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When he first opens his eyes, he finds himself staring into the piercing green eyes of a young woman who hovers over him.
He blinks, once, twice, and then his operating system catches up with the hardware. There is a gentle whirr, and then bzzt! bzzt! as his New User Protocol starts up. "H-hello," he stutters out, his voice program not yet entirely calibrated from the newness. "I am Unit AX4021-U5133. You are recognized as New User. Identify yourself, please."
The woman backs away, her movements tight with tension. He catches on to this as his system automatically does a silent full-body scan of her. "Do not be alarmed," he assures her, "I will not harm you. I am here to assist. Identify yourself, please."
She swallows slowly. "Wanda Maximoff," she says at last. Her voice is a soothing alto.
"Hello, Wanda Maximoff." His hardware hums again, signaling that all of his programs have been calibrated. "I am a Home Premium unit. I will assist you in all of your daily functions in your place of residence. Will you give me a name?" He recites this from his lines of program code, because users who utilize Home Premium units prefer to establish familiarity.
Wanda says nothing at first, her eyes searching him. "Vizh," she manages. "The Vision. Vizh. uh, Vizh. I'm going to call you Vizh."
"Very well," he accepts, processing the data. "I am Vizh. How may I assist you today?"
--
Wanda Maximoff likes to smile. Vizh takes note of this immediately. Whenever the opportunity presents itself, she wears a smile that lights up her entire face.
He decides that this is nice.
It makes his function in the household simpler. He can gauge how well he is doing in his responsibilities as a home premium unit from her smile. (Smile, noun. 1. A smile is a facial expression formed by flexing the muscles near both ends of the mouth and by flexing muscles throughout the mouth. Among humans, it is an expression denoting pleasure, sociability, happiness, or amusement.)
Sometimes, though, there is a difference in her smiles. This troubles his program, because there are times when she smiles and he recognizes the gesture, but other times when she mimics the expression even though there is a lack of reason for her to be happy.
Eventually, Vizh decides that when she smiles the second type of smile, she is lying. (Lying, transitive verb. 1. To create a false or misleading impression that may or may not be believed true by the liar.)
Miss Wanda does not appear to be a hostile user, so he decides to ask her about it one day as he is preparing her dinner in the kitchen. Burger and fries, she had insisted earlier, and a scoop of ice cream on the side. (She likes to eat her fries with the ice cream.)
"Miss Wanda?"
She has her legs swung around a chair facing him because she likes to watch him work; she told him as much early on.
"Just call me Wanda," she protests, much as she has been doing the past week. (It is against his programming to ignore a request, but it feels very wrong for him to deny her any manner of respect.)
"May I pose a question?"
She gives him a lopsided smile, one that he has learned denotes that she is feeling playful. "That was one already."
He pauses, because she is correct. "I apologize."
"No, it's okay. Ask away," she amends, waving her hand dismissively.
"Why do you 'smile' when you are not happy?"
She stills. There is no sound from behind him at all, and he turns his attention away from the hamburger meat. "Miss Wanda?"
"What makes you say that?" She blinks, and her voice is tight again, with an emotion he cannot place. (Human emotions are regrettably complex, and he wishes he could learn them faster.)
He twists away from the counter and bends down next to her, because she is about to cry and he knows it. (Her heartbeat has just gone up by 20 beats per minute, and his quick body scan indicates that her eyes are lubricated with too much fluid.) "I apologize, Miss Wanda. I did not mean to offend you. I merely wish to understand you better."
"You--...you didn't offend me," she says slowly. "I just. I wasn't expecting anyone to notice."
"I am an A.I. unit," he supplies, closing his eyes as he scans her. "I can gauge the slightest changes in your body. When you smile and you do not mean it, there is a vein that pulses at the side of your neck. Your muscles constrict unnaturally, and your shoulders are tenser."
"Oh," she says, lamely. She blinks, and two fat tears roll down her cheeks--but nothing else after that. Vizh reaches up to brush them away, but she jerks back, startled. "Sorry! I didn't mean, uh. It's just, you're...cold."
"My apologies. I forgot." He draws back and heats up his hardware to a comfortable ninety-seven degrees Fahrenheit, and then he reaches toward her again and wipes away the tears.
"I didn't know you could do that." She gives him a strange look.
"It is in the user manual."
