Carmine Jewels ║ Wanda Maximoff

Chapter 49 - Perception

"My apologies." Natasha glanced at Keira, who had bent down to stretch her legs. "Key, do you still have some energy left, or did I push you too hard?" She cooed, her eyes shining at the offended look on the blonde's face.

A thin sheen of sweat covered Keira's face and her chest was heaving rapidly as her body fought for recovery. Straightening up from her stretch, she threw a glare at Natasha. "I'm seriously offended, Romanoff. Of course, I still got some energy left, what did you have in mind?" She huffed, not having paid the slightest attention whatsoever to the conversation, and casually brushed her hair over her shoulder.

This was one of the rare instances where her hair was down during training. Keira absolutely loathed it, but it was useful to train with her hair down since one never knows when a fight might break out.

Deciding to push Wanda's boundaries a little bit further, Natasha sauntered over to Keira and dragged a finger across her slightly exposed collarbone. "Oh, I know that." She said in a low voice, trying hard to contain her smirk while glancing at Wanda.

The brunette managed to keep control of her face this time, but the way her clenched fists made the skin on her knuckles turn white gave her away.

"I think Wanda could use a session, both with and without powers. Care to do the honors?" Natasha continued, winking at Wanda who looked both bemused and embarrassed. When she wasn't teasing Wanda with Keira however, Natasha liked the brunette very much. They got along really well, and had even leveled up to joking with each other.

Keira couldn't help but notice how Natasha's behavior had been slightly odd the last couple of months, but she just shook her head in amusement and thought nothing more of it. The redhead always had her moments of mystery. "I'm up for it, if you are?" She asked tentatively while glancing at Wanda, who quickly rearranged her features into a gentle smile.

"Y- Yeah, of course! I got loads of pent-up energy." Wanda stumbled over her words and shook her head to cut herself off while a light blush slowly crept up her neck. Why did she have to be so awkward?

"Good, you'll need it." Keira smiled, rolling her shoulder in an attempt to warm up her muscles again. In the beginning, it had been interesting to see what Wanda remembered from their first-ever training sessions together back at HYDRA, but it quickly became painfully clear that nobody had bothered to keep up with the brunette's hand-to-hand combat skills after Keira left.

But after months of training, Wanda slowly but surely regained her old skills. Keira had to hand it to her, she was an excellent student. Attentive, smart, and very quick to learn.

"Do you wanna start with some power tricks, or would you rather start with the physical?" Keira asked, already forming a plan in her head. She knew far too well that Wanda disliked being called a witch, or having her powers referred to as magic, which she respected.

Some of the team, however, had difficulties remembering this. Tony especially liked to refer to the brunette as 'witchy', something that always caused a scowl to appear on Wanda's face whenever she happened to hear it.

Wanda's head tilted slightly to the left in thought. "Powers." She decided after a short moment. "They're easier to control if I'm not completely exhausted." Smiling, she followed Keira's example and started to stretch. Even if they were starting with the non-physical parts of training, she still didn't want to pull a muscle.

"You got it, солнце." Keira did a theatrical bow and purposefully ignored Natasha's smirk. Sokovian and Russian weren't too far off from each other, they did originate from the same language family after all. That meant that some of the words were practically identical, which was why the redhead had recognized the word for 'sunshine'.