Just as she'd imagined a point of connection between them, Wanda felt it recede again. She reminded herself that there was nothing of the revolutionary in this man, not in his regretful voice and not in his distant expression. For all his easy sympathy and quiet intelligence, Loki was not her friend. She needed to remember that, no matter any seeming moments of intimacy they shared. Wanda mentally scolded herself: she was being mawkish and simpleminded. So they both had brothers who faced the innumerable horrors of the Hunger Games. That meant nothing. Nothing at all.
"Alive," she repeated dully, her gaze shifting from Loki to Thor across the room, truly considering her fellow Victor for the first time. Was that what she was? Alive? Her heart still beat, she breathed in and out, but her entire reason for existence had been snuffed out in the arena, before the rapacious gaze of thousands of viewers. Her brother hadn't died for some higher purpose or even by simple accident. His blood had been spilt for sheer entertainment. Entertainment.
Now she was little better than one of her father's automatons, following the code others had programmed for her. When was the last time she had taken any action of her own accord? Even tonight, awakened from her stupor of grief, she was still dressed in the tight, metallic gown her stylist had suggested, wearing the garish, technicolor makeup favored by the her team. Her words, her mannerisms, her everything-- others had had a heavy hand in crafting the person she now appeared to be. Wanda felt a wave of nausea overtake her at the thought. Natasha seemed to at home in the Capitol, content to be admired, desired, and emulated. Was that the fate that waited her? To forget Pietro? To forget how deeply the Capitol had wronged them? To grow tired of fluttering her wings incessantly against the merciless bars of her new-found cage until she accepted them?
"You must have been so relieved," she murmured in a distant tone, the ghost of a smile on her pale face not reflected in her voice. "And your parents must be so proud, seeing both of their sons such successes."