A Villain State of Mind

Chapter 7

Chapter 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...?

- Mikkeneko

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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.