Chapter Text
➻ polish
In those weightless, gray days between the end of her world—Ultron-and-everything-that-had-come-with-him—and the official assembly of the new team, Natasha had taken Wanda into New York for a day out.
“Makeover time,” she’d said, sauntering down Eighth Avenue in the early summer heat. Most of those days are blurry, thinking back on them, not that Wanda likes to. But some things she remembers vividly. The smell of Clint Barton’s farmhouse when she’d first stepped inside, with Clint hunched over his work, red-eyed, as if planing that shelf perfectly smooth could make up for a boy taking bullets for him: fresh-baked pie and fresh-cut wood and coiled shavings like shell casings on the floor. The funeral, of course, like a knife between her ribs. And New York, the press of minds and voices, the sea of humanity, almost overwhelming; the way it parted for her, people giving the occasional slanting double-take as if something about her had sent goosebumps prickling down their arms in the summer heat; the teeming, mad abundance of overpriced stores and American decadence existing side by side with ragged men huddled in doorways and pigeons and fruit hawked on the street, things that were almost familiar.
“I’m not being facetious, by the way,” Natasha had said. “When your whole self and your whole world turns inside out, it’s easier to change your body along with it. Otherwise you start wondering why you’re still here.” A shrug. “At least in my experience. Your mileage may vary, but you look like you could use a distraction.”
Wanda had wondered, out loud, why Natasha was being so kind to her, and Natasha had just tilted her head. “I assume you saw what I saw. Isn’t that your answer?” It hadn’t been, at the time. Later, seeing her with Clint’s children, she’d started to understand. Natasha’s mind had been glassy, slippery, full of shadows locked in neatly ordered coils of ice; she could smash one and run, had, regretted it; but she could not even sense the depths of her, could not know her. Not except the old-fashioned way, blundering in the dark, for her true self was impenetrable, perhaps even to her—and, Wanda realized with time, brilliantly simple and kind.
Wanda had struggled, swimming through that sea of New York: more minds than she’d ever been close to before. She didn’t want to listen, she didn’t want to reach in; she was tired, and sick with guilt, and everything had turned inside out and she wanted to turn back into herself. Maybe it would’ve been easier if she didn’t care, like she used to, if she’d just plunged through this mass of water balloons, heedless, let them burst and spill themselves over her skin. Maybe she would’ve drowned. Natasha, familiar iceglass, never went far from her side, and Wanda didn’t know whether that had been on purpose, but she’d been grateful.
Wanda had, perhaps, gone overboard: lifted her hair up six shades, added those curling honey-brown extensions. The facial had been nice, stunningly luxurious. The new makeup was layered, contoured, not just the swipe of black pencil and cheap waxy red lipstick she’d used for years; it took an hour to apply, was full of overpriced formulas that felt like silk and air on her skin. She backslid, of course. It was high maintenance. Expensive. She looked terrifyingly American, barely recognized herself in the mirror; sometimes this was comforting, sometimes she felt as if Pietro was standing beside her, in that reflection, next to his little sister who had become an alien, and she scrubbed it all off and wept.
There had been a makeup store, high-end, all glossy black with more saleswomen than customers, pots and tubes and primers and bronzers and more kinds of product than she’d known existed, all out for sample in tiny rainbows, and she and Natasha had played for ages. Purple was not Natasha’s color, they decided. Green was stunning, but bold. She so needed the right dress for that, she said, and laughed. Wanda felt hollow by then, floating, so overwhelmed with color and texture that she could barely remember her name, never mind her sorrows, which had perhaps been the point. But along with everything else, all the bright and perfectly tone-matched new shades and formulas, she’d picked up an oversized pot of matte black nail polish. Just like she’d worn for as long as she could find it. Just like she’d painted on in a bomb shelter beneath Sokovia as Pietro had wrinkled his nose at the smell.
She’d worn it to the funeral. She’d worn it every day since. It was mostly gone, crusted and thick, by the time she’d put Vision through the floor and fled with Clint, and, of course, was still there, in that empty complex. No time to take anything with her. She wonders if Stark has sealed her room. She wonders if Stark has thrown away her things. She wonders why she cares, why she hasn’t learned her lesson by now about homes, and not having them.
