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

"Earlier, you said something about the conversions between Midgard and Asgard time being difficult," Xavier said. "Can you tell me more about that?"

Loki frowned, rewinding the last hour's worth of conversation. "I am quite certain that I said nothing of the sort," he said.

Xavier smiled. "Thought it very loudly, then," he said. "But please, I'm curious. What do you mean?"

Once again Loki was astounded by how little these humans understood about the universe and their own place in it.

"I was a geneticist before I became a teacher," Xavier reminded him. "If you want to talk comparative astrophysics, look up Jane Foster."

Loki rolled his eyes, leaned back in the hard metal chair and spread his hands as far apart as the chains would allow. "Time does not flow at the same speed across all the realms," he said. "It is slightly different on each of the realms, but the difference of Midgard to the others is the greatest. It is why your realm is commonly known as the abode of mortals, although many of the other races of the Nine do not live forever. But the much greater rate of years here on Midgard means that you humans seem to age and die so much the faster."

"How much faster?" Xavier wanted to know.

"It is not exact," Loki felt obligated to warn him. "The sages tend to say that a mortal's life to that of an Aesir is that of nine times nine - nine times as many years in our lives, which pass nine times faster on Midgard. But that is really just a literary convention. On average, it's closer like seven and a half."

Xavier looked taken aback. "So you're saying that for every year on Asgard, almost ten years pass here on Earth?" he asked.

"More or less," Loki said. "It is why Fath - Odin always forbade us, as children, against getting too attached to any mortals. They would only die and leave us heartbroken. Strange to think that he should reverse his ruling, and actually encourage Thor to befriend humans during his banishment here." His mouth twisted bleakly, as comparisons rose up unbidden. "But then, the rules somehow managed never to apply to Thor."

Xavier was quiet for a moment, then prompted him, "You said that it was an average. Why an average?"

"It is not constant," Loki said, relieved to be broken out of his bitterness to talk about more abstract matters. "Sometimes the difference is greater, sometimes it is less. It goes in cycles, and cycles within cycles, periods of time when our two realms are brought closer together and the time becomes more synchronized.

"When the timeframes of two realms coincide, there tends to be war." A small smile played about his lips as he remembered his history. The last great synchronization had occurred a hundred and fifty years ago, Asgard time, or over a millennium in Midgard time. The Jotnar had taken advantage of the nearly-synchronous timeframes to launch an assault on Midgard, and Asgard had found itself - quite unusually - able to respond in a timely manner. The war between gods and monsters that had raged back and forth over primitive Midgard had been enough to nearly split the fragile world apart.

Loki had, of course, been just a baby then.

"The rest of the time, when the streams move further apart, they tend to just ignore you for the most part," Loki said. "You should be just as grateful, really."

"And what is it at now?" Charles asked with interest. "Moving closer together, or further apart? Should we expect war, or indifference?"

"Indifference." Loki grimaced, trying not to feel the aching twinge in his chest at the thought of how he'd been abandoned here. The gulf between the two realms was at their widest, now. Loki knew it - he'd been counting on it, counting on Asgard being too slow to mount a response to his doings here. He'd expected to have days, maybe weeks to mount his campaign and assert his control over Earth before Odin could send anyone to stop him.

Instead, Thor had landed on the roof of his plane after barely a single day. He must have departed Asgard within the hour of Loki being spotted on Earth, and how had he convinced Odin to commit so much power so fast? Loki could only wish that it was anything to do with himself, not the Tessaract or the safety of these godsbedamned mortal pets, that had fueled his urgency.

What was keeping Thor now, Loki could only imagine. He'd been stuck stewing here in his own juices for three Midgardian weeks now, with nary a sound from his brother. No doubt, Loki thought bitterly, Thor would be quick enough to put in an appearance if he were somehow to escape from his bonds and rampage among the humans again, if he were to try to execute any of his so carefully laid plans - elephants. Now was not the time to think of plans. Think instead of elephants.

