Title: A Villain State of Mind
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Angst, brief graphic references to mutilation.
Timeframe: Set post-Avengers.

Author's Notes: Not much of Loki in this chapter; it's mostly Mommy and Daddy arguing, as it were. I am really holding my breath that my portrayal of either Fury or Xavier in this chapter doesn't piss people off, but... well, some things get said in this chapter that really needed to be said sooner or later.

"All right, Professor, what's this about?" Fury asked after the heavy, airlock-quality door slid shut behind them.

Xavier shook his head. "Not here, Director. He's still listening."

"The hell he is." Fury shot a doubtful look through the vacuum-layered glass of the one-way observation window at their prisoner. He certainly didn't look like he was paying them any attention, concentrating instead on figuring out how to eat with his hands chained. "That whole cell is completely soundproof."

Xavier sighed. "Soundproof for humans, maybe," he said. "Aesir - or Jotun, as the case may be - have somewhat more sensitive hearing. Trust me. He can hear us. Shall we retire elsewhere?"

Loki abandoned his intense concentration on the plastic spoon long enough to shoot them both a poisonous glare at being found out - apparently, one-way mirrors didn't work on Jotuns either - before turning his back on them in what could only be described as a massive sulk. Fury blew out his breath, and with a jerk of his head indicated the direction down the corridor behind them. Damn aliens and their damn supernatural senses.

They fetched up in the same conference room as before, when Fury had given Xavier the debriefing (which he now recognized with some annoyance as having some major holes in the intel, but how the hell was he supposed to know?) about Loki.

"Why'd you cut the interview short?" Fury said, turning to Xavier as he accessed the security monitors from the holding cell. Loki was currently attending to the tray of food they'd given him; the chains on his wrists meant he couldn't bring his hands up to his face, and had to hunch down almost to the level of the table to be able to eat.

"Because Loki was growing increasingly exhausted and unstable," Xavier replied. He'd pulled a notebook out of somewhere - seriously, who still used paper notebooks in the 2010s - and was making some rapid notes on it. "It's best to give him some time to eat, wash and rest before continuing."

Fury raised his eyebrows. "He seemed fine to me," he said. "Insolent little bastard. Full of sass."

"He only seemed coherent to you because I was actively suppressing his feelings of anger and fear," Xavier said, making more notes. "But that will only go so far as a short-term solution."

Fury's eyebrows raised even further as the implications of this unexpected ability sank in. "Didn't know you could do that," he mused. "Speaking of long-term solutions, isn't there any way you could make that permanent? Take away his anger and hate completely?" A Loki without his anger issues or epic grudges would be a hell of a lot easier to manage, that was for sure.

Xavier snapped his notebook shut, and gave Fury a cool look it took him a moment to decipher as utterly calm fury. "Yes," he said, "yes, he would be. And as long as we're discussing long-term solutions, why not simply chop off both his arms at the elbow? That would also render him much more manageable, and the degree of mutilation would be about the same."

The hair stood up on the back of his neck, and despite himself Fury couldn't help the nausea that rose unbidden at the mental images the mild-sounding suggestion conjured. Loki, huddled in a corner stained with his own blood, arms and legs ending in stumps - Fury has seen many terrible things in his career, and done many things that were arguably terrible. But not that. Never that. Not even to Loki.

"That's not how we do things," he told Xavier, and it took a lot of effort to keep his voice steady. Wasted effort, really, because he knew perfectly well that Xavier can see right through him like a pane of glass.

Xavier gave him another of those looks, and then his expression cleared slightly. "I'm glad to hear you say that, Director," he said. "Particularly because if you had not said that - and meant it - I would have been obliged to remove Loki from your custody."

"What?" Fury choked out, feeling his eyes nearly bugging out from his head. "Now, hold on just a minute here! You don't have the authority to -"

"Must I remind you again that I don't work for you?" Xavier said sharply. "You brought me in as an outside consultant, and that's exactly what I am. And if you continue to mishandle Loki's situation, I will take him over from you."

