Sitting opposite Kitty Pryde and taking notes, the Collector suggests she tell him about her childhood. Nice try but that was not the deal, she reminds him. She tells him why she and Peter Quill broke up and he will let them go unharmed. That’s the deal. She’s not going to enable his emotional voyeurism more than she has to. Though she found it strangely enjoyable reading the report card where she leaned Betsy failed classical literature.
It all started when Spartax made the dumb-ass move to elect Peter their king…
Kitty’s narration:
Kitty watches as Peter is beset with advisors who tell him how to hold the speech to the planet. She tries to get his attention and announces she’s off. He remembers about her birthday, right? Peter and the advisors still argue about whether he can use jokes in his speech. When he turns around, Kitty is gone.
The next day, Peter phones Kitty and asks her to help with the speech. She suggests he come down to the ship where all his friends are. If not, she will see him the next day.
Swamped with work, Peter of course forgets Kitty’s birthday dinner the next day, much to her chagrin. The next day, while Peter is in a conference, Kitty throws him back his stuff. She is dressed as Star-Lord and tells him she had to save the Kymellian transport from sailing into the black hole instead of him. The advisors chuckle, as they see her wearing Peter’s costume. Guards grab her and she announces she is his fiancée. She was just giving him a hard time. Peter replies he doesn’t know who she is. Throw her out to the garbage, he orders.
The next day, he is supposed to hold his speech before the planetary crowd. When he looks at his notes, he instead finds a note by Kitty, informing him she took his speech out to the garbage with her. Helplessly, he starts with a weak joke while Kitty enjoys her petty revenge.
She left the planet with the Guardians before he could get back at her… before they could say goodbye. She’s always got to have the last word. Everyone always asks her why they broke up. Did he cheat? Did she lie? They had disappointments which are their own special kind of betrayal. Death of a thousand cuts. At first, it was like she didn’t know him anymore. Then she asked herself did she ever know him. They were under so much pressure and they just acted worse and worse to each other until she didn’t even like herself. She guesses it sounds stupid now that she is saying it out loud.
The present:
So tragic, the Collector sighs and asks her to excuse him briefly. He sheds a tear and gathers it. One of the saddest tears in his collection. He thanks her. When he turns around, he finds Kitty is gone.
A moment later, she hits him over the head with a huge artifact. He’s welcome! His Celestial toothpick! he sighs. He shouts after her that she can run all she likes. He knows exactly where she is going.
He enters his prison to find Star-Lord is still in his cage, right where he left him. The Collector demands to know where Kitty is. He thought she was with him, Peter retorts.
The Collector wonders where she could have gone. Not his menagerie, he fears, which is of course exactly where she went. A moment later, a stampede of very angry prisoners attacks.
Kitty, in the meantime, gets a giant gorilla to shatter Star-Lord’s cage. A little warning next time, he protests. She tells him he’s welcome.
In the meantime, aboard Star-Lord’s ship, one of the Skrull actors is discussing modernist alien theater with the ship’s AI Lydia, until Star-Lord hit him with a baseball bat, shouting Masterpiece Theater is canceled. Lydia is pissed off and protest, despite Kitty’s plea that they are in danger, Lydia finally relents when Peter promises to take her to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and sits with her through a staging of the Bald Soprano. Mollified, Lydia lets the ship take off, leaving a broken-hearted Skrull behind.
Struggling with his released captives, the Collector vows he has still one zinger left and presses a red button. Aboard the ship, all are electrified. After they recover, Peter and Kitty find that Lydia is toast, and they cannot reboot her out in space and the manual override doesn’t work either. They are lost in space. Peter announces. Kitty refuses to accept that. This is nothing a little determination and elbow grease can’t fix!
Seven hours later, she agrees that they can’t do this. They’ve got around seven hours until the air runs out, unless they get sucked into a sun first. So, they got some time to kill. She guesses it’s stupid to ask for a deck of cards, since he doesn’t even have a back-up system…
If this it, can they at least cut out the snide remarks? Peter asks. Can’t they go out as… friends? A friend doesn’t do what he did to her back there, Kitty spits. Fine, fine fine, he admits. She is right about it all, he was a real jerk to her, not just on starbase Kermit but back on Spartax. He was just – he’s never been a big deal like ever! And then suddenly he was king. He couldn’t handle it. He could barely remember his own name. He screwed up. Not just the king thing. He screwed up their thing. He’s sorry.
Kitty is surprised he is apologizing. Peter continues that he hates that they broke up. He hates himself. He misses them. He misses her.
Reluctantly, Kitty also apologizes and admits he was right. Part of becoming Star-Lord was to make him look bad. When her parents divorced, when the X-Men died and also every day at school, everyone looks at her to be calm dependable Kitty. It’s like her thing. But she couldn’t remain calm about him. It hurt too much. So, she hurt him back.
He tells her it’s okay and apologizes about screwing up their engagement. It’s not that he doesn’t want to marry her. She’s the only person he would like to marry. But doesn’t she think they got engaged too soon? Were they ready for the next level? Kitty doesn’t know. She always moves too fast. That’s also her thing. Why does she always do these dumb things? It’s his fault, Peter replies. When he was a kid… never mind. He doesn’t want to lose her. Kitty doesn’t want to lose him either. That’s why she said yes. To her, he’s always been a big deal. Really? he asks. She’d the biggest deal that ever happened to him.
What they had was good, Kitty insists. Really good. Maybe if they hadn’t started out long distance. Light years apart, he continues. Maybe if they hadn’t rushed into the engagement, she continues. Maybe if they also weren’t trapped in a helpless ship hurtling toward their doom, he points out. If they had another shot, they could do it all over, she suggests. They are almost close enough to kiss as they wonder if they could.
That moment, a noise breaks them apart as another ship turns up next to them, courtesy of Rocket and Groot. While the two argue who won the game, Peter points out they just got a second chance. Not so fast, she tells him. But they can definitely say all’s well that ends well. Cue for an emergency transmission from space.
A furious Tony Stark berates them for letting a cheap Skrull imitation of him fool them and then let him go…