Wanda smiles flatly, but it is not a dishonest smile. "I don't read those." She takes a deep breath. "I'm sorry, I'm just not used to being alone so much. I...I used to live with my brother. Uh, I have a twin. His name is Pietro."
"Pietro," he repeats, storing the information for future reference.
"But he moved out with his girlfriend, Crystal, a few weeks ago. She's a nice girl, of course. I just miss him," Wanda says. Then she stops, and grins. "You were his farewell gift for me, actually, to make sure I had someone to watch over me."
Vizh moves away slowly. "I see." She misses her family. Is this why she seems "sad" sometimes?
"Uh, I also...I had a boyfriend. Up until a week ago."
"Oh." The revelation is not startling. It makes sense. Vizh busies himself with preparing the food.
"He's an actor, though. He's very busy." Now she sounds distant and unhappy again. (Oh. Oh.) "We fought a lot, up until--...I just, I've never really been alone before."
"You are not alone," Vizh says, assembling her meal onto the plate. "Am I not a presence in your humble abode?" He moves over to the table where she is sitting, and sets the plate in front of her. "Your dinner, Miss Wanda."
He expects her usual "thank you", but she simply gives him a funny look again. Then she takes a deep breath and says, firmly, "Call me Wanda. Please."
"...Very well, Wanda."
She looks pleased, and he is glad for his decision.
--
Wanda is beautiful.
Vizh is not reluctant to acknowledge this, both to himself and her on occasion. It is an observation that is immediately apparent to anyone who notices her.
She has a wild mass of dark brown curls that seems to have a sentience of its own, especially after she first wakes up. (Once, she apologizes profusely after she bumps into him before she has had a chance to tame it that morning.) Her green eyes are especially startling against the backdrop of her tanned olive skin, and there are days when she looks fierce enough to own the world.
But she does not own the world. She is a teacher at a kindergarten, and that makes her even more endearing. On weekdays, she is away from her apartment for extended periods of time while she works there. She often stays long after she's no longer being paid (he knows because he asked once), even, to help with extracurricular activities.
One morning, though, she forgets her lunch. He glances over his shoulder while washing the dishes from that morning's breakfast, and there it is--sitting on the table.
He blinks, and decides to deliver it to her after he finishes up here.
So Vizh goes to visit her at her school.
The woman at the front office is polite as she signs him in, and she remarks, not unkindly, "I didn't know Miss Maximoff had an A.I. unit."
"I am afraid my presence would not be worth mentioning in any meaningful conversation," he says, apologetically, and she looks taken aback.
"My, you're remarkably humble," she smiles.
She sends him on his way, and he wanders down the halls until he finds Wanda's classroom. The door is already open, and he finds an interesting chaos waiting for him.
A sea of crayons has spilled all over the colorful carpet that stretches across the room, and there are children running around in every direction. Others still are hunched around a table, scribbling on paper and bickering loudly with each other. There is one little boy who seems to be ingesting craft paste, and another little girl who is shrieking about someone stealing her crayons.
The two unseated children are followed by a flurry of paper airplanes, and in the corner of his eye, he sees Wanda bend down and snatch up one of the children. "Gotcha!" she says brightly.
"Miss Maximoff," the dark-haired boy whines, "Tommy stole my drawing!"
Meanwhile, the other, silver-haired boy is looking over his shoulder at the first one and sneering triumphantly, no longer paying attention to where he is running.
Vizh scoops him up before he hits the wall near the door, and the little one jolts in his arms, surprised. "Hey, Mister," he says, squinting hard. "Why do you have a red face?"
Wanda turns her gaze to the door sharply, and her mouth drops open. "Vizh. What are you doing here?"
"You forgot your lunch," he explains, approaching her desk and setting down the bag. "I just came by to drop it off."
"You're an android," the silver-haired boy whispers, awed.
"Correct."
"What can you do?!"
Vizh pauses. He's never been asked that before. After a moment of thinking, the jewel on his forehead lights up and shifts from color to color like a strobe light.
"Wooooow. That is so freakin'--"
"Tommy," Wanda says sternly.
"--cool!"
"Miss Maximoff," the dark-haired boy cries, not willing to be forgotten, "Tommy stole my drawing and crumpled it up!"
