Chapter Text
1996
“They told us to wait,” Wanda says. Her arms are crossed tight over her chest as she watches from the doorway. “They said they’d be back when the sun went down.”
“The sun’s gone down twenty times, sestra,” her brother replies quietly, shoving candles into the small knapsack that rests on the old mattress. One of them almost falls and he catches it, pointing at her with it, tossing it with the rest, “Tonight was twenty-one.”
“They’ll come back this time,” she says, as certain as she can manage to be. Mama calls her headstrong. “They said they’d be back when the sun went down.”
“You keep saying that.” Pietro lugs his bag on his shoulders, almost toppling over with the weight, “What if they got lost? Someone’s gotta find them.”
“Why can’t I find them?” she stamps her foot, frowning deeply. She tends to get her way when she does this. It isn’t working on her brother right now, unfortunately, only the parents seem to fall victim to it. “Why can’t I go with you?”
“If they come back, you can tell them where I went.” He grips tight to the straps, determined. “I’ll go to the market first. That’s where they said they’d be.”
“They said we’re too little to go out on our own,” she tries to remind him.
Suddenly this doesn’t seem like a good idea anymore.
She misses their parents more than anything, yes. She wants them to come home as soon as possible, wants their hugs and their stories, wants them to make dinner so they can stop cobbling together random meals… but, at the same time, she’s afraid to be alone.
This house is big. It is made for a family of four, not a Wanda of one.
Pietro is taller, he can reach things better than she can. He knows how to operate the stove, since Papa taught him. Even for a few hours as he walks to the market, down that scary and dark path, she’ll not be able to do anything.
They’re too little to go out on their own individually. If they go together, though… surely two littles equal a big.
“You stay,” he says. He is trying to sound firm like their father but his voice is high and squeaky and Wanda can’t help but giggle. Pietro frowns, lowering his voice even more, “What’s so funny?”
“Nothing, nothing,” she shakes her head, hair swaying behind her. He goes to pass her in the doorway and she stops him, “Promise you’ll be back.”
“I promise I’ll be back,” he monotones. She hates his lack of fear and yet envies it all the same.
“No, you have to say it like you mean it or it isn’t real.”
Pietro rolls his eyes, “I will be back. You have my word.”
“And your promise?” she holds out her pinky.
He hesitantly links them. Mama says Pietro’s getting to the age where he starts to act more like a fool, as men tend to do. Wanda assumes that’s why he doesn’t treat pinky swears with the respect they deserve.
Wanda turns all of the outside lights on as Pietro prepares to leave, tying his shoes as he leans on the door. The yard is illuminated, dewdrops like Christmas lights, and she squints against the sudden flood of the glow. She turns to see her brother giving her a look.
“What?” she asks, “To light the way.”
“You’re going to make airplanes land in our yard,” the boy laughs at her, standing upright. “Or aliens.”
Pietro is terribly interested in aliens. Too much, in Wanda’s opinion. She’s had nightmares after some of his scary stories.
“Aliens aren’t real,” she mutters.
“Airplanes are.”
She sticks her tongue out at him, “Go. The faster you go, the faster you come back.”
“Right.” He stands there for a moment before sighing, opening his arms, defeated by his own hidden fear of the nighttime, “Um. Hug for good luck. Or whatever.”
Wanda stumbles over her feet to tackle him, needing the hug just as much as he does - though he’ll never admit it. мальчики глупы. Boys are stupid.
“It’ll be alright,” he says as they part. She wishes she had his confidence.
He does not say I love you when he steps out the door. Wanda grumbles a bit at that though the embrace softens the blow. She’ll tell him when he gets back.
She stands in the doorway as he walks out into the night, the contents of the bag clanking with his steps. There is the desperate urge to feel like this is a good idea. She watches until he’s out of the beam of light, until the noise fades, until it’s just the chirping of bugs and the sound of her own breath.
Wanda clicks the door closed with both hands braced on the panels she can reach. Home alone for the first time ever. The house is too quiet. Too still.
She repeats the information that she knows as if it may be a comfort, as if it will fill the space: Their parents left for market three weeks ago and have yet to return. Pietro leaves tonight to find them. And Wanda stays. Because it is her job, it seems, to stay put.
She can stay. It is an easy task on the face of it. Stay and sit and wait. They’ve been waiting for weeks already. A few more hours can’t hurt.
There isn’t much to do alone, she realizes quickly. All of the books are too complicated, too big, too scary to read on her own. To her credit, she tries. One of the books is so heavy that she tumbles to the ground after just a moment of holding it in her arms.
Time passes slowly. An hour feels like a day. The worry she feels, the fear and the loneliness, it’s exhausting. She falls onto the sofa that faces the front door, bringing her legs to her chest, chin on her knees, staring. Waiting for the knob to move, for the hinges to creak, for the noise of footsteps and voices that aren’t her own.
She waits for Mama's hugs and Papa's bristly cheek kisses. She waits for Pietro's yelling voice.
Another hour passes. The bugs even seem to be tucking themselves in to rest, the buzz fading. It's extremely late.
