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

Author's Notes: Here I am again, guys. Unfortunately, this doesn't quite mark a return to my normal posting schedule; the other contest is dragging out much longer than expected. But I promised I would return again after a month, so here's the next chapter.

Nick Fury was not, strictly speaking, a spy.

'Spy' by its very definition implied a certain level of furtiveness, of deception, of going far afield into enemy territory to gather information. Nowadays, Nick Fury had people to do that for him. But he had been, for many years, just such a spy; and even now that background shaped his world. Fury was a man to stand at the center of a glass dome with plate windows and digiscreens in every direction, keeping a complete and clear-eyed view of the world around him. Information was his meat and milk, his currency and his addiction. Information was his life's work.

That did not mean, however, that he always liked the taste of it. The worst days of his life had taught Nick Fury that the things most important to know were also the most unpleasant to hear.

"So explain it one more time, from the top," Fury said, placing his hands on the metal surface of the table and leaning over it. "What, exactly, is a 'titan'?"

It was a reflection of how things had changed in the last week, that Fury felt no more than the usual cold-edged caution at putting himself within arm's reach of an unbound, super-strong supervillain with a grudge against humanity in general and SHIELD - in the person of Fury - in particular. Loki himself looked unnervingly forbidding, with the streaks of dark blood still lingering under his eyes and the corners of his mouth where they'd been wiped away by a handkerchief. But the hostilities seemed to have called off, for the moment; himself, Loki and Charles Xavier all circled the table in this impromptu conference to defend the Earth from a high-level threat of totally unknown provenance.

"One of the precursors," Loki said, as casually as though that could possibly be expected to mean something to them. "An undying being of godlike power. He is more powerful than most, and," a peculiar bitter smile twisted the edges of his chapped and bloodied lips, "also quite, quite mad."

"So when you say 'beings of godlike power,' " Fury said. "Is that in the same way that you and Thor are supposed to be gods? 'Cause we managed to take you out without too much trouble, as I recall."

Loki glared at him, a black look underscored with rings of dark bruising that made the expression particularly ferocious. "Ignorant mortal fools," he snarled. "The Aesir are as they are, as they ever have been. If a few witless peasants in mud huts chose to name us gods, that is entirely your doing and not ours."

Even in the heat of the discussion, a part of Fury noted in passing that Loki still (unconsciously?) used us and ours when talking about the Aesir.

"Thanos is a being of another magnitude entirely," Loki went on. "Your mortals have no notion, no notion at all of how sheltered you really are. Did you imagine me to be the great evil of the universe, Fury, one of the things that go bump in the night? I am but a gentle nursery maid compared to what else is out there.

"The Titans built the realms, setting order to chaos and seeding wakened life on the worlds they fashioned. Thanos numbered among them once, but he long ago betrayed life in favor of his fascination with death. He once had another name, I suppose, but it has long since been forgotten in the shadow of his great obsession. It was most likely this obsession, this fascination which drove him mad; for all he kills, he can never himself die, no matter how much he would wish to. They say he once fell into a pit of molten metal, and emerged from it no more than irritated by the heat.

"He can never meet his great lady face to face, so he sends others to her in his stead, a neverending stream of sacrifice," Loki continued. "He studied death, manipulated it, sought to harness it, and at last his research culminated in the forging of the Infinity Gauntlet, an artifact of cosmic power. With the Gauntlet in his possession, Thanos was able in a matter of moments to destroy half of all living things in the universe."

Fury blinked, thrown off balance despite his intense focus by Loki's last declaration. He understood the words, but the impossibility of the statement, the sheer scope of what Loki described seemed ludicrous. "You have got to be kidding me," he said, the words escaping without him quite meaning it. He looked over at Xavier for an appeal.

Loki smiled grimly. "Thanks to the casting of a great temporal spell - a working the magician gave his life to accomplish - the deed was undone, and the combined forces of Thanos' enemies overwhelmed him moments later. The Gauntlet was taken from him, the Infinity Gems scattered, and Thanos banished to the far corner of the universe - but not killed, for he could not be killed. And in exile he continued his path of unending slaughter.