"I did not! I made it into an airplane, which is so much better than your stupid drawing anyway," Tommy protests hotly.
"You did, too! And my drawing is NOT stupid! MISS MAXIMOFF!"
"Tommy, that wasn't very nice. Billy's drawing is beautiful," Wanda says, frowning. When Tommy's face falls, she continues, "Your airplanes are lovely, too, but maybe next time, you can make them out of blank paper?"
"Okay," Tommy mutters. "Sorry, Billy."
"Thanks," Billy sniffs. "Can I be put down now? I'm going to make another drawing." He glares at Tommy.
"Play nice," Wanda warns them, and she sets down Billy. Vizh follows suit with the boy in his arms, and they both run off, still squabbling with each other.
"Sorry about that," Wanda says tiredly, but she's smiling--the kind of smile that lights up her entire face. "That was Billy Kaplan and Tommy Shepherd. They're quite the handful."
"I see. It seems...fun, though."
"It is." Suddenly, Wanda's hand flies up to her disheveled hair, and she pats it down hurriedly. "Uh, thanks for bringing by the lunch. I won't forget it next time."
"Next time, I will not let you," he agrees, turning away. "By the way, you look beautiful today."
She blinks after him, but he is already gone.
--
One morning, while he is still hooked up at his usual charging station, Vizh receives a notice from his internal server.
IMPORTANT: An update to your system is now available. Would you like to update now?
His system is still groggy from the sleep mode, but he sends out a quick answer.
>>Yes.
The low thrumming that plays in the background is a familiar pulse as he waits for the new information to surge into his body.
ERROR: Your system cannot be updated. There are one or more issues with your program. Please check your program manually and try again at a later time.
His eyes snap open. That is unusual. He is a fairly new unit; there should not be anything wrong with him so early on. He unplugs himself from the charging station to shake off the buzz that the electricity is giving him, and then he initiates a search through his system.
"Vizh?" Wanda calls out from the next room over. "Are you done charging yet? I was going to go ahead and put in a load of laundry, but this blasted machine--"
"Almost," he answers. "I have an update to my system."
"Oh. Okay. Take your time, I'm sure I can figure this out somehow," she announces, sounding determined--as loud clanging ensues.
There is a funny twitching to his mouth, and Vizh stops dead. What is wrong with his hardware? His hand reaches up, but his face has already smoothed out again.
He needs to identify the error before he starts malfunctioning in his utilities.
He pulls up his program code and sifts through it carefully, line by line. This might take a while. So far, so good. Everything is as it should be--
"Vizh?" Suddenly, Wanda pokes her head into the room, and her brows are pushing against her eyes in another expression he cannot place.
"Yes?" he hums out, still going through the coding.
"You--you updated?"
"I tried. There is an error with my program. It is not accepting the updates. Right now, I am going through my code--"
"Don't worry about that. You can do it later, right? I really need you to help me with the laundry, I can't figure out what I did wrong!" Wanda exclaims, bustling into the room and hooking her arm through his. "Come on."
She whisks him away from the charging station, and he is about to defeatedly give up on searching through his code, when--
The script that he is scrolling through begins to show up in red. Each line in red indicates an error that deviates from the original coding, and all of it--all of it--is red.
He allows himself to be dragged along, but internally, he zooms through the program, trying to understand the changes that have been made. They do not make sense, not even to him. The code is a disturbingly complex conundrum, as if someone whose abilities rivaled the original creators had gone in and rewritten it. And then, finally, he finds something that could make sense, in one line--...
...--but it still means nothing at all to him.
He clutches on to that one line, storing it away for later.
But for now, he exits all of his windows and allows his attention to be distracted by the lovely woman pulling him down the hall.
--
Later that evening, there is a knock at the apartment's front door.
Wanda is upstairs taking a bath when it happens. She has never instructed Vizh on a protocol for visitors before; she has never had visitors in the entire time he has been activated.
The knock is persistent, though, and it comes with a loud, "Wanda? Hello?" in the next couple of thuds. Vizh decides to answer it to be polite.
He opens the door to a bulky man who peers at him through thick, dark brows when Vizh offers courteously, "I am sorry, Miss Wanda is currently unavailable. Could you come back another time?"
