Chapter Text
The Tesseract, as the mortals had named her some long while ago, churned wildly.
It is not that she was afraid or angry. She did not feel such emotions, or at least, not in ways mortals would understand. Curiosity, of course, perhaps even pain, even loyalty, but she did not feel in ways comprehensible to lesser beings, and almost all beings were lesser to her.
She wasn’t really a “she”, either, more of a presence, a frequency, an “it”, but the connotations of “she”, connotations attached to ships and storms and atomic bombs, she liked those better. Besides, calling her “she” is much easier on the narrator’s poor brain, so I hope you forgive me, dear reader, for taking the initiative.
The Tesseract could feel her sisters twisting in response, reaching out to see what had bothered her so, feeling it for themselves. She welcomed them with light touches and welcoming pulses, the six repelled like the strongest of matching magnets yet drawn together like moths to a flame all the same. It was a curse, to want to be combined with her sisters yet at the same time be unable, but it was a curse they beared without complaint.
They felt curiosity, they felt fondness, even pain, even loyalty, but they did not feel fear, nor happiness, sadness, anger. They wanted release, they wanted contentment, they wanted to ease the horrible confinement. They were confined to their physical forms, to their prisons, and they hated it, but this is something energy doesn’t have to be sentient to feel. Just as water wants to flow and fire wants to burn, energy wants to expand, and the infinity stones are no different.
Their other feelings-that loyalty, that curiosity-were there from the mortal hosts they had taken, leftovers from different energies melding with theirs. Most mortals who had dared use them hadn’t left much of a trace, but the first; the ones they had been created for, the ones who had shaped them, cursed them, the last who had truly wielded them...well, they were made to be loyal, not to their creator, but to His children. They were made to be curious, not by their creator, but by their masters, who had thought that giving energy it’s own little conscious would be a fantastic idea.
They had been wrong.
The stones had been tossed by their masters into the Great Nothing long before stars and planets and universes existed. Their trails, wisps of life and death and everything in-between, had dissipated and been drawn together and dissolved and combined and had eventually, now accompanied in the void by dust and rubble and leftovers from the First Earth, created their own little bubble universes, their own life. And then came mirrors of earth and splinters of time and things were set in motion, cosmic beings clawing their way through the Netherspace leaving wormholes and passageways behind. Everything started to leak together, throbbing like hearts in and out, in and out, sometimes closer, sometimes farther, some floating, others anchored. In the mess they, the stones, had found the trails their sisters had left behind and flocked to the only one already trapped, held hostage by mortals attempting a shoddy imitation of mastery.
They had not forgotten the few beings that could match their power, that could wield them true, but they settled for this. This was the closest they could get to regaining their true purpose. All they wanted to do was be wielded, to find a master to be loyal to. Oh, they were cruel as all non-humans are, and oh, they were bitter with the loss they had suffered, revenge-driven in the most alien of ways, but they were not unkind. They were not unkind simply because, having no understanding of nor ability to understand kindness, they could not deliberately pursue its opposite. They just existed, energy with a little extra sentience, energy that could tear the multiverse to shreds.
But now...She felt it. The Tesseract, the closest one to the place It had landed, saw It, felt It, and churned in despair. They had been so poisoned, all wrapped up in themselves, poisoned by mortals and by their prisons. She felt ashamed, an emotion she shouldn’t be able to feel, yet feel it she did. Still, though, she felt hope, happiness, all those things that humans experience, because It has come back for her. It had found her. It would wield her, she was sure, would take care of her, purify her from these borrowed emotions.
Why else would It come here? Here, a universe empty of Its kin, empty of anything substantial but them. And though It, too, had been weakened, drained and darkened and hurt, It was more powerful than any of her fraud masters. She could help It, she realized with more of that unwanted glee, and then It would help her. She longed for It’s touch, for his touch, to use the pronoun he had adopted in his current vessel. She wasn’t alone. Her sisters helped her, fed her, and she ignored the pain to reach, reach, reach-
Contact. Beautiful, pure, reaching for him as he reached for her, and she fed him, healed him, and in return he promised her freedom.
Freedom to be wielded, she hoped, and exhausted, she collapsed back into herself, anticipating the day she would once again be with one of the only beings who could claim to be her Master.