A Villain State of Mind

Chapter 8

Chapter Notes:

Loki's original plan, as described in this chapter, was based in outline on Kadorienne's "Stolen Relics" (chapter 7) where Loki explains his own plan to the Avengers. I liked it so much I knew I wouldn't be able to avoid parallelling it when the time came for our Loki to spill his story.

(That's the important stuff out of the way; the unimportant rambling is at the end.)

- Mikkeneko

☆__________☆__________☆

Nick Fury was not, strictly speaking, a spy.

'Spy' by its very definition implied a certain level of furtiveness, of deception, of going far 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.

"He is a Titan," Loki said, as casually as though that could possibly be expected to mean something to them. "One of the Eternals, beings of godlike power. Thanos 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 look particularly ferocious. "Ignorant mortal fools," he said. "The Aesir are as they are, as they ever have been. If a few ignorant mortals 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 when talking about the Aesir. The cameras were recording all this, Fury knew, diligently absorbing every word in detail. It was a good thing they were, since Fury was having trouble struggling past his disbelief to absorb more than one word in three of this.

"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.