[At the smile, Billy has to look away. He's faced down that kind of smile before and paid dearly for it. He'd like to be satisfied with that- just view Loki as a monster and leave, stare down that smile and let the Asgardian's image overlap with the warden of the Cube. Bad men. Bad, bad men who smile in the face of the suffering innocents. Smile with smug self-satisfaction while children scream for mercy.

But the memory of the week before, meetings in the library, shared lessons of magic and science and the wondrous power that connects them together, is haunting him just as much as that smile. What makes a man evil? What makes them beyond redemption? Is it memory, or their nature itself?

It just doesn't feel right to him. None of this does.]

That's not what I said. Being hated isn't what makes someone worthy of suffering. Innocent people are hated all the time, trust me.

[Innocent people are shoved into lockers, punched until they bleed, shot, stabbed, bashed in dark alleys, treated like lesser beings because of what they wear, how they behave, where they're from. Who they love. Innocent people die because someone hates them every day.

But they never get answers, do they? They never get to ask, why? Why do you hate me? Why are you making me suffer like this?

Because there's no reason. No reason at all.]