"The pair of you never cease to surprise me," Vision remarked, as he walked past Eva and Wanda sat on the floor of the rec room. This was warranted by the fact that Wanda was very carefully painting Eva's nails.
"We're gonna have a pillow fight and talk about boys after this," Eva declared, "just to really set back feminism."
Wanda rolled her eyes as Vision laughed.
"I shall see you both later," he said, closing the door behind him.
"He's got a point, though," Eva said, as Wanda finished the base coat. "I wouldn't have put a revolutionary like yourself down as a manicurist."
Wanda shrugged, opening a bottle of absinthe green nail polish. "When we were younger, before our parents died, my brother and I wanted to run a salon together," she explained, and smirked a little at Eva's shocked expression. "I know, it seems stupid now, but it was our dreams. Pietro would make people's hair for them, and I would paint nails."
Make people's hair, Eva thought, I love the way people talk in second languages. "What happened to that dream, then?"
"Reality," said Wanda. "When… when we were being enhanced, we were not well treated, but we put up with it for the results that would happen to us. And one day, Pietro asks to bleach his hair, and they say he is not allowed to buy the dye. That was the only time I cried, the whole of when they had us."
Eva thought of the photos she had seen of the Maximoffs during the (literal) fall of Sokovia; the boy's bleached hair, and the girl's flawless black nail varnish. Maybe the salon dream made some sense after all; surely they hadn't grown up wanting to be supers.
"Is it getting easier?" Eva asked, noticing Wanda had stopped painting. "Missing him, I mean."
"No," she said quietly, "but I am also getting better at it."
"I guess repeatedly killing the guy that did it kind of helped," she said, at a loss for what else to say.
Wanda smiled in her melancholy way. "Kind of," she agreed, unscrewing the bottle again. "I hope you don't mind green."
"It's my favorite color," she replied, "what about yours?"
"Scarlet."
"… And Pietro's?"
"Silver."
"What was he like?" Eva asked, blowing on the nails of her other hand to dry them faster.
"I believe the word Americans use is 'asshole'," she said with a small smile, "but he could be sweet, when he wanted to be. He was a good man."
Eva screwed up her face as she thought back to the time around the Battle of Sokovia. "Average height," she said, "kinda hot, faster than Tony Stark trying to get away from one of his ex-girlfriends?"
"You met him?"
"Only once," said Eva, "yeah, he was… alright." She tried to think of any redeeming qualities of the impatient customer other than the fact he had a very nice face, but drew a blank. "I, uh…"
Wanda caught her eye and burst out laughing. "Yes," she said, "speechlessness. That's the effect Pietro often had on people, one way or another."
A/N this chapter is kind of short but fear not, my children, for next week begins an EXCITING 3-4 chapter arc which is EXCITING and also EXCITING. Also I just finished act one of Finding Bucky, so now is a perfect time to pop along and read that in case you haven't already. Also also, my buddy old pal wishingforahome also writes an Avengers fic which, if anything, is a lot kinder towards Tony Stark and Pietro Maximoff than I am, so if you like them go read that. Seriously though, I do not write them as particularly likeable people. Maybe it's because Eva's as bitter as the beverages she sells.