The last coat is nearly gone now. It’s worn down entirely on the tips of all her nails, scuffed raw and torn from the hours she’d spent thrashing against that straightjacket, hair and tears in her face as her mind pounded helpless against the collar at her throat, before she’d given up, slumped lifeless in the corner, waited to die. Some black spots near the bottoms of her nails, grown out a little from the quick. She’d wanted to finish the bottle, maybe find a new color afterwards, like shedding her mourning clothes, and it’s the most foolish thing to be upset about, but. Bodies and changing. Sometimes the littlest things get to a person.
Those last few black spots shrink before Natasha turns up in Wakanda, where Wanda’s been hiding in her room from all the sideways glances and, mostly, trying to remember what her mind feels like when it’s all there. Natasha, being Natasha, manages to find a local woman with an impeccable fashion sense, more curiosity than resentment towards foreigners, and a considerable stash.
“Makeover time,” she says, appearing in Wanda’s door like a warm glassy wraith.
It’s a long night. Hair and foundation are hopeless, of course; Shuri laughs at their ghostly Slavic complexions, and has a lot of fun playing with their hair but can’t get it to stick in any of the local styles. But shadow and lipstick and nail polish are a party. It’s as smooth and luxurious as the high-end brands from New York, and bolder, vivid and high-pigment colors mixed to gleam on dark skin. “And stay on when you sweat,” Shuri says proudly. “I wear this one all the time, even when I spar with my brother, it’s very well tested.”
“Your brother?” Wanda asks, fussing with those last few black spots on her nails.
“T’Challa, of course—oh, didn’t you know?”
Natasha, dabbing her eyelids with luminous copper, smiles with a twist of her lips that doesn’t look like an apology. “I forgot to tell her.”
“No, no, it’s lovely. Everybody’s being so sad at me, so formal, if I hear another—” she lapses into her own language for a moment “—I’m going to explode. This is exactly what I needed, Ms. Natasha, I need to peel all my skin off and paint myself a new one. And fight a dozen men also.”
Natasha’s smile stays crooked, and increasingly fond. “Well, I’m only one woman, but if you want to go a round…”
“Gods, yes.” She holds up an elegant fingertip. “Once our nails dry.”
“She’s worth a dozen men,” Wanda murmurs. Shuri doesn’t have matte black nail polish; Shuri doesn’t have matte anything. There’s black so glossy it looks liquid even when it dries. There’s black filled with glittering gold like stardust in the void. There’s black that crackles and shrinks away from copper so it looks like veins of sunlight. There’s black laced with some strange glimmering stuff that turns it nebula purple in slanting light. There’s black that’s pebbled, and Shuri’s wearing a coat of that which she’s brushing a breath of blood-red over, to highlight the texture, and it looks nigh volcanic. “May I…may I try that when you’re done?”
“Of course, Ms. Wanda! It’ll want two coats. Or I have this sparkly red if you want…?”
The pearlescent, Wanda decides in the end, looks the best. Over the red gloss base coat, it shimmers in the light, changes intensity in swirls like a scarlet oil slick; it looks like her power has seeped into her nails, lit them up with her red ghost light. It’s ostentatious and hypnotic and she can’t stop staring at them. She summons a little wisp of power, just to see it glimmer and reflect, and puffs it away when Shuri notices, but it’s too late.
“That looks beautiful,” Shuri says with a grin, flitting her own fingertips about as if that will help them dry faster. “Cool. That’s the word, yes?”
“Yes,” says Natasha, definitive. She’s gone for the black-and-copper crackle, which takes a long time to set, and she’s waiting patiently, settling down in a crouch to stretch with catlike balance.
“It’s not frightening?” Wanda asks, genuinely curious.
Shuri laughs, fearless. “No! I know you are powerful, yes. So is everyone I know, in ways.” She shrugs. “If you were a danger, my brother would not let you enter this country alive.” She scoots closer. “Show me again!”