The man just stares. His arms are enormous. Every inch of him ripples with strength when he moves, which he does when he leans against the doorframe. "I didn't know she had an A.I. unit," he says, mostly to himself. Then he looks at Vizh and says, "I know she's in there. She's always home around this time. Tell her to get down here."
Which is grossly rude, considering what he has just told him, so Vizh frowns. "I said, Miss Wanda is currently unavailable. Please come back another time."
And he begins to shut the door, in which the man leaps up and pushes it back open. "Now look, you blasted robot--"
"Vizh?"
Vizh turns to see Wanda approaching, full dressed and drying off her hair with a towel. He is about to answer, but the man at the door beats him to it: "Wanda."
"...it is you, Vizh." She lets the towel fall from her hands, and Vizh steps aside, confused.
"I came by to get my stuff," the man says, puffing up his chest. "I need it. Important stuff, you know."
"Oh. Okay." Wanda gives him an odd look, and then she picks up a box near the door that Vizh has always noticed but never asked about. "Here."
"Oh. And, uh, that's everything?" The man takes the box with ease, his eyes searching.
"That's everything," she agrees. They stand there for a few moments, neither of them saying anything. "Is there something else you wanted?"
"No," he says quickly. "Nothing at all. I'm going now." And he does, turning on his heel and heading for the elevator.
Wanda waits for a few moments before shutting the door behind him.
"I do not understand," Vizh says, as soon as the door is closed. "Is his name Vizh?"
"What? Oh!" Wanda looks horrified. "Oh, I--uh, no. That's just a nickname. He always said he had a vision for each of his characters before he acts them out, and I was joking with him about it one night--...a-anyway, it stuck."
There is some more silence. Vizh is unsure what to make of this new information. He has always liked his name. Now, he is not so sure.
"Anyway, his real name is Simon Williams," she hastily supplies, making her way across the room.
"...I beg your pardon?"
She stops in her tracks and looks back. "What?"
"Could you repeat that, please?"
"His real name is...Simon Williams?" Wanda says slowly. He recognizes this one, this look on her face. She is anxious. But why?
Because "Simon Williams" is the only cohesive object he found within his stream of code earlier today. His stream of code, line after line--lit up in red. "I found...that name in my program, earlier today. When I was trying to update. My--...code, there appears to be something wrong with it." He pauses. "There appears to be a lot wrong with it, actually."
Wanda seats herself onto the couch. "When Pietro moved out, and Simon broke up with me--I...I was lonely."
"You have said this."
"Pietro gave me this A.I. unit." She laughs dryly. "I wasn't ever going to use it. But I was sad...and Tony, uh. My friend, Tony Stark."
Quietly, Vizh looks up "Tony Stark", and he comes back with more results than he could imagine. Headlines flash out at him at every turn, but most importantly, Vizh learns that he is the CEO of Stark Industries, a technology corporation that rivals the one that made him.
"He offered...to make you more human. So that I'd use you. I said okay," she says, looking up. "He needed to base your neural processors off of someone, off a real human's brain waves...he asked me for a name. I'd meant it as a joke, but he took me seriously. He re-wrote you based off of Simon."
"Oh." He does not know what to think. "So I am--...Everything I am..."
"It came from Simon." Wanda glances down. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to--I would've never done it if--...I-I didn't think," she amends forcefully, and then she falls silent. "You're not what I expected."
"I am sorry?" It comes out as more of a question than a genuine apology, and Vizh is not sure why.
"Are you mad?" She asks in a small voice.
Vizh blinks several times. "...what is 'mad'?"
Her eyes flutter to look at him, really look at him. More silence. And then she lets out a shaky laugh. "Of course. Never mind. You can't be mad." She rises to her feet, looking over her shoulder once more. "Are you okay with the name 'Vizh'? I can--I can give you another, it's--"
"Why would I not be 'okay'?"
"...never mind." Wanda lets out a heavy sigh as she walks away. "Don't bother with dinner tonight, okay? I'm just...I'm just going to go to bed."
And she disappears into the next room.
But Vizh makes her dinner anyway, because he does not like the idea of her going hungry for the night, and leaves it at her door.
--
But maybe Vizh is not okay, because he thinks about it a lot.
He thinks about the dark-haired man wedging himself into the doorframe, and he tries to tell himself sometimes, I am him. He is me. But it does not make him feel any better. He also repeats his name over and over again to himself, Vizh. The Vision. My name is Vizh, but that makes him feel worse.
