Title: A Villain State of Mind
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Angst, semi-graphic reference to past torture.
Timeframe: Set post-Avengers.
No wonder Charles hadn't been able to read Loki's mind. He'd assumed his mind would be like a human's, or a mutant's, searching for the conscious sense of self contained tightly within the other's skull. Loki's consciousness was like a mind turned inside out, thoughts and feelings and sensations scattered all on the outside while his self-awareness was buried within, lost deep in memories years past.
Charles had been hearing Loki's thoughts ever since he'd walked into this cell, but he hadn't recognized them for what they were. Now he was plunged into Loki's nightmare, as deep and real as though he had been transported across the leagues of space and time.
Darkness. Darkness of Nidavellir, the deep fastness of the dwarfs. Red. Red glow of the forge, Brokk's forge, bright sparks flying as the bellows blow. Heat. Heat of the fire, of glowing metal as it grudgingly reshapes under Eitri's hammer to form wonders.
Pain. Pain of his hands, crushed in the clamp Eitri normally uses to hold a piece of metal while he works it, now used to hold him, keep him from running or fighting or doing anything to save himself.
Fear. Panic at his own helplessness, knowing there is no rescue, there is no recourse, that this time he has gone too far. He tried to sabotage the great hammer that Brokk is shaping, knowing it was meant for his brother, knowing it is the finest gift that Nidavellir has ever given to Asgard. Thor already has so much, overflowing with gifts and toys; why, why should he get this too, such a magnificent weapon, while Loki gets nothing? But his stealth failed him, his wits deserted him; he is captured. Held, at the doubtful mercy of the dwarven smiths. The dwarfs are not a forgiving people at the best of times, but this trick, this sabotage, this vandalism is an outrage they will never forgive -
Words bubble up in his mouth like blood; threats of Asgard's retaliation, bribery, trickery, guile, hot spiteful insults, pleas for mercy. Words do not please the dwarfs, and when they cannot silence him with threats or blows, they turn to a more practical solution.
A hot coal is picked up from the bed by a pair of metal tongs; hard hands on his face, pushing him down, bending him painfully back over the anvil. Strong fingers pry his jaw open, holding his head fast despite his frantic efforts to jerk away. A cruel voice growls, "Your silver tongue is in need of tempering, Liesmith."
Red and hot and painpainPAIN as the coal is shoved in his mouth, burning his lips and cheeks and tongue and he screams, screams until his throat breaks and bleeds but it can't escape his mouth past that pain. He needs to spit it out, to be rid of it, and his heels beat a frantic tempo against the base of the anvil as the struggles helplessly, mindlessly, in the iron grasp of his captors. He can't even turn his head.
Silver needle flashes in the red glow of the forge and one holds him still, pins his head in place and his jaw closed as the other goes to work, thick black thread to sew his mouth shut. Sealed shut. Gagged and bound and silenced and no one will hear him, no one will ever hear him. Words and screams and blood and fire all bubble in his throat but they can't get out, he can't get out, he can never ever get out, no one comes and he is trapped can't speak can't scream can't can't can't -
Charles wrenched himself free of the nightmare with a tremendous effort, a pained gasp escaping his lips as he broke contact with Loki and fell shaking back to his place across the table.
"Xavier? What's happening?" Fury demanded in his ears, and the guards all look shaken and worried, as though they feel they ought to be shooting something but aren't sure where to aim. "Are you all right, Professor? What'd he try to do to you? Report!"
Charles found his voice, and spoke without taking his eyes away from the transfixed, glassy-eyed prisoner across from him. "Take off the gag."
"Are you out of your mind?" Fury said sharply in his ear. "I've already told you why we can't -"
"Take it off him," Charles repeated more forcefully, and followed it up with a mental push on the guards that caused them to spring into movement, forgetting for several crucial seconds that the order ought properly to have come from Fury. One of the agents wheeled sharply towards the door, entering the codes to spring it, and hurried out into the corridor beyond; it seemed that the key, or whatever it is, was not in this same cell.
"Now hold on!" Fury protested. "Agent Johnson, stand down! I haven't authorized - Professor, you can't just order my men around like this!"
"I told you, Director, that I would not be a party to torture." Charles didn't even try to disguise the edge in his voice. He did not normally have a violent temper, preferring to seek peaceful solutions to conflicts; but when his protective instincts were roused, they did so with an implacable vengeance.
