A Villain State of Mind

Chapter 6

Chapter Notes:

We're back to Charles' POV here, and this chapter also focuses 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.

- Mikkeneko

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Despite his lingering doubts, the scene in Loki's cell that day did cause Fury to unbend a little bit. Perhaps because 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.