Wanda isn’t sure when she falls asleep. Her eyelids go heavy, she fights against the tide, she thinks she can do it, she can hold on -
And then she wakes up.
Her body hurts from the position she fell asleep in, sore enough to denote several hours lost. It takes her a moment to realize that time passed likely means that they’ve returned - or, alternatively, that it was all a dream.
But the house remains empty. Quiet.
Mama and Papa are gone. Pietro is gone.
The house is too big to lay empty like this.
The beginnings of a panic build in her chest. She holds her legs tighter as if to constrict the feeling away. It does not work.
Pietro hadn’t said when he’d come back, didn’t say he’d come back by the sunrise or the sunset, didn’t say he’d be back within the hour or within the week. She wants to seek comfort in this, wants to find the pockets of vagueness in which she might instill optimism, and yet she fears that it will be another twenty-one sundowns before her brother returns.
How is she meant to make food by herself? How is she meant to build a fire, should they not return by the wintertime? Papa only taught Pietro the fun things, fire and survival and chaos. Wanda only knows how to do laundry, how to run the bath, how to carry four plates at once from the stove to the table. She was taught the unfun things, the necessary things. Mama told her that men are too foolish to take responsibility for unfun things, that sweet ladies such as themselves must pick up the slack.
It's unfair. She no longer wants to pick up the slack. She wants her family. She wants to be cared for, wants to be assured that those who leave will come back. She wants to hear their voices again. Anything but this awful quiet -
There’s a resounding crash from outside.
Everything shakes, glasses and picture frames rattling, an earthquake that lasts for only a few seconds. Wanda falls from her place on the couch, palms braced on the rug, eyes wide and searching. The door is still closed, the house intact. She isn’t sure what could be outside, if it’s a battalion or a group of scary big trucks that threaten to take her away.
She isn’t sure what’s out there. But whatever’s out there could get her family. And she can’t let that happen.
Wanda pushes herself on wobbly legs. The impulse to charge out into the night with a war cry is tempting but not very intelligent, if she’s learned anything from Pietro’s stories. The men in those stories, so-called heroes, often tend to attack with their fists and not their brains.
Wanda is headstrong, she is a lady. She’s no idiot boy.
She grabs one of Mama’s wooden cooking spoons from the kitchen before walking toward the door.
The door creaks horribly as she swings it open in one quick motion, flinching as it bangs against the wall beside it. Outside, the yard is almost completely pitch black save for the beam of yellow light from inside the house that filters out. She frowns up at the outside lights that all seem to flicker and whir pitifully. The earthquake must have blown the bulbs out.
“Pietro?” she calls out, voice echoing through the thick air. No response.
She frowns, stepping forward on the porch to get a better look with the spoon held outward as if to warn any monsters that she means business. She scans the area to guarantee to her anxious brain that there’s nothing to fear.
The majority of things seem to be in order, thankfully. The grass remains unbothered by tire treads, no armies lurking in the shadows. Nothing is amiss.
Well, that is, until she catches sight of the shed that lies only a few feet away.
Her breath hitches at the sight. The roof of the shed, as best she can see in the dim light, is completely cracked open as if a meteor has rocketed through it. A column of smoke carries up toward the moon, glowing a faint, pulsing gold from a light that seems to reside within its walls.
Wanda’s feet carry her forward, spoon extended outward like a sword. The wooden steps groan under her light, careful steps. She wonders what Pietro would do in this situation, what her father would do. Her mother, certainly, would stand in the doorway in her nightgown with her arms crossed over her chest, cursing at the boys as they crept slowly toward the danger.
Wanda is creeping slowly toward the danger.
And she can… she can hear a voice.
“Oh. Ow. Ow. " A few moments of distressed noises. Then, “I… have a voice. I have a voice? This is me? Hello?”
Wanda’s eyebrows draw together. It sounds like a man. Is it a thief? He doesn’t seem very good at his goal.
“This is terribly - ow - indecent.” A distant rustling, a few clanks and clatters. “This… is… clothes? Are these clothes?” A pause. “Oh, dear.”
She slows to a stop a few feet from the doors. The glow seems to fade through the cracks as if the thief within has gone, and yet she can still hear shuffling. Uneven breaths. Quiet murmurs of what Wanda is hesitant to identify as panic.
Then, abruptly, the doors fly open. Smoke billows outward and Wanda waves it away with a hand.
An alien emerges from within the dark shack, blundering out through the smog, hastily wrapped in what seems to be a large sum of burlap that he must have found inside. He’s tall and slim, glowing blue wide eyes that dart around the yard as if searching for a predator. He looks like a shadow, legs and hands black as they peek out from his wrapping, his head filthy and yet still somewhat distinguishable.
Wanda can’t breathe. Her grip is so tight on her sword that her hand begins to ache - but she begins to feel that she may not need it.
The alien seems frightened. He breathes heavy, feet stumbling, searching around like Wanda feels she might if she were to be alone out here for long. He's mumbling something to himself that she cannot hear. It isn't a prayer, she knows this much. Do aliens pray?
Somehow, the fear on his face fades when he notices her standing there. His posture straightens, his mouth snaps closed, and he tilts his head for a long while as if trying to make sense of her. As if she is at all the unlikely attendant, here.