"We're not trying to torture him," Fury snapped in return, his voice deeply aggravated. "Everything we've done is in the interests of keeping him contained with a minimum of force."
"Torture might not have been your intention, Director, but it was certainly your result," Charles replied, glancing over at the door as it opened. "Your device triggered some sort of flashback, and he's stuck in it. I can try to bring him out of it, but it's obviously not going to do much good while the gag is still on him."
"Hold it!" Fury's voice barked over the intercom, not just Charles' earpiece. "Nobody move! Professor, need I remind you that we have those restraints there for a reason? I'm not trying to cause needless suffering here, but we can't leave him free to use his mumbo-jumbo and escape."
"I will endeavor to keep him contained in the meantime," Charles assured him. "I can block those parts of his mind that give him access to magic."
"You can do that?" Fury demanded suspiciously. "Since when?"
"Director Fury." Despite the tense situation, Charles couldn't keep an edge of amusement out of his tone. "Need I remind you what I do with the rest of my time? With a school full of mutants in various stages of violent adolescence and post-traumatic stress running around, a regular part of my job is ensuring that those powers which pose a danger to others are kept dormant until such time as their owners have self-possession enough to control them. I have quite a lot of practice at it. Trust me."
There came a dark silence over the intercom, and Charles sighed. "Director, this waswhat you brought me in for," he said. "You were running out of alternatives. Fortunately, I can provide some. Now let's move on with this."
"You'd better know what you're doing," Fury muttered, and then the intercom flicked off. The Agents guarding the cell jumped nervously a moment later, though, so presumably Fury only redirected his frustration onto them instead. One of the guards left; two more came in, some sort of unfamiliar rifle-style weapons unholstered in their hands (though not, thankfully for Charles' peace of mind, aimed at anything other than the floor.)
"Oh," Charles added just before the door closed again, "please bring us some water."
Despite his bold words towards Fury, Charles was not by any means certain of his ability to control Loki's magic. It was different with mutants - since their powers all sprang from a common gene, they tended to show up in the same place in every mutant's mind, accounting for individual differences. In a more general way, Charles could stop people from being able to do any given thing, given advance warning.
The problem was, Loki's mind wasn't like a human's. Even as shattered as his thoughts were right now, Charles could tell that the architecture and the symbols used to frame thoughts were different from any mind he'd ever encountered. And he was not experienced with magic. He wouldn't know what use of magic looked like from the inside of Loki's head until he went for it - and then he'd just have to hope he was quick enough on the draw to block him.
Of course, first he had to get Loki's consciousness back in his head, not blown out from here to nidavellir. Charles turned his concentration back on the afflicted demigod, bending his mental powers back on him.
He had no intention of plunging himself into Loki's visions again; once had been enough, and the nightmare - fueled by Loki's panic and pain - was strong enough to drag him under and bury him completely. But that first contact had not been in vain; it had left behind a channel, a line as it were, that stretched between them. He worked on pulling Loki back along that channel, drawing him out of the lost places of his mind like he would draw a fish on a hook from a deep sea. Or use a life-line to draw a drowning man from the water.
"Loki," he said, reinforcing his mental line of connection with a verbal one. "Open your eyes. Look at me. You are safe. You are not in the fastness, the dwarves are not here. This is Midgard." He pulled the words from Loki's head, careless of how they fell from his lips as though they were part of his everyday vocabulary. "These visions are not real. Let them fall from you. You are on Midgard, among the humans, and you are safe." For a given value of 'safe,' anyway.
Something thumped down on the table at his elbow, and Charles broke off momentarily to look up and smile at the agent who'd delivered the eight-ounce bottle of water to him. "Oh," he said, "much more water than that, please." She looked flustered, but smiled briefly back at him before turning to hurry back out.
At last, Fury himself strode into the cell, a small bright magnetic code-key held in one hand. He gave Loki a dark look, and Charles a much more doubtful one. "I hope you know what you're doing, Professor," he muttered, before he reached over and with rough hands disengaged the lock of the gag and pulled it free, tossing it to the side. Loki gasped, wrenching himself sideways away from Fury's impatient hands; the moment he was released, he doubled over sideways and spat blood onto the floor.
