A Villain State of Mind

Chapter 4

"All right, Professor, what's this about?" Fury asked after the heavy, airlock-quality door slid shut behind them.

Xavier shook his head. "Not here, Director. He's still listening."

"The hell he is." Fury shot a doubtful look through the vacuum-layered glass of the one-way observation window at their prisoner. He certainly didn't look like he was paying them any attention, concentrating instead on figuring out how to eat with his hands chained. "That whole cell is completely soundproof."

Xavier sighed. "Soundproof for humans, maybe," he said. "Aesir -- or Jotun, as the case may be -- have somewhat more sensitive hearing. Trust me. He can hear us. Shall we retire elsewhere?"

Loki abandoned his intense concentration on the plastic spoon long enough to shoot them both a poisonous glare at being found out -- apparently, one-way mirrors didn't work on Jotuns either -- before turning his back on them in what could only be described as a massive sulk.

Fury blew out his breath, and with a jerk of his head indicated the direction down the corridor behind them.

Damn aliens and their damn supernatural senses.

They fetched up in the same conference room as before, when Fury had given Xavier the debriefing (which he now recognized with some annoyance as having some major holes in the intel, but how the hell was he supposed to know?) about Loki.

"Why'd you cut the interview short?" Fury said, turning to Xavier as he accessed the security monitors from the holding cell. Loki was currently attending to the tray of food they'd given him; the chains on his wrists meant he couldn't bring his hands up to his face, and had to hunch down almost to the level of the table to be able to eat.

"Because Loki was growing increasingly exhausted and unstable," Xavier replied. He'd pulled a notebook out of somewhere -- seriously, who still used paper notebooks in the 2010s -- and was making some rapid notes on it. "It's best to give him some time to eat, wash and rest before continuing."

Fury raised his eyebrows. "He seemed fine to me," he said. "Insolent little bastard. Full of sass."

"He only seemed coherent to you because I was actively suppressing his feelings of anger and fear," Xavier said, making more notes. "But that will only go so far as a short-term solution."

Fury's eyebrows raised even further as the implications of this unexpected ability sank in. "Didn't know you could do that," he mused. "Speaking of long-term solutions, isn't there any way you could make that permanent? Take away his anger and hate completely?" A Loki without  his anger issues or epic grudges would be a hell of a lot easier to manage, that was for sure.

Xavier snapped his notebook shut, and gave Fury a cool look it took him a moment to decipher as utterly calm fury. "Yes," he said, "yes, he would be. And as long as we're discussing long-term solutions, why not simply chop off both his arms at the elbow? That would also render him much more manageable, and the degree of mutilation would be about the same."

The hair stood up on the back of his neck, and despite himself Fury couldn't help the nausea that rose unbidden at the mental images the mild-sounding suggestion conjured. Loki, huddled in a corner stained with his own blood, arms and legs ending in stumps -- Fury has seen many terrible things in his career, and done many things that were arguably terrible. But not that. Never that. Not even to Loki.

"That's not how we do things," he told Xavier, and it took a lot of effort to keep his voice steady. Wasted effort, really, because he knew perfectly well that Xavier can see right through him like a pane of glass.

Xavier gave him another of those looks, and then his expression cleared slightly. "I'm glad to hear you say that, Director," he said. "Particularly because if you had not said that -- and meant it -- I would have been obliged to remove Loki from your custody."