Title: A Villain State of Mind
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Angst, mild self-harm.
Timeframe: Set post-Avengers.

Author's Notes: Spæmaðr - "a man who sees," a shaman or seer. It's not actually a historically accurate word; in Norse culture the role of seer was only ever taken on by women, the proper term for which is spækona. It is an extension of spæ (also the root word for 'spy' in English) with -maðr, the male suffix (also seen in seiðkona vs. seiðmaðr, a female vs male magician.)

I wanted Loki to have a word for Charles other than 'mortal' or 'human,' one that would convey his respect for Charles' power and wariness at Charles' ability to see through his defenses. Since I really don't think the Aesir have a concept or word for 'telepath,' I decided to use this instead.

Loki sprawled in the metal-framed chair, his hands bound by a length of metal chain that ran down to a bolt on the floor and back up again, and thought of elephants.

The spæmaðr, Charles Xavier, was here again; he returned time and time again no matter what measures Loki tried to ward him off. The first evening he'd come back, once Loki had eaten and drunk and had a little time to recover from the fits of delirium the horrid gag had brought on him, Loki had thought him a tool of Director Fury and determined to say nothing to him. He'd slouched in his chair, silent and sullen and glaring, and locked his teeth shut.

He might have saved himself the effort. Xavier held up both ends of the conversation effortlessly, asking casual questions and then reaching into Loki's mind to pluck out the answers, as though Loki was an open book from which he might read aloud. Loki had flinched and snarled and scrambled to clear his mind, only to find with some horror that it was almost impossible to not think of things. If someone told you to think a pink elephant, for example, it was almost impossible not to think of one, no matter how hard you tried to push it from your mind.

In the small hours of that night, however, he'd thought on a way to turn that very weakness to his advantage: the way not to think of something was to fill your mind with something else instead. And so when Xavier came to his cell the next day and began to talk at him, friendly and personable and oh-so-insufferably calm, Loki responded by calling into his mind the filthiest, most perverted sexual fantasy his mind could generate. If Xavier was going to insist on entering his mind like a voyeur, Loki thought, he could at least give him a show.

He'd expected anger, or at least shocked outrage, but instead Xavier reacted with no more than a raised eyebrow in Loki's direction. He redoubled his efforts, turning from thoughts of women he'd known and dreamt of in the past to more vile sexual acts, couplings with men, lewd perversions he'd never even had a chance to try in his long lifetime and only secretly imagined to himself in the dark hours.

Xavier took it all in stride without a break to his equanimity, as though he were twice Loki's age and had seen so much in his life that nothing left could surprise him, although he did spare a snort and a dry comment on one or two of Loki's most fabulously unlikely flights of fancy.

"I do work with teenagers, just so you know," Xavier advised him pleasantly.

Once it became clear that sexual thoughts were not going to drive Xavier away - although they did at least succeed in the goal of stopping any further questions - Loki turned in desperation to darker thoughts of cruelty and violence. He called to mind memories of past battlefields, screaming horrors that had flashed by him and that he had blocked away for the sake of his sanity. He confidently expected this to work. All the mortals - with very definite exceptions, such as Fury or the red Widow woman - were soft, tenderhearted, and Loki suspected that Xavier was even softer and more foolish than most. He must be, surely; he must be outright addled in the head if his moronic, wrong-headed compassion extended to even such a creature as Loki.

When memories of his brother's battlefields began to run thin, he filled in the gaps with his own dark dreams of power: dreams of crushing Midgard, breaking Asgard, forcing his family and all these foolish humans to bow before him. Fantasies of revenge on Fury, on all those who dared to hold him captive and take such liberties with his person; he drew over the details of his revenge with great vicious care, imagining the look of fear and awe on his face as the life bled from his body. Ugly flashing thoughts of overpowering Xavier himself, if only he were freed of these bindings, of dragging the broken man from his ridiculous metal chair and smashing him to the ground. Surely that would be enough to horrify and repulse Xavier, letting such evil fill his mind.

But in the end, Xavier still sat before him unmoved, his expression calmly composed and his gaze unwavering. If that was a lie to conceal his true feelings, Loki had to admit, he was in the presence of the master.

"Are you quite done?" Xavier asked him.

Yes, Loki thought; he refused to say it out loud but he could not deny it in his own mind. Hours of furious concentration on such vile images left him feeling drained and exhausted, and much more shaken and sickened than he had expected. Clearly, this was not going to work.

"Good," Xavier said. "There's really no need for this, Loki; I'm not trying to interrogate you. I only want to talk. You can ask me questions too, if you'd like; I'm sure there are things you'd like to know too, and I'd be happy to tell you."

What an obvious, transparent lie that was. "I cannot imagine what petty doings of this mortal sphere would hold the slightest interest for me," Loki said, but a spark of interest had caught within him despite himself. Banal doings of worthless mortals they might be, but at least it would be something to occupy his mind.