Charles observed the gag dispassionately as it hit the table. It had not - he agreed with Fury on this - been intended as an instrument of torture. It was made to fit over the jaw and lower face, extending inside the mouth to still the tongue. There were no hooks or spikes or sharp edges, nothing cruel. But neither had it been intended for long-term use - its edges were hard and unyielding, and over the twenty days of wear it had rubbed lip and cheek and gum to bleeding ruin. The bright piece of metal was stained with splashes of bright blood and lines of darker, older blood all along the inside.
Loki's mouth was in terrible shape, his lips parched and withered, his tongue when it lapped out tentatively to test its freedom left a well of bright red in its place. He looked no less lost, disoriented than before, but a little sanity began to return to his eyes.
"Loki," Charles said sharply, giving a little tug on their mental connection to pull Loki's attention to him. He met those green eyes steadily, feeling awareness slowly dawn behind them, feeling the tattered scraps of Loki's consciousness beginning to return to their rightful place. He helped as best as he could, pushing and pulling and guiding, but he dared not push too hard in such an unfamiliar pattern, lest he cause more harm than he helped. The grounding voice was just as important. "You are on Midgard," he repeated quietly. "You are not there any more. You are among mortals, and you will not be harmed."
"Will not be..." Loki's voice was little more than a croak, after three weeks of disuse. He blinked, his head jerking up and back as he seemed to fall into himself all at once, and looked around to take in the details of his cell. Whatever he saw there apparently did not please him, for he erupted into a towering rage.
"Release me!" he shouted at the top of his voice, ringing painfully in the claustrophobic confines of the cell. "How dare you seek to bind a god, you brazen cockroaches, you meddle in things far above your capacity to comprehend - release me at once, or I swear by the nine you will know pain, you will know - I will hang you from a rock and call the crows to feast on your eyes, your tongue, your - I will flay you from the feet up and send the skins to your mothers, I will -"
For someone who hadn't used his voice in three weeks, he had admirable diction and range, Charles thought. He slipped a few times into what seemed to be another language, the words unfamiliar but their meanings glaringly clear. The SHIELD agents looked more than a little uneasy at this torrent of verbal abuse and threats, but a glance at their superior gave them no direction; Fury's attention and gaze was locked firmly on Charles.
And Charles could hear, as they could not, the frantic undercurrent of panic and desperation running underneath the curses and threats, the desperate raging as he pulled at his bindings and found no give, no escape in any direction. To wake from a nightmare of captivity and pain only to find oneself in another captivity and pain was, Charles thought, not all that much of a trade-up.
So he let Loki vent his rage and fear for a few minutes, let him run through his pent-up energy; he had few reserves and soon exhausted himself, slumping down onto his chair shaking in every limb. Charles reached out and twisted off the cap of the water bottle, pushing it across the table in reach of his hands. "Drink," he urged him.
Loki's eyes snapped to the water bottle, and a burning thirst sprang urgently into the forefront of his mind. The fleeting thought crossed his mind to refuse it, but that was quickly pushed aside by the craving need for water. Without a word he snatched the bottle up in shaking hands and downed it in long, painful gulps.
As Charles suspected, the bottle was quickly emptied, but fortunately just about then the agent appeared with more; a large pitcher of water and a plastic cup. Charles motioned for her to set it down on the table and then back away; he poured the first glass for Loki himself.
Loki downed half the pitcher before he started to slow, the painful thirst finally abating. The phantom sensation of burning coals in his mouth, Charles knew, also slowly faded. His hands shook as he pressed them against his mouth, feeling for any hint of stitches; when he found none, he dropped his hand and leveled a steely glare at the nearest target. Which happened to be Charles.
"Better?" Charles asked him softly, well aware that the combination of pain and fear and rage that still stormed within Loki made him no less dangerous.
Loki eyed him up and down, and his face pulled into a sneer; it cracked his lips and made them bleed. "How low Midgard's mightiest heroes have fallen," he said in a rasp, "that they bring cripples and degenerate half-men to do their work for them?"
The thing was about being a telepath, the thing was,you always heard people's intentions along with their words. Charles was quite accustomed to the stinging bile that came along with insults, the seething venom that bubbled behind taunts and slurs and sometimes behind polite smiles. He well knew the flavor of thoughts that hated and despised, and although the words were calculated to hurt, there was no true feeling behind them. They were tests, volleys thrown in the dark to test his reactions.
