Drift (Loki x Reader)

VI. The Annihilation Wave

Yes, I understand that the Annihilation Wave is from the comics but for the purposes of this story it will vary to some degree.

"Physicists define matter in two different ways. There is the matter that you and I are made of, the matter that we learned and drilled into our brains. There's a central core that is positively charged, a vast space in between this centre until there is a region of negatively charged space called electrons. 

There is a principle that for every familiar atom created, there is an antithesis created. Similar to the matter we know, but with a negatively charged centre and a positive outreach. Creatively, this is called anti-matter. It's one of the biggest problems in physics, because for every regular atom, there should be one atom of anti-matter. Together, the two united and died in a spectacular explosion. Therefore the universe today, you and I, clinging so desperately to life under the fleeting light of our sun, should be a fairy tale, though admittedly, there should be none alive to hear the tale.

The question is about where this anti-matter went. For the sake of our tale, I shall provide you the answer that the physicists on Midgard are still grunting over in their primitive garb. There is a lone pocket that exists like a cancerous tumour on the flesh of our universe. No one has ever been there, at least none like you and I, made of our positively charged matter. For that world in of itself is comprised of nothing but cold, lifeless anti-matter.

Now the physicists will tell you that anti-matter would make objects such as familiar as the objects made of our regular matter. But anti-matter is cold, meant to harbour no life, no words, none to exist to know its nature. The beings from this universe are twisted, demented creatures whose minds collapse into madness from the weight of their nature. Their blood boils at the thought of being alive, their very universe wishes them dead. They have known nothing but cold and darkness and they envy us for our lives.

We don't have a proper name for it. Some call it the 'Negative Zone' but it cannot quite capture the essence of its nature. It's a dimension of horror, twisted nightmare whose shadows come alive at night to eat the children born into suffering. This realm in of itself has a consciousness, a unified mind that drives to seek out all living things that it does not welcome. Sometimes for fun it would allow in pockets of positive matter, throwing it at the bare backs of the inhabitants born into the Negative Zone, giving them a slow, tortuous death, screaming into the night, knowing that the shadows watched, doing nothing but grin.

But he had been the strongest, the champion born out of this bloodshed. He had survived for eons inside of this world, beating back the shadows that whipped his flesh, carved their hatred into his soul. He didn't even think he had a soul for he was not of the regular universe but of this hell. Did people born in hell have souls?

He stood at a barrier of light, watching the fabric of space-time ripple as his fingers danced along the edges, the barrier between his conquered universe and the next. He could feel his hatred rise inside him, hearing the voices of the trillions that lived inside this universe that he did not. The way they laughed, the way that they bathed in the lights of stars and watched galaxies dance into the night, the way that the universe welcomed them.

He wanted them to feel the pain of his world, to know how cold the universe could be, was supposed to be. There was so much space between the centre of an atom and the outskirts of charge, there was so much empty space between a sun and its planets. In fact, the majority of the planets in this positive universe did not host life, they were too cold and barren to lay the seeds of evolution.

He wanted them all barren. He wanted their blood or whatever liquid ran inside them to spill across the soil, to rip off the crust of each planet and watch it crumble to ash. He allowed the tips of his fingers to enter the positive universe and felt the pain inside of him as his body, the body made of the unwelcome matter, disintegrate as it met its positively charged antithesis.

Matter and antimatter at never-ending war.

Maybe his universe had created him for this reason, made him the champion so that he could become in flesh the living incarnation of a battle as old as the dawn of the universe, the feud between matter and anti-matter. 

He looked down at the suit he had made, a suit with no colour that could be described in the universe you and I are familiar with. The suit itself rippled in anticipation, a consciousness of its own. It felt his desire... No, it was a living incarnation of his desire. His thoughts became reality, whatever he wanted, he could have. 

He had wanted to end this universe, to make it suffer. So his universe, or perhaps just him for he had conquered his own universe, made it so. 

He fastened the gloves onto his hands, watching his own blood drip from his mutilated fingers. The fabrics clung to his flesh as if they were his own skin, the very scars and veins within him visible. Midgardians would have claimed he looked like a demon from their fairytales of the night. Upon reflection, he had come from the night, a place of darkness, a place where all hope was devoured and cast into nothing.

Annihilation, his very purpose. The reason why he had been molded in a forge with no fire, no fire but a dark hatred for anything that was not alive, made of a matter that was a cancer to the inevitable fate of the universe. Everything was meant to die, everything meant to rot away into a cold nothingness from which the universe had originally been birthed from. There was a reason why the universe had created this very cancer of a world made of antimatter, the reason why it didn't expel it like a foreign disease. For it needed him, it needed his will, to ensure that order was restored, to restore balance between the fight of matter and antimatter, a physics problem personified.

Without hesitation, he plunged his hand once more through the veil, feeling for the first time a universe he had never ventured, the universe he would soon call his own. His hand did not dissipate, his very existence in this world an anomaly, anti-matter thriving in a world made of matter, hatred in a place of warmth.

He recoiled his hand, analysing the glove in admiration for the protection it had granted him. How could one not argue this was divine well, that this was not the universe using him as a weapon to restore things to the order for which it craved? This was the ultimate test, the ultimate proof, in fact, that life, living things, were merely a flaw in an otherwise perfect system. Life was not meant to exist, not in a world or universe that was so unforgiving.

"I am unforgiving," he muttered, using his voice for the first time in centuries. The last time he had used it was when he had screamed during the long death, when his cold universe had carved the skin off his back and replaced it with stone. 

"I am the weapon, the instrument of destruction."

Annihilation.

He never had a name for there had been no one alive in his universe to grant him one.

The survivors of the first day, the day he used the bomb that devoured entire systems of planets, the day that would be known as Annihilation Day, would call him Annihilus. 

And then he cast himself through the portal, towards the light, towards his destiny. The empty ships behind him followed, the darkness cutting through the light, the cancer drifting ever so quietly toward the heart.