No doubt Thor and Odin found it convenient to simply forget about him - out of sight, out of mind. No doubt there were many important affairs of Asgard to occupy Odin's mind; no doubt Thor found more satisfaction in roistering with his sycophants than to spare a thought for Loki. If he were to be dragged home in chains it would be such an embarrassment to Odin, a scandal to all of Asgard. No doubt it was easier to let him rot here, behind the sterile metal walls and stifling magical wards the mortals had built to contain him, to wither away under the flood of Midgardian years while they basked in the golden youth and glory of Asgard without him.

No doubt.

The mortal looked at him sorrowfully, but thankfully said nothing, no insipid words to try to convince him otherwise. And that, Loki thought, was as good as a confirmation.

"Here," Xavier said, the next time he came to the cell. "Read this."

Loki accepted the sheet of paper the spæmaðr handed across to him with wary gingerness, as though it were coated with poison or bespelled to burst into flame at his touch. It did neither, and Loki's eyes automatically began to scan down the printed lines - then did a double-take when he recognized it. This is my letter? he thought, gaze rising to meet Xavier's with surprise. The one he'd written weeks ago, back when his increasing need had finally broken down his pride enough to deign to communicate with his captors.

It had been all for naught, of course; these savages were ignorant of even the Midgardian languages Loki had learned years ago, and Loki did not know their modern script. Not that Fury and his scurrying minions would have been likely to give him anything useful, anyway, but just the act of communicating with another living being would have made so much of a difference.

"Yes, it is." Xavier pulled out a notebook of his own, uncapped a pen and poised his fingers over a blank page. "Please, read it."

"Aloud?" Loki's eyebrows raised, and he had to exert effort not to flush with anticipated humiliation. At the time of writing it, he'd been... extremely frustrated, and some of the words that had been transcribed onto the page did not bear repeating. Not that he didn't stand by his own words, of course - but his captors would not likely be pleased by some of the descriptions he'd awarded them in his rant.

Xavier's own eyebrow went up in response. "To yourself, if you would prefer," he said, gesturing with his pen.

Somewhat suspiciously, Loki complied; as he scanned down the page, Xavier's pen went flying over his own. At the end of it, Xavier set the stylus aside and ripped the page out of his book, handing it across the table. "Here. You'll want this."

"What is it?" Loki accepted the page, even more warily than before. He could not for the life of him see what this was supposed to accomplish, and the not-knowing made him tense and defensive.

"An English translation of your own letter," Xavier explained. "From the paper to your thoughts to mine back to paper. It won't be exact, but with the two pieces of text for comparison, you should be able to get a start on learning the language."

Loki blinked, stunned with the implications of the scraps of parchment in his hand. (Meanwhile, the scholar's part of his brain went into overdrive at the thought of what a boon this could provide to the archive section of Asgard's library - instant translation of ancient languages! No, it would only work if a native speaker of that language were at hand...)

"I..." He cleared his throat. He wanted to say thank you, but if he admitted his gratitude, then what service or servitude might the spæmaðr demand in return? No favors were ever granted for free, not for Loki. "I -" He stiffened, and retreated into his chair as much as the chains still on his hands would allow. "What makes you think I have any interest in learning your primitive tongue?" he managed to say at last.

Xavier shrugged, as if it mattered not to him. "You don't have to, if you don't wish to," he said. "But you can keep the translation anyway. For the novelty of it."

Loki gave Xavier a suspicious glower, but his hands crept out and curled around the papers all the same.

"You held the throne of Asgard for a time, didn't you? While Thor was banished?"

Loki glanced uneasily at Xavier and then away, as though he could hide his thoughts if only he avoided eye contact. The little mortal looked so small and harmless sitting there, housed in that metal conveyance that compensated for his frailty. That was an illusion, though; the truth could be seen if you only looked at his eyes. Power in those eyes, dangerous, deadly.

"Yes," Loki said. There was no reason to hide it. He had nothing to hide. He was the rightful king - rightful - rightful! "Odin slept. The succession fell to me." Why not me? Odin said, said I was born to be king. But no one wanted me, they only wanted Thor. To push me out of the way so that Thor could stand in glory once more. But he was banished, Odin banished him. Only a king could lift that sentence and why should I? What did I owe it to him, to any of them, to let Thor come back and push me aside so that he could finish leading the realm into ruin?