Instead he heard, a flurry of disjointed thoughts like a swarm of minnows: Who is he? New, never seen before. Not a guard. Not a soldier. What does he want? What does he fear? Not a threat. Man of the mind; scholar, doctor, mage? What does he know? How can I get at him? How can I frighten him? How can I make him want to help me?
It was impossible to feel angry or insulted by someone who was obviously so afraid of him. "Oh, I'm not a superhero," Charles informed him calmly. "I don't even work for SHIELD, really. I'm here as more of a... consultant."
Loki's face stayed a stiff, hostile mask, but his eyes were confused and wary, off-balance. The water had helped somewhat, but he was still swimming with exhaustion, mind and body both ground down by weeks of deprivation. Charles leaned forward and asked him, bluntly, "What else do you need?"
"I need nothing from you," Loki spat, but his thoughts clearly said otherwise: Food, please, please, anything, I'm so hungry, please. Then over that primal need, forceful and clear, I must not show weakness. I must not give them any openings, for they will show no mercy. I will not beg, not from them.
Charles turned towards the hovering agent and addressed her cordially, "Would you mind bringing up something from the cafeteria? Anything they have hot would be fine. While that's waiting," he turned his glance towards one of the other Agents hovering by the door, "If you could get one of the snack bars you hide in your desk, Jason, I'd appreciate that."
The young man gawped and stammered for a moment, and after shooting a terrified glance at Fury, fled. He returned in just a few minutes with the foil-wrapped bars in his hands, avoiding his superior's eyes as he held them out. Loki glared at the unfortunate man for a moment, then at Charles, then at the bars; then he snatched them, and tore the wrappings apart with completely unnecessary viciousness. His hands shook as he shoved the food in his mouth and bit down.
"Does caffeine work on you?" Charles asked, mildly curious as he watched Loki devour the granola bars. He could feel the exhaustion pressing down on Loki's mind, dulling his awareness and leaving a gray fog over all of his reactions. "I could arrange for some coffee. I know you're tired, but I have a few questions to ask you before either of us go anywhere."
Alarm shot across Loki's mind like a shooting star, searing-bright and sharp. Questions - pain, was the first association that made itself known, an immediate synapse snapping into place. Then, I don't know what they want. I know nothing. I have nothing. What can I tell them? What answers will they accept? If I scream convincingly enough, will they believe me when I lie?
"Thanks for the offer," Loki said from a dry throat, "but I believe I'll pass on your hospitality."
Charles sensed it coming an instant before it happened; the thought of escape lit in Loki's mind, which had been until then too distracted by primal concerns of pain and food and water to think of such an abstract concept. Loki reached out in his mind for something dark and shining, words that formed out of glittering stars. They swirled into shape in his mind, waiting only for the motion of breath over lips -
And Charles reached out and shut it down, pressing over the words like closing his hand over another's on a switch. Stopping motion, stopping use. It was harder than it usually was - Loki was strong, much stronger than the minds he usually dealt with - but in this one area Charles was stronger even than a sorcerer of Asgard.
Loki's eyes jerked up towards him, widening in panic and horror as his magic failed to respond, as the glittering words fell and disintegrated half-envisioned. "What did you do?" he hissed.
"The condition of removing the gag is to make it no longer necessary," Charles said, calm and steady. "I'm sorry, Loki. But you can't go anywhere, not yet."
"You -" Loki flinched backwards, lowering his head as though he would clutch it in his hands. The chains on his wrist jerked his hands back before they could rise above table-height, and Loki shook his head, his eyes white-rimmed with horror. "You - how are you doing this? You're in my head, you -" No, not like last time, his thoughts wailed. Ripping, tearing, twisting - not again, not again -
Again? And wasn't that an interesting comment, for all it implied. But Charles had no time right now to pursue that thread, because Loki's breathing was increasing at an alarming rate, sliding towards hyperventilation as the demigod succumbed to another panic attack. "Get out, get out -"
What Charles really would have preferred to do now was to back off, to withdraw completely from Loki's mind and give him the space he needs to calm down and regain his composure. He didn't like forcing a connection on an unwilling recipient; it was still an intrusion, no matter how careful he was not to do any lasting harm. But the circumstances didn't allow for that; Loki was still dangerous, still a prisoner, and if he wanted to retain any authority over Loki's treatment he had to demonstrate that he could keep him under control.
