Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It is approximately eleven at night. A Thursday. The sky is overcast. The sky is always overcast. And, bizarrely, it always tends to feel like it’s eleven at night on a Thursday. 

Vision checks his watch, backlit by the brooding university building, walking forward with a false confidence he did not earn. He trips over the curb that he always trips on. His bag knocks against his leg and he grasps at a light pole to reclaim his balance. He’s lucky, today. Caught himself before nose met street.

This curb does not have a name and yet they seem to be on a first-name basis. Old friends sharing memories of skinned knees and tattered palms. Somewhat of a parasitic relationship, truly, but they’re too far in to admit they’re not good for each other.

Nothing is new.

His life is structured and cemented, neverending, each step counted and each second considered - but he still finds himself stumbling through the days as if he never expects them. The set dressing is the same, the voices he hears in the conversations that he’s never meant to participate in, the monogamy he holds with boredom is inescapable. It is truly fascinating that he cannot even manage to be successful in a boring life. 

He has often wondered, in the quiet moments (much of his days are reserved under the subheading quiet moments), if he was meant to be a person at all. Certainly most people are having a good time every day, smiling and feeling something beyond corporeal dread. Certainly most people learn how to step over a curb after the first week, let alone the second year. 

Right. Two years of this. And two more years to go.

Nothing has changed. 

Sleep in, look for work, panic, go to evening classes, panic, pick up a cheap meal on the walk home, eat it on the couch while zoning out at the television, mark off another successful day in the calendar, wander to bed, panic for a nightcap, drift into the void. Start it again. 

No, nothing changes.

There’s a muffled clamor behind him as his classmates wander down the same staircase he had just left, the door having just clicked closed behind him. He can hear them all the same. They speak about Friday’s plans. They speak about tonight’s plans, which don’t seem to be planned at all but rather a current action. It is tonight. It is happening.

Spontaneity. Vision wonders what that’s like, to be spontaneous. It sounds terrifying. 

He catches his breath from his daily near-death experience, a shaky look cast over his shoulder to the steadily approaching figures through a foggy glass door. He hurries out of the street and out of their view as if he’s not meant to be here at all.

The route Vision takes back to his flat is not necessarily… safe. Very much the opposite. The main street is too much after a long day of being around people. People are loud and draining. Even in the nighttime, even on a Thursday, his heart can’t seem take it in excess. And so… his priorities intact, he chooses an alternate route - a back way. He walks through the alley systems, the dark and quiet parts, a maze of empty spaces that hold a seventy-thirty chance of a figure tucked away in a squared shadow, knife glinting, ready to murder him. 

The trick, Vision has found, is to stand up straight. 

People tend to see a man in a heavy jacket with a bag in an alley to be somewhat intimidating. Apparently. As long as he doesn’t speak and let on the fact that he is consistently and chronically afraid, as long as he doesn’t squeak and beg for his life, he’s practically untouchable. There are people here sometimes, looming silhouettes, that look up with sharp and narrowed eyes when he rounds the corner. He offers a nod and he continues walking. 

He always takes the route that passes the street food market, self-proclaimed to be the cheapest in London. Vision always stops there on the way home, gets his one meal for the day, tries desperately to befriend the man who works inside and always fails miserably. 

Quesadillas. Old ingredients stored unchilled and unpreserved, thrown on a fryer in the back of a truck. First item down on the list, cheapest and least complicated. Every single weeknight. Every single day.

Is it easy to make for himself? Yes. Does he ever have the energy to do so at eleven at night? No. Has he tried to make something simple on a stove before? Yes. Was the London Fire Brigade pleased? No. Not at all. 

It’s a miracle that Vision has not died yet. From someone else’s hand or his own, it doesn’t matter. Vulnerability is baked into him, each atom and synapse and fingernail. Surely, since he’s still alive, that means that he’s doing something right. That’s what he tells himself. He’s doing something right.

Nothing changes. 

“Evening,” Vision tries to lean an elbow on the lip of the concession window, peering inside the belly of the truck. He doesn’t know why he bothers. It’s like speaking to a wall. His elbow slips. He nearly falls over. He is always nearly falling over.

He’s been coming here for so long that a small white parcel is presented to him before he even orders. A hand is extended wordlessly and Vision places the exact change in the palm, offering a weak nod. With a sigh, he plucks the bag from the steel shelf and tucks it into his courier bag, stumbling forward and on his merry way.

