Title: A Villain State of Mind
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: None this chapter.
Timeframe: Set post-Avengers.
Author's Notes: We're back to Charles' POV here, and the next few chapters also focus somewhat more on Charles' character than Loki's. Just a refresher, this version of the Charles Xavier character comes from the "First Class" movie-verse, wherein Mystique and Charles were foster siblings.
Despite his lingering doubts, the scene in Loki's cell the previous day did cause Fury to unbend a little bit. Perhaps he was starting to wonder, against his will, whether Loki's guilt was as unassailable as they had first assumed (but more likely because Charles had so definitively demonstrated his ability to keep Loki under control if the alien made a break for it.) Either way, Fury at last consented to unchain Loki's hands during their interviews.
He felt Loki's sheer delight as the heavy manacles were removed, rubbing at his wrists with his hands and testing his new range of motion - but when Loki raised his gaze to meet Charles', his expression smoothed back into blank wariness. Loki did not clearly remember the incident of the night before - his memories of the period just before unconsciousness were a vague blur - but it was clear that on some level he remembered Charles hurting him.
Charles could still see the mental blocks in his mind - or at least, he could see where they were not, unnatural patches of blankness bound to his psyche like white stitching against white leather. Charles had, in the course of his work with mutants and non-mutants alike, occasionally been compelled to put mental blocks over certain abilities or memories - but never anything quite like this. It revolted him, in a way that would be almost impossible to explain to a non-telepath, to see those incisions and stitches upon a living mind.
Loki was prevented from thinking clearly about anything connected with a certain subject, with an inexorable, almost surgical precision. There was a chill, remote quality about the work that disturbed Charles deeply. Whoever had done this to him had been no amateur in manipulations of the mind, that was for certain - and yet the faint traces of the work's author had an alien, almost mechanical feel to them. That he (or she) was not human was a given. That they might not even be alive in a way that humans could understand seemed all too real, and disturbing, a possibility.
Charles' mistake the night before was to try to pry the blocks loose from Loki's mind with sheer force, accepting some minor discomfort and disorientation on Loki's part as a momentary inconvenience that would surely be outweighed by the relief of being free. But that had failed.
A living mind was a vital thing, always shifting and growing. In the same way skin could heal back over wires that had cut deep enough, Loki's thoughts and memories had rearranged themselves around the blockage in his mind. Already they were becoming embedded in his psyche, forming the foundation of how he viewed the world. He'd built upon them all new disarrays of hurt and resentment and the relentless frustrated hunger for vengeance for an injury he did not even remember.
The unknown puppetmaster had placed Loki in the role of conqueror and destroyer, and Loki had rebuilt his shattered sense of self around that role. Before he could remove the mental blocks, Charles would need to pick apart the convoluted mesh of thoughts and compulsions and grudges that formed his new identity. If he could find a way to bring Loki out of this villainous state of mind he'd mired himself in, then the rest would follow easily.
But the first step - and, inevitably, the hardest - would be to gain Loki's trust. He could do nothing without that, not without Loki fighting him at every turn. Loki was a bristling, defensive mass of paranoia and neuroses, snapping at any hand that extended near to him. But Charles was just as determined… and more experienced. And patient.
One step at a time.
"How bold of you, to let loose my hands in such tiny, confined quarters," Loki said softly, settling those hands crossed at the wrist on the table before him. His eyes bored into Charles, wary and calculating. "I might go mad again and lash out like a beast. I might strike you, kill you with a blow to your fragile neck before anyone could get near enough to stop me."
"I don't think that will happen," Charles said truthfully. Loki in his right mind would do no such thing, and Charles didn't intend to do anything that would provoke another irrational episode. He recognized the symptoms now, and would avoid them. He wouldn't give up at removing the blocks from Loki's mind - not by any means - but he'd learned from his mistakes. He'd have to find a more subtle approach.
"And what if it did?" Loki said, and his voice was carefully and deliberately pitched to reach the microphones. There is no trust in this house, his thoughts flickered, forming and dissolving almost too rapidly for Charles to catch. Separations - differences - schisms - conflicts of loyalty, if I could find those cracks and work at them - elephants, elephants, elephants…
Whatever he'd been plotting derailed into a stream of colorful nonsense. Charles considered letting Loki know, in the interests of transparency, that he was really only wasting mental energy in such a pursuit. Charles was quite capable of reading beyond the surface level of a mind at any given time; a thought did not have to be fully formed and verbalized for him to see it and comprehend the meaning behind it. He was as aware of what Loki was deliberately not letting himself think as Loki himself.
On the other hand, whatever Loki's intentions in deliberately screening his thoughts this way, the ultimate effect was that he was slowly breaking himself out of the circular habits of angry, destructive thought that had grown to dominate his mental schema. That was an outcome Charles meant to encourage whenever possible, so he made a point of not calling Loki out when his mental soundtrack swerved towards and then away from an unpleasant or malicious place.