So instead of letting go and pulling away, Charles extended his power further, spreading a soothing blanket over Loki's agitated, panic-churning thoughts. He pushed against Loki's stabbing rage and blooming panic with the same force he had used to contain his magic, lessening it - not completely, for such a lack would likely only imbalance Loki's mind further - but reducing it to manageable levels. Loki's tense-clenched body relaxed as the panic attack passed off, his hands dropping loosely into his lap as his head tipped back up. He regarded Charles through slitted green eyes, hooded with a new respect and wariness.
"Unexpected masteries," he said in that gravelly voice, "coming from a mortal like you. How did you come by it? Are you a seidmadr, one who seeks to pervert the forbidden sorceries to your petty ambitions?" Seidr, the arts of the volur, the holy women; only a sick and twisted man would pursue them. Like me. He gave a dry laugh. "Or is it something not studied, but born into you?" He studied Charles narrowly. Half-breed? By-blow of the Vanir, some Aesir's bastard? Changeling, torn out of proper realm and place?
Charles made a mental note that Loki spent an awful lot of time projecting his own circumstances and motivations onto others. "No, both my parents were ordinary humans," he said, answering Loki's unspoken thought rather than his spoken question. "My name is Charles Xavier. I'm a mutant. That is," he added when the word registered no recognition with the other man, "A human born with some alterations to our DNA, that give us certain abilities humans don't normally have. In my case, I have some small psychic abilities." A bitof an understatement there, but Charles didn't suppose Loki really needed to hear all the details.
Loki jerked back as though he'd been snakebit. "You hear my thoughts?" he said, his voice equal parts startled and horrified. His mind howled a denial so vehement it was hard to break down into words; he can see through me; he knows my lies; knows my thoughts; open, vulnerable, unsafe. Never let anyone so close, never let anyone see. Never trusted anyone with such secrets, and now he just reaches in and takes them from me?
"Yes, I can," Charles said evenly, not bothering to dissemble or soften the blow. His eyes flicked up to Nick Fury, simmering in the corner like an engine vibrating to be set free. "Given your... track record on truthfulness, Nick Fury asked me to assist with this interview, with the hope that it will make things much quicker and easier for all involved."
Loki stared at him in horror as the implications began to creep in on him; Charles supposed he couldn't really blame him for that, but that was just how things were going to have to be. He needed some time to build up a more permanent block on Loki's magic, so that he wouldn't be able to make a break for it the moment Charles' concentration slipped. Another gag, this one only invisible and less cumbersome than the last. As much as it pained him, he didn't doubt its necessity.
Charles gestured to Fury, signalling him to come forward and take over the questioning. Interview. Interrogation. However polite and civilized they were going to keep this conversation, there was no arguing that was exactly what it was. Charles concentrated on quenching Loki's anger and fear to manageable levels, enough to keep him lucid and in control of himself.
Fury was all business, and if any of Charles' actions in putting a leash on Loki disturbed him he didn't show it. He leaned forward on the edge of the table, getting almost into Loki's personal space, and growled, "Why'd you come back here? To Earth?"
Because Thor likes this realm and I wished to take it from him. Because somewhere there must be a people so weak and unimportant that they would bow to even me. Because I had no choice. Because he - That thought broke off and slithered away, leading off into curious blankness which piqued Charles' interest. On the outside, Loki's face curved up into an unfelt smile. "Why, I saw this realm just buzzing with disorder and I felt I just had to step in and put it to rights, of course," he purred. "There was only so much I could take of watching your blundering incompetence before I simply had to step in and show you mortals how it was done."
That was such obvious bullshit that Fury didn't even bother checking with Charles to see it was a lie; and anyway hadn't answered the right question. "I didn't mean then," he said brusquely. "I meant, why aren't you up in Asgard after you left with Thor? We sure as hell didn't want you back, and if that was an escape attempt, it was the sorriest one I've ever seen."
Loki's eyes flickered with temper. "Rest assured, Director,that had I sought escape I would have found a much more efficient way of going about it." Just such plans flickered through Loki's mind, compulsively cataloguing all the ways that he could have given his captors the slip from the moment the alien invasion failed. Right up until they put the gag on him, binding his magic, he'd been confident that he could have escaped at any time.
"So why'd you bounce?" Fury demanded.
