#delinquick

Imagine being trapped in your own body, forced to go in slow motion - now that's ordinary every day for the boys, and that's when they're talking to their family or their team. That's voluntary. That's not mandated by the state. 

I see a lot of people sort of see Tommy and Pietro as quite impulsive, but they have way more time to think about their actions than others around them. Sure, team work is still important, which requires communication, so the impulsiveness isn't good.

But neither of them are stupid. Now, I want to be clear: Pietro and Tommy are perhaps a little above average intelligence, but they're not geniuses. They do not need to be geniuses. With half an hour in Stark Tower, Pietro could engineer fucktons. This is a boy that altered a Walkman at age sixteen to run at precisely his speed when running; he would have had to test his own speed and work it out, then figure out the speed of the Walkman and how fast that would have to go, et cetera. For any normal teenager, without the internet and manuals and tutoring that'd take weeks.

For Pietro the trial and error could be condensed to an afternoon: and then he knows how to do it, so the next one would take four seconds. More than that, they could read entire libraries in a single week, learn what they can from books and solidify it with a minute's worth of trial and error; the rate at which they can accumulate knowledge would be obscene.

Pietro would learn over time how to use mnemonics, memory techniques, memory loci, he'd learn how to do things will muscle memory. He'd likely conduct studies and tests on his own powers - not because he's a scientist, because he's not, but because he's curious. Because he wants to be good at what he does, but moreover, because he has so much fucking time on his hands he needs to occupy himself with something.

This is why I see Pietro coming to Tommy and dropping a dozen books and folders in a box into his arms: Pietro has no doubt compared all he can to his powers in order to become more efficient. The things he can do are sans limitation, half the time.

And, for the most part, Pietro isn't on the offensive: he saves people and moves them out of the way. His offensive consists of punching people really fast. But the thing is, if people knew he was capable of more, he'd be asked to use that power. If people knew he was smart, he'd be expected to now things.

You know Clint Barton's "I'm a dumb" routine? I don't think Pietro's impatience and sharp retorts are all that different.

And thus we see Tommy again, trying to talk to the Young Avengers and falling short, trying to be a good person and falling short: he's the only one still willing to be a superhero. But here he has to wait for everyone to take their heads out of their asses and do the right thing - wait ages.

Tommy isn't an old man like Pietro. He's a little bitter, but not jaded in the same way. And I think Pietro would do everything to ensure he doesn't get jaded in the same way, because when you're a speedster and you yell at the world at your own speed, it can't hear you. It doesn't matter how angry you are, how upset you are, because you're still going too fast.