"In what way am I mishandling the situation?" Fury demanded, wondering how the hell he gone from being the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. to feeling like a little boy being called to task by one of his tutors. "We've got him completely under control!"

"Under control," Xavier said, and sighed. "Director, I understand that you've had a very stressful couple of weeks -"

Xavier had no idea, Fury thought. Starting with the colossal fuck-up that was Banner's rampage in Harlem, continuing on through Thor's crash-landing in New Mexico and leading right on into that crazy Russian scientist trashing the Stark Expo and then to this entire fiasco with the Tesseract ever since, Fury couldn't even remember the last time he'd gotten a full night's sleep.

" - but you are, once again, looking only at short-term solutions," Xavier continued. "You're failing to consider a very critical piece of information."

"Which is what?" Fury said belligerently.

"That Loki is functionally immortal." Xavier opened the notebook and set it on the table, his fingers tapping against something that looked like quick arithmetic calculation. " Loki is still a young man by the standards of his people. From what I can gather his father is over seven thousand years old and has been king for most of that time. That's as long as the span of all of recorded history. So right now you have him under control. Can you guarantee that you'll be able to keep him that way for a month? A year? Ten years? A hundred? Can you guarantee that in all that time there will be no disasters, no changes in command or policy, nothing that will crack the iron grip of control you're so proud of?"

Fury shifted uneasily, but didn't answer. He didn't need to; the answer was all too plain in his mind.

Xavier continued remorselessly, "He may not have had a reason to hate us before, but we're certainly giving him plenty of reasons now. Sooner or later he will be free, Director, and when that happens what will you do if he gets out and comes back for us, mad with pain and carrying a grudge against the entire human race for the way we've treated him?" He paused for a moment and waited, but when Fury made no comment he went on.

"If we aren't going to kill him, then we have to find some way to seek reconciliation, because this is not a problem that is going to go away if you leave it in a cell for long enough. Between execution and rehabilitation there is, in the long run, no middle ground."

"Excuse me," Fury said, "I'm not particularly interested in his rehabilitation." And I haven't completely let out execution as an option, he couldn't help but think.

Xavier gave a thin smile. "Perhaps you haven't," he said mildly. "But there's always Asgard to consider. Director, I don't know any more about Asgard than you do, but I have seen Loki's mind. He doesn't fear going back to Asgard, not the way one would fear an execution. He's certainly not looking forward to it, but I very much doubt they mean to kill him, or would tolerate us doing it for them. They haven't done a particularly good job of controlling him up till now; do you really want to stake Earth's future on the bet that they'll do better in the future?"

"...goddamn alien space vikings," Fury muttered. As much as he hated to admit it, Xavier had a point; Fury didn't know enough about Asgard to be sure that he could count on their help. If Thor was anything like a representative of their culture, then it was entirely possible that the entire alien culture between them didn't have the right mindset to hold onto Loki for more than a few years at a time. And Xavier was right again. Loki was a problem without an expiration date. He'd keep coming back again and again until someone found a way to deal with him permanently. There was only one solution Fury knew that was that kind of permanent, and for all Fury knew Loki could find some way to circumvent even that.

"Asgard aside, there's another thing to consider," Xavier was saying, bringing Fury out of his bitter thoughts. He folded his hands around that notebook of his. "I couldn't help but notice, when I was taking a look about his mind, that I am not the only one to have done so recently."

Fury stared. "Are you suggesting he was being mind controlled?" he said. Thoughts of Agent Barton and that damnable scepter leapt startled into his mind - oh, hell no, this was not a complication he needed now.

"Controlled?" Xavier shook his head. "No, I don't believe so. But there are definitely marks, scars in places where someone with powers not unlike my own was... careless. There are parts of his memory that are sealed away under powerful barriers that are not of his own making." He smiled, a wintery little smile. "I admit I would very much like to know what is behind those blocks; it could be something very valuable to us."

"Such as?" Fury asked, intrigued.

"Such as the identity of whoever sent him here in the first place."

"What do you mean, sent him here?" Fury demanded.

Xavier's eyebrows rose nearly up to his nonexistent hairline. "What, surely you don't think he came here on his own, do you?"