He does not like being someone else. Not that he was ever someone to begin with, of course. He is merely an A.I. unit. But even that, on its own, was individual. Being an A.I. unit was who he was. These days, he knows he is just a copy--a poor imitation.
And then there are days where he finds himself wanting to be more than just his own identity, but the original itself.
He finds old photographs while he is cleaning the apartment, photos of her and Simon Williams together. He has his burly arm wrapped around her neck, and she is graceful as a swan even in stillness, but there is a dazzling smile on her lips as she glances back at him. Her eyes are tender, fond, as he bends down for a kiss, and there the camera has them frozen together in time.
Vizh looks at those photos, and there is a twinge in his wires, in something, because he wishes, so desperately, that there is something in his program that could pull such a wonderful smile out of her.
Because even though she smiles around him, it is never that sort of smile.
She has such a nice smile.
There are more photos, many, many more, trashed around the place and tucked in crooks and nannies that he is not even sure if she is aware of. There are photos of them entangled in kisses--butterfly kisses, chaste kisses, and then the hungry kisses, passionate kisses--and he places all of those face-down, because he does not feel comfortable intruding upon their private moments.
But also because oil begins to leak from his face--probably from focusing on one thing for so long--blurring his line of sight around the edges.
He does not want to be a copy.
He wants to be himself.
And maybe, just a little bit, he wants to be human.
Humans are nice. They feel things and they love each other--yes, they can love, that's very nice, that's a nice thing to have.
It occurs to him, suddenly, that he is finding all of these photographs only now, perhaps because he has started searching for them.
So he stops looking, and he leaves the photographs he has found in a pile on the table while he tidies up virtually everything else in the apartment.
--
The photos are gone when he comes back from grocery shopping the next day.
Instead, Vizh finds Wanda curled up on the couch with a book in her hand. Wanda likes to read--this, he knows well. But she does not read on electronic tablets as he knows is the customary format for reading. She prefers the vintage paperbacks with worn covers and yellowed pages and the scent of musty bookshelves clinging to them.
To be honest, if it were not for Wanda, Vizh does not think he would have ever been able to see a real book just going from day to day. He is not sure why she has so many of them, but she does--all lined up with the utmost care on a shelf in her bedroom. He knows because he has dusted that shelf often.
He sets the grocery bags down in the open kitchen and begins unloading them. "What are you reading?"
"Hmm? Oh. It's, uh--" She sits up, looking mildly embarrassed. "It's one of those cheesy novels with torrid love affairs..."
"You have a lot of them."
"You're right. Okay, I love them," Wanda grins sheepishly. "The books were my mother's. She...she died when Pietro and I were very young. I got her books." She shrugs. "She liked to collect them. The cheesy romances, that is. She adored them, and I guess...I guess now, so do I."
"Which one are you reading now?" He asks, arranging the last of the groceries into the refrigerator. He turns back to the bag and stops at the sight of ice cream. "Would you like some ice cream? I bought strawberry." (Wanda likes to try new flavors all the time, but strawberry is her favorite.)
"Oh! Yes, please," she agrees happily. "Um, this one is called The Duke's Mistress."
"Torrid love affair, indeed." He takes the small tub of strawberry ice cream and a spoon, and he brings it over to her.
"Thank you," she croons, and there is a flutter in his chest. He is about to head back to the kitchen to start on dinner, but she stops him. "You're done, right?" She peers around the corner to check for grocery bags. "Okay, yeah. Sit down." Wanda curls up her legs so they are no longer stretched across the couch.
"I should start on dinner--"
"I've got ice cream. Ice cream for dinner." She picks up the tub and opens it, peeling back the plastic.
"That is not healthy, though--"
"Read to me," she interjects, shoving the book at him. Reluctantly, he sits down, and scans over the words.
"'He frowned down at her, pushing up his quizzing glass--'"
Wanda lets out a spiel of laughter, and Vizh stops abruptly, afraid he has done something wrong. "I am sorry, did I--"
"Oh, God, I'm so sorry. It's not you. It's just, this book is the most ridiculous thing I've read by far, and having you read it is even better." She smiles brightly at him, and he feels his internal system growing hot.
"What makes it ridiculous?"