Loki continued. "Would Director Fury even try to stop me, I wonder? Or would he hold back his response just long enough for the deed to be done? How convenient it would be for him, don't you think, if his two enemies struck out at each other, eliminating themselves with no effort needed from him. Tell me, Professor; do you think the humans would come to your aid? Or would they stand back and allow me to carry out your murder for them?"
As far as spreading dissension went, it wasn't a bad effort, Charles decided. Even if he could read Loki's intentions (and the relentless projections of his own doubts onto others - of course Loki did not trust them, of course Loki would prefer it if his adversaries fought each other,) Fury could not. But he refused to rise to Loki's bait, to treat his suggestions as though they had any credibility. Instead, he permitted a small smile to slip onto his face and said, carefully and evenly, "A better question, Loki, is whether I would allow such a thing."
Loki looked away, discomforted.
"So tell me," Loki said, "more about those humans like yourself."
"You mean mutants?" Charles clarified, intrigued by the question. It was the first time Loki had taken the lead in any of their conversations, and the first time he'd expressed open interest in anything about Earth.
"Yes, yes." Loki waved one dismissive hand. "Whatever you choose to call yourselves. From the perspective of gods, of course, there is very little to choose between one mortal and another, but it seems to mean so much to you."
His nonchalant attitude belied the threads of anxiety slipping beneath his thoughts. Unexpected masteries - the spæmaðr can not only hear secrets but induce paralysis, inflict pain, warp perceptions - what else? I must find out. I am blindfold in this battle. I must learn more, find his weaknesses, find an angle.
"You speak of mutants as though they are distinct from other mortals," Loki continued. "How so?"
"Genetically speaking, they are," Charles answered. "Although the expression in each individual is unique, all mutants - what we call Homo superior, as opposed to Homo sapiens which is the proper name for non-mutant humans - share a modification on their DNA which we call the X-gene. The X-gene first appeared in what appeared to be spontaneous -"
Although Loki kept his expression attentive and serious, Charles caught a flash of boredom as his attention began to wander, and cut himself off with a smile and a headshake. "You'll have to excuse my pontification," he said. "This is my life's work, you know, so I do tend to ramble on if given an opportunity. I'm sure that given the proper background, you'd have no problem understanding the whole dissertation, but I wouldn't want to bore you."
"Not at all," Loki lied, and Charles let the polite fiction pass. "So you are saying that these - Homo superior - are an entirely separate species, then?"
"For a specific value of the word 'species,' yes," Charles said evenly. "Though most mutants so far have been born to normal human parents, and non-mutants can still have children with mutants. So the variation between the species is not too great."Yet, he thought.
Loki waved this aside. "Most of the races of the Nine Realms can breed together," he said dismissively, "though not all with equal results, to be sure. I am more interested in learning more about these abilities that you say mutants have."
Fear, Charles caught a little of that, if they are all so potent as you. Ambition, if I could build another army of these mutant mortals, what are their strengths? Wariness, if I must fight them someday, what are their weaknesses? But also, beyond these thoughts, a bright spark of plain curiosity. That there was something in the universe so new, so fascinating, that yet he knew nothing of - unbearable.
"There is a great deal of individual variation," Charles said to that spark of scholarly fascination. "Some enhanced abilities seem to be common - strength greater than the average human being, for instance, or faster healing. Many mutants have some kind or another of direct external energetic manipulation, whether of light, or sound, or kinetic force - how it's expressed seems to depend largely upon the individual's formative experiences. Some talents are more powerful than others, a few especially gifted individuals have more than one talent at once - but that's rare."
Sparks of godhood, Loki thought. Each individual has only one, like a single shattered fragment of a great spell, and yet if all combined together they might equal the power of a warrior of Asgard.
That was certainly a perspective that Charles didn't hear often, and he couldn't stop a faint smile at the sheer hubris evident in Loki's mindset. "Some of my most capable students have formed a team, what you might call a troubleshooting squad," he added blandly. "With their powers combined, they are quite formidable."
He expected Loki to bristle at the challenge, pull up the pride of his warrior culture in response, but to his surprise Loki didn't take the bait. Instead he leaned forward, his eyes intent. "They are sworn to your banner, this battalion of heroes?" he asked. "Do the mutants have their own country, then? Are you their king?"
Powerful and wise, like Odin-king, Loki thought. Yet also - gentle. Kind. Not like Odin-king. How does a king manage to wield his authority, when crippled with such weakness? I must know. I must learn how…
"No," Charles said, keeping his voice neutral. "I am not a king. At most I am a custodian, of my own small lands and those mutants who live under my care there. But there are many more mutants who live outside my boundaries, and mine is not the only faction."
