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Wanda tensed, her hands curling into tight balls. A chaotic, raging grief pulsed through her veins and she released it with a scream, throwing her hands up and unleashing the energy that danced in her fingertips. A wave pulsed out around her and bounced off the titanium walls of the training facility deep underground below the Avenger's new bunker. Wanda curled in on herself; her arms wrapped her body as she bent at the waist and sobbed. The echoes of her own power struck her in a tidal wave, sweeping over and through her as they flowed like eddies in the current, trapped in the small room.
When Natasha opened the door, that maelstrom of pulsating energy took the opportunity at escape, diffusing out into the air in the hallway. Natasha braced her stance, leaning forward into the onslaught of Wanda's power as if fighting her way through a Siberian blizzard. Overwhelming grief tore at her heart, The weight of every loss she had felt in her long years of spycraft pressed down on her in a sudden, crushing force that very nearly pushed Natasha to her knees. Wanda sank to the floor as the rush of emotion circling the room dissipated.
"Wanda," Natasha called. Although Wanda no longer blasted her grief outward, a single look was all it took for Natasha to see that the girl was still caught in the turmoil she had projected outward moments before. "Are you ready?"
"No," Wanda hissed, "and I don't think I'll ever be."
Natasha waited in silence. Wanda's outbursts had grown less frequent over time, but on the anniversary of Pietro's death, it was to be expected.
Wanda turned her face away. Clint would have tried to engage her. Steve would have commiserated. Sam tended to sit next to her in empathetic comraderie. Vision never knew what to do and alternated between trying to talk to her and simply offering a hug. Natasha's therapeutic method involved standing by quietly, somehow validating Wanda's grief while simultaneously waiting for her to get off her ass and move forward. Wanda want sure how she did it, only that it was both effective and irritating.
"The pomana is ready?" Wanda asked.
"Steve has been in the kitchen all day." Steve, it turned out, loved cooking - as long as it involved spices and butter and not boiling everything. He reveled in exploring the tastes and gestures of food that had been unavailable or rationed during his youth. After Pietro died, Steve fell back on a staple method of offering sympathy: bringing food for the family. When he learned that Romani tradition required a feast after nine days, six weeks, six months, and one year after the death, he jumped to the task.
Wanda stood. Her fingers twitched with the lingering traces of her explosive emotion, but she knew the danger of another outburst had passed. At each of the last three feasts, a few of the Avengers had stood and announced the end of their mourning. Now, a full year after his death, it was time for the immediate family to end the period of mourning. Now it was time for Wanda to put aside her grief and move on.
"This doesn't mean you forget him." Natasha didn't say his name. The Romani avoid the use of a deceased person's name. After Wanda said she preferred the Romani way over sitting Shiva, the Avengers all worked to learn what that involved and how they could support Wanda. They were all strangers to the tradition, but they were the closest thing Wanda had to family and they did their level best to fill that role.
"No. I don't think there's any chance of that happening." Wanda moved with a lithe grace to slip past Natasha in the doorway and dart out into the hall. "It just means I have to live without him."