"That man is forever pushing up his quizzing glass to show disapproval. I swear to you, I'm going to re-read this one of these days and turn it into a drinking game."
"Well, consider it an ice cream game for tonight. Eat your dinner," he admonishes, turning back to the book.
"Okay." Wanda sticks the spoon into the tub, digging out a portion. "You know, you have a nice smile."
"I beg your pardon?"
"You have a nice smile?"
He blinks widely at her, not understanding. Silence. Her own mouth quirks up. "You do know you smile a lot?"
Vizh reaches up to his face, smoothing it out. "Since when?" he asks, concerned.
"Since I first activated you," Wanda says. "You smiled at me when you saw me."
"No, that...A.I. units should not be able to do that. I believe that is a hardware error," Vizh insists. "Perhaps I should have it looked at--" But then he trails off, because it occurs to him that any and all errors that he exhibits may be the subsequent result of his re-programming.
"Well, it's nice. Does it...bother you that you smile?"
"I...I suppose not, if you enjoy it."
"I do," she says agreeably. "Here, let me see the book." She exchanges the ice cream with him for the book, and she flips back through the pages. "There's a scene in here that I think will make you laugh."
"I do not laugh," Vizh protests, taking her legs and setting them on his lap, because she looks uncomfortable in her scrunched-up position.
"Yeah, yeah. You don't smile, either." Wanda glances at him impishly. "Okay, here, listen to this."
And she reads to him, in her smooth, melodic voice. He decides he likes the sound very much. He listens with great care, but he is at a loss for words when she finishes.
"I...that's a very interesting scene. He raises his eyebrows too much," he says finally. "And clutches the quizzing glass too much. And frowns. And his eyes are too often cold."
"Vizh, I see your mouth. You are trying so hard not to laugh right now, and that's not fair because I want to be right if you find this funny," Wanda complains loudly.
Her sulkiness is even better than the scene, and he cannot help the breath of air that escapes his lips into a sound. Vizh looks at her, startled, and it occurs to him this is the "laughter" she is referring to. "I--"
"YES! You laughed," she shouts with glee. "Here, you choose a scene." She switches with him again, and takes a few more bites of ice cream.
He sifts through the pages, but is surprised (and embarrassed) to find an overwhelming number of scenes with sexual content. "Wanda, there is a lot of...human intercourse in this, are you sure--"
"That's even better," Wanda declares. "Read them."
He glances at her, but she seems perfectly unfazed--so reluctantly, he does. He chooses the shortest one and reads it with great--no, really, great--embarrassment. When he is done, Wanda is doubled over with laughter.
"This is the best. Oh, God. My night has been made. You were so uncomfortable, do you understand how precious that is--ow, ow, I can't breathe--" She is still howling with laughter, so Vizh pushes a spoonful of ice cream into her mouth.
"Hush and eat your dinner," he grumbles, not unkindly.
"Mmm. Thank you." She licks her lips and swallows, taking the spoon from him. He watches her, all of a sudden mesmerized by her mouth, the shape of her lips and the way they move.
"Remind me why you like these books again," he says, mostly to distract himself from his irrational train of thought.
"Okay, okay. I started reading them because of my mother, but the truth is, I like them because I think they're sexy," Wanda says unabashedly.
"'Sexy'?"
"Yeah. You know, sexual attraction and all that." She blinks. "Wait, no, you don't know. I mean, uh..."
She trails off, and Vizh is left looking at her, and her at him. There is a calm that overtakes them, not necessarily an uncomfortable one, but not a peaceful one, either. Earlier, he heated up his hardware to accommodate their physical contact, but perhaps he set the temperature too high. His body feels entirely too hot to be a normal temperature, probably as a result of the wires beneath his skin crackling against each other.
"I can keep reading," he offers at last.
"Please," she agrees.
"I was 'joking' about ice cream being your dinner."
"I know you were."
"I will make you a real dinner later."
"I know you will."
And somehow, even though that makes the air even thicker than before, it is not entirely unpleasant. He keeps reading to her as she spoons ice cream into her mouth, and he is pleased that she seems happy.
--
Yes, it has occurred to Vizh that he may just be a substitute for Simon.
But he has also decided he does not particularly care. He just likes the way the corners of Wanda's mouth twitch when she looks at him, and the way her clear green eyes train on him when she is talking to him, and the way her laughter bounces off the walls when he is the only one around to hear it.