"And so you became king," Xavier mused. "Did it make you happy?"

No. It hadn't. Loki kept his mouth shut, lips pressed thin together, but the truth of it screamed across his mind. No. From the moment his hand had closed on Gungnir's haft to the moment he opened his fingers and let go, he had not known a moment's peace.

He who sat on Hliðskjálf ruled over not only Asgard, but by extension held guardianship over all the Nine Realms. Asgard's King had no equal, no check upon his power; he had absolute power, indisputable authority. So it had been for thousands of years, yet it had taken Loki only two days to realize that absolute power existed only on sufferance of those who carried out the orders. There had been no one upon whom he could rely, in whom he could confide. Only his mother, and she one of those who had betrayed him.

His kingship was a sham, a hollow mockery. His father's advisors had treated him with barely veiled contempt; his brother's friends with open hostility. No sooner had commands left his lips than they had run to disobey them. Even Heimdall, the great golden guardian whose loyalty was (supposed to be) beyond question, had not hesitated to betray him. When he returned to Asgard he would be revenged on them for such slights - he would finish what the Destroyer had barely begun, rend them limb from limb and burn them to ashes - elephants, elephants, he thought frantically, trying to rein his murderous emotions back before Xavier sensed them.

He'd sought to find a way to turn the people's favor towards them, to find a way to win their obedience if not their respect. It was not an uncommon occurrence in the history of Asgard that a new, untried king would break in his reign with a bloody war or two, to prove his strength and win the acclaim of his warrior people. With Thor's idiocy having brought war with Jotunheim to their doorstep, it was too good a possibility for him to pass up. With the Allfather laid low and Asgard's mightiest warrior cast out, it was a surety that Jotunheim would try to take advantage; it was a threat to the safety of the realm that could not be ignored.

Yet Loki knew that he did not dare to lead Asgard's army against Jotunheim. He feared to turn his back to them, shied away from issuing orders that he knew would not be obeyed. Even if he could compel them to follow him (why should he have to compel, persuade, enforce loyalty? why should it not be given him unasked, as it was always given thor? why why why was thor worthy of loyalty respect admiration love and he was not?) he would be expected to lead the charge. It was inevitable that in such a melee, he would once again be touched - and exposed for the truth of what he was.

Even if he avoided open war with the Jotun, was only a matter of time until he was found out. Already Thor's friends looked at him with such suspicion, such distrust. They had been with him in Jotunheim, one of them might have seen, seen the frost giant grab his arm and how he yet remained unhurt. They would turn on him - they would kill him the instant they realized, jotunn imposter cuckoo traitor monster...

No one would speak for him, no one would defend him. Thor was gone and Odin slept; there was no protection on which he could call. The truth of being king, Loki realized, was that a king had no friends and no father. He was absolutely alone.

Seated in the great golden throne, with the staff of absolute power in his hand, Loki had felt nothing more beside a hunted beast; fleeing from one cover to the next while the baying of hounds sounded all around him.

"It doesn't sound like it was a terribly fulfilling experience for you," Xavier said dryly, and Loki glared at him. He might be defeated, bound and stripped of his freedom and his power, but he would not be made a mock of by this crippled little mortal. He, Loki Mischief-Prince, was the one who inflicted such needling on the warriors of Asgard, puncturing their self-important egos with teasing barbs.

The parallel was obvious and not one he wished to think on too deeply.

"So why did you do it?" Xavier prompted him.

"Why what?" Loki snapped, mind still on Asgard, still caught in the vivid throes of those humiliating memories. Why had he become king? What choice had he? He'd never wanted the throne but he'd needed, needed the chance to prove himself. He knew the moment the servant had held out the spear towards him that such an opportunity would never come again, whether by chance or manipulation. Why had he sent the Destroyer? What else was he to have done, surrounded by traitors and oathbreakers who sought to ruin everything, everything -

"Why did you want to be king on Midgard?" Xavier asked, and his voice was strangely soft, strangely gentle. Almost compassionate, as though he were discussing some abstract, tragic drama and not the attempted conquest of his ownhome.

