This is hopefully the first of several stories that came to me while I was obsessing over Thor: The Dark World for a year and a day. Enjoy!

In my dreams I see them. My wife kneels beside our doorstep, tending the pale flowers that she loves. My daughter runs to me; I swing her into the air while she chatters, telling me about the new puppies and asking when she will get her grown-up braids. I see my brother and his sons: twins, and almost grown. He is so proud of them. He envies my posting, he says, but he will follow soon enough when the second wave is prepared. I laugh, promise to leave a few enemies for him, and tell him to be careful of the knife I gave him. Then their faces fade, and I awake into my nightmare.

I can barely remember how I got here. At my worst, I sit in the corner, shaking, wondering if there was ever a time before the pain and the scalding light. There is no room to stretch my legs, no dark shelter to hide my eyes, and little warmth. When my mind goes blank, it can take a long time for it to clear. But when it does I remember that there was a time before. There was a ship, and a mission, and a king who would lead us to victory. I was a soldier then, and I led soldiers. And there was a time before that, too, a time of families and children and home. But those memories are unbearable anywhere but a dream.

The walls of this place are made of glass, and the ceiling is always lit. When I first awoke here I thought I was being interrogated, but no one asked me any questions. People come to stare, though: incessantly, as though I am some sort of artifact. I turn away, and they walk to the other side of the cage and keep staring. In time I realized that I am not a prisoner. I am an exhibit.

There are other cages here besides mine. When the room is darkened I can see them, going back as far as I can see, some with plants, some with animals, some with people. I only recognize a few, and I am the only älfenää [1]; I learned that the first time I tried to escape. Oh, yes, I tried. I am no coward; I was a soldier, and the memory of my brethren burned too strong for me to accept this as my fate. I never stood much of a chance, of course, half blind and my leg stiff from poorly-healed wounds. But the last time I ran I made it all the way through the door to the street beyond, and when they caught me I fought them. It took eight men and a shock net to drag me back in.

The master of the place was not happy when they brought me back to him. He had little enough to say to me, and what he did say was in that tone of detached disappointment that never means anything good. I was defiant through it all; I had no idea what was in store for me.

To punish me, I was returned to my cage and a measure of poison was added to my food daily. I think it was iron, and while it was not enough to kill me, it tore at my insides and seared the hair from my scalp in less than a week. My warrior braids, which I'd worked so hard to earn and taken such pride in, were swept out of my cage like so much garbage while I lay there, too weak to move. That was not the worst, though. The attendant who had been in charge of me was placed in a cage beside mine, bound with shock cuffs, and left to suffer in my sight.

After that I knew it was hopeless to try to escape; so I tried to die instead. I stopped drinking, stopped taking the food they brought, embraced the pain in my limbs and waited for my heart to stop. But they would not allow it. I awoke to find myself bound, with a tube in my nose dripping food and poison into my stomach, and I despaired.

For all that cruelty I might have slipped into the living death of madness; but even the master of the collection could not smother every spark of kindness. A new attendant was assigned to me, a pink girl like the last one, and so like her she might have been her sister. I heard them call her Carina; she was young and curious, and her eyes said she had had a hard life. In shear desperation I reached out to her with my mind, and when she did not instantly shake me away I clung on like a drowning man. I told her who I was: Djoom[2], a soldier of Harudheen[3], entrusted with the leadership of Squad 3, assigned to the Flagship Ark. I told her about my comrades: Shinlai the medic, Ladravith who could through a knife twice as far as anyone, Kethiss who got drunk and told elaborate puns, and all the rest. I told her about the Convergence, how we'd become trapped on Vanaheim and fought to the last when the Vanir came upon us, and I wept for my friends. I spoke of the Aether, and to my shock she said it was here, in the Collection.

As time passed I came to see something like a friend in Carina. We might be on opposite sides of the glass, but she is no less a prisoner than me. She lives in terror of her master, who seems to regard tormenting her as a form of entertainment. At some point she had come to believe that her only way in life was to submit to the warped intentions of the Collector, or someone worse; I tell her that it is not so. I tell her that freedom and dignity are the due share of every rational creature, and that to gain them it is worth a fight to the death. She can stand up to him, I say, if she has the courage. She trembles at this thought and I do not pursue it; but the seed has been planted.

It is strange, but there is some comfort in the presence of a fellow prisoner. She knows who I am, that I am a person, and when her master is not looking she speaks to me and keeps me company. When I try to refuse the poisoned food, she begs me not to: "It will only hurt a little, and my master will be so angry if you starve again!" For her sake I eat; I can bear the pain, if it keeps her from the last attendant's fate. Fear is warring with her new-found strength, and I feel it will not be long before the Collector finds in her more than he bargained for.

I have lost the count of time; I cannot say how long I have been here. But when they arrive I know something is different. There are five of them; four are creatures whose kind I do not know; but the fifth looks so like the hated Asgardians that I am on my feet before I see that he is not. He is carrying something; I can feel it, and when he presents it to the Collector, he is delighted. It is a relic, not unlike the Aether itself, and the raw power washing off as it is revealed makes me want to back away. There is nowhere to go, and I hold my ground.

Carina is opposite me. While the Collector gloats over his latest prize, she is drawing slowly closer to it, thinking, considering. I can feel her growing determination. She's going to do it – she's going to stand up to him! My heart is racing; drawing up as much strength as I can, I reach out to her. Do it! Do it and be free! She lifts her hand to the glowing relic, glaring at her master, and suddenly I sense in her what I should have seen before – the poison that, in my own misery, I failed to notice.

"I will no longer be your slave!"

No – that's not what I meant –

I can only watch as her hand closes over the relic. Then the room is ripped apart.

[1] The Dark Elvish word for a Dark Elf.

[2] Pronounced "Jome".

[3] The home planet of the Dark Elves, destroyed at the beginning of Thor 2.