"Thanos commands legions of armies, spreads his dominion over a dozen planets. The last world he waged war on, mere moments after he accepted their surrender from throne of his power, he ordered a strafing of the capital city that killed millions. He has no interest in conquest, no desire to rule. He cares only for death. He is in love with Death, in the most literal of ways; he imagines her to be a woman, and pays court to her with legions of brutal slaughter.

"You humans are so soft, so undefended. You let yourself breed into the billions, covering the globe, and yet barely a tiny fraction of you bear any military might at all," Loki said scathingly. Huh. Not usually the complaint Fury heard leveled against the United States. Right - warrior culture, Fury thought. Although if the rest of the universe was as dangerous as Loki was making it sound, maybe the bloodythirsty space vikings were on to something.

"When Thanos brings his army across, there will be no diplomacy, no bargaining. He has no interest in conquest, no care for ruling. He cares only for killing, and your quivering world will offer him no more interest than six billion test subjects for inventive new ways of dying."

"He bargained with you," was all Fury could think to say to that.

Loki twitched, and sat back as-if casually in his chair. "Ah, but I had something he wanted," he said smoothly.

"Which was?" Fury snapped.

Loki waved a hand. "The place of Thanos' exile is very far away, on a plane not entirely contiguous with this one. He could have gone on being no more than a shivery fairy tale to you lot of mortals, until - " Loki's voice, which had been in the cadence of a storyteller, abruptly dropped into grim coldness. "Until one of you imbecilic mortals tampered with things beyond your ken. The Tesseract was awoken, and its far vertices nudged the outer realms of unbounded space where Thanos' empire resides. It may aid your limited understanding to think of it as a tunnel, or a doorway - one Thanos could see, even if he could not yet understand how to open it.

"And then who should turn up on his doorstep except... yours truly," Loki said, and he flashed a smile that for all it was wide, looked more than a little sickly. "A magician, and one with a special knowledge of secret doorways and hidden paths. He imposed upon me to travel the byway of the Tesseract, as he himself could not do, and seize the Tesseract, there to open the door from the other side and allow a few of his minions through. And the rest, well - you know. Or think you do. The pathway remains, even if the gateway is closed. And on the other side of it, he waits."

There was a long silence in the little metal cell.

"You sicced this crazy motherfucker on my planet," Fury said flatly.

Loki rolled his eyes. "There's no need to act like this was my fault," he huffed. "Thanos and his own pet minions would have figured it out within a few years. I merely advanced the timetable."

On the other side of the table, Xavier stirred and frowned. But whatever he was thinking - or Loki was thinking, which he overheard - he didn't consider it important enough to interrupt.

"And you thought it was a good idea to sign on with him? Make yourself part of his little death crusades?" Fury demanded, disgust and disbelief oozing thick from his voice.

Temper flashed in Loki's furious green eyes. "Have you understood nothing of what I told you?" he snarled. "One does not leave Thanos' company before he wills it, not through any means. My options were made clear enough: I would abide, or else I would be put to endless agony until my will broke, and I would abide anyway. I chose to skip over the tedious middle parts, with all the writhing and screaming for the mercy of death, and come right to the inevitable conclusion. Hopefully with some semblance of my wits and agency still about me," Loki finished savagely. "You'll have to excuse that I'm not one of your heroes, to volunteer for a few decades of helpless agony to no greater purpose."

Xavier learned forward, smoothly inserting himself into the roiling atmosphere of the cell, and spoke for the first time. "It's clear enough what you had to offer him," he said calmly, taking control of the conversation with little effort. "But what did he offer you in return?"

"Wine, women, gold?" Fury guessed coldly. "A chance to pay your brother back for whatever grudge-match you've got going? A pretty throne to sit on and lots of peons to tell you how great you are?"

"Clearly, you already know the circumstances so well," Loki bit off in return. "I wouldn't dare to suggest a correction."

"And what else?" Xavier asked, addressing Loki and ignoring Fury.

