before she could second guess herself.

Her antennas lit up as Mantis breathed out through clenched teeth, her hand tightening painfully around Nebula's. Her expression crumbled, then smoothed out with a gasp, a few tears escaping her.

Nebula nearly tore away her hand then and there.

And then she did it again. Mantis smiled. She smiled through the pain Nebula had caused her, smiled at her. "Thank you for trusting me."

"I don't have any happiness to share," Nebula said, and snapped her mouth shut immediately. She didn't know where that had come from.

Mantis paused, her hand warm in Nebula's. "I did not, either. Not until the Guardians freed me of Ego." If there was something they had been good for, there was at least that much. "You are free, too. We both are."

Mantis was practically beaming now. How did she manage it, while still feeling what Nebula felt?

"We can make new memories," she continued. "Happy ones. Together."

Nebula had to look away. She didn't know how to deal with this. Earnesty. Sappiness. Empathy.

Her first instinct was to storm away and punch something. Preferably Quill. But something stirred in the void of Nebula's chest, in between machinery and cold, lifeless metal. The kind of yearning and desire for something she had never experienced before. Happiness.

She wanted to believe Mantis. She wanted it to be more than just a word.

Together.

Her face burned with an emotion Nebula couldn't place. If nothing else, Mantis' presence was preferable to the rest of the lowlives sharing their ship.

She squashed the urge to flee like an annoying bug and stayed, their hands linked together and sharing their pain.

A/N: Beta'd by the wonderful To Mockingbird, PyrothTenka and Igornerd!

Please let me know what you think!

~Gwen