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

Author's Notes: So... long-term readers of my fic may be aware that I am usually very emotionally disconnected from my fics. I may think that this or that thing would be happy or sad, on an intellectual level, but I can't really know what sort of emotions it will actually invoke. Not until someone reads it and gives me their reactions do I know whether I've actually achieved the emotional impact I was going for.

So with that disclaimer... I think that this chapter has a lot of feels...?

Fury wasn't an idiot; he knew what Xavier was trying to do.

It had been easy to hate Loki when they'd first brought him in, a spitting ball of defiance and hate. When all he ever had to say was cruel taunts and stinging insults, and every conversation was a battle to see who could one-up the other and get the last word; when he'd swaggered around in his fancy costume of leather and polished chrome like some Lord of the Rings set escapee, it was easier to think of him as a caricature, a cartoon villain.

Xavier made it harder and harder not to see him as a person (if not a human being, then certainly the next best thing.) It was deliberate and Fury knew it; all that business about the childhood stories, the favorite foods, the discussions of Loki's father and mother was in aid of making them see Loki as a real person. Someone who had a past and a history and a whole other life before this cell, who sometimes smiled and even laughed in a way that wasn't cruel mockery.

That bombshell about Loki's age had been a low blow. As far as Fury himself was concerned, it didn't change anything; countries all over the world recruited children much younger than nineteen to do their dirty work, and when you were down in the wetwork of a dirty operation you couldn't afford to hold back your hand out of some misplaced notion of chivalry. But it had left its mark all the same, and Fury could see it in the reactions of his men and women, the new way they talked about Loki, walked around him, looked at him.

Fury knew what Xavier was trying to do, but damn if it wasn't working, at least a little bit.

There was a right way and a wrong way to get information, Fury knew. He'd had all the training, was aware of all the arguments; he knew plenty of experts that claimed that torture never worked, the information it produced was inherently unreliable. (As far as Fury was concerned, there was a time and a place when even unreliable information was better than none at all; at least it gave you a lead to work with.) He knew that it was - in theory - much better to form a bond with the subject, gain their trust, until they gradually came to confide in you of their own accord. It was not something Fury himself was particularly good at; that was why he employed Natasha Romanov, among others. He certainly would never have had the stomach - let alone the patience - to sit in the cell with the mass murderer of New York City and chat pleasantly as though they were friends.

But there could be no denying that Xavier's method was getting results. They'd learned more from Loki in the last five days than in the month prior - and more than they'd ever learned from Thor, for that matter, in the entire time they'd known him. Every word was diligently recorded, analyzed, and archived. Once again, Fury wished with frustrated bitterness that he could have someone like Xavier on his team full-time: even without the cheating advantage of his telepathy, Xavier's interrogation skills were first-class.

And what a difference Xavier's presence had effected! Their prisoner had gone from being a disheveled, infuriated, semi-lucid ball of rage and hate to this: lounging casually and at ease in the station chair, hands clasped loosely and unchained on the table between them, volunteering all manner of useful information in response to Fury's questions about Asgard.

Of course, Fury didn't intend to trust Loki's answers as far as he could throw them - Xavier himself still sat in the corner of the room, as quiet and still as though her were just part of the furniture, while Fury and Loki conversed. Still, Fury didn't miss the way Loki's eyes flitted frequently to the mutant in the corner, as if seeking his permission - or reassurance - after every question.

"I need to know," Fury said, laying out his concerns as bluntly and honestly as he could bring himself to do in Loki's presence. "If there's another threat to Earth, Midgard or whatever you call it, what is the likelihood of someone from Asgard stepping in?"

Loki gave an insolent, insouciant shrug. "Let's just say, I wouldn't place a wager on it," he said, and his lips curved up in a blade-thin smile. "And I have been known to bet on some very long odds in my time. You are but a primitive, scrabbling backwater when compared to Asgard. Why in the Nine do you think they would give a damn what happens to this benighted realm?"

False, Xavier's voice whispered softly in the back of Fury's mind. It was still slightly unnerving, but they'd given up trying to find a headset system that Loki couldn't overhear. Midgard is one of the Nine Realms which the king of Asgard is sworn by oath to defend. They have come in force to defend Earth before, and they will do so again if they possibly can.

