Aveilut

Everything was dark and empty. Wanda's breath came suddenly into her throat as she transitioned from sleep to wakefulness in an instant. Blinking against the darkness, red light flared around her hands and eyes as she reached for Pietro—and found only more emptiness. With a soft whimper, she reached for the clock by her bedside. The staring red letters said 3:17, which was a good—forty minutes since she'd last looked?

With an exhausted sigh, she sat up and pulled her blanket around her. Her hands were shaking, her breath hoarse in her throat as if she had been running. She reached for the dream she had been having, but even using her own mind powers on herself brought back only blurred, orphaned images of candles and a feeling of peace. She shut her eyes, and thought of Friday nights, a long time ago, herself, Pietro, and her parents. She could remember the feeling of the words on her ears, in her mouth, but she could no longer shape them.

She made her way clumsily across the room to her new, tiny desk, flipped open her (also new) laptop, and found her way to Wikipedia. Clicking through a few links took her to List of Jewish prayers and blessings, and she scrolled down. The words looked foreign but felt right as she whispered, "Barukh ata Adonai Eloheinu, Melekh ha'olam, asher kid'shanu b'mitzvotav v'tzivanu l'hadlik ner shel Shabbat." Over and over again she formed the words, reaching after the image of candles in her head, reaching for the feeling of peace—reaching for Pietro. But there was still that aching emptiness, and she scrolled farther and clicked some more links. Then, with tears rolling down her cheeks, she whispered, over and over, "Yit'gadal v'yit'kadash sh'mei raba."

Steve Rogers ran. Running was a simple thing, an easy thing. Air came in; air went out. His feet hit the ground. He didn't have to think about running, and he didn't have to wonder where he was going. He could just sit back and enjoy the ride. He'd get there eventually.

Still, thoughts forced their way in. He felt largely responsible for the new Avengers. With Banner gone, Stark and Thor not always reliable—it was mostly him and Romanov. And Steve had no desire to be a commanding officer. He didn't want to be Fury. Hell, he wasn't sure what he did want to be. A friend, maybe?

He reached the end of his circuit to see Natasha leaning against the wall. She was toeing one foot idly in the dirt, not looking up, but he knew she was waiting for him. "Something I should know about?" he asked, not without a sigh as his run came to a premature end.

"I'm worried about Maximoff," Natasha said without looking up.

"Worried about her?"

Natasha made a noncommittal noise. "She hasn't been sleeping. And she's stopped showering now as well. She turned down dinner last night and she's been subsisting on hard-boiled eggs and water."

Steve didn't bother to ask how Natasha knew that. Instead, chewing on his lip, he asked lightly, "Why are you bringing this to me?"

And Natasha stepped forward, punched him lightly in the shoulder, and responded, "Well, you're the team dad, aren't you?"

Steve found he didn't really have any response to that.

Am I closer to you this way, Pietro, or farther? Wanda carefully shut the door to her room behind her and then slid down it into a heap. Her hair felt greasy and sticky, and she felt suddenly that she was sick of eggs. She could picture Pietro's words, Well, little sister, it is only the first meal that needs to be eggs. Why are you still eating them?

I am not your little sister, she would say. Twelve minutes is nothing. And, as for eggs, well—perhaps it was because she felt she needed more than one meal. She had not eaten a meal in mourning for her parents, or for the others who died in the bombing during which she was orphaned. More meals of eggs were required.

God would forgive you, I am sure, her brother would say with a smirk, and she would flash back, I don't want God to forgive me. But the words rang louder in her head than she had intended. I don't deserve God to forgive me. She fingered the long rent in her shirt, on the right side, above her lung. It should be on the left, because to lose Pietro was to lose her heart, not just one lung, but that wouldn't be correct—wouldn't be traditional.

Someone knocked lightly on the door, and she jerked upright and scrambled to her feet. Cautiously peering through the peephole, she saw that Captain America was standing outside, waiting patiently. Wanda had not had much to do with him since the beginning of her sojourn with the Avengers, though he had run her and the other new Avengers through training often. But that was impersonal, a commanding officer. She didn't know why he would be showing up at her personal quarters.

Hesitantly, she opened the door a crack. "What do you want?" she asked, and then wondered if he would think it was rude.

"Just checking on you," he said with a smile. "May I come in?"

Wanda blinked at him, but nodded slowly, letting the door swing open. Not sure what to say, she backed into the room, and motioned vaguely at the door in front of the desk. Captain Rogers nodded in thanks and took a seat, though he raised his eyebrows at her when she sank onto the floor in front of the bed instead of drawing up the other chair.

They sat in silence for a few minutes, Wanda staring down at her ripped shirt, finger the hole in it awkwardly.

"How are you doing?" Rogers asked gently, after a long pause.