“H-hello… small… one,” the alien says in a kind, though disoriented voice. He clutches the fabric around him tighter, “So sorry for the… the spectacle, I hope I didn’t frighten you.”
She shakes her head wordlessly. He sounds... nice. He doesn’t sound like the scary green men that Pietro always warns her about, gnashing teeth and large eyes. He appears to be made of dust and his voice is like nothing Wanda has ever heard. Polite. English. Not alien-like at all.
And yet he seems very much to be an alien.
He glances around, still staggering a bit, “Where… if you wouldn’t mind, er… might you tell me where I am?”
“... My home,” she replies slowly, her voice cracked around the edges. From shock or from the smoke in her lungs, she doesn't know.
“Quite, yes.” He adjusts his grip on the fabric, “And… where is your home? On the planet Earth? Geographically?”
Wanda doesn’t know what that word means. But she knows where she is. “Sokovia.”
He pauses at that. “You’re speaking English.”
“So are you.” This alien is strange indeed.
She shifts the spoon in her hand, the threatened feeling fading and the need for a weapon becoming less and less, which catches his attention. He peers down at it, distrustful, “What… is that?”
“Lozhka,” she holds it up for him to see. “A spoon.”
“And… what do you do with it?”
“… Eat… things.”
The alien’s eyes go wide and he staggers backward, landing against the shed door with a thunk, “You’re going to eat me?”
Wanda looks up at the tall figure, the way he seems to be afraid of her simply due to a small piece of wood, and she suddenly breaks into a fit of laughter. Hours of worry, hours of fear, hours of loneliness culminate. An alien has landed in her father’s shed, is wrapped up like an infant, and is scared of a wooden ladle. Pietro wasn’t right at all, aliens are funny.
“H-human?” comes the alert voice. She barely catches it through her own sound, echoing through the trees.
“I’m not going to eat you,” she manages, hiccuping as the fit winds down. She wipes at her eyes with small hands, “I thought you were a scary monster. I thought I’d have to hit you with it.”
“Ah,” he replies breathlessly, shoulders relaxing slightly. Little bursts of soot seem to come off of him with every small movement. “So, I am safe?”
“I’m not hungry,” she promises.
“I dread to think where I’d be if you were,” he says, not quite to her. He shuffles a bit to turn around, making a soft noise of distress at the sight, “I apologize for ruining this lovely structure. Hopefully it’s able to be mended.”
Wanda can't help but squint at him. Papa’s shed isn’t a lovely structure. It’s… a shed. Full of rusty tools. The most special part of it, as it stands, is that an alien fell into it.
She watches him as he turns in a tight circle, unable to move his legs much in the confines of a swaddle he’s created. When he meets her eyes again, there’s a moment of epiphany that flashes across his face.
He wrings an arm out from his potato sack of a wardrobe and offers it. She stares.
“My name is... Vision. I think.” He opens and closes his hand, still outstretched, before he frowns at her lack of receptivity, “Isn’t this how you greet humans? A handshake?” Then, he studies her, “Do the little humans do handshakes?”
A handshake from an alien. Her family will have much to hear about when they return.
She accepts his hand, making a face at the heat that emanates from his palm. He seems to be made of fire. He smells like smoked wood. “I’m… Wanda.”
“Wanda,” he repeats, “What a nice name.”
When he releases her hand, she makes a blegh sound at the black smudge left and wipes her palm down the front of her dress. “Are you made of ash?”
“I don’t think so,” he looks suspiciously down at his own hand before it disappears back beneath the burlap. “I’m not certain what I look like under all of this. In fact, if it isn’t too much of a hassle, might I trouble you for a bath?”
Do aliens take baths? Is she supposed to allow him this? Allow him into their home? She knows how to run the bath for Papa when he’s had a long day at work, knows how to lay his clothes out for when he’s done. She could be troubled for a bath. Mama always says to be kind to the guests, but does this count?
“Ah,” he says after a long moment, reading her silence as a rejection. “I do suppose I’ve troubled you enough. Thank you, small one, I will leave you be.” Vision stands there for a moment, eyes wrenched closed as if trying to do something, before he seems to deflate. His eyes are illuminated bright blue when he opens them, the light inside them flickering, “Once I… remember how to fly.”
He offers somewhat of an apologetic smile before he stumbles toward the woods, toward the path her brother left down, and Wanda’s fear of being alone overrides any reservations about this odd man. He seems to have manners.
“Alien!” she calls after him. His back stiffens and he glances over his shoulder. “You can come in.”
“I... can?” he asks, seeming hesitantly elated.
“Yes,” she sweeps her spoon-holding-arm to the side, toward the house, before pointing at him with it, “But if you try to hurt me, I’ll eat you. I swear it.”
She expects him to get afraid again, that funny sort of afraid, but instead… he just seems… perplexed.
“Hurt you?” Vision takes a few steps back in her direction, seeming to get the hang of it. “Why would I hurt you?”
“Because you’re an alien.”
He snorts like that’s absurd, “No, I’m not.”
“Then what are you?”
