Loki Misses the Asgardian Prison System

Chapter 146

Pietro is bored.

He's spent almost every moment of his life with his sister since they were ten years old. He doesn't really know what to do now that she's not here. She's supposed to entertain him. How can she entertain him when she's talking to Loki?

So instead, he heads to the kitchen, because if he can't talk to his sister, eating his boredom away is the next best thing. It's a luxury he never had when he was young; his family couldn't afford it. He certainly wasn't given a free rein of HYDRA's food. As far as he's concerned, this is the height of luxury. He's just going to sit here at the kitchen counter and eat pretzels until either Wanda comes back, he runs out of pretzels, or he thinks he's going to puke.

This is what adulthood is supposed to be about, right?

He's made it through half a bag or so when Tony appears, and, as is always the case when Pietro sees him, he has mixed feelings about it. On one hand, Tony has been nothing but nice to him and Wanda since they were invited to join the Avengers ("nice" being a relative term, of course; he is Tony Stark, after all, and his idea of "nice" comes with a side of sass), but on the other, he killed the twins' parents. He supplied the United States with the bombs they dropped on their home. He helped the United States destroy an innocent country, and as long as he got paid, he didn't care. He's held that grudge for years. It's hard to let that go now.

Tony glances around the room. "Wanda's not here?"

"No."

"Hmm." Tony ponders that for a moment. "Is she okay? I feel like you guys are always together."

Pietro shrugs. "She's fine." He takes a bite of a pretzel, snapping off the top half with his front teeth.

"What, she decided she didn't like pretzels enough to hang around?" Tony jokes. "What's she up to?"

Again, he shrugs. "I don't know."

Tony stares at him. "You don't know?"

Pietro shrugs again. "Nope."

"You don't know what your sister is doing," Tony repeats skeptically. "Your sister, who you spend every waking moment with – and every not-waking moment with. You don't know what she's up to."

Pietro shrugs. "Nope." He pops the rest of his pretzel in his mouth with a satisfying crunch.

Tony's quiet for a moment as he looks at the kid; then, "Yeah, you're full of shit."

Pietro cracks a smile at that.

"Alright," Tony says, "FRIDAY, what's Wanda up to that Pietro won't tell me?"

Welp. That charade didn't last long.

"I believe she is in Loki's room," FRIDAY says, "but I don't have access to that wing of the building."

Tony folds his arms over his chest and looks at the kid with an inquisitive eyebrow raised.

Pietro can admit when he's lost. There's no use in pretending he doesn't know. He'd hardly pretended to begin with. "She only wants to talk," he says. "She said she would leave if he wanted her to."

"After what happened earlier, I don't know if I believe that," Tony says. "One of them is going to do something stupid."

Pietro shakes his head. "It will be fine." She's been gone for a while and he hasn't heard a sound. Either they're getting along fine or one of them is dead, and if it's the latter, it's a little late to do anything about that now.

"Mm-hmm." Tony eyes him skeptically.

Pietro just reaches into the bag, and, amidst the obnoxiously loud crinkling, takes a bite of another pretzel.