Chapter Text
He sleeps, huddled on the icy ground. He does not remember what it is to be warm. The cold drives into his skin and bones, leaving shards of white-hot pain that he almost wishes would stay. He at least feels alive when he hurts.
Erik Selvig wasn’t one to swear. It showed a lack of imagination. But as he stood in the dark matter lab, staring at the glowing blue cube before him, he found himself thinking of some very imaginative curses. Another day, another failure. He was beginning to wonder if he should admit to someone that he had no idea what he was doing, or even looking for. This Tesseract eluded him. He had the information from Hydra and all of SHIELD’s records, and they did him no good. Turning to Fury, he shook his head.
“Nothing.” Selvig nodded to Langley. “I’ve had enough for today. Shut it down.”
He curls in on himself. He thinks his arm is broken. Again. It feels strange when he tries to move it, as do his legs. He absently wonders if he’s dying. He wonders if it matters.
Selvig turned his back on the machine. Enough failure for one day. Behind him, the apparatus suddenly flared to life. He whirled on Langley, uncommonly short-tempered.
“I said shut it off.”
The tech held up his hands. “I was.”
Slowly, ever so slowly, Selvig turned around.
A beam of blue light shot from the Tesseract through the darkness of the lab, smashing into the gate at the other end of the giant room. Selvig watched in awe as the blue energy swirled and writhed, finally spiraling open at the center to reveal a vast emptiness. In that second, Erik Selvig saw perfection.
A wormhole.
“Are you getting this?”
Frantic beeps sounded from behind him as Langley worked feverishly. “We are now.”
A tug, unfamiliar. Irritating. He shifts painfully in his sleep.
The wormhole bloomed for a second, obscuring everything within and behind it. Selvig saw it collapsing on itself, and he found himself reaching out to stop it. But as the singularity closed, it brought with it a violent explosion that blew him off his feet. Actinic light flowed in waves up the walls, spiraling toward the ceiling where it vanished.
He rubbed his shoulder where he had been thrown back against a display as he pulled himself upright. Fury was already calling for a medical team. Selvig’s eyes narrowed in the smoke.
Something had come through.
A change. Cold metal against his face. The smell of it fills his nose. Another hallucination. Dimly, he hears footsteps thudding towards him. Staccato clicks surround him as he lies in a pool of darkness and his own frozen blood. Voices. Hands, intrusive and prodding. He begins to drift away, but they will not let him. They grasp and pull and lift and abruptly he is moving. He shuts his eyes against a sudden light, glaring but intermittent. One voice draws him from the depths. Loud. Insistent. “Sir. Sir, can you hear me? Do you understand me?” It repeats and repeats.
“I hear you,” he finally says. It aches to speak.
“Sir, can you tell me your name?”
He doesn’t know why it matters, but he will do anything to silence the voice. It echoes through his head, leaving piercing pain in its wake. His words come slowly.
“I am Loki.”