The momentary humor fades from his face as if he hadn’t considered that, stopping in front of her. Vision brings a hand up from the cloth to rub at his cheek in thought. The dirt is polished away, leaving a shiny spot of red and silver beneath. “That is a very good question.”
Wanda doesn’t like that response - but rather favors the dismissal of her alien theory - and turns to walk toward the house.
“Come, follow,” Wanda says. Mama always says that when Pietro comes home after rolling around in the mud, waving him forward. Stern and in-control. “I know how to draw a bath.”
Vision doesn’t seem to know how to walk up stairs, apparently. He barely knows how to walk on a flat plane. He struggles on the porch, then up the stairs toward the washroom. Wanda instructs him on how to use the railing, demonstrates how to put one foot in front of the other. The look of concentration on his face makes her laugh the entire way up.
It takes her more time than usual to run the water without Mama here to guide her, without Papa joking that he’ll dunk her in the tub if she doesn’t hurry up. Vision waits patiently, bouncing up and down somewhat nervously in the corner of the bathroom, forming a small pile of dust at his feet. She frowns at the black footprints that trail through the house. She doesn’t know where the broom is to sweep them away.
“I don’t know if you’ll fit,” Wanda says, the rickety faucet sputtering behind her. “You’re taller than Papa, and he can’t fit his knees under the water.”
“I’m certain I can find a way,” he says, voice holding a comforting clarity as it echoes around the old tile.
Wanda takes quick steps out of the room, tugging some of Papa’s working clothes from the drawer and bringing them back into the room. She sets them on the stool to the side, pointing at them, “Clothes.”
“Oh,” Vision’s eyes go wide, almost sparkling. “Those are clothes.” He does somewhat of a double-take at what he’s wrapped in, “What is this?”
“It’s for the garden,” Wanda tells him. She likes that she gets to answer questions for once rather than ask them. She pats the fabric on the stool, “These are for wearing.”
“I see.” He stares at her father’s clothes, almost awed by the raggedy pile, “Thank you for helping me.”
“You are very welcome,” she says politely, offering a curtsy like she was taught to. She giggles when Vision hesitantly mimics the gesture. The room goes still as she turns to squeak off the tap as it reaches the right height. The steam seems to indicate that she may have turned the handle too far. “You may want to wait, alien. The water’s too hot.”
“I just traveled through the atmosphere,” he assures her, “I think I will be fine.”
Wanda wraps her fingers in the sheet that hangs above the tub, the lack of a door having inspired a very lackluster level of privacy. She gestures for him to walk forward, he does, and she swipes the curtain-like border closed when he’s past the barrier.
“Wanda?” Vision asks once he’s out of sight, fretted.
“Do you not know how?” She can hear how frustrated she sounds. This man is even more of a fool than her brother. And that was previously thought to be impossible.
“I’m… it’s simply a matter of getting in the water… correct?”
“You will need more than water to clean all the dirt away,” Wanda says, turning her back and crossing her arms over her chest. “Mylo. Heard of soap?”
“A bell is being rung. I think. Um. I’ll… I can… I can do this.”
Wanda sits on the floor of the bathroom, back to the curtain, as the alien washes away the dust and soot and stardust. She is surprised by Vision’s manners. By his kindness. Even as her curiosity grows to be too much to handle, as her questions begin to arise, as her voice rattles around the small room, he answers them to the best of his ability.
“Who are you?” It seems to be an important question, to ask the identity of someone you plan to have as a guest.
“Er… I’m not entirely sure. I apologize. I only know my name.”
Wanda frowns at that, “And you came from the sky?”
The tinny noise of water sloshing. “I think so. Yes. Yes, I believe I did.”
How does he not know anything? Wanda often felt it was unlikely that anyone in the world knew less than her, it felt every day she learned a million new things and often had trouble keeping track of them. It is a frustrating, lonely feeling, having to ask so many questions. It isn't fun, feeling childish. This Vision is so big and yet so lost in this world. She supposes because he's just been introduced to it.
Against her wishes, she worries for this new person. He seems to be in pain, seems seriously lost, confused and afraid. If Mama were here, she’d know what to do. She’d be able to help him.
There’s the gurgle of the drain as he seems to pull the stopper up.
“There is a towel beside the soap dish,” Wanda recites Mama’s instructions. “You can make use of it.”
“Ah, thank you.” The towel hanger squeaks. Then, “Oh.”
That’s a concerning noise to hear.
“Alien?” she turns her head to the side, not to see but rather to regard the oddness. “Are you alright?”
“I just… I seem to have caught my reflection."
She scoffs at that, "What is the matter with it?"
"I look very odd. Apparently. I don’t look like you.”
Wanda shakes her head, “Aliens are different than people.”
“Well, I thought I wasn’t an alien, but…” He trails off.
There’s a long moment of silence as the man gets dressed, asking a few ridiculous questions along the way such as what am I meant to do with these buttons? or and the shirt… it goes on the top, right?
All of these things are meant to be taught early on. Wanda remembers being taught how to dress herself, which colors went together, how to lace her boots. Vision seems so timid when approaching the easiest tasks.
Wanda was taught how to do these things by her family.
So... what does that mean for him?