Loki still had hopes - in some silent, buried part of his mind, to be brought out and looked at only when he was alone - that he could find some way to bend Xavier and his powers to his own will, to enlist his aid in escaping this place and planning his next campaign. But if he could not persuade him, then in order to escape from here Loki knew he would have to find a way to defeat him; and to do that he needed to know more.

As much as he wished the spæmaðr would leave and take his terrifying, too-discerning magic with him, a part of Loki longed for conversation, for stimulation. It was not only thirst and hunger alone that had driven him into that terrible trance, nor even the unyielding muzzle that cut into his lips and gums until the only taste he knew was that of his own blood. As much as any of those things it was sheer boredom that had driven him to the point of hallucinations, the mind-numbing tedium of blank walls and barren cells with nowhere to go, nothing to do, and no one to speak to. The endless empty hours had fallen down on him like drips of water on his forehead, silently wearing away at his sanity around the edges. Loki's mind had always been quick, easily prone to restless boredom at the best of times; now, his unresting unrelieved thoughts beat against the blank walls around him until they threatened to drag him into raving madness.

The hunger and thirst and pain were cured now, but the boredom remained. None of the SHIELD guards would respond to him at all save Fury, and Loki had absolutely no desire to talk to him. What good was it for his tongue to be loosed if he could not draw on his magic to escape? What good was it to be able to speak, to cajole and threaten and persuade his captors, if none of them would listen?

But now he had a challenge, something that offered a respite from the endless grinding tedium of silence and enforced inactivity. Xavier was not like these other mortals, their minds weak and dull and their souls flat and magicless. Xavier was infuriating, Xavier was maddening, Xavier was… intriguing, full of contradictions. Human, and yet not. Passive and yielding in his manner, yet possessing a determination that could - demonstrably - outlast Loki's own stubbornness. Weak and crippled in body, yet unbelievably strong in mind. Loki knew the danger of trusting to appearances; he would not make the mistake of underestimating Charles Xavier more than once. To be in his presence was every moment a risk, but without the risk there could be no reward.

Were he free of his bonds, Loki had little doubt that he could take the little human out: though not as strong as his kindred, Loki had the strength of the gods (monster!)and long, long years of training. That he could crush Xavier in a physical fight was not even a contention. That he could beat him in a duel of spells or magic… well, assuming he was free to use his magic at all, Loki had no doubt that he would prevail.

But Loki was not free, he was chained to the spot and helpless to defend himself against anything these wretched humans might do. Xavier was powerful, dangerous. He was a spæmaðr, like Heimdall, one of the seeing ones - and Heimdall was the only lord in Asgard, save Odin Allfather himself, that Loki ever truly feared. Loki had to wonder if even Odin could match against Xavier in the arena of the mind, although it would certainly be an interesting battle to watch. Loki knew of no other being in all the realms whose power approached him, except perhaps - perhaps… Loki wasn't sure. For a fleeting moment he thought he knew, but then again it was gone.

Such powers were - such powers were terrifying. Loki knew. Such powers could rip and tear and crush a defenseless mind, could - could twist thoughts back on themselves until he knew not what was real and what was - could hurt him, more than anything else in the universe ever had -

Charles Xavier could do that to him. There was nothing that Loki could do to stop him, and certainly no other would intercede on his behalf. Fury would probably watch through his lifeless spy-windows and laugh all the while.

Charles Xavier could destroy him, reduce him to nothing but a shell.

And Loki did not understand why he did not.

He couldn't stand this, having no defense, no recourse against the inevitable. If he could not flee, and he could not fight, then his only option was to try to charm his way out. Loki could be charming, he knew, when he put his mind to it; could be personable and witty and sympathetic and debonair. Could project such an aura of wry friendly innocence that even those who knew him best, should have known better still fell for it time after time. Dazzled by the surface, never once seeing through to the monster inside.

So Loki smiled, sweet and playful and just a little bit sheepish; the Okay, you got me, good one smile he'd used to get himself out of far too many escapades in Asgard in ages past. "But I do owe you a favor, it's true," he conceded. "You helped me with that most unpleasant business with the gag."

Xavier's gaze on him was cool and thoughtful, and Loki turned up a few watts on the smile. He could do this, he could do this. It would be harder to fool a spæmaðr, but if Loki could not hide all of his thoughts behind obfuscating images, he could at least deflect them sometimes. So when his thoughts strayed to things he did not want Xavier to hear, he did not try to force them away, but instead filled his head with thoughts of elephants. How on earth had such a creature ever come into being? Whoever had come up with their concept, Loki decided, had a truly strange sense of humor.

"So, Loki," Xavier said thoughtfully, and settled himself back with his hands laced together over his lap. There was a glass of water at his elbow (and another one at Loki's, and he tried not to feel to grateful for it when he knew Xavier could hear) which seemed to indicate they would be here for a while. "Tell me about your mother."