He likes all of those things very much. And so, he has decided he does not care. No, not one bit.
One night, he unplugs the vacuum to hear Wanda playing smooth jazz in the living room.
He glances over to the living room, and sure enough, while she is assembling an arts and crafts project for the children over at the kindergarten, Wanda is spiritedly twirling around in the living room.
"Wanda?" He calls out, amused.
"Shhh. Come dance with me, Vizh!" She urges, grinning from ear to ear.
"I am not sure--"
"Don't make me drag you over here," she warns.
Vizh lets out a sigh, but he heads over to the living room and catches her arms in a perfect, fluid motion. He sets his hand beneath her shoulder blades as he spins her around the room. She looks up into his eyes while they move, and he can feel the smile on his face this time as her eyes mischievously twinkle at him.
As it turns out, Wanda is even more graceful when she is dancing. She flaunts that grace shamelessly now as he twists her out, and she coils back into his arms again. "You're a great dancer," she announces happily.
"It is not difficult. These are the most basic movements of any A.I. unit," Vizh explains.
"You're bragging."
"I merely meant--"
"It's okay, I love it!" She is still grinning when the song ends.
As the silence settles, he becomes heart-stoppingly aware of how close she is, pressed against his torso, and that she is peering into his eyes, her nose no more than 3 millimeters away from his and her mouth less than 2.286 centimeters away. Something in his chest lurches with a sharp pain.
Neither of them moves any closer to the other, but neither of them moves away, either.
He simply blinks into her green, green eyes, the sensation similar to what he imagines sinking into an ocean would feel like.
She closes her eyes. Why did she close her eyes? Vizh is too nervous now, and he wrenches away first.
"I--I am going to--"
"Dinner. Right." Her eyes are open again, and she is smiling like nothing had happened.
"Uh...yes, dinner."
"Okay." She says nothing more after that, merely bending over her project on the table as the next song starts.
Vizh heads to the kitchen, feeling very, very confused.
--
Then, one morning, Vizh emerges from his charging station to find Wanda at the door, chatting animatedly with Simon Williams.
He has a bunch of red roses in his left hand.
There is a sinking feeling in his stomach that Vizh recognizes by now, but he would never admit it to anyone who asked him.
"Simon, this is very nice, but--" Wanda turns at the sound of Vizh shuffling out of the hall. "Oh, Vizh--uh, okay." A loud POP! crackles from the kitchen. "Oh, shit! My eggs. I was trying to fry eggs this morning, and--" She dashes off, calling over her shoulder, "I'll be right back!"
Vizh watches her run off bemusedly. She often tries to handle some of the household functions, "to take some of the work off of his hands", as she had put it--but "try" is the keyword. When he looks back to the door, though, Simon is less understanding.
"Wanda--" Simon gripes, frustrated, as he bangs his fist against the door with such impact that Vizh is concerned for a moment that he might have broken it.
"Please be careful with the door," Vizh says, after a moment. "Miss Wanda will be with you shortly--"
"Wanda, you can't just keep pushing this blasted robot in front of me just because you don't want to talk!" Simon shouts. He throws the roses to the ground and stomps on them angrily. "I wanted us to try again, but fine!"
"Sir, you are being very loud--there are other residents on this floor--"
"Oh, for God's sake, SHUT UP!"
And Simon's arm swings out and crushes Vizh's head against the door.
There is an ugly sound as chips and boards and units are smashed to smithereens, some of the parts spilling out onto the floor where he stood and others simply rolling around and dropping deeper into the abyss of his system. Fresh electricity sparks and steams in the air, and it takes another moment before Vizh is suddenly aware of the overwhelming pain he now feels. Pain, too much pain. He has never felt so much of it before, so much all at once, so intensely. Maybe thanks to those neural processors, those same neural processors based off of Simon Williams.
Everything happened too fast, and his system warns him, CRITICAL DAMAGE: You have experienced a critical amount of damage. WARNING: Recovery not possible if you do not shut down immediately. Which is funny, because Simon destroyed his shutdown circuit, so Vizh could not shut himself down anyway. His body collapses to the floor as soon as Simon retracts his arm.
There is shuffling behind them as Wanda comes back to the door, but she drops whatever she is holding to the ground with a loud CRASH! as she takes in the sight.
