The din of the party seemed to drop away in an instant. Looking fairly stricken, Wanda could only nod tightly at this, not trusting her voice. Not trusting herself. This was nothing like the pat sympathies offered to her at every turn. This man seemed like he meant it. Really, truly meant it.
It seemed that despite herself, Wanda was not yet the relentless machine she wanted to be, bent only on revenge with all traces of vulnerability safely extinguished. She had thought she'd toughened up, assumed she had developed a second skin of incorruptible steel after so many weeks in the spotlight. But she'd been wrong. It seemed that people could still make her feel things other than anger and disgust. Or at the very least, this man she truly knew nothing about could. He acted as if he could partially grasp what Pietro had been to her--not an actor paid to give the viewing public equal doses of thrills and pathos but her brother. Her entire world, really.
Feeling strangely exposed, her eyes quickly shied away from their locked gazes. Her grief was a chasm, if she allowed herself to fall in she'd never get back out. And that meant no revenge for Pietro. She'd be doomed to live pointlessly on without him having done exactly what the Capitol wanted--delivered memorable television before fading safely from view. It was this thought that allowed Wanda to breathe again past the tight knot of grief in her chest. She managed to scan her mind for something appropriate to say.
"It's hard not to be envious," she admitted, desperately hoping to redirect the focus to him rather than on her loss. "You two must be close. I can see that just from the way you're watching him."