There’s an orderly list in his head with hastily scrawled due dates underneath. Those are the assignments left for the week, the month, the year. They play on a loop as he goes. He wasn’t gifted with the skill of time management. If he doesn’t write it down, if he doesn’t plot out his entire day point-by-point, nothing gets done. And so, he plans. He loops.

His logic curriculum requirement has been kicking his ass with little remorse, he should probably pool much of his study time into that. Logic tonight, psychology tomorrow… Right, and then that essay…

Yeah. That’s a good start.

He turns into the alleyway again. He scans for danger, a funny thing to have to do, a funny thing to feel secure in. Who knows what danger looks like, until it happens?

He finds nothing. Great. 

He pushes forward. He trips on an aluminum can that clatters and skids across the asphalt. Vision mutters an apology under his breath, to the can or to the road or to himself, he isn’t sure.

A turn to the left, fifteen quick steps taken that echo, and then a right -

He stops in his tracks. 

Of all the journeys he has taken down this path, this route he has created, the weaving maze and the faux-intimidation, never has there been someone in this part. He is only one turn away from his flat, from the broken emergency exit door in the back of the building that the janitor allows him to use after ten, likely due to pity reasons. He is close to his home, close to the rest of his night, close to his bed.

But he is closer to… whoever this is. 

This is a person. Small person. 

Vision clutches his bag close to his body as he watches her teeter forward two steps, then back three, then one forward, then five back. She pauses. Her arms are thin as they swing out to her sides like wings, likely a somewhat inefficient attempt at balance, and she presses forward again. 

He’s thinking back to his first semester, now. Thinking back to the required courses, the ones on public safety. Look out for each other, they said. If you see something, say something, they said. 

This is something.

He’s always been somewhat of a bystander, in truth. This has been his role. He surrounded himself with extroverts who would jump at the chance to save someone. To surround himself with means to find and stand in the vicinity of.  (Strangers can be friends if he calls them that.) Vision would be left to hold their coat and shift nervously on the sidelines as they roll up their sleeves. 

This isn’t a pub. There’s no drunken brawl happening. There are no others to speak of. It is Vision, and it is this… person… and it is this horrifying alley that Vision has taken great care not to focus on for too long.

Not many extroverts here to pick up the slack, unfortunately. 

Vision is holding his bag like it might be a shield. He does not fit the hero archetype very well. He knows this about himself.

But.

If he doesn’t help this girl, if he doesn’t try, he’s going to have stress dreams about it for a year. 

He takes a hesitant step forward. 

The girl stumbles. Her steps aren’t steps anymore but rather attempts to swim up and into the air, attempts that are unsuccessful. She tries to float, her bare feet scuffling along the awful ground, but she finds herself unable to do it. It’s a swaying momentum, forward and backward and side to side. 

He tries to use his voice. It doesn’t work. 

He should say something. He knows this. It isn’t good to be a tall man in a coat following some… clearly intoxicated and disoriented person. God. She must be terrified. 

“Hi. He–hello!” A second attempt works better. She doesn’t react to his voice, even as it lingers in every crevice of the narrow space. He trips over his own feet as he walks forward, inching his bag around to rest against his back. “I’m, uh.”

She doesn’t respond. Pushes onward. Forward-back-left-right. 

Vision grimaces. He catches up to her with ease, one of his steps equating to… what, three of hers?

“Hello,” he sounds particularly un-intimidating tonight. For once, it is in his favor. “Hi. Are you alright?”

He stops beside her, trying to catch her attention. She pays him no mind, moving ahead. He glances toward the other end of the alley that he just came from, then toward the direction of she’s locked onto.

No one seems to be here. There’s nothing at the end there. At the end, to the left, there lies the building that holds his home. Rather, the mildewy emergency exit to the building that holds his home. Right by the bins. Not quite a place to go for refuge. Not quite a place to go at all.

Vision follows. He walks at her side, leaning forward to look at her, to try and remember if he’s seen any faded missing person posters that bear her resemblance. 

Her nose is sharp. Her cheeks are hollowed. Her posture, save for the wobbliness, is almost pin-straight. 

Her eyes are closed. 

Completely unfamiliar. But definitely in trouble.

“Are you… lost?” Vision tries again, “I mean, I don’t think you’re…” 

He trails off as he spares a look downward. 

“Hey,” he says softly. Worry shifts its meaning, gets heavy in the words. He moves to walk in front of her, backwards, trying to claim her focus, “Hey, where - where did you…?”

Vision is vaguely familiar with what hospital gowns look like. This is gown-adjacent. He’s no genius but, typically, they give you your clothes back before you’re discharged. Typically, they don’t release you into an alley with no shoes and say hey, walk down there and, while you’re at it, keep your eyes closed, would you?