"Yes!" Fury's mind was sent spinning, playing over his first encounter with Loki and all the subsequent fallout. At the beginning they had been working under the assumption that he was acting alone, and after that events had played out too fast for them to stop and readjust their assumptions at any point.

Xavier gave him a look, and although he didn't say it out loud Fury didn't need to be psychic to read Well, that was dumb of you on his face. "The army clearly was not his. That's plain enough in his memories even if it wasn't in the disparity of their technology and methods. Someone obviously furnished it for him, someone who was all too pleased to send him along on the front lines and allow him to take the brunt of any counterattack. Most army commanders do not also take the role of advance scout, Director."

Fury groaned. His first reaction, unworthily, was Well shit, didn't we have enough problems already? He would much rather deal with Loki and all his complications than to have to admit the existence of a bigger, badder enemy behind him who was still out there somewhere and mad as hell. Especially now that they no longer had the Tesseract to fuel their military defense research.

But he was too much of a spy at heart to deny the existence of new intelligence just because it made him uncomfortable, so reluctantly, he faced the possibility head-on. "So we need to get Loki to spill the beans on his former employer," he said.

Xavier frowned. "I'd like it to be that simple," he said. "Unfortunately, whoever put the mental blocks on him was very thorough. He cannot say their name, or even think it to himself."

"Now that he's able to talk again, I'm sure we can find a way to get around that," Fury said. He strove to keep his voice cool and emotionless, but he also knew there was no point in not saying what was on his mind, since Xavier would pick it up in two seconds anyway. "We have people who specialize in getting past protective conditioning."

"...No." Charles gave him that look again, the one that looked calm but was unutterably angry. "Apart from the fact that I have told you repeatedly I will not condone or assist with any efforts that involve torture, it wouldn't work, Nick. It's not that kind of block. He himself cannot break it from the inside, no matter how very much you make him want to. To attempt to force the issue would only crush his mind against that unyielding barrier."

I wouldn't cry over that, Fury thought.

Xavier folded his hands on the table and leaned back in the wheelchair, and there was that disappointed-tutor look again. "Director, I'm starting to find your bloodthirsty attitude in regards to your prisoner rather disturbing," he said in a neutral voice. "Are you sure you have the necessary objectivity for this?"

"In a word? No."It wasn't the most diplomatic he'd ever been, but there was no point in weaseling words around Xavier; and anyway Fury was getting tired of trying to watch his tongue. Getting tired of Xavier's condescending, voice-from-on-high attitude and especially getting tired of his touchy-feely, hugs-and-kindness attitude towards their prisoner. Yes, Fury knew the regulations and would stick rigidly to them, because that was what separated men who kept order from men who served nothing but their own desires. He'd make sure Loki got three meals a day and a prisoner's coveralls and a bed to sleep on and proper medical care, should he need it.

But he had no desire to forgive Loki and no desire whatsoever to rehabilitate him, and if the day came when Loki finally reaped the full measure of what he'd sown, then Fury would pull the trigger and be glad of it. "Since it seems you haven't been paying attention, Professor, let me remind you: In the course of his little vacation on Earth he busted up one of my labs, terrorized a crowd in Germany, and oh yeah, flattened half of Manhattan during rush hour! Do you have any idea how many people died there? Civilians - innocents!"

"Innocents?" Xavier said, and his calm, almost cordial tone cut right through the heart of Fury's rant. "Oh, do let's talk about innocents."

Suddenly, Fury wasn't at all sure that he wanted to. But Xavier had gotten the momentum of the conversation away from him, somehow, and ran with it.

"In the past year, the Sentinel initiative hunted down and killed one hundred and twenty-seven adult mutants," Charles said, and the number sounded too precise to be anything but correct. "In the past year, five cities have seen breakouts of anti-mutant riots, with seventeen deaths - five of whom, I might add, were physically disabled humans and not mutants at all.