"Because I -" Loki stopped abruptly, the words cutting off as though by a falling blade. "Because -"

The second attempt went no better than the first. The words, he'd lost the words,they slithered and vanished out of his sight for all he tried to clutch at them. When he tried to pursue them it was though he'd run headfirst into a stone wall, leaving him stunned and stupid with the impact. He stared across at Xavier, helplessly mute.

"As much as you were despised and distrusted on Asgard, you had to know it would be ten times worse on a conquered realm," Xavier continued relentlessly. "You had to know that the humans would not submit to you tamely, or else you would not have made such a show of force on your first arrival. Earth would never surrender to you, Loki, never. You had to realize that on some level. Why, then?"

There is no throne, the mouthy little craftsman had told him. He'd known it, even then he'd known it to be true, but by then it was too late.

Why, indeed?

Still he was speechless, bereft of words and answers, and now Loki was beginning to panic. Questions, they had questions for him and he could not answer, they would surely hurt him now, bring pain pain pain until they squeezed the answers from him in between his screams. But he could not answer, it wasn't that he refused, he could not,and there would be no respite for him no escape no way out -

"I nuh," Loki stuttered, his tongue feeling numb, his words slush-mouthed. "I d-d-duh -"

He had to say something, any lie, any words at all. The panic mounted, both from fear of what the humans might do to him if he did not and the unexpected terror of finding such a trap within his own mind. He forced his voice to work, pushed out the first and only words that would come to him. "You will kneel because you must, you are - you are lesser, you are nothing, you are - you are - made to be ruled to be bound to bow and to - scream in lightless squalor where all is lost in emptiness, to serve - to serve -"

He hardly even knew what he was saying, where these tumbled rush of words came from, but once he started he could not stop. They came boiling out of him from some fathomless place marked round with jagged crimson edges. "You exist only to die to give up your worthless lives in flyspeck glory at my coming, the wake of my passing crimson with the blood of allies and enemies alike, bones paving the path to the citadel under the howling sky where she-"

"Do you hear yourself, Loki?" Xavier cut across the rush of words, his voice low and clear - not heard through his voice, clogged with rushing white noise, but in his mind. "These are not your words, Loki. This is not you. Who speaks through you now? Who uses you as his avatar?"

He could feel it now. After that first day - when the spæmaðr's magic had lain heavy as a suffocating blanket across his seidh, trapping him here, exposed as a butterfly in a pin - he had barely noticed Xavier's touch on his mind at all. Merely a tickle, a light brush against his thoughts that reminded him constantly to be wary. Now he could feel the mortal's power inside his head, pressing and pulling at something that ached. His jaw felt stiff, his tongue numb and leaden. "What... are you doing... to me?" he choked out, each word felt as though cut with his teeth from a wooden plank.

"I'm trying to helpyou, Loki. Work with me, let me help you."

That was a lie. That was a filthy lie and Loki knew it, he should know, he was the expert on lies. No one tried to helped him, no one ever had, and no one would now that he was disgraced outcast defeated criminal despised failed failedfailedFAILED-

A scream burst from his throat, strangled and animal. No words, he had no words, they had all been sealed away inside him, leaving him mute and silent and powerless to defend himself. What had he ever had to battle with, to bargain with, but his mind and his words? Without them, what would be left of him? Just a mute, hollow shell, to be stuffed and dressed up and paraded before a cruel audience in a dumb-show -

He would not submit to that, he would not, he would not. Loki threw himself into mindless struggle, forgetting the cautious reserve told him it was no good, it was useless, there were too many enemies out there and they were too strong. His hands were chained, pinned to the floor. Pinned, like a hunted animal on a spear. He could neither reach nor escape his tormentors, he couldn't get out, he couldn't speak and couldn't fight and couldn't flee and -

The pressure in his head grew to be too much, feeling like it would split him behind his eyes. Loki threw himself forward, slamming his forehead against the unyielding metal of the table in a desperate attempt to relieve it. There was a screeching noise as the metal bent and warped, lost in the static that spread across his skull in a strange white silence. Somewhere very distantly he could hear shouting, but that meant nothing to him; at least the cacophony inside his head was silenced.