He met Loki's gaze calmly, and those poisonous green eyes lost their fire, slid off him towards the ground. "Does it matter now?" he asked in a quieter tone.

"You might as well tell him," Xavier said, voice strangely gentle. "Or I will."

"Tell me what?" Fury demanded, more than a little put out to be out of the loop.

Loki said nothing. Xavier looked back over to Fury. "This region of space hosts a number of populated worlds in addition to our own," he said. "Once he established a foothold on Earth, Thanos could use it as a staging area to wage war on any other planets in the vicinity."

"But Earth was to be mine," Loki snarled, the words bursting out as though he could not help himself. "He would not touch it."

Understanding came to Fury at last. "You mean he promised to spare Earth," he said.

Eyes still downcast, expression resentful, Loki nodded.

Fury couldn't believe what he was hearing - all his easy assumptions turned on their head. "Are you seriously telling me that you thought you had to conquer the village to save it?"

"You're welcome," Loki said through his teeth.

And if there was one thing that could piss Fury off more than the idea of a narcisstic alien wannabe dictator trying to take over his planet, it was the idea of two of them, haggling over Earth to see who would get first crack at it. As though the Earth already belonged to them, that they could decide its fate so offhandedly.

"So what you're telling me is that you were banking the survival of the whole damn planet on the idea that this guy Thanos, who you've said is a genocidal maniac, keeping his promise to you?" Fury said skeptically.

Loki made an impatient gesture with his hands. "Of course not," he said. "I didn't expect him to keep his word, any more than he expected to keep mine. But it bought me time, and an opportunity to gather my resources for another gambit. One where I'd have more to bargain with - or threaten with - than the clothes on my back and the words in my mouth."

"Why?" Fury demanded stridently.

Loki's head came up again, his neck held proud and his mouth in a firm unyielding line. "Regardless of what Thor may have told you, I was King of Asgard," he told them. "I took the same oaths he did, to protect and shield the Nine Realms from harm. That includes Midgard. I may have been betrayed - cast unjustly from my throne - but I still take my oaths seriously."

It made a sort of sense, Fury thought. If Loki's description of Thanos' genocidal habits was accurate - and Loki at least seemed to believe that it was - then he wouldn't leave much behind him for Loki to rule over. Couldn't get much tribute and adulation out of a pile of corpses, after all.

"And?" Xavier prodded, although Fury couldn't imagine what else he would have to say.

"And... Thor loves this realm," Loki muttered, almost inaudibly. "He is fond of you mortals, for all your backwards habits. It would - grieve him, were it to come to harm."

Fury's mind very nearly shorted out at this, this twisted and backwards expression of - of brotherly affection, in all the least expected places and most bizarre forms.

"Besides," Loki said, a glint of his usual wicked humor returning to his eye. "I would get to rub in his face, that I succeeded where he failed - that I protected Earth from a threat that he never could have hoped to."

"What, you protected Earth by unleashing an army of alien lizards in the middle of a major civilian population center?" Fury said bitingly. "I don't think much of your strategizing."

"Oh, that was never my strategy." Loki waved that away. "That was the Chitauri's idea - they aren't much in the way of tacticians. Overwhelming frontal assault against the greatest concentration of available warm bodies is about the limits of their military science."

"Then why'd you go along with it?" Charles wanted to know.

Loki's expression tightened, staring off into some unfathomable distance. "Believe me, if any alternative had presented itself, I would have taken it," he said. "For what they had done to me, I should have preferred something much more painful, much more lingering and horrific. But under the circumstances, I had to take what I could get. It was fitting enough, in its own limited way. They got they wanted, which was a glorious battle; and I got what I wanted, which was the whole lot of them dead."

It took a moment for Fury to sort out the implications behind that sentence, and when he did he had to grind his teeth against the throbbing vein in his temple. So the whole battle over New York, all the destruction and death, was no more than Loki playing two sets of enemies against each other for his own benefit? He should have let Clint Barton shoot him through the eye, after all.