Loki pounced on that, his eyes alight. "What different factions of mutants are there, then?" he asked.
Blast - he hadn't meant to admit that. Charles concealed a wince, but answered as conservatively as he could. "I believe that mutants should, for the benefit of humanity as a whole, stay on peaceful terms with the parent race," he said. "That we should, as much as possible, remain unobtrusive and discreet. There are others who disagree."
"I would think that your people would be lords among men, compared to other mortals," Loki commented. Powerful men like flattery, the calculation flickered in his mind, they like to be reminded of the power they hold.
"I'm afraid it's not quite like that," Charles said. "Mutants are feared and hated in most human societies."
"Whatever for?" Loki said in astonishment. "Really, almost any change would have to be an improvement."
Charles shrugged. "Not all mutations are benign, or even neutral. Some are harmful, dangerous to the people around them and even to themselves. There have been - incidents where a mutant newly coming into his or her powers inflicted quite considerable damage to their surroundings. Most were accidental, but a few - could not be said to be accidents."
Loki could believe it. Loki did believe it, having come into similar powers - though more through study than through natural causes - during his own tumultuous adolescence. The temptation to use his newly discovered powers to revenge himself on his childhood tormentors had been too much to resist, even if Loki had ever had much of a history of great self-restraint. The All-father had quickly found out what he was doing and put a stop to it, more was the pity, but his family had still been required to pay a substantial wergild in recompense. It had been worth it.
"I see you understand," Xavier said.
Loki laughed scornfully. "Are you mortals really so pathetic, so tiny?" he asked incredulously. "That you would spurn the most powerful among you, turn those who should be your greatest allies into enemies?"
"I'm afraid so," Charles said, and leveled a shrewd gaze on Loki. "But then, perhaps we aren't the only ones. Are the Aesir really so different?"
Loki jerked and flushed; Charles knew he'd hit home. "That is not the same," he managed, feeling illogically compelled to defend his homeland and people. "Asgard upholds strength above all other virtues. It is weakness that is despised."
"Weakness, or strength which comes in unfamiliar guises?" Charles replied. "Humans are much the same. Mankind has always feared change, and hated that which was different.
"There is another group of mutants - led by Erik Lensherr, who calls himself Magneto - which believes, not dissimilarly to you, that mutants are superior," Charles said, as matter-of-fact as if he were discussing the weather. The earpiece he was wearing gave an unhappy buzz, but Charles ignored it this time. "That Homo superior should rightly rule over normal humans, and seeks to lead his mutants to a victory over them."
"Professor," Fury's tinny voice came over the headset. He normally didn't interrupt during Charles' sessions with Loki; he'd warned Fury to avoid talking on that channel as much as possible, since it was impossible to reduce the volume enough to keep Loki from overhearing it too. "Can I ask what you're thinking giving information on radical mutant factions to the supervillain who just tried to take over the Earth? Last thing we want to do is give him inspiration."
Charles pressed his lips together and shot back telepathically, This is all publically available information. If he were free and looking to resume his activities, he could find this out in ten minutes of research. Hiding or lying information from him won't accomplish anything, nor will acting like Loki taking over the Earth is still a possibility.
Loki gave him a bland, innocent smile. He had, of course, heard every word that Fury had spoken over the channel. "He sounds like quite an inspirational figure, this Erik Lensherr," he said in a bright tone. "Perhaps I should look him up, once I retire from your kind hospitality."
Charles snorted and shook his head. "I can assure you, it would be a waste of both your time," he said dryly. "I once knew Erik quite well. To be quite honest, he's more than a bit of a racist; he would never ally himself with non-mutant humans, let alone an alien from another race entirely. In his own way he's a man of very strict principle, and he would never join forces with someone who did not seek to advance the mutant cause."
He was diverted to brood for a few moments on Erik, well aware of the irony of his own airy assurance as to Magneto's motives and methods. How could he claim to speak with any authority over what Erik would and wouldn't do in pursuit of his cause, when he'd lost any influence or restraint over the other man years ago?
It still hurt even after all this time, the way he'd failed with Erik. The more so because for all Charles had turned his thoughts a thousand times over each moment, each act, each link in the chain of tragedy… he still couldn't see any other way that it could have ended. Charles and Erik had shared the dream of a new world for mutants; how could he fault Erik for seeking that still? He and Erik were so alike, and yet - in the most critical of ways - so alien to each other. Erik was so very, very convinced of the rightness of his cause, the justness of his methods. There was no way to dissuade him from his path, not without him becoming a wholly different man. And he had been a good man, Charles had believed - believed it still. How could such a good man have committed such terrible evil?