Fury scowled at Loki, wishing there was something he could do to wipe the smirk off his face. Unfortunately, one of the conditions to him being here, interviewing Loki - and to Xavier volunteering to act as a lie detector - was that Fury was not to call Loki out on his false answers. Xavier had insisted on it.

("I am not insensible to your security concerns, Director," Xavier had told him earlier, when they'd been - arguing was really the only word for it - over this interview. "Ask your questions, and I'll confirm whether his answers are true or false. Either way, you'll get the information you're looking for. But this isn't an open license to harass or belabor him.")

"My agent informed me that Thor Odinson had made an oath to protect this world," Fury said. He didn't miss the way Loki tensed up at the mention of Thor, small lines tightening between his brows despite his attempts to hold onto his attitude of nonchalance. Thor was Loki's sore spot, without a doubt.

"And you believed him?" Loki gave a brittle laugh, swinging to sit up straight in his chair. "I would not have expected such childish naivete from one so worldly as you, director."

"Our research indicates that an Asgardian's word is binding."

"To another Aesir, perhaps." Loki's fingers flicked as though to brush the contention away. "But to a mere mortal, no man of Asgard would ever consider himself bound by such a paltry thing. You are beneath us, and we need not consider ourselves beholden to you."

False, Xavier chimed in silently. Mostly. An Asgardian's word is considered binding if given to a human - there are only a few other races that it's not. Including Frost Giants.

Well, Asgardian-Frost Giant relations were not Fury's problem. Still, despite Xavier's admonition, Fury couldn't resist the opportunity to needle Loki a little bit. "If it's a choice between taking your word on the matter or taking his, Thor Odinson is a lot more credible on Earth right now. You're not exactly our favorite extraterrestrial around here right now."

Loki drew back, his posture closing and his expression growing steadily more hostile. "I never aspired to be."

Fury snorted. "No, really? You could have fooled us - sure seemed like you came looking for praise and attention. Just a tip; generally speaking, we humans prefer people who fight to protect the Earth, instead of to destroy it -"

He'd been trying to get a rise out of Loki, so maybe it shouldn't have surprised him as much as it did when Loki slammed his hands down on the table between them, leaving hand-shaped dents in the surface. His gaze was black with anger as he leveled it across the space between them. "I have done more to protect this benighted world than Thor ever has!" he snarled.

"What?" Fury's attention sharpened on Loki. "What is that supposed to mean?"

Loki didn't respond. He slowly sank back into his chair, and his face grew blank and closed, retreating back into himself. It was a look Fury had seen before, and it inevitably signaled the end of Loki's always-limited cooperation. "We are done here, Director," he rasped.

With a growl, Fury shoved to his feet and took a few short steps to the door of the cell. The hydraulic doors were not, sadly, equipped to slam behind him. Once in the corridor Fury exhaled, pressing his fingers to the bridge of his nose to try to alleviate the headache pounding there. Xavier always urged him not to let Loki get to him like this, but damn the little shit tried his patience.

Speaking of the telepath. I assume that last one was a lie, too? Fury thought, deliberately subvocalizing his thoughts and projecting them as loudly as he could in the way Xavier had suggested he do if he wanted to make himself 'heard.'

For a long moment there was no response, long enough that Fury began to wonder if he'd done it wrong, or if Xavier simply wasn't looking. Just before he gave up waiting, Xavier's response came back, unexpected enough to leave Fury speechless.

Actually, and Xavier's 'voice' was thoughtful, as far as I can tell, that one was true.

After Fury had gone, Loki paced round and round in his cell, his quick nervous steps doing little to dissipate his restless energy. The interview of earlier, and its abrupt truncation, still lingered in his mind and made him uneasy. Why had he said such a thing? He couldn't imagine. He'd long since shaken the childish need to one-up Thor in everything his brother did - shaken the habit many years before it had ever crossed Thor's foolish mind that protecting mortals was a thing he should do. The snapped retort had come from some unconscious place in his brain, and it left him deeply shaken to realize himself so out of control of his own mind.

The numbing mixture of exhausted shock and confused gratitude that had gripped him for days - ever since Charles Xavier first appeared in his cell, swooping in like a Valkyrie to pluck him from the bloody battlefield of his own memories - was finally fading. He was left once more to contemplate his own position, and his future, and what he saw made him uneasy.