"They were constantly clamoring for a battle, and so I gave them what they desired," Loki continued. "They had little understanding, and even less vision. My plan would never have come to combat at all. Thor and his stooges may throw themselves into such idiocy gladly, but I have never had a taste for such base wastage.

"I would have come through the portal, just as I did, and cried sanctuary. I would have carried the message of Thanos and his intentions to you, presented myself as a lost refugee fleeing from his wrath. I knew you had contact with Aesir before, and knew Asgard to be friendly to you - with Thor out of the picture, unable to gainsay my account, I could easily have appeared to you as an ally, even a savior. And so I would have been.

"My expertise in sorcery is second to none, even in Asgard - light-years beyond that which is available to you on Midgard. You would need every scrap of it if you hoped to stand against Thanos. I would have worked with your scientists, your heroes, your generals, to fashion weapons and tactics that would revolutionize your armies and bring you to a new era of strength, one that could rival even Asgard in military might. In time, I was sure, even the kings and magisters of this world would come to me for advice and knowledge."

Loki smiled slowly. "And one by one, in time, each of those generals and scientists would have come under my command; each retaining their place, their authority, but with loyalties answering only to me. I would have no need to steal the Tesseract, for in time they would have brought it to me, and made me its keeper. It was belonged to my father, you know, before it was lost here upon Earth; I have a more rightful claim upon it than any of you.

"And then... I would win." Loki spread his empty hands, as if surrendering to the inevitable. "I would have Midgard to my hand. Victory against Thanos, while no guarantee, would have at least even odds. I would have proven to Thor that I could protect what he could not, and proven to my - to Odin that I could be as good a king as he. I, Loki, answering to no one, would have gathered the all threads of Midgard's control in my hands." He met Fury's eyes. "I do not need a golden throne and a shiny staff, Director, to be king."

Fury's spine stiffened, chilled by the thought of how easily that plan could have succeeded - no, not succeeded, he told himself firmly. For sure no single man could take over the entire Earth's government without anybody noticing, mind control or no mind control. Right? It was only a question of how far the damage would have spread before it was contained. Three thousand dead and a few city blocks trashed suddenly seemed like much less to worry about, in comparison to what could have been.

In what was possibly the most stern tone of voice Fury had ever heard him use towards Loki, Xavier asked, "I don't suppose it occurred to you at any point that you might have genuinely allied with us against the threat Thanos presented?"

"Not particularly, no," Loki admitted. He looked almost embarrassed. "All in Asgard know that you mortals are but babes at arms when it comes to warfare. When the Frost Giants invaded Midgard, you had little more to stand against them than flung stones and sharpened sticks. Even the last time I visited, a few of your centuries ago, you were still new enough to the concept of projectile weapons that you were still lining up in rows of brightly-colored uniforms to be shot."

"We've come a long way since the redcoat days," Fury said, restraining himself from pointing out that they'd beat the redcoats, and with a much smaller and poorly-equipped force to hand. Loki obviously had little ability (or interest) in distinguishing between one 'mortal' nation and another.

Loki snorted. "Have you really?" he said. "Even now, you are divided among a hundred petty warlords, quarreling among yourselves. Conflict and strife divides you, paralyzes you. Your common soldiers are as no more than chaff before the reaper. Even your elite team of chosen heroes could barely stop squabbling long enough to fight together against an immediate threat."

"Funny, because I seem to remember them beating you pretty handily," Fury said. If Loki was going to be snide, he could be snide right back at him.

Loki glared at him. "Of course," he said scathingly. "With the mightiest heroes of two realms to call upon, with the cream of Midgard's technology and unlimited resources to draw on, in the crunch of the moment you managed to foil the plans of one lone man with a stick. Congratulations. Let us dearly hope you put up a better show against the next foe, who will not after all be coming to aid you."

And that, right there, was about all Fury could swallow from this guy. This alien who had come to Earth uninvited, dragging his cosmic threats and his grudgematches with them, and rampaged halfway across the world before they finally managed to put him away - sitting coolly in a cell in his own helicarrier and saying with a straight face that he'd come to help.