"Oh, and let's not forget the Rosemary project - started in 1997 as an anonymous data census on mutants, then when the bureau changed hands in 2005 turned to soliciting and then eventually kidnapping underage mutants, holding them against their will in a secured facility in Rosemary, Colorado. When the project was shut down in 2009, the cleanup crew decided against the advisability of letting loose a population of embittered and possibly dangerous mutants into the population, and fifty-seven children and teens were given lethal injections. Three escaped. I spoke with them at some length when they came to my school. I still do, every week, as part of their grief counseling.

He'd started out the speech cold and clinical, but by the end of it his anger had clearly taken hold of him; he was angrier than Fury had ever seen him before, even in the dangerous and occasionally bloody occasions where they'd worked together on an operation before. It was hard to believe that he normally carried this rage so well hidden, so tightly suppressed; allowed sometimes to heat his words or his gaze but never, ever allowed to take control. Not even now.

"None of this even addresses the M.A.D. laws - now on the books in forty-six states, I believe, including this one - which state that any suspect known to be a mutant should be considered as armed and hostile even if they have no weapon and show no hostile intent, and authorizes uses of deadly force by authorities under all circumstances up to and including a routine traffic stop." Xavier bites off the words with precise, furious diction. He might as well be spitting nails, each one landing with the force of a hammer blow. "Current estimates run that these laws have lead to the death of over four hundred mutants, not counting non-mutant casualties in escalated situations where mutants defended themselves.

"So do not stand there wearing that badge, Director Fury, do not stand there under the flag of the government that considers all these incidents lawful and authorized, and talk to me about innocents."

Fury stood there with his hands clenched together behind his back and said nothing at all, swallowing against the angry denials or savage counter-arguments that rose to his teeth. Stood there and tried not to writhe too obviously in shame, because he knew too damn well that what Xavier was saying was true. SHIELD had never been directly involved in anti-mutant initiatives - none of his projects ever had been - but nevertheless Fury's clearance was the highest and so he was kept apprised. He was kept informed, in a detached and abstract way, of what measures and countermeasures were taken regarding "the mutant threat," he was given monthly estimates of how angry the experts in the Pentagon estimated the mutant population to be on the heels of another riot, another purge.

And what had Fury done? Nothing, not a damn thing. He'd seen this fight wasn't one he could win and turned away from it, deliberately channeled all his career into fighting battles that seemed cleaner. Simpler. Not always easy, not by a long shot, but fighting alien invasions over Manhattan was nothing so ugly as the brother-against-brother warfare of domestic security. He'd opted out of this battle long ago, and he'd done so without a pang of conscience, because mutants weren't his kind of people.

All the same, Fury hadn't gotten where he was in life by letting other people push him around easily. "So what's your point?" he grated. "You're saying that because mutants have died, it's okay for this guy to kill other people? Like they cancel out somehow? It doesn't work that way."

"No. That is not, in fact, my point." Xavier blew out his breath, squeezing his eyes shut and pressing his fingertips to his face. "My apologies, Director. I vented a great deal more of my feelings than I ought to have, given the circumstances. It won't happen again.

"Do you know why I'm here, Director?" he asked. His voice was calmer, less passionate, but the anger was still there. "Not just here today, but in general: why I choose to live as a peaceful part of human society rather than to tear it down, why I haven't gone off to join Erik in his crusade to build a better world for our people, why I lead my students in defense of your kind and not against them? Do you think it's easy for me to champion the cause of the humans, Director, when I hear my students speak of the abuses and tortures they endure at the hands of your kind?"

Fury did wonder, sometimes. Not that he would ever insult Xavier by expressing his suspicion out loud, but he was security-trained; paranoia was built into him. There was an ongoing file on Charles Xavier, frequently updated, which everyone at his clearance and above had read; one of the sub-headers was an ongoing circulating argument between three of the top head think tanks of the country (Fury included) about whether Charles Xavier could still be trusted, or whether they should activate the order to have him shot.

Fury had always argued for trust. But sometimes, like now, he did wonder - not whether Xavier was worthy of trust, but whether they were.

"Why?" Fury said, and his voice sounded amazingly calm, under the circumstances.