He had books, now, lining a small plastic shelf in his sleeping cell. Charles had provided them, and now that he'd grasped the nature of the mortals' alphabet and the tempo of their written syntax his reading vocabulary was increasing exponentially. He was given three meals a day, which he was actually permitted to eat, and no more of the heavy spices that burned painfully on his tongue and in his stomach. Loki had never said a word of complaint - he would not have admitted to such a weakness - but Charles had known anyway. The clothes they gave him, though drab and dull, were clean and sufficient for warmth and modesty. He was allowed to stand and walk and move freely - but only within the confines of these rooms, and only when the spæmaðr was in attendance.

This - this was not right. There ought to have been a dungeon, with chains and rats and dripping water down cold walls that flickered in guttering torchlight. He should have been kept caged like an animal in a pit, trapped in his own filth, given barely bread and water enough to keep his body alive. Loki had not enjoyed the ordeal of his captivity prior to Charles' arrival, and did not exactly wish for it back - but at least when those around him treated him like the despised criminal that he truly was, the world had made sense.

"Are you so soft to all your prisoners?" Loki asked scornfully, coming to the end of his circuit and turning at bay. "Does every condemned criminal get likewise treated to an extended stay at a luxury hostel?"

Charles' eyebrows went up. "If this is your idea of luxury, then the answer is yes," he murmured. "There are standards of basic decency by which all civilized countries abide. But Loki, you aren't a condemned criminal."

Loki rocked back on his heels, surprised by Xavier's assertion. "Am I not?" he challenged.

"No. You haven't had a trial yet, or a sentencing. Until then, you are technically under our custody, but you are not a prisoner."

This was so ludicrous, Loki let out a chuckle. "And what do you call the chains, then? These guards waiting on a hairs-breath for a chance to shoot? The muzzle that the good Director used to silence me?"

"Precautions for our safety," Charles told him, and gave a faint smile. "And so, indirectly, for yours. Loki, you should know by now that we aren't seeking to make you suffer. But until we hear back from Asgard as to what they plan to do with you, your fate is still uncertain, and we cannot let you leave at will."

Loki turned away, scoffing. "You need not wait for a judgment on high that will never come," he said. "Simply name your sentence and execute it, without all this muddling about. You know what I did. All the world knows. You, of all people, know what I am."

"Yes," Charles said; and although the word was an agreement, the tone of his voice made it clear that he drew far different conclusions from that knowledge than Loki did.

"Why are you doing this?" Loki snapped, rounding on Charles as he sat watching from his chair in the corner. "Why do you insist on mollycoddling a prisoner that Asgard hasn't even bothered to disclaim responsibility for? Why would you waste so much of your time and effort on someone so completely beyond all hope of redemption?"

"I wouldn't," Charles replied.

Loki's lips drew back, baring his teeth in the mockery of a smile. "Do you think you can save me, Charles Xavier?" he said mockingly. The very idea left him shaken to the core, deeply touched and just as deeply frightened. "What sentimental foolishness has infected your brain. I can't be saved, don't you understand that yet? I am not some feral beast that you can tame, nor a child to be coddled and corrected. I am a criminal, a villain, and as your Director is so fond of telling me, I left three thousand dead mortals in my wake to prove it. What more must I do to prove that I am serious?"

"You say you deserve punishment because of the things you've done," Charles said, "and you do these things to bring pain on yourself. Can't you see how circular that is? Where does it begin, Loki? Where does it end?"

"It ends when you end me, no sooner or later," Loki said. "There is no other option. I will never be tamed, Professor, I will never be safe."

"So you say with your words," Charles said. "But your heart tells me otherwise. You lack conviction."

Loki gaped at him, stunned by the accidental repetition of the words that foolish doomed mortal had thrown at him on the Helicarrier weeks ago - or was it an accident? You lack conviction. Had he pulled that from Loki's mind, somehow, or had Fury told him? "Why do you mortals keep on saying that?" Loki demanded. "What is that even supposed to mean?"

"It means that even you don't want to live in a world where you succeed," Charles told him brutally. "You seek to conquer, but you don't want to rule. You push people away, but you're terrified of being alone. You want to hurt your brother, but you would never know peace within yourself again if he were dead.