“Where’s your family?” Wanda asks, watching the curtain rustle as he moves behind it. “In the sky?”
“Um…” There’s a gentle thud before the fabric is being swept to the side, Vision standing there in her Papa’s clothes. “In truth, little friend, I don’t believe I have a family.”
It takes a moment to get used to this new, clean Vision. He isn’t a shadow anymore, exhaling black and hugging himself close. He wears dark trousers and a ratty, white buttoned shirt, skin bright red in the dim lamplight. His shoulders are wide, his stance upright, and he looks much taller this way. She squints at the small gem on his head. She hadn’t noticed that before. It looks like one of the broaches Mama has.
Wanda watches him lift the burlap from its puddle on the ground and attempt to hand it to her. She pushes it away and back down to the ground, feeling like there’s a more pressing issue at hand, “No family? Where do you live?”
“I don’t have a place to live,” he answers. Of everything, this is the scariest thing Wanda has heard all night. “I’m unsure where I’ll go, after this. But certainly there will be a place for me on this planet.” Vision doesn’t seem so sure about that last part, fingers fidgeting at his sides. “At least, I hope there will be.”
“You can stay with us,” Wanda says. He peers down at her and she hurries to explain, wanting so badly for him to stay, wanting for Pietro and Mama and Papa to see this silly new friend she’s made. Wanting for them to see how smart and grown she is, that she could help an alien. “Everyone needs a family.”
Vision is frozen to his spot. “I can… I can stay?”
“Unless you’re evil,” she clarifies. This is an important precedent to set.
“I don’t think I’m evil. I hope I’m not.” He tugs at the sleeves that rest too high up on his forearms, slightly small on him. Wanda’s never met someone so tall before. He's like a tree. Or a building. “It might be nice to have a family.”
Wanda is pleased enough with that answer.
“Then you can stay,” she makes the decision by herself.
After a curt nod, somewhat of a transactional gesture, she begins to walk out the door and toward the stairs. Her pace slows after a moment when she realizes that the floor is only creaking enough for one pair of feet, pivoting to find Vision watching her helplessly from his place in the washroom.
“Human?” he asks after her. He seems to be stuck to the floor as if he’s stepped in tar.
“You’re… you’re meant to follow,” Wanda says, exasperated. He’s taxing to keep up with already. “Where I go, you have to go.”
“... Oh,” he takes a hesitant step forward, looking to her for reassurance, before joining her in the hall. “I see.”
Wanda rolls her eyes, making her way toward the stairs. “I don’t know why you call me Human. My name is Wanda, I said.”
“Well, you call me Alien,” he grumbles, fingers scrabbling for purchase on the railing as they descend. “It only seems fair.”
When they reach the bottom of the steps, Wanda moves toward the kitchen on instinct - typically, Mama says, guests enjoy tea - but she stills as Vision strays from her side to walk into the main room. For a moment, Wanda fears that he’s walking to the door, that he’s leaving, but he settles in front of the large bookcase.
“These are books,” he says.
Wanda huffs, “Yes. They are books. You have eyes, yes?”
“They are new,” comes the confusing reply. Crimson fingers trace the old spines, the books on the higher shelves that she couldn’t reach.
“Those books are older than I am,” she attempts to correct him.
“No, I meant my eyes.” Before she can even comprehend what that means, he’s turning to look at her oddly, “Older than you are?”
She confirms with a hesitant nod.
“And…” he tilts his head, “How old are you?”
What a curious question to be asked. She hadn’t meant to be specific here. The point is that the books are ancient. The alien seems very good at missing the point.
“Sem’,” she says, puffing out her chest.
Vision stands for a moment, thinking about her response very intently. Wanda’s posture falters, confused. He asked the question and she answered it.
“Would you mind... showing me that number?” he asks. “I’m not familiar with that word. That language.”
Wanda glances down at her hands before holding them up, three fingers pinned to her palm while the others stretch toward the ceiling.
“Ah,” he hums gratefully. “Seven.” Then, he makes a face, “You’re very old.”
She always wanted to be a grown-up but, at this moment, she can’t help but feel offended at his tone. Mama says Wanda’s still her little baby. And this alien calls her old? “How old are you?”
He didn’t seem to anticipate the question turned back at him but he takes it in stride. “Well, what time is it?”
Vision scans the walls, identifying an ancient analog clock and crossing the room to brush his palm down its dusty face, squinting at the numbers there.
“I suppose I’m…” he counts on his fingers, “Approximately an hour old.”
Wanda’s offense fades and she’s left with a bubbling, bad feeling. “That isn’t true.”
“I wouldn’t lie,” he says, and she wants to believe him. He sounds truthful, but this is preposterous.
She wrinkles her nose at him, “But you’re so… vysoky. Tall.”
“Am I? How tall were you when you were born?” he asks curiously.
“Shorter than I am now.”
“Hm,” he looks down, almost disappointed in his own presentation. “I see.”
His attention is captured by something on the opposite wall and he takes hurried steps forward. Wanda watches as he leans close to the picture frames that hang there, to the old embroidery works that Mama was so proud of. He traces some of the stitching with careful attention.
