Maximoff.

i’ve been thinking a lot about tommy’s fighting style lately.
this is a boy who can literally blow shit up at will, a far more formidable power than the one he’s known for most widely and yet he chooses to almost never use it.

i can only think of two times we’ve ever actually seen tommy use that ability: at the end of volume 1 and when he’s playing with molly hayes during civil war.

i really love what it says about him that he almost never uses that power.

he was locked up and experimented on by people who wanted to turn him into a living weapon. they, surely, were counting on him using that power and using it to achieve nefarious ends. tommy’s refusal to do that, his refusal to use that power at all, is like spitting in their faces.

but when it comes down to it, tommy’s always been more about saving people then fighting bad guys. think of him during siege. when teddy and billy were off getting in fights, tommy was running around getting as many people out of harm’s way as he could, saving lives and still not feeling like he’s doing a good enough job because he can’t save enough people. think of him during the secret invasion when his first instinct was to get molly and klara to safety.

tommy wants to save people. that’s what he’s about. that’s why he puts on the costume and does what he does. it’s not about being a superhero, it’s about saving people.

it makes me think that someone must have gotten hurt in the school explosion. tommy hurt someone (by accident, i’m sure. i have no doubt about that) and now he’s dedicated his life to trying to make up for it.

i wonder if he knows that’s what got him on the team. i wonder if he knows that billy only agreed to get him once he heard about his ability to cause explosions. i wonder if he knows that he would’ve been passed over completely if not for that power.

and if he does know, i wonder how he feels about it. i wonder how he feels knowing that the thing that got him his friends – his family – is the thing about himself that scares him the most. the thing he hates. the thing that represents everything he doesn’t want to be but has the potential to become.

i want to talk about tommy. i want to talk about when he said “they’ve kept me locked up for months… testing me… probing me… trying to turn me into a living weapon”, because i have questions. did anyone ever try to talk with tommy about this? asking him if he was okay? did tommy have nightmares? did tommy have fears of that the freedom he’d got wasn’t permanent? because yes, tommy is a tough guy, but he’s also 16, and he may have vaporized his school, but he is still just a kid. and he was kept locked up for months. all alone. not being able to use his powers. not being able to do something to get outta there. they had all these tests on him and he couldn’t fight against it. he couldn’t have known if someone would ever go to get him out.
i just need to know someone asks tommy if he is okay.

yes yes yes, all of this. i need to know that the others talked to him, helped him out. especially because they broke him out because billy needed help with rescuing teddy, did he ever worry that they were going to return him to juvie once he was no longer useful to them? did he worry about his usefulness having an expiration date? and maybe when he was first told about him and billy being the scarlet witch’s twins he was so happy because there’s no way they’d kick him off the team now right? but then he remembers what frank and mary did. if his parents can sign him away to be locked up and experimented on then why on earth would a supposed ‘soul twin’ with no real connection want him around? and that’s why he’s so dismissive of the idea. like he says in the children’s crusade - it’s not that he doesn’t believe it’s true, it’s that he doesn’t see the point. because his family abandoned him before, why should this one be any different?

[ugly sobbing] dammit seriously. and he needs this, needs a family. needs people he can trust. needs billy and the way billy cares about him. with hugs that tommy never asked for but he got anyway. with rants about how important that they care of each other. i swear to god, tommy needs to be loved but he’s just so afraid of that everyone will let him down, like everyone will just leave him again and again, and he can’t do this all the time, he’s not that strong. he can’t carry this many scars.

this is why i love nohmmy so much. because they have a shared life history. i imagine noh and tommy spending time talking about the stuff they’ve been through that they just can’t talk to the others about. and noh being around really helps tommy to see his worth in the group and he stops complaining so much when billy wants to do things with him. it’s healthy for him.

Also, what gives me feels is that when they saved Tommy Eli made it a point to say that they weren’t saving a delinquent, and I feel like that just had to hurt, ESPECIALLY right after pointing out that he’d been experimented on.