"Your mind and your heart are at war within you. So long as you strive not towards what you desire, but only in mindless rejection of what you resent, a part of you will always be plotting to undermine yourself... and you will always, always fail."

Loki stood, his hands opening and clenching into fists. He controlled his breathing carefully, in through his nose, out through his mouth, because he could not, he could not lose control of himself now. It was true, it had always been true and he knew it, he knew it, he was destined to fail at everything he ever tried, heroism or villainy alike.

"How do you know you would fail doing good?" Charles asked.

"Don't you think I haven't tried?" Loki snapped at him. "I did. I tried so hard to be a hero - I planned it so perfectly -" He'd practiced every detail, worked out every step of his plan. He'd practiced his lines in the mirror in his private chambers until he was sure he could say it without breaking - 'Your death comes at the hands of the son of Odin.'

"In my experience," Charles said wryly, "That sort of heroism isn't the sort of thing you can plan ahead of time. You can't generally arrange for crimes to happen that you can then thwart. It's a little more... spontaneous."

Loki hissed. "If being a hero means never planning for anything, leaving your fate and those that you command to the whims of Fate, then truly I was never cut out to be a hero." He ought to have known, the only true heroes were those who fought with their fists and their heart, relying on their inherent goodness to see their will done. Only the villains were clever and cunning, hiding like cowards behind plots and plans that existed only for the hero to unravel. If a lifetime of tales of wicked sorcerers and brave warriors had taught him anything, it was that there was no praise for those who thought their way to the end of a problem instead of smashing through it. No valor, no honor at all to be found in the clever and crafty ways. He ought to have known that from the start.

And it had all gone wrong anyway, it had all gone wrong. Thor had appeared, and in just a few words smashed all of Loki's carefully plans into ruins. Loki had been doing good, he'd protected Odin and killed Laufey and he was defeating Jotunheim - if Thor had foiled him that ought to make Thor the villain, but why did things never seem to work out that way? Just by appearing, just by being Thor upstaged him, made him the villain.

Enough. "So be it," he said aloud, feeling a bleak sort of satisfaction, a sort of finality in the words. "So be it then. Let all the realms be agreed that I am wicked through and through. If I cannot be a hero then I will be a villain, the greatest foe that Asgard has ever faced. I will become the scourge of all Asgard, of all the realms; I will rend the sky from the earth if that's what it takes -" He choked it off, but the thought continued unbidden: if that's what it takes to make them take me seriously, to respect me, to see me.

"I see you, Loki," Charles said gently.

Loki said nothing, pressed his lips together so tightly they stung, as though he could still feel the bite of bright metal upon them. His traitorous eyes, too, pricked as though with needles, burned as though with coals; he closed them and pressed the palms of his hands against them, grinding the heels against his skull.

"But I have to wonder, Loki," Charles continued after a moment, when Loki said nothing. "Are those really your only choices?"

"What do you mean?" Loki said, and he was proud of himself for how even he made it come out.

"You speak of being a hero, or being a villain, as though those were the only two options available," Charles said. "Are those two things really the only things in your life that you can imagine yourself to be?"

Loki's eyes flew open, staring blindly off into space, rocked and unsteady by Charles' question. He said nothing.

After a long silence, Charles went on. "You know, it's a funny thing," he said. "Working in the academic field, one thing I see happening a lot of with students who never really leave school. They go from high school to college to graduate college, not following any dream or passion, but just because they're afraid to leave the system they know for a wider world which is strange and unfamiliar.

"Don't get me wrong - I love teaching, and I think there's no profession more noble, or more valuable. But most of these children don't really want to teach - they simply fall into it by default. They've spent all their lives in a system, you see, where the only two roles available to them are that of student and teacher. And in the end, when they run out of roles they can take on as a student, they become teachers themselves - not because they have any passion for it themselves, but because they simply don't know any other way to be."

Charles paused, waiting for a reaction, or perhaps searching in Loki's thoughts for he knew not what - he hardly even knew what to think to himself at such a bizarre monologue. "I wonder if things are not the same in Asgard," he said, "only with heroes and monsters instead of teachers and students. If all your life you've only been taught that those two roles are the only ones that matter, then you find yourself defaulted into one role or the other, even if the truth is that neither suit you at all."