Wanda shrugged, feeling her shoulders hunch up and wishing she had Pietro there to coax them down. "Some of the Avengers are a little concerned," Rogers said, after waiting for her to say more, which she didn't. "I know this has got to be rough on you—Ms. Maximoff—" the name came out awkwardly, but it was the first thing that made Wanda feel a little more welcomed. She wasn't experiment anymore. She wasn't one of the twins. She wasn't little sister any longer. She wasn't even sure she was Wanda. But she felt as if she could almost handle being Ms. Maximoff. Rogers continued to speak, "—ah, but I don't think any of us want you to end up being malnourished." At Wanda's uncomprehending look, he clarified, "The eggs."

Wanda's mouth opened slowly. He was being so careful. He was skirting so carefully around—whatever it was that he was worried about. She looked down at herself, filthy, wearing a ragged, torn shirt, her fingers still greasy from her last dinner. She hadn't told anyone, because she wasn't accustomed to needing to tell people things. There had never been people worried about her before. There had only been Pietro. She smiled suddenly.

"I—I am not depressed," she said clearly. "Well, maybe I am. I don't know exactly. I'm, everything's empty, there's an empty spot where he was, but I'm not showering because. It helps. It makes me sleep better." Then, realizing he was still concerned and confused, "I'm sitting shiva."

There was another moment of confusion, and then his face opened in comprehension. "You're Jewish. I'm sorry, I didn't realize."

"I'm not. I mean, I was." She was confused again, unsure how to voice herself. She suddenly realized that, aside from Pietro, she had spoken only to the scientists for months, if not years. And before that, the twins had kept to themselves, afraid to open up to anyone, afraid of loss. If you kept your world to one person, one person out of all the billions of lives who lived and died and were lost—your world was small, but it was safe. But now she had lost her entire world. And in that loss, she had lost the ability to make herself understood with only a gesture, only a look. Now she had to use words, and her words were clumsy and incomplete. She took a breath. "We were raised Jewish, but when our parents died, we were taken in by a family who was not Jewish. We were very grateful to them, but after that, we did not worship much."

Rogers nodded. "I grew up in a neighborhood with many Jewish people. I've heard of sitting shiva, but I've never heard of the eggs."

Wanda flushed. Embarrassment was a strange feeling in the middle of grief. It was strange to her that she could feel anything other than the gaping emptiness or the odd peace she felt when she slipped into sleep and dreamed of Friday night and candles. Embarrassment was so ordinary, and she suddenly realized she had missed ordinary. "I just looked up the rituals on Wikipedia," she confessed. "I didn't know who to ask." She didn't say, I didn't know if I could ask. "And eggs are only really for the first meal, but I thought I needed many meals. I've lost so much." And, oh, how self-pitying that sounded. She bit her lip and dropped her eyes.

"I'd need a lot of eggs," Rogers said, and that was so not at all what she expected that she found herself looking up again to see him considering the problem thoughtfully. "Seventy-five years in the ice means a lot of loss," he said in response to her look. There was a hint of sadness, but also a sly twist to his lips. She found that she had to smile back, warmth through the emptiness, humor through the emptiness. No—humor and emptiness, co-existing.

She remembered that from inside his mind, before. The sense of an enormous wound, gaping open, but edged around with a dark, patient humor. She hadn't understood the wound then. Her own injury had been seared shut with hot anger, not laid empty and open like this.

She nodded at him and tried to smile. Rogers smiled back, and that pulled a real smile out of her, involuntary and almost painful. Then he blew out his breath and stood up. "I'll leave you, then," he said steadily. "I don't want to intrude on your grief."

"My mourning," Wanda said suddenly, and he paused and looked at her in confusion again. "You only intrude on my mourning," she clarified. "You do not intrude on my grief."

Wanda slept well that night for the first time in a long time. She dreamed of Shabbat dinner, of lighting the candles, of singing with Pietro and her parents. All three stood on the far side of the table from her, their faces shadowed, and when she tried to walk around it, she found that it kept growing longer, the end getting further and further away. Finally, she stopped in frustration, only to feel a hand laid on her shoulder. "Don't worry," said Steve Rogers, his face hidden behind the Captain America mask. "They'll wait for you." She woke strangely comforted and almost late to breakfast.

Sliding into her usual seat by herself at one corner of the cafeteria, Wanda sat undecided in front of an empty tray. Perhaps she had eaten enough eggs, but she wasn't sure what to get herself. This was the first meal she had eaten outside of her room in almost a week.

"Mind if I sit here?" She looked up quickly. Rogers had a plate of pancakes drenched in syrup in his left hand, and a pile of fried eggs—also syrup-covered—in his right. Surprised, she shook her head, and he sat down next to her and set the pancakes in front of her. "I checked Google last night. Apparently, during the shiva, visitors are supposed to provide the mourner with food."

"Thanks," Wanda said awkwardly. She nodded to his own plate. "They're supposed to be hard-boiled, you know."

"Guess I didn't check Google that closely," he smiled. "This is good enough for now. Oh, I found a number for the local synagogue, by the way." He slid a piece of paper toward her across the table. "You don't have to give them a call, but I figured it might help to have their number."

Wanda smiled through sudden tears. "Thank you," she whispered, and half-heard Pietro's voice in the back of her mind. Thank you.