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Wanda had one name on her wrist. Pietro Maximoff. When she was little, her mother would always smile and her and her brother’s matching soul marks, saying it meant they would love each other forever. She was not wrong (Wanda’s mother rarely was).
As they grew older, she could still remember it in a million little ways; how Pietro would press absentminded kisses to her forehead, how Wanda taught him to cook their favorite meals, how he stepped in front of her when they first saw that bomb.
Mother was right, because Wanda still loved him, although he was dead.
.
Wanda met Vision’s existence with a tilt of her head and the thought of, well, stranger things have happened. She gave him a slight smile as he first cast his eyes around the room. He seemed confused by it, so she dropped the expression.
(If she’d looked for just a second longer, she would’ve seen him frown, just a bit)
.
He sat with her on her first day at the Avengers compound. “I appear to have nowhere to sit,” he said. She pointedly looked around the relatively empty room, raising an eyebrow.
“And your company seems nice,” He said, a little awkwardly, which made her smile (and if she’d been keeping count, she would know it was the first time she’d smiled since Pietro’s death).
“Well, I guess we could squeeze you in.” She said, glancing around to the empty table. He gave something that might have been a, if somewhat confused, smile, and they mostly ate in silence, which suited Wanda just fine. People always thought that silence was space to be filled; they never considered it an entity in its own right.
.
Vision was somewhat accustomed to seeing humans in immense pain, having lived with both the Avengers and Mr.Stark for an extended period of time (or his entire existence). He was, however, not accustomed to humans experiencing immense pain due to coming into contact with him.
The first time he touched Wanda (taking the salt shaker from her at dinner), she immediately recoiled, face contorting into pain as she pressed a hand over her mouth to keep from screaming.
“Wanda?” Vision said, leaning over, trying to think of what he could do, but within a few seconds, she was upright again, unbuttoning the cuff of her shirt furiously with a determined look.
Her face went through a myriad of expressions; Vision caught glimpses of guilt, pain, remorse, and something else, which he had the slightest suspicion might have been love.
“I knew it,” She mumbled to herself, and Vision thought, very abruptly, that she looked rather beautiful. Regaining his footing, he cast his gaze to her once again.
“Wanda?” he said, and when she looked at him expectantly, he didn’t know what to do.
“You didn’t feel anything, right?” She said, gaze piercing and hard. He tilted his head. “Feel what?” he replied, and she gave a rueful smile.
“Of course. You wouldn’t have one.” She said, shaking her head. She picked up the salt shaker again. “Say, would you like to learn some cooking?”
Humans never failed to amaze Vision. Wanda especially.
.
Wanda had never bothered to hide her marks. So when Vision caught her with her sleeves rolled up, writing a grocery list for their next (likely somewhat disastrous) attempt at cooking, she wasn’t taken aback.
“Is it a human tradition to have the name of a loved one written on the inside of their wrist?” Vision said, sitting down next to her and pulling out a beat-up copy of A Most Wanted Man, lent to her with a wry smile by Clint.
“No,” she said. “That’s your soulmate.”
He didn’t say anything, but she sensed confusion. “We don’t really have a concrete idea of it either. A soulmate is… someone who you’re supposed to love, a lot.”
“Romantically?”
“Not necessarily. And it’s not guaranteed to work out.”
“Like you and your brother,” he said, and it stung a bit, like an old wound being prodded at, but she liked that about him, how he didn’t dance around things even if it would hurt. They treated her like she was a bomb ready to go off, but Vision, Vision just treated her like a human. Puzzling, sure, but to him, all humans were.
She gave him a smile, feeling weak and suddenly exhausted. He reached out across the table to touch her hand lightly, and for a while they just sat there, hand in hand.
.
“I don’t want you to do this.”
“I know.”
“You shouldn’t.”
“I must.”
“You’re keeping me captive against my will! ”
“Wanda, your powers are dangerous and difficult to control-”
“As if you’re any better-”
“And that is why I work with others who can aide me-”
“No, you just let them stomp over you because you’ll do whatever Stark says, you’re just a little toy soldier for him to command-”
She put a hand over her mouth, as though suddenly realizing a grave mistake.
He turned away from her, feeling the need for air. “It would be best if I were not in your company right now,” He says, finally, his voice feeling too quiet and unnaturally soft.
He thinks she nods.
“Yeah.” She says, and turns away from him. “Yeah.”
.
He wants to say he is not glad when she escapes. But he is rather bad at lying.
.
But she is caught, as the rest who support Captain America are when they return. He sees her come in with her hands in cuffs, wrists bare. He meets her gaze across the room.
She turns toward him, and it feels a bit like gravity as she walks in his direction, regardless of the guards meant to direct her.
She walks up to him and shoves her wrists toward him, giving him a meaningful look but not affording any words.
On one wrist is her brother’s name. That, he already knew.
On the other is his.
His eyes go wide as he looks up to meet her gaze, and she meets his eyes steadily. He sees that her eyes are slightly red around the edges, as if she had been crying. Something sharp feels like it’s cutting something in his chest. He hopes she was not crying because of him.
“Let’s do better next time, okay?” she tries for a smile. “We’re a team. Or, I think we should be.” And her smile is a bit wobbly, as if she might cry.
He returns it, thinking nothing of it as he takes a step forward and pulls her into a hug. Humans will forever confuse him, but that does not mean he does not love them.
This one especially.
Because humans, no matter how much destruction they may cause, always have the ability to get back up and keep going, keep pushing forward. And no one does that better than Wanda.
As she departs, he sees the others paying him some confused looks. He ignores them, instead giving Wanda a slight wave, which, if going by the curve of her lips as she leaves the room, she no doubt catches.
He thinks, slowly, that maybe this is what Wanda meant when she talked about soulmates.