Loki tried to laugh. It came out as a choked sob. "You must be a fool," he said. "What other pursuit can you imagine for me?" Me, the bringer of war and chaos? Me, the architect of nightmares, the mother of monsters, the avatar of death?

"With your powers and intellect? I can scarcely begin to imagine," Charles said. "This world is a vast place, with more things to go and do and learn than could ever be accomplished in a thousand lifetimes - even yours, as long as it is. Are you interest in the study of languages, as you seem to have a special gift for? There are thousands upon thousands you could seek out to study, including ancient languages lost to us mortals - but not, perhaps, to you. If you care not for humans, what about other forms of life? You could travel the wilderness of every continent, to seek out new species of plants and animals to discover. Or if the wonders of Earth bore you, or if your study is one of magic which is not to be found on this world - you have access to forms of travel and research that the academics here could only dream of, and centuries to hone your knowledge of the craft, to research higher forms of magic never before dreamed of in any realm.

"Or, if you were to tire of learning, there is equally much that you might teach. - I know that I lean a little bit too heavily on the student and teacher model of the world, but it is what I know, and I am prone to my own biases as any other man. There is so much that we could learn from you, Loki, about the secrets of the universe and the realms we know nothing of. If, once you leave this place, you find yourself with nowhere else to go, I would love to have you come to my own school, and there to speak with my own students - to teach them what you know about loss and grief, and recovery, surviving and moving on. I think we would have much to learn from you, too."

Loki shook his head, trying to bury himself in denial, but it was too late. Charles' words opened up whole new vistas in his head, bringing light to a tunnel of possibility that had narrowed down so far Loki hadn't even realized how dark his horizons had become. He felt as though his world had been rocked, tilted on its axis and left askew. Bindings at the very foundation of his mind felt loosened, old certainties come undone.

Loki had filled his heart with ice, built it up within him on the revelation of his true heritage in cold, unfeeling waves. If he filled himself with ice then he could tell himself he no longer cared, no longer wanted, no longer felt pain - no longer felt anything. The ice was cracked and shattered now, and slipping dangerously around the edges - but if the ice were to melt, then what would be left of Loki once it was gone?

"No," he said unsteadily. "No, you're wrong... I can't be. These - these things are for other people, not for me." Never for him, never ever. "I'm a monster. I am evil. I was born to be, destined to be. It's not - not something I can choose, it is what I am."

"No, Loki," Charles said implacably, and how Loki's heart skipped and stuttered in his chest at those words. "You are not.

"One side effect of my position is that I have, over the years, been called to do battle against all manner of unpleasant beings who threatened the safety of my people or my world. I have looked into abysses far darker than nightmare, and I have seen true evil. I have seen true evil, and Loki, it is not in you."

Loki closed his eyes, and felt the tears slip free, tracking down his cheeks. How long had it been since the last time he wept? It seemed he could hardly remember the feel of it. "I am a monster," he repeated in a whisper. Clinging to the one thing in his world that seemed certain.

"You are a man," Charles corrected him gently. "A man like any other, with the potential for both good and evil. A man of both cleverness and learning, playful and curious, resolute and brave, who has endured incredible trials and come out the other side alive and whole where many would have broken.

"You are lonely, and selfish in your aloneness; you are angry, and destructive in your rage. You have been hurt, and your pain makes you cruel. But these are things of circumstance, not of nature. You don't have to be this way, Loki. You are what your choices make you, no more and no less. Choose again, and change."

It was too much. It was too much, and it broke him - where all the years of neglect and disdain, all the long months of pain and hardship had not. The unrelenting kindness of this one small mortal that he could not escape and could no longer deny spoke to him, to that small part of himself that yearned for it like a plant to the light. The ice melted in a rush and Loki broke down, weeping.

He fought against it, snarling through his tears even as he twisted one way or another, searching for an angle of view where he could hide his shame from the prying cameras he could never quite forget.

"It is no shame," Charles' voice came to him, so damnably, hatefully gentle.

And Loki had been lied to all his life, from the moment he had first been a babe abandoned in a temple by one uncaring father to the next - but he chose to believe, one last time, that what Charles said to him was the truth.

~tbc...

(PS - kudos to all of you who recognized the 'Wicked' shout-out in Loki's speech there. I feel that Loki and Elphaba would have a LOT in common... ;)