It’s not made of the thin material he expected, isn’t open down the back or tied. In fact, it has buttons. A collar, straight and pressed like a dress shirt. He frowns as he sees the pocket over her heart, black-painted numbers that seem to be so old and worn that they’re indistinguishable. It isn’t an outfit to be donned temporarily.

They’re getting close to the end of the alley, now. And Vision's anxiety-laced curiosity is now, officially, in the mortal concern zone. 

Vision stops in front of her. 

Part of him expects her to walk right through him like a phantom. Part of him expects her to walk forward and bump into his body, grow visibly inconvenienced, shimmy her way around, keep pressing on.

Expectation is a complicated thing.

She halts in her tracks in tandem with him as if they’re connected to some invisible pulley system. His confidence immediately falters as the girl’s jaw tightens, her neck going taut for half a second, and she cocks her head to the side. 

“I… am… so sorry,” Vision whispers, eyes wide, taking a step back. “I don’t mean to be in your way. Really, I don’t, I just - are you okay? Because you seem - not to be rude, but you seem… you seem…”

He can hear his pulse in his ears. His nervous smile fades, his hands fidgeting at his sides. In the silence, in the tension, clarity somehow blooms and it feels as though he’s seeing her clearly, now. Even in the dark. Even without understanding.

It… looks like someone’s firing a laser pointer toward her face. He tries to figure a better comparison but there is none. Two dim, red lights on her closed eyelids.

That doesn’t make sense. Because his shadow blocks the flickering overhead lamps, blocks the lights behind. He squints slightly as if to make sense of it. 

Then, before he can attempt to ask if she’s alright for a hundredth time, she opens her eyes. 

Vision's breath leaves him. 

Her eyes. Her eyes. They’re glowing, glowing red, like stoked embers or a burning engine or simply like a warning. 

Before he can apologize, before he can fall backward and die, the girl’s lasers roll back into her head, her feet slipping out from under her, and she’s pitching forward and into his chest. Vision panics, arms held out for her, unsure if he’s meant to touch her or if he’s only meant to watch her hit the ground so that he can run away. 

He catches her. She goes completely lax, her insides completely liquefied, and he stands there, breathing heavily with what he now assumes to be a corpse in his arms.

Okay.

Corpse in his arms.

Okay.

“...” Vision's mouth is dry as he gradually shifts his hold on her, any and all possible alarm bells ringing in his head, ringing so loudly that they break apart. “… Fuck.”

The seminars never covered this part of everything. 

In the morning, Vision will remember what he should have done. It will be a whole ordeal. He’ll smack his forehead and he’ll fall against the counter, he’ll press his fingers into his eyes so hard he sees stars, he’ll curse and curse and curse for what could very much be hours. 

In the morning, Vision will remember that 999 exists. He’ll remember that he should have called them. He’ll remember that there is such a thing as emergency services for a reason. 

For now, however.

In this very moment. 

Vision stares down at the girl who has so abruptly passed out, the girl who is lost and very likely afraid, likely released from some sort of medical center with no preparation. The girl that he is quite suspiciously holding in an alley that often sees tens of murders semi-annually. 

He looks at the stretch of an abyss that surrounds them. 

He looks back down to her. 

“... Shit,” he whispers, wincing as he bends down to hook his arm under her legs. “Alright,” he says. “Okay. Alright. Oh, my God.”

She weighs nothing. The ridges of her spine dig into the inside of his elbow. He takes care not to fall forward on his face as he hisses out a breath, anxious and mortified and concerned and quite literally everything diagnosable about himself at once, and begins to walk. 

“Alright.” He nods somewhat vacantly, his attention split evenly between the stretch of darkness ahead and the glowing girl slumped against him. “Alright. It’s - it’s gonna be alright. I think. You’ll be okay.”

He convinces someone of this. The more he says something, the more it is true.

There is no room for this in his calendar. 

As he makes the rest of his trek in company, as he slowly begins to lose his mind, as he shoulders his way into the building… 

As he climbs the stairs, bag knocking against his legs, and mutters half-encouragements to both himself and the unconscious company…

As he fumbles with his door keys, having to balance the girl in one arm, kicks the door open and, once inside, kicks it shut…

As he hesitantly places the girl on the couch, her arm falling to the side and her head lulling forward, as he bites at his nails and pulls at his hair…

… all that his brain can offer is a somewhat hysterical cackle and a not-so-comforting voice that says: how’s that for spontaneous?

