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They talk late into the night. It feels right, to be retelling his life among the stars as they brighten up the darkness of the terran night.
Somewhere among those lights there was his other family, the Peter he knew he was coming back to someday. But not before he bridged the distance between him and what was left of his family on Earth. Not before he let himself be someone of Earth. A phrase he used many times over the years but one that long since stopped being true.
He was a stranger in a strange land here, constantly confronted by how little there was left from the times he remembered – all those memories that had the sound of his mother’s favourite songs running through them…
”In a way I knew. That you were up there somewhere,” his grandfather surprises Peter by saying. Indicating the starlit sky. ”I would have dreams, over the years. I’m a reasonable man, I don’t have time for nonsense. But when I closed my eyes some nights I would see these… machines. Starships. Coming down right at our door. And in the dream... I know. Even before you step out… I know what they’re bringing me back from the stars.”
Peter can’t help but stare. A few words, but they introduce a dose of the Twilight Zone to this already plenty strange moment.
”All these years?” he asks, feeling his heartbeat growing a little unsteady.
”So many dreams,” replies his grandfather, eyes lost in memories.
”You know... Many cultures in the galaxy where they believe dreams are glimpses through the eyes of a different you in some other world.”
He doesn’t know why he says it. Why he shares that thought with the old man who might not need an idea that strange adding to his worldview. But to his surprise his grandfather smiles at that. Liking the idea of it. Of dreams being windows to life as it could be – as it was, somewhere, in the boundless infinity beyond this single universe.
“I think I can believe that,” says the old man, his voice carrying a quiver of some emotion. Hesitating for a long moment before adding... “It’s not always you, you know.”
“What?”
“In the dreams. It’s not always you that the ships are bringing back. Sometimes... in some other world...” he says, glancing at Peter, “it’s your mother that steps off the ship. Looking just like she did before she grew so weak. All in red – like you said the space pirates wear.”
“Mom...?” he says, struggling to imagine that. Meredith Quill – an intergalactic outlaw, wearing the red of the Udonta clan. Was there such a world, in the endless expanse beyond the world as he knew it? In some universe, somewhere...
The thought of some other Peter, travelling the galaxy with his mother, should fill him with envy. But the possibility of it, of that one small, fragile world where she got to live her own adventure among the stars instead of never getting to leave Earth was simply too beautiful to resent.
“Does she look happy? In your dreams...?” he asks. Only to find his answer in the misty look in his grandfather’s old eyes.
Somewhere, in some world too far beyond his reach, some version of her was. Happy. Alive. Singing along with songs of a small blue planet she left behind to see the wonders that lay beyond...
If there was a better dream, Peter couldn’t name it.