Wanda can’t shake the distressed feeling in her chest as she watches him. He treats everything so carefully despite having plummeted from the heavens. There are too many pieces to put together in her mind and yet she feels that, if she doesn't, no one else will.
Why did he come here? Why does she have to help him with so many things? She’s only a child - well, she supposes, the both of them are. There must be someone else, someone grown, who can take care of him.
“You’re… an hour old.” She frowns as he turns to her, offering a confirming smile, “Where’s your Mama?”
He glances toward one of the pictures, identifies a man standing in similar clothes with his hands in his pockets, and slowly mimics the posture. He meets her eyes again, “What’s that?”
“A… a mother,” she says. He seems to understand, crossing the room to stand in front of her.
“I don’t have one. If I do, I couldn’t find her. And then I…” Vision gazes up at the ceiling as if the stars are visible from inside, “I fell, I suppose. I’m unsure if I’ll be able to get back to where I came from.”
“You fell?”
He laughs as if reminiscing, “Well, yes, unfortunately I seem to have fallen into your property.”
The crash had been so loud. She remembers he had sounded hurt when she first heard his voice. “Are you okay?”
Vision bends a bit to pat her head, “Oh, yes, friend, I’m perfectly fine. Only a bit frazzled.”
“Frazzled,” Wanda repeats. It sounds odd in her voice. Words with ‘a-z’ don’t fit in her accent very well.
Vision doesn't make fun of her. He may be a fool, but he’s a nice one. He answers her questions without frustration, allows her to exercise some level of knowledge above his. He looks ridiculous and yet she can’t bring herself to focus on that.
He’s a friend, somehow. She isn’t alone.
And, more immediately, he can reach things that she can’t.
“Vision?” She grabs his attention from one of the intricate rugs he seems fascinated by, “I’m hungry.”
He’s suddenly afraid again. “I-I don’t think I would be very tasty, I believe I’m mostly made of metal.”
Wanda covers her small face with her hands, giggling uncontrollably.
“Is this the ritual?” He sounds wary. Wanda peeks through her fingers at him to see how his eyebrows are drawn together, though he doesn’t run away, “Am I doomed?”
“No! You’re such a scaredy cat,” she reaches for his hand that he hesitantly accepts, pulling him to the kitchen. She stops in front of the sink, pointing up at the hanging baskets there. “I can’t reach the apples.”
“... Apples,” Vision exhales, reaching up with a red hand to take an equally red fruit, handing it down to her. “I must say, little friend, many of the items you own seem to be out of your grasp. It’s very inefficient.”
Wanda takes the apple in both hands, taking a large bite, before her smile fades around it as she understands his words. “... Oh.”
“Oh?” he sends a worried glance to her before observing the other fruits, “Was that not an apple?”
“No, I…” she chews, cheeks full, looking toward the front door. They still haven’t returned. She had almost forgotten. “Usually my Papa gets the apples for me. But he isn’t here right now.”
Vision’s hand stills where it rests in the lemon basket. “You live with others?”
“Yes. My family.”
The tall man slumps against the counter, scanning the house that’s within view, “Does everyone live with others? With a family?”
“Not always. But we are children,” she tells him, which seems ridiculous to say to such a tall person, “and children have to live with people that will take care of them. It is how they survive.”
“Oh.” He inspects his hands, face falling into an expression she can identify as intensely sad. “I’m unsure what will come of me, then.”
Wanda sets the apple on the counter. Vision’s sadness is something she cannot bear. He’s meant to be happy and ridiculous and funny. She tugs at his hand, “Ne plach', Alien, please don’t cry.”
“I’m not crying,” he assures her, arm jostled around by her pulling, “I don’t know how.”
“You don’t need to be sad anymore,” she tells him firmly, which seems to grab his attention, and his hand falls to his side as she releases it. “You’re staying with us, now. We’ll take care of you.”
Vision looks at her for a long time. “But what can I do for you?”
She scans him, “I don’t think you can do much. You don’t know what a spoon is.”
“I do now,” he counters, almost hurt. “You’ve been kind, little friend. And endlessly patient. How do I possibly repay you?”
Wanda presses her lips together. She looks toward the front door, then up to Vision, then over to the picture frames. The bubbly bad feeling returns.
“Can… can you find them?” she whispers.
Vision’s focus shifts to the door as well as if to find an answer there. “Find who, human?”
“Mama and Papa,” she says, crossing her arms over her chest to hold herself close.
He slowly kneels to be closer to eye level, appearing very serious all of a sudden as he examines her face, “Where have they gone?”
“They left for market three Mondays ago,” she says. The alien frowns. “Pietro has gone after them. He’ll be back soon.”
“Three Mondays,” he repeats warily. He doesn’t like that any more than she does. “And… what is a Pietro?”
Wanda tilts her chin upward. “My brother.”
“A brother, too,” he seems fascinated by this. Fascinated by the idea of a family. “I see. Yes, I will look for them, Wanda. You have my word.”
If anyone can find them, this silly man can. He fell from the sky, perhaps he saw them from up there. Wanda takes a few steps back, pulling one of the picture frames from the wall and setting it on the ground. She tugs the back panel loose, the frail paper in her hand, running it over to Vision.