Fury stood abruptly from the table, the metal chair scraping and grinding painfully against the floor, and whirled around to stalk out. He hadn't gotten this far in his life without knowing when it was time to absent himself from a situation before he did something they'd all really, really regret.

All things considered, Charles was just as happy when Fury stalked out of the briefing and did not return. He could always review the security tapes later if he had questions that needed answering, but at least he wouldn't be able to give in to his compulsive need to trade stinging remarks with his information source.

Loki had been impressively cooperative and forthcoming so far, but there were some questions that he was not inclined to answer with Fury in the room.

"I still don't understand why you chose the plan you did," Charles said quietly, keeping his posture and tone as nonaccusing as possible. Fury did provide an object lesson in how not to get people to open up to you, that was for sure. "I can see how, with the memory blocks on your mind, you could no longer remember Thanos to warn us about him. How did you come to the course of action you chose, then?"

Loki hunched over slightly in his chair, as though weights settled upon his shoulders. He was silent for a long moment - not refusing to answer so much as having no answer to give. "It was... like an actor," he began at last, awkwardly. "Thrust on stage where he knows none of the lines, left to guess at the plot by the costumes and props. I had a weapon in my hand, and Fury stood there poised to fight." He let loose a ghastly chuckle. "I was ever a disappointment to my weapons tutors, but this much at least they did manage to drill into me: when you find yourself in a battle with a foe before you, you fight, you do not wait for him to make the first move. He who hesitates is slain. It was a reflex action, that was all."

That was not the complete truth, Charles could sense in him. Even then Loki had been angry, and lashed out in his anger, caring little if the ones on the receiving end of his wrath were not those who had incited it in the first place. Such an explosion of violence was usually not very discerning as to its targets, and Charles spared a moment of pity for Fury having been caught in the path of it.

"And after that?" Charles prompted him gently.

"I don't know. It is all a blur. After Thanos... after he..." Loki groped for an appropriate word, and found one. "Despoiled my mind - after he shackled my memories, hobbled my wits - I was left with only a few distorted fragments of my original plan. I tried to make sense of where I was, what I was doing, what enemies surrounded me..." His brow pinched. "It was all in pieces. I knew that I needed to make contacts within SHIELD, but not who. I knew I had to let myself be captured, but not why. I knew that I must draw together Earth's strongest defenders and spur them to action against a monstrous threat -"

He bit out a humorless laugh. "But without the memory of my true enemy, I had no notion as to what that threat could have been, besides myself."

He seemed to have more to say, and Charles waited. At length Loki continued. "It seemed like all my life had been leading to such a moment - when I became the monster in the stories. The norns had placed my feet on the path... all prophecies come true eventually, you know, however you strive to avoid them. There seemed little point in fighting my own destiny. At least it was a role that I understood, to play the villain, and I played it well." There was a note of pride in his voice, however inexplicable; the desire to succeed at something, anything, rather than continuing only to fail at anything.

"Like any proper monster does, I invaded and pillaged. I destroyed, I killed, and I sought out heroes whose purpose it would be to oppose me. I gave them enough hints as to my own plans, my own weaknesses, that they could not miss if they were clever enough."

"After that," he said, so quietly that Charles would have had to strain to understand him if he hadn't been broadcasting the despairing thoughts at the same time. "I simply waited for someone to... stop me."

To stop me, his thoughts whispered, and there was a flash of a jagged rainbow bridge, the end of a shining gold spear, and a sickeningly long fall, to end me.

Charles spent a long time asking easier, though no less necessary, questions about Thanos' capabilities and his forces, making notes as he went. Fury could get them later off the monitors, he knew, but he had his own records to keep.

At last, though, a glance at his watch confirmed the story his growing fatigue already told; it was getting late. "Why don't we wrap things up for the night?" he asked Loki, whose neck was also beginning to droop; the advantages of his greater constitution were set off by the disadvantages of having had his mind nearly ripped open earlier in the day. Fortunately, he healed quickly - and the more so with Charles' own aid - but it had clearly taken a lot out of him.