Mother, Frigga, golden honey-blond hair rippling from a long braid as she leaned down over him, her face in shadow but outlined in a halo of light. Soft hands and cool skirts and a soothing, murmuring voice and - "I'm afraid I can't help you there," Loki said, in a tone of deliberately affected innocence. "I never knew my mother. Some Frost Giant slattern back on Jotunheim, I suppose."

Xavier smiled. "Tell me about the woman who raised you, then," he said.

Loki eyed him warily. "Why do you want to know?" he asked. What use could such knowledge possibly be to a mortal? Did they hope to plan some tactics, some strategic assault on Asgard? Should he stop them, or encourage them? But - not Frigga, no, there was no purpose to such a thing. It would tear out the heart of Asgard, leave Odin hollow, Thor wept and grieving... they would be weak then, unprepared for an assault... no. Loki fixed his thoughts firmly on the strangeness of elephants, their wickedly curving tusks, the grey wrinkled skin and long sinuous appendages. Elephants.

"I find it's a good place to start when getting to know someone," Xavier answered. "At the beginning."

Not an assault on Asgard, then; only on Loki himself. "You wish to know my weaknesses," he challenged.

"And your strengths," Xavier said. "And everything in between."

All that afternoon Xavier continued to ask him about Asgard, confusing and irrelevant trivialities that could bear no strategic value, even if this batch of mortals could ever be fool enough to think they could oppose Asgard and somehow win. Instead, the shriveled little mortal rambled on about pointless topics of childhoods and memories, books and hobbies and favorite foods.

It would not match his new strategy of pleasing cooperation if he wasted his energy deflecting such trivial sorties, so Loki allowed himself to be drawn into the topic despite himself. It was all meaningless, anyway, all lies; he had never belonged in Asgard, had never been a prince, never been Aesir at all. Nothing more than a Jotun cuckoo in fair fledgeling, part of a grotesque pantomime carried out by his mother and father as everyone in the household played along that he was a real child. It had all been no more than a lie, and so it meant nothing to him.

Xavier spoke reminiscently of the house where he'd grown up, a rambling and gently-aging mansion somewhere in the hills of New England (whatever had happened to the old England, Loki wondered.) How when summer ended chill the would turn the leaves from green to gold and red and yellow, a profusion of treasure shimmering along the hillsides in the autumn wind.

Loki hadn't been prepared for the answering surge of memories that swirled up within him in response, nor to the half-anguish, half-regret that accompanied them. Memories of walking in his mother's garden, the grass prickling and itchy under his skin. Frigga's private garden, it had been the cloistered retreat of the royal family when the princes were young; it had long since been remodeled, turned into another practice yard for the palace guard, the grass dug up and replaced with hard flagstones, and the trees pruned back to shadows of their former selves. Centuries gone.

But in his mind it was still as it had been, the bright stones of the path and the jewel-colored leaves hanging before him almost close enough to touch. Thor had run ahead, shouting and laughing, and climbed in the trees; Loki had been too small to reach the lower branches, and he'd sulked at the injustice of it all until Frigga laughed and hugged him, pulled him into her lap and gave him cherries from her own plate. Loki couldn't remember any more whether they'd been his favorite food before then, or had become his favorite after that day, but for years the cherry tarts that the kitchens baked on Donnerstag afternoons had been the prime target of his and Thor's snitching expeditions.

The memories leapt with agonizing clarity into Loki's mind, the star-spangled sky and the golden buildings and the time-frozen, picture-perfect people there, and Loki hated that he could not banish them from his mind as passionately as he hated Xavier for reminding him, as passionately as he hated Fury for binding him here.

It perhaps shouldn't have been a surprise that after that particular conversation, when the spæmaðr had vanished for the evening meal and his little guard-puppets brought him food in a flimsy plastic tray, to find the evening meal accompanied by an offering of cherries.

Foolishness. He knew what Xavier was trying to accomplish, just as he also knew that it wouldn't work. He was Loki Liesmith, Loki Raven-god, Loki Trickskin; he had hundreds of years old and a mountain of corpses under his feet. He did as he pleased. He was not to be tamed by choice morsels of food, not to be brought to heel and made to obey by simple, pitiful acts of kindness.

(How do you know?) the treacherous doubts in his head whispered. (Has anyone ever tried?)

If Xavier thought this would work on him, he was more of a fool than Loki ever imagined him to be.

He ate the cherries anyway. Just to show them that he did what he pleased.

"How old are you, Loki?"

Loki cocked his head and frowned. It was a strange question; he couldn't offhand think of a way they could use that information against him. "Why do you want to know?" he said suspiciously.

Xavier smiled. "Perhaps I'm just curious," he said. "I'm a teacher, after all; it's a habit of my vocation to always want to place people in the right age group."