“This is them,” she says, pushing the photo into his hands. She points to each of their faces individually as she names them, “Mama… Papa… and Pietro.”
Vision brushes his thumb down the side of the image, “Are they always this happy?”
Wanda shuffles beside him to get a better look. “People aren’t always happy. But they do smile a lot.”
The alien stares for a long time, seeming to memorize everything, before slowly folding it along the already-present creases. “They’ve been gone for a long time. I mustn’t wait any longer.”
Vision stands, tucking the photograph into his pocket. Wanda watches as he considers something, turning and unhooking the hanging baskets before setting them on the ground.
“For you to reach,” he clarifies.
She feels her face pull into a frown despite the kindness of the gesture. While she had requested help from the alien, while she knows it is her best option… she doesn’t want him to leave. He is funny. He put the hanging baskets on the ground - that’s hilarious.
Vision is a friend. And he’s younger than she is. Maybe he shouldn’t go out alone.
And yet he walks toward the door anyway.
“Gone to market, you said?” he asks as he moves, long legs propelling him so fast that he’s at the door in seconds. Wanda stumbles after him. “What is a market?”
“Podozhdi, don’t go!” she grabs for his hand again, falling forward, wrapping her arms around his waist. “Don’t go, don’t go, don’t go.”
He stops and looks down at her, “Am I being captured?”
“You can’t go alone,” Wanda says. He doesn’t feel like he’s made of metal, like he says. But surely he must be. “You’re too little. You’ll get lost too.”
Vision hesitantly places his hand on her head, unsure how to comfort and yet trying his best. “I’ll find my way. I think I might be a machine, I think I’m meant to be good at locating a destination. No matter how little I am.”
She wrenches her eyes closed. “I’m not letting go.”
A quiet laugh. “You asked me to find them, you know.”
“I know,” she sighs, hugging tight all the same.
There’s a humming noise, a buzzing, and Wanda opens her eyes to see Vision stepping away. She looks down at her empty arms and huffs. Stupid alien superpowers. Stupid boy.
“No time to waste,” he reminds her.
She nods weakly, reaching for the doorknob. “The faster you go, the faster you come back.”
The door squeaks open as she pulls it. Vision steps onto the porch with hesitance, looking suspiciously at the stairs. Wanda considers reminding him of the railing but he’s pushing himself off the ground and floating down to the grass before she can get the words out. She watches him fly for a moment, amazed. How can such a fool be so graceful?
The tall man sighs as he walks forward, grimacing at the shed. He tilts his head back to look at the stars as if searching for something. His eyebrows draw together. He doesn’t seem to find it. The sadness returns.
Wanda takes slow steps out onto the porch, “Vision?”
He drops his head to see her, the sorrow melting away, “Yes, little friend?”
“Will you…” she closes her hands tight at her sides, “Will you be back?”
He frowns, walking a few steps forward to stand just before the bottom step. His voice is gentle as he replies, “Of course I’ll be back. You said I could stay.”
She holds out her pinky, schooling her face into something confident, and he peers at it questioningly.
“This is what a promise looks like,” she explains.
“Oh!” he hesitantly raises his own finger and she links them, “Yes, a promise. You’ll be here when I come back, correct?”
“I live here,” she says in a bit of a tone that her mother would not approve of, then waves him away. “Now go.”
Vision smiles. He backs up a bit, another glance sent to the stars, then he’s jetting off into the sky. Wanda hops down the steps, head falling back to watch him, a vague stripe of gold through a night speckled with stars.
As soon as he’s gone, she feels her eyes get heavy. It’s the gravity of nighttime, the buzz of the summer bugs, the exhaustion of teaching a million-foot-tall alien how to walk up the stairs. She wonders if this is what it feels like to be a parent. When Mama and Papa return, she plans to apologize.
Wishing she could fly like Vision, she carries herself up the porch steps, through the house, up to her room. The bed feels perfectly soft, the blanket smelling like home, and she drifts into sleep easily.
The sun comes up, and the funny red alien still has not returned.
Wanda rolls out of bed, making herself dizzy, running down the hall to ensure that her friend wasn’t a dream. She laughs at the sight - black footprints trailed through the house toward the washroom, a dark black ring around the basin of the tub where the water had been, a puddle of blackened burlap on the ground. She stumbles downstairs, cheering to an empty house when she sees the hanging baskets still placed on the tile of the kitchen.
She sits beside the baskets for hours, watching the door. The pile of apple cores by her feet grows more and more as time drags, her back hurting from where the handles of the cabinets press into her skin.
The sun sets two more times. Two entire days of silence, of steadily dwindling excitement that shifts into slowly increasing worry.
Vision was too little to go out on his own. She knew it and she let him go anyway. She should have gone with him. It would have been better to go with him, better to have a friend.
The third morning, apple stash depleted, Wanda puts on her boots. She drags an old burlap bag from her Papa’s closet, stocks it with the last candles in the house. She tries to remember what Pietro had packed - to be fair, she had been too distracted by his confidence and frustrated by his boy-ness to focus on the contents of the bag.
