[Peter rubs his hands across his face, and paces a couple of steps, clearly still upset, clearly torn. He paces over to John, hands behind his head, working off some of the steam.

Peter, you can hit him if you can look him in the eye and still blame him for being controlled.

He's in pain. If hurting me will take some of that away, I'd like to let him. He can also let people know he's done what he needed to, balanced the scales a little bit. Probably fewer people will want to hurt me after that.

No one ever really cared if he was in pain, besides his friends, besides the Guardians. Peter's gone a long time without friends, really. The Ravagers weren't really 'friend' types and Yondu, as much as he realized what Yondu's done for him and been to him, was pretty much made of tough love and refused to coddle him.

Maybe that's why he himself cared how bad Quark had it. Reminded him of himself when he was a kid.

Peter looks at his fist, remembering the whopper of a black eye he'd gotten from being bullied he day his mom died.

He was being a bully too, wasn't he?

John didn't seem like he wanted any part of it at all. The lack of affect...maybe he was extremely traumatized too. Peter knew he himself would be a wreck either way, but it wasn't uncommon, seeing people shut down after bad things. If he hurt John, and John truly hated himself for this...

...but that meant accepting it was possible for anyone here to succumb to something this awful.]

Damn it.

[Peter opened his fists and offered a hand to John, instead.]