"I'm sorry," he heard Xavier saying, as if from a great distance. "I pushed too hard, too soon. We'll try again another time, when you're ready."

Now, the mortal's voice whispered in his mind, clear as if spoken directly in his ear. The command was heavy with calm, silence, a promise of freedom from fear and relief from pain. Sleep.

Loki slept.

The demigod - or Frost giant, whatever the hell he was - dropped so quickly it was almost insulting. One moment he'd been pitching some kind of fit, throwing his weight against the chains like he'd been possessed - even the titanium-adamantium alloy, Fury's pride and joy when it came to state-of-the-art technical developments, started to bend and twist under the strain. Fury barely had time to hit the big red panic button on his console and was halfway through a tersely-worded alarm that would send a dozen extra guards into the cell… for all the good they'd be able to do, anyway. The most he could hope for was to slow their prisoner down while Fury used his emergency channels to call some of his more high-powered allies into the fray, and then -

Xavier hadn't even moved throughout their prisoner's explosion of fury. One moment Loki had been jerking around like a mad beast, and the next his eyes rolled back in his head and he slumped bonelessly over the table, his breathing evening out into the rhythms of deep sleep. The telepath hadn't even needed to touch him.

No wonder Xavier hadn't been particularly worried about Fury stationing guards in the cell, or out in the hallway. Fury was somewhere between impressed, and mildly outraged at how easyit had been. Couldn't Xavier have seen fit to be on hand the first time their would-be mad dictator had tried to take over the Earth?

However it had happened, Loki was unconscious now, and at Xavier's request Fury had his men carefully unhook him from the chair and take him back to his even-more-heavily-reinforced sleeping cell. It was clear there'd be no more interviews today, and Fury stood beside Xavier in the corridor and watched as his men carried Loki past them on a stretcher.

New bruises bloomed on that pale skin, on his wrists where the manacles had bitten him, on his forehead where he'd slammed it into the table hard enough to crumple the reinforced steel. Fury eyed them with a deep doubt; he knew better than most how hard Loki was to damage, how hard it was to put even such marks as those on him. How desperate must Loki have been, to struggle so hard and so fruitlessly? They hadn't, as far as Fury could tell, been talking about anything that should have been so painful or difficult a topic. What could possibly have set him off so violently?

"Are you starting to believe me now?" Xavier remarked from his elbow. "That someone has been tampering with his mind, and left ligatures on his memories that he cannot break."

Instead of answering him, Fury deliberately turned his back to Xavier in order to watch the retreating progress of their prisoner down the corridor and away. He was starting to, a little bit. But lifelong habits of suspicion could not be so easily erased. "He could be faking it," he said distantly; not because he hoped to persuade Xavier to change his mind or even because he fully believed it himself, but because he knew Xavier would sense his doubts whether he spoke them aloud or not.

It still made him feel better, to imagine that he had some control over what Xavier heard from him.

"He is not," Xavier assured him.

"I have only your word that what you say is going on with him is the truth," Fury said, keeping his voice careful and controlled. It was a logical objection to make, he thought, a perfectly reasonable doubt.

Somewhat to his relief, Xavier chuckled, apparently not offended by his suspicions. "That's true," he said. "And I'm afraid there aren't any other proofs I could offer; at least, none that you could accept. But you decided to trust me when you first brought me here, Director; it hardly makes sense for you to change your mind now."

Fury nodded wordlessly, acknowledging the truth of Xavier's words even if he couldn't fully accept them. Couldn't put the careful doubts fully from his mind.

"If it helps," Xavier offered him in a bright tone, sounding detached and clinical and almost amused by the whole situation. "Think of it this way: if for some reason I wanted you to trust me, Director Fury, you would."

And with that (un)reassuring thought, Xavier left him standing there in the corridor, staring after the unconscious form of the stricken god.

~to be continued...