To his surprise, Loki tipped his head back and let out a harsh cackle of laughter towards the ceiling. "I bounced, as you so charmingly put it," he spat, "because my so-called brother Thor is an imbecile that can't be trusted to operate anything more complex than a blunt instrument for smashing things." Stupid Thor, lazy shortsighted arrogant golden Thor, why why why can you never once think before you act, once again you leave me behind to pick up the pieces?
"The Tesseract?" Fury prodded him. "I thought that was your people's technology."
Loki sneered. "It was," he said. "And so are your primitive vehicles your own mortal technology - and yet I doubt even you would be so foolish as to give the keys of a semi truck to a toddler."
"Are you saying that Thor screwed up, and that's why you ended up back here?" Fury repeated with disbelief. He glanced back at Charles, who responded with a shrug. Loki wasn't lying; he might be mistaken or lacking in knowledge, but what he was saying was the truth as far as he knew it.
"Travel using the Tesseract is hardly as simple as aiming and pressing a big glowing blue button," Loki explained, slowly as though speaking to a child or to the mentally ill. "One must properly calibrate the probability field to accurately take the measure of what it is transporting. Otherwise, anything not specified in the field will be rejected. As I had the fortune to so spectacularly witness." I could have warned him he'd got it wrong, if he had asked me, if he had allowed me to speak. He knew, he knows what I am, and yet he forgot to take that into account, to change the spell to transport one Aesir and one Jotun instead of two Aesir. Idiot!
Charles' eyebrows rose at this last revelation, and he had a sudden suspicion they'd stumbled into something very important. "You are not Aesir, as Thor is?" he interrupted. "How did that come about?"
Loki and Fury both twisted around to stare at him, Fury with suspicion, Loki with horror and shock. There was such a spike of fear from Loki then that Charles could not have contained it if he'd tried. "The file -" Charles nodded at Fury; "mentioned that you and he were not related by blood, but it didn't say anything about you being a member of a completely different species."
"That's because Thor didn't mention it to us," Fury growled, and he sounded no small amount of pissed off about it. "Obviously no one ever taught that boy the concept of 'sharing military intelligence.' "
"Or else he didn't think it was relevant," Charles murmured, studying the chaotic overflow of Loki's thoughts. "Or maybe he preferred to protect his brother's privacy as much as he could."
"Well that's great, but it means we have to rewrite all our assumptions!" Fury complained. "We'd built up a catalogue of observed reactions when Thor was in the hospital during his first stay, but if this boy isn't even a member of the same species, we'll have to scrap our whole file and start over!"
"Oh, what a trial that must be for you," Charles drawled, "facing not one but two first contacts with representatives of an alien species. An anthropologist's dream." Fury only glowered at him.
By this time, Loki had recovered enough to speak. "No doubt it is welcome news," he said, heavy with the sarcasm. "You need not readjust your assumptions at all; Asgard remains the golden realm unsullied, inhabited solely by heroes. The villain is only a Jotun changeling, after all, so what other outcome could have ever been possible?"
"Jotun?" Charles asked. Not because the word meant anything to him in particular, but because he could feel from the furious blot of dark rage and hatred in Loki's mind that it meant quite a lot to him.
"Frost giants," Loki spat. "Beasts and monsters of Jotunheim, the scum of all the Nine Realms. It must please you, mortals, to know there are other races out there even more degenerate than your own."
And there, there was the hatred, the revulsion. The boiling venom, the wish-to-hurt. The hate behind which there was no love. Asgardians were no better than humans, then, after all; where humans hated and despised mutants, Asgardians directed their hatred against other races.
But that wasn't what hit Charles like a splash of cold water, that made his heart twist and his stomach sink. It wasn't Loki's hatred that shook him so but the doubling-back, the hate that swallowed its own tail and became despair. It was a combination he knows well, a bitter poisonous brew that he had faced many times before, in many other minds.
Loki was a frost giant. It was himself that he hated.
Charles had seen that hatred countless times since he started his project of gathering young mutants, of making his school a refuge where they could flee the torments of the human world, rest, and learn about themselves. Internalized racism, his notes called it, but that was a cold and clinical phrase for the storm of grief and rage and terror and pain that Charles has read in the minds and hearts of far, far too many children.