"Very well," Loki acknowledged magnanimously. "I shall see you again on the morrow."

Charles shook his head as he tucked the notebook. "I'm afraid not tomorrow, Loki," he said, bracing himself for the surge of shock and incredulous fear that met his words. "I will return the day after."

Loki kept his expression impressively bland, but there was no way Charles could miss the riot of tangled thoughts that burst through his mind at those words. He's leaving - he doesn't want to see me again - no no no don't go - cold and lonely - now that he got what he wants, he doesn't need me any more - all rolled up under a sharp heavy hurt in his chest that said: abandoned.

Charles couldn't help the sigh, the sorrowful breath. "Loki, I've never lied to you, and I'm not lying now," he said seriously. "I will return the day after tomorrow. I promise this. The only things that could stop me would be an emergency that absolutely required my presence - an attack on or by mutants, or a greater threat to this world. I don't deny it could happen. Though I never meant to, I have over the years acquired a small number of enemies -"

Loki scoffed. "More fools, they," he said.

Charles smiled. "So yes, it's possible that I will not be able to return the day after tomorrow. But even if that happens, it won't be because I didn't want to."

Loki looked away, his face stiff but his mouth tight. It would take more than a few words of reassurance, Charles knew, to lift that freezing hurting fear from his chest.

"I am responsible for a great many people," he told Loki, "including, as I told you once before, a team of my students who work very hard to keep this world safe. I must let them know all I have learned from you, to begin preparing for the new threat."

Charles didn't touch people very often. His position as a figure of authority kept him somewhat aloof, and many people were made uncomfortable by either his mutation or his handicap. His physical contact with Loki since they had met had been limited to only two occasions, both when he had been trying to establish a deeper mental connection.

He touched Loki now, a hand on his shoulder where it met the neck. "You have endured much, to bring us this warning," he said firmly. "The very least I owe you is to treat this with the seriousness it deserves."

It was manipulative, Charles wouldn't deny it. He'd worked hard over the past week to bring Loki out of a feeling of opposition with Earth, and with humans - to lead him into the mindset that they were on the same side, or could be. If he could make Loki feel appreciated, invested... if he could make Loki feel like Earth owed him their gratitude, he would be more likely to stay his hand in the future.

It was manipulative. But it was also true.

Loki's eyes filled and he blinked rapidly, even as a rush of complicated emotions and half-coherent thoughts flickered through his mind. "Thank you," was all he said, barely audible.

Charles squeezed harder, conveying all his concern and fondness through the channel of touch, and then let his hand drop. He didn't like leaving Loki in such a vulnerable state - but he had responsibilities he must redeem to others, as well. The only way he could prove to Loki that he would come back was to do it, to prove that he was as good as his word.

~tbc...

More notes: You may notice a slight shift in tone in this chapter, compared to previous ones. That's because Loki's conversation with Fury was originally part of a different fic, which I discarded because it didn't have enough legs to stand on its own, and was little more than a meta-argument about Loki's original plans and intentions.

Some liberties have been taken with Thanos' backstory here. Mostly because "He comes from the distant cosmic reaches... OF SATURN'S MOONS! WEEEEOOOOOOOH!" sounds really kinda stupid. If he and his army of space-breathing lizards were really that close, would he have needed a magical Tesseract portal to invade earth? Of course not, he could have just loaded them up on his giant space whales and made it a road trip.

So in this new cosmology, the 'Titans' are basically god-creators (yes, just like in Warcraft mythos) rather than being "people from Titan." They may or may not have connections with the Celestials, thus imparting a more sinister motive onto their practice of creating pretty worlds and seeding them with sapients. And "the Eternals," which is the race Thanos was originally from (although he looks nothing like them) are now a race of super-long-lived, super-tough humanoids that the Titans made to be guardians of their creations. And yes, this means that the Aesir are Eternals, even if they don't remember where they came from. And the Jotnar are mutated/locally adapted Eternals.