This time was different, Charles told himself firmly. This was different. Loki was not Erik, pure and ruthless in his quest for righteousness. Loki was just confused, twisted and hurt in his mind, lashing out in reaction to hurts he had received. There was nothing fundamental to Loki that demanded he unleash evil onto the world, only terrible mistakes. He just needed help, and Charles would help him. This time it would be different.
"Why, Professor, you wound me," Loki protested, laying one hand over his heart in a gesture of injured sincerity. "What makes you think I don't have the best interest of mutants in mind? If my stewardship of Midgard had not been so cruelly nipped in the bud, I am sure that I would have had nothing but the highest regard for you and your people. I would have given them the highest stations among warriors, made them the gatekeepers for your realm."
It was an interesting bit of logic-twisting there, Charles noted. Loki wasn't exactly telling a lie; since his conquest of Earth had never actually come about, he could claim any number of hypotheticals as if they would have been fact. He could even, at least for five minutes at a time, convince himself that his claims were completely true.
Not that it really mattered, since Charles wasn't the audience here - Fury was. Loki had by now decided that he could neither deceive nor unnerve Charles, and instead focused all his sallies towards building mistrust between the two camps of his captors. He certainly had Fury nailed to rights, the deep-seated paranoia that pervaded the military man's every action. Whether Charles agreed to Loki's proposition or hotly denied it, the seeds of doubt would be planted.
So he laughed. "Very noble of you, Loki," he said with a chuckle. "But you'll forgive me if I don't intend to trust the intricacies of human-mutant relations with someone who didn't even know mutants existed a few days ago. I will be content with the allies I have, thank you."
Loki sneered at him, slumping down in his chair with his arms crossed over his chest, the very picture of insouciant boredom. "Yes," he drawled. Playing for time while his mind raced, Charles sensed, seeking a new angle of attack. "Such allies you have, when you yourself have admitted them to be enemies of all your own people. So very good of you, Professor, to selflessly put your own safety and freedom on the line for the chance to do their bidding. What reward could they possibly offer you, I wonder, that would make it worth it?"
"I don't really do it for reward," Charles said calmly. For a teacher, getting to see your students bloom and grow was its own reward; it would have to be, in order to put up with all that came along with it. But that was not a sentiment he would expect Loki to understand, yet.
"Tell me, Professor, how do you do it?" Loki asked, leaning forward intently in his chair. "Why do you do it? Why do you continue to aid the humans, after all this time? After all they have done to you and yours, all the struggles and humiliations; why do you allow them to keep you on the shelf, ignored and disregarded, until they have some use for you - only to reverse their course and come to you, saying of course we need you, need you for the skills that only you possess, to clean up this mess of our own devising?
"Why do you, when you know that as soon as your usefulness to them is past you will be thrust once again into the shadows? Why do you help them, why do you not leave them to choke in their own impotence, why do you not return to them sevenfold the same cruelty and indifference that they heap upon you?"
There it was again, Charles reflected; Loki projecting his own issues onto others with furious intensity. And projecting was exactly the word for it: even with his magic blocked, Loki's psychic strength was not inconsiderable. He generated a mental field that extended quite some distance beyond his own body, filled with a crackling silent litany of whatever was going through his head at the time.
Charles wondered if that wasn't the unexpected secret behind Loki's success as a liar, how he got people to believe his lies despite his reputation being widely known. Loki's mental field fed his intended falsehoods into his audience's mind before he even opened his mouth. Most people, lacking Charles' own sensitivity, would not be able to identify the source of the whispering doubts; they would creep in among their own thoughts as though born there naturally, and so when spoken aloud would seem all too plausible. He wondered if all Loki's people had the same ability or if it was unique, a part of his inherent magical abilities - either way, he didn't seem to be consciously aware of it at all.
He also knew perfectly well that he wasn't even the real target of Loki's subtle attack here - it was aimed at the other listeners, hidden behind the microphones and cameras. More of Loki's not-very-subtle campaign to spread dissension and doubts amongst his enemies, and even if Charles knew very well what he was up to, that was no guarantee that Fury did.
And so it was with both his audiences in mind that Charles chose his words very, very carefully when he answered.
"Because they are our family," he said, the idea stunning in its simplicity. "The humans are our kin. Our parents were normal, our grandparents, our aunts and uncles: most of us have sisters and brothers, cousins and friends who are human. Not all of them are estranged, not all of them have turned their backs on us, and so we can never turn our backs on them.
"No matter what else happens between humans and mutants, we will always be bound by ties of blood and kinship. We are the future of the human race, but they are its foundation: as much as it is folly for them to try to destroy their own future, we can never forget that it was they who brought us into this world."
And let that go on record, he thought, let that little clip go into the storage banks and be played and replayed and analyzed by top SHIELD operatives for the next five years. He had said nothing but the truth and the full sincerity of what he believed. If even one person watching that video would listen, then that alone would make this all worth it.
~to be continued...