Loki gave a dry laugh. "Rest assured I am far older than any of your students," he said. "In all likelihood, I am older than all of your students combined." He didn't know the exact number in Midgard years, offhand - conversions between Midgard and Asgard time could be tricky. He'd worked it out once, years ago when he'd been bored, but those calculations were far out of date by now. It had never been something he'd thought to need to know; never had he imagined being stranded here, amongst mortals.

"I was more thinking developmental age than chronological age," Charles said mildly. "To the best of our knowledge, Aesir have all the same stages of life as humans - childhood, adulthood, old age. Whereabouts are you in that progression?"

"How should I compare?" Loki said irritably. "You mortals drop dead at forty years, do you not? Hardly enough time to measure."

Xavier stifled laughter. "That's a bit out of date," he said. "There might have been a time when that was true, but with modern nutrition and medicine things aren't nearly so dire. In the United States, at least, the average lifespan is around eighty years."

"That's hardly any longer," Loki snorted. What was Xavier getting at with this? Loki scowled at him, mind racing from one possible angle to the next. Unless Xavier thought to belittle him by implying he was still a callow youth incapable of defending himself?

"We have a few different ways to measure adulthood," Xavier said casually. "At sixteen years old, you are allowed to drive your own vehicles; that's generally considered an important milestone. At eighteen you are eligible to join the army. And at twenty-one, you can legally drink alcohol. Though most people don't actually wait that long."

That startled a laugh out of Loki, short-circuiting the building resentment. "So at this mark of eighteen years your people can go off to war, but cannot yet drink in the company of men? Truly, Midgardians have strange priorities," he mused.

Xavier chuckled in rueful agreement. "Twenty-one serves as the marker for a few other things, as well. At eighteen you can vote, but you can't hold political office until twenty-one. I suppose it's only fair, since it would be cruel to ask anyone to sit through endless Senatorial hearings without a promise of a stiff drink at the end."

Loki's smile faded slightly as contemplation of Midgard's strange customs led inevitably to a comparison with home -Asgard, not home, how easily his treacherous thoughts betrayed that word. There were some similarities, he supposed. On Asgard a boy became a man when he had achieved his first great feat of strength, not at any arbitrary pre-determined date. But long tradition held that no Aesir could serve on the Althing, nor rule as a lord, until he had completed his second century of life.

It had been that two hundredth birthday that Thor had recently passed, and the coronation had been set to mark the occasion, since Odin could not have passed the crown to him before then. Loki, of course, still had decades to go before he reached that all-important mark; technically, he'd been too young yet to take the throne. Yet another way that his own brief, disastrous kingship had broken all bounds of propriety and outraged the sensibilities of Asgard. If there had been anyone else who could have taken the throne during that interregnum, anyone at all, Loki knew they would have passed him over. Again.

Not that Odin would have ever allowed a Jotun to sit upon Hliðskjálf, no matter how many centuries had passed him by. Loki swallowed black gall, and forced his attention back to the matter at hand, gratefully seizing on any excuse to escape his own thoughts. "I suppose by your standards, then, I would be perhaps nineteen or twenty of your own years."

The words fell casually from his lips, but the silence that followed them was so sudden that a coin dropping would have been loud as a thunderbolt. Seized with a sudden uneasy suspicion, Loki glanced around at the faces of his captors, trying to pin down the sudden change of attitude. "Why? What does it matter?" he demanded, bristling defensively.

"Nothing you need to worry about, Loki," Xavier said, and although his expression was free of any overt humor, Loki was absolutely convinced that somehow, the little mortal was laughing at him.

"Let's talk about Thor," Xavier suggested, later that afternoon.

And Loki had known that this question was coming, because it was always about Thor in the end. Everyone wanted to know about Thor, to talk about Thor, to be with Thor and pay attention to Thor - he, Loki, was only ever an afterthought, a stepping-stone to the son of Odin who was real, only ever considered as an annex to his arrogant stupid (golden) thickheaded musclebrained (perfect) fool of a brother -

No one looked at Loki and saw Loki, no one. Not even this spæmaðr whose sight was so keen, whose wits were so dangerous, who fought battles of the mind with powers of magic like him. Loki had thought maybe - Loki had hoped maybe - but no, never, never. Xavier hadn't even met Thor yet and already he liked him better, he didn't care about Loki, why would anyone care about Loki when they could care about Thor instead, why why why why why -

"Let's not," Loki forced out through clenched teeth, careful to enunciate his words through the storming howl of pain-rage-love-hate-guilt-envy-shame in his mind.

It mattered not what he said. He would be ignored, he was always ignored. Hold your tongue. Know your place. No one cared what he thought or felt. No one.

"All right," Xavier said, quietly.

And he didn't ask about Thor again.

~to be continued...