"I do this because I believe that we can build nothing on foundations of hatred and violence," Xavier said. "I do this because I believe in giving humans not only a second chance, but a third, and a fourth, and however many chances it takes because in the end, reconciliation is the only true option. All other paths lead to no end, only an endless cycle of vengeance and pain. I'm not a hero, Fury, and I'm certainly not an Avenger. I'm not out for justice. I'm out for peace.

"You and I both know about making the hard calls; and usually when people say they make the hard calls they are talking about deciding who will die." Xavier leaned across the table towards, him, his eyes bleak and his voice deadly serious. "But sometimes, the hard calls come in deciding who will live; those who will walk free under the open sun that you'd rather see dead or buried, those whose hand signed those papers and whose voice gave those orders. If the price for justice is too high, if claiming it will end in more chaos and retribution falling back on the heads of those under your care, then you must make your choice knowing that the voices of the slain call out for justice which you cannot answer.

"Because they're dead, Director. You can't help them now no matter how much blood you spend. You can only help those who are still living." He paused for a moment, and then added in a slightly sharper voice, "And if you mean to do that, then you need to get your head out of your ass where this prisoner is concerned."

Fury took a deep breath, inhaling slowly through his nostrils and blowing it out in a forceful exhalation. When he forced himself to step back from his feelings, he could see that some of what Xavier said was undeniably true. Regardless of what Loki did or didn't deserve, what it came down to was that they weren't allowed to kill him and couldn't hold him forever. Fury wasn't at all certain that Xavier's optimistic plans of rehabilitation and reconciliation were options; there was too much hate and madness looking out of Loki's eyes for that.

Fury didn't regret the actions they'd taken, he'd considered them necessary at the time and he still did now, but somehow he doubted the necessity of the actions would make Loki any more inclined to forgive them for the pain and indignities he'd suffered at their hands. Especially not because Fury wasn't sorry, couldn't be sorry, couldn't separate himself from his own grudges no matter how many fine words Xavier threw at him.

So what should I do? Fury thought, helpless and frustrated. He couldn't say it out loud, because that would be surrendering too much of his autonomy as director of SHIELD, to ask an outsider for instructions like a small child. He couldn't say it, but he thought it.

Xavier gave him a grave nod. "I'll take responsibility for interviewing Loki, if you'll authorize that," he said. "I believe I am the one most qualified to tackle those mental blocks he's carrying, and I'm sure the results will be of great interest to both of us."

"Sure." The word left Fury's lips a little stiffly, but there it was all the same. "You'll have access to whatever you need, and authority over the prisoner equal to mine." It was a fairly major concession, but it was also a relief - shifting part of the burden of his crazy immortal pain in the neck to someone else, someone surely more capable of handling it than himself.

"I'll need to return to my base of operations for a short time," Xavier said, turning towards the door. "I have some research I'd like to do, and some resources to tap into. In the meantime please make sure Loki gets a chance to rest. I'll be back later this evening and we can continue."

"You're leaving?" Fury felt a stab of doubt. "What about that psychic hold-thingy you've got around his magic? Because without that, we won't have any choice but to restrain him again."

"That won't be necessary," Xavier assured him. "The restrictions I placed on him are temporary, but they'll hold without my presence for a few hours. After twenty hours or so they'll start to unravel, but I should return well before then."

"Huh," Fury thought, and frowned. "Couldn't you make them last longer than that?"

Xavier returned a bland smile, and Fury scowled. He could, Fury realized, but he wouldn't; not if controlling Loki meant that Fury was required to keep letting Xavier back in. Xavier's smile turned to a chuckle. "I'm glad we came to an understanding," he said. He turned away from the conference table, tucking his notebook safely away, and started wheeling himself towards the corridor outside.

"Professor..." Fury called out, just before Xavier passed through the door. He cleared his throat. "Those deaths - they would never have occurred on my watch." It was a forlorn scrap of assurance, he knew, a meaningless hypothetical boast of feats he'd never have a chance to claim. That if he'd been there, that if he'd been the one calling the shots, he would have done better.

Xavier turned to meet his eyes, and nodded once in the direction of Loki's cell. "And his would never have occurred on mine."

With that, he turned and left.

~to be continued...