"You know, I didn't want you back anyway!" Simon yells, pointing an accusatory finger in Wanda's face. With that, he turns away and starts to head for the elevator.
"VIZH! Oh, God, Vizh," Wanda cries.
Vizh stares up at the ceiling, trying hard not to picture Wanda running after her lover, imploring him to stay, as his last memory. Oh, how interesting. Where do robots go when they are dead?
Can robots even die? They are never alive to begin with.
"Wanda, look, I'm not going to play games with you..." Simon's voice is back, so Vizh assumes he came back for Wanda, after all. "...Wanda? What are you doing?" His voice sounds funny, cracking, even. But maybe that's just Vizh's audio input failing him.
"Vizh, oh my God, please don't...oh my God, oh my God, Vizh..." Wanda mutters fiercely, tears rolling down her cheeks.
And then Vizh sees it.
Wanda has sunk to her knees, and she is leaning over him, breaking out in swelling, hysterical sobs. "Vizh, don't you dare leave me. Don't you dare do it," she hisses. "I will never, ever forgive you, so you stay with me, do you hear me?"
She fumbles with her phone, her hands shaking violently as she mumbles, "Tony, goddammit, Tony, I knew I should've put you on speed dial..."
Vizh is fading now. It's an odd feeling, to fade away as opposed to simply blacking out. Maybe that is the difference between dying and falling unconscious. He feels himself slipping away, first the edges of him and then a little bit more and more of the center of what makes him him...
But he does not even care that he is probably dying right now, or even where robots go after they die, because he understands now. When Wanda had cried out "Vizh", she had meant him.
Vizh, Unit AX4021-U5133, the A.I. unit that no one seemed to know Wanda Maximoff had.
And Vizh decides, firmly, at that moment, that yes, he does like his name. He loves his name, in fact. And it does not matter that he will never be able to tell her that, or that he will probably never see her again, because he knows now, knows beyond the shadow of a doubt that it is not Simon, it was never Simon, it was just him.
Yes, Wanda cares about him.
And that was all Vizh ever needed to know.
"Dammit, Vizh, don't smile at me, not now, come on..." Wanda chokes out. "Stop smiling. I don't want to see it. Not now."
She crumples to the ground and plants a wobbly kiss on his shattered forehead.
And that is his last memory.
--
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. . .
REBOOT SUCCESSFUL.
When he opens his eyes, he finds a pair of concerned green eyes looking down at him.
It takes a moment for his operating system to catch up with the hardware, but after a gentle whirr and a bzzt! bzzt!, his New User Protocol starts up. "Hello," he says. "I am Unit AX4021-U5133. You are recognized as New User. Identify yourself, please."
The woman whose eyes are trained on him suddenly looks crestfallen. No, more than that. Her eyes begin to well up, and she turns away.
There is a sharp jolt in his wires.
"W--" His voice cracks, and he tries again. "WaNnn-da?"
Wanda Maximoff rapidly blinks back her tears as she looks at him. "Do you--do you remember who you are?" she asks unsteadily.
"My name is...Vizh."
Without warning, Wanda throws her arms around him and presses her mouth against his fiercely. Her lips are soft and warm and it takes him that to remember he hasn't heated his hardware up to a human temperature for her yet, but she doesn't seem to care.
She pulls back after another moment, and says in a meek voice, "I'm sorry. That was probably inappropriate."
But he pulls her back in for another, deeper kiss. She is startled at first, but melts into his arms when she understands. He is not quite sure how to do this, to kiss--it's not exactly in the user manual, after all--but he is a quick learner and falls into the movements of her mouth. She arches into his touch, and he catches the scent of strawberries clinging to her. His entire frame feels wobbly, his circuits singing with electricity.
Finally, she draws back for a gasp of breath, and he can feel the smile he is giving her.
Wanda returns the smile, a dazzling one that lights up her entire face. "Tony said you might not be you again when he gave you back to me...he said he tried...oh, God, I love that man," she sniffs, and Vizh notices that her lashes are still wet with her tears. He brushes them away gently.
"You know, I've never done this before," Wanda murmurs. "A robot and a human."
"That makes two of us," Vizh says.
"Yeah. Hey, can we go back to that kissing thing?"
"We can," he says agreeably, pulling her down again.