“Stupid boys,” she mutters to herself as she shoves a jacket on top of everything, cinching the bag and pulling it onto her shoulders. “Always getting lost.”
Daylight assists in her journey. The fools hadn’t thought to leave in the daytime. She walks the path for what feels like an eternity, calling out for her family, feeling all the while that she’s getting closer to them. She's walking forward, she rationalizes, which surely means that she is near.
A seven-year-old Wanda Maximoff is intercepted at a train station twenty miles away from her home by Sokovian authorities. They ask her name, her business, where her family is. She tells them that she does not know.
A seven-year-old Wanda Maximoff receives the first hot meal she's eaten in weeks. She tells the kind woman about the red alien in burlap. The woman takes many notes as she talks, face screwed into a frown.
A seven-year-old Wanda Maximoff is brought to a home for little ones. She asks if they know her brother Pietro. They do not.
On the third sunset, after three full days of searching the country for the family in the photograph, a three-day-old Vision plummets into the ground outside of a little human’s home.
It takes him a moment to get his bearings, to crawl out of the crater he’s created in the grass and brush away the dirt and dizziness, before he looks up to see all the lights inside still on. To his three-day understanding of humanity so far, illumination within a building means that people are present.
“Human!!” he calls, tripping and falling on his face as he attempts to brave the stairs on his own. It takes him a moment, bare feet slipping on dew-slick wood, but he makes it to the top somehow. He wrestles with the doorknob, tongue bitten between teeth, letting out a breath of relief as it squeaks open.
“Human! I'm back! How long has it been? How old am I, now?” his foot catches on the rug and he tumbles forward. “Ow.” He scrambles to his feet again, “You won’t believe the days I’ve had!”
Vision grips the railing with both hands, pulling most of his weight up while his clumsy feet carry him. He runs to the bathroom, trying to find her. There are so many rooms in this house and yet he's only seen her in a few of them. Surely she'll be in one of them.
The washroom is empty.
“... Human?” he calls as he turns his back to the vacant room, slightly less loud, panting. He listens for a response that never comes. His chest whirs quietly, a bad feeling. “Are you... sleeping?”
After a moment of listening, of stillness, he slowly walks forward to nudge the door at the end of the hall open. There is a bed, there, barren. Its blankets are tossed to the side, hanging down toward the floor. No human.
“Wanda?” He frowns at the silence of the big house, turning and pushing open the other doors with cautious hands, “I only found a necklace, I couldn’t find the people, but… but p-perhaps we could search together!”
Every door leads to an empty room.
The house is quiet and she is gone.
He rubs the back of his neck, his chest feeling strange, bracing a shoulder against the wall to bear his weight as he walks back down the stairs.
How curious. The little human said she’d be here. Perhaps she went for a walk? What do the little ones do for fun? So far, he only knows what the big ones like to do. And the big ones really seem to enjoy hitting him with various objects when he asks questions. Really strange-looking spoons that make loud noise, that fire like cannons.
There is a pile of eaten apples on the floor of the kitchen.
“Wanda,” he says to the air, almost disappointed, walking forward to gather them up. He finds a small bin near the door, thinking it to be a suitable receptacle. They clunk as they hit the bottom and he brushes his hands down his shirt with a sigh.
It might be good to tidy up while she’s gone, he decides. The little human is right, there isn’t much he is capable of doing. He couldn’t even find the people she had asked him to. Hopefully he can stay, even though he didn’t complete his task. No other humans are as kind to him.
Vision places his hands in his pockets, tracing the edge of the picture folded inside, as he wanders out of the kitchen. He grimaces as he sees the evidence of his last visit - the footprints he left, the black smudges on the railings. What a terrible guest he’d been.
He rolls his sleeves up and looks around for something that might be efficient to clean with. The databanks within his mind surely have some sort of guidance, though they still aren’t functioning well after his fall. They jitter and stutter when he attempts to access them. Only vague words and phrases, muddled languages that he can barely understand.
Perhaps Wanda can help him understand her language. She’s a very good teacher.
Over the course of the night, Vision gets used to things. He manages to sift through the rubble of the shed to identify a broom and rag, learns how to use them through rigorous trial and error. He sweeps the floors, sweeps away the dust he had left. He drapes the burlap he had worn in the garden, where it’s meant to be, and cleans the basin. He makes the little one's bed - he assumes that the pillows go at the top, but he isn't certain if dressing a bed is the same as dressing a person.
Vision finds cleaning to be rather fun, truly. He finds himself feeling rather sad when he’s finished.
The sun begins to rise as he clambers back down from the top floor, tasks complete. Vision walks around to marvel at his handiwork before noticing the new sources of light that filter through the windows. He checks the clock and frowns.
Wanda’s legs are so small, he feels concern regarding how long this walk is taking. Perhaps humans have a higher tolerance for exertion. Vision is exhausted.
He shuffles over to sit on the couch, sighing at the feeling - he hadn’t been able to rest the entire time he searched for the people in the photograph. It is nice to be off of his feet for a moment. He rests his head back with a sigh, eyes locked on the front door.
Vision cannot help but feel excited for the little human’s return. He has so much to tell her about, so many questions to ask.
Certainly she’ll be home any minute.