Hatred against mutants was ingrained in human culture, embedded. Even parents who considered themselves tolerant and accepting - even the very few who actually were - couldn't shield their children from outpouring of derision and disgust that assailed them from every angle. That kind of conditioning couldn't help but leave scars, once the truth was known. It sometimes took years of careful and patient work to coax his students out of that mindset, to bring them to a place where they could learn to accept their fellows and take pride in their true selves.
Some of them never could. Others went too far in the opposite direction, turned their hatred inside-out and directed it against the humans instead. Some of them left Charles and went on to Erik, joining his cause instead. And it grieved Charles each and every time it happened, it was a failure whose sting never lessened - but he kept trying, all the same.
Up until now he'd kept a part of himself detached from the proceedings, sympathetic yet clinical; not invested. He was invested now, and he knew that he could no more walk away from Loki than he could have from Jean, or Scott. Or Kitty, or Kurt, or any of the other students that had, over the years, put their faith in him.
He'd find a way to help Loki. Not to escape captivity, certainly - that would be a short-sighted and ultimately counterproductive exercise, when Loki returned to vent his rage on his former captors - but in some better way. Help him find peace within himself, maybe, so that when the time came he could be trusted with freedom. Help him to be able to be free, inside and out.
Meanwhile, Fury was asking another question. Running down the list, no doubt, of questions he'd put to Charles in the all-too-unprepared briefing from this morning. "I said," he growled, "why haven't they come back for you? They're two and a half weeks late for your scheduled pickup. Any ideas what could be keeping them?"
"I haven't the faintest idea, I'm afraid," Loki said in a calm voice, while his mind erupted in a scream of anguished fury. They don't want me they don't need me not their son not brother not prince not even one of them, cast out abandoned rejected left behind they'd rather leave me here to be eaten slowly by rats on Midgard than even want to LOOK AT ME -
Loki tilted his head to the side and his lips curled up in what could, generously, be described as a smile. "Are your precious new Asgard allies letting you down already? You really should not put your trust in princes, you know. Did you not wonder why they ignored you all these years, until you so happened to uncover something of interest to them?" His voice held the faintest of tremors. "They'll treat with you only so long as you have something they need, and then they'll drop you in the gutter like the worthless, miserable animals that you are -"
Definitely projecting, Charles thought, as he slapped hard on another uncontrollable swell of emotion: grief and pain and resentment and heartbreak. This was getting out of hand; Charles was not an empath, was not really equipped to deal with specific emotions, not like Dani or Hope. He could do it as an extension of his mental powers, but it wasn't really his forte. He much preferred dealing with the root causes of such self-destructive mental schema, than handling their symptoms piecemeal.
Charles sighed and rubbed a hand over his eyes. Somehow he'd gotten himself sucked right into the situation he swore he wouldn't; standing by and lending his powers to the interrogation of a hostile prisoner. He frowned and let his eye fall on Fury's back, leaning over the table towards Loki and growling out his words. A reassessment of the situation was definitely called for.
Movement outside the cell door attracted his attention; he glanced over that direction and saw the young man he'd sent off to get food for Loki, hovering by the doorway with a tray in his hands. Well. That had taken long enough, although now the timing seemed auspicious. "Director," he said, interrupting Fury mid-sentence. The tall, one-eyed man twisted back and glowered at him. "Why don't we take a little break?"
Fury hesitated, the reluctance to leave off the questioning now that they'd finally gotten a break writ plain on his face. "Some issues have come up that I'd like to discuss with you," Charles added, and Fury acquiesced with a grudging sigh. The hard determination to get as much information out of his prisoner as he could battled with the desire to get out of the room before he gave in to a not-completely-incomprehensible yet highly unprofessional desire to strangle his prisoner for all the cheek he was getting from him.
The two of them filed out of the cell, passing by the tray-bearing guard on their way. The meal seemed to be hamburger stroganoff, and included no cutlery except a flimsy plastic spoon - a bit pointless, in Charles' opinion. If Loki's hands were free and he decided to attack, he could kill them with his bare hands with no need of a weapon; if they weren't and he didn't, then they might as well at least give him a fork. But that was Fury's operation all over; conscientious paranoia in the smallest of details.
While overlooking some of the rather more major ones. He'd have to see what he could do about that. Now was not, perhaps, the time to push for Loki's unbinding; but that would come in time.
~to be continued...