Chapter Text

It’s sort of funny, the few seconds of morning consciousness before the eyes open. 

That finicky period of time when the mind flickers back on and nothing makes sense for a second or two. Memories don’t exist, just reacquainting oneself with gravity. Trying to work up the courage to be a person. 

This is where he is, right now. Floating in that high of forgotten responsibility.

Vision hasn’t been in a morning or mid-day class for a long time. This is to say, he knows when the day has only just begun. He knows when he’s missing time he could be spending asleep. Two years he’s spent here on somewhat of a nocturnal schedule. It takes active effort not to hiss upon realizing that it’s still daytime. 

He knows that checking his phone will only mean trouble, that he’ll get sucked into the world far too quickly, that he’ll never get back to sleep. He knows that waking while the sun is still high in the sky is going to throw everything off. He knows this. 

Hm. But it seems there was a reason why he woke up early. It crawls its way through the fog.

His mind has flickered back on, he welcomes it tentatively. Something… something is different. Unfortunately, in this state he’s in, it is not something that he can put his finger on.

He’s taken a few psychology courses in his day. He’s well familiar with the science behind what he’s feeling. That uneasiness, that innate urge to move and wake and hide and run. 

Scopaesthesia, says a memory of a ten-pm lecture, the definition scrawled in a mental notebook in his own atrocious handwriting, the feeling of being watched. 

He opens his eyes. 

Right, the sun is up. Perhaps that was the cause, spotlight filtering through transparent curtains. He never sleeps on the couch, often because he doesn’t actually fit on it. Curious that he’s chosen to, today. He cannot identify why this decision was made. Maybe it’ll come to him later.

He sweeps drowsy attention around the living room with a groan, limbs too heavy to stretch.

Yes, everything does seem to be in order. 

There’s the television on its no signal input, the coffee table and the old energy drink cans that rest there, the half-conscious girl he took off of the street and let sleep in his home is perched on the arm of the couch looking down at him with her laser red eyes, the blinds are drawn, the - 

Vision pauses. 

He directs his attention back to the other end of the couch. 

He blinks.

There are no… particularly heroic words with which to describe the scream that comes from Vision’s body. 

It’s not a question of heroism - the memory returns all the same. The girl who is light as air, bony and rigid, crouching and peering at him like she isn’t sure if she wants to keep him in a jar or rip his throat open. The girl who fell into his arms and the girl who, as it appears, he carried up to his flat completely of his own volition. 

His volition is awful. He must stop using his own volition.

Ah, yes, the scream. 

“Fuck!” he shrieks, scrambling rearward until the arm of the sofa digs into his back. He tries to climb up and over it like a hurdle, the old thing creaking under his weight, but his perception of the room is a lot smaller than it actually is. He's been backing up for a long time. 

Her eyes only glow brighter, wider, and she’s reaching out thin hands toward him. It seems that she doesn’t want him in a jar anymore.

Vision hasn’t called his mum in a few months. She’ll be so cross with him. Is there time to send a text? Apologize for the ridiculous way in which he is about to die? Politely request that she clear his browser history before looking through his laptop for memories of her late son? Fuck.

His gaze flickers from her hands to her face, then down to his socked feet that push and push at the cushions to try and propel himself away, then up to her again. 

With every glance, the red grows. It spreads from her eyes to the tips of her fingers and down into her palms. It doesn’t spark like fire, rather flowing down like mist to wrap around his ankles, tugging him forward, tugging him closer, like a fly to a spider’s mouth.

Another screech breaks from his throat and he tries to claw the red away with urgent fingers. His noise and action only spurs her on, beckons the insanity to multiply, her eyebrows raising almost as if she’s in danger, and the grip tightens. His hands are taken by it as well, and then the rest of him, and at this specific moment, he remembers that 999 exists. 

Oh, God.

Vision is hauled forward by the ankles until his back is on the cushions, his head thudding against the arm rest, and then he’s lifted up in the air. He squeaks. The girl holds him tighter in response. He sways a bit as if held by the collar on a rope, the sway only slowing as his surprised thrashing fades and he does what he has always been so wonderful at doing - resigning himself.

“Oh, my God,” Vision squeezes his eyes closed, trying to bring his knees to his chest as if he can actually move them, each limb held by an invisible and very strong hand. He gives up, resigns, his legs going lax as he floats there, empty body with a frightened mind, “Please, I didn’t - I’m - I know it doesn’t matter, but I - f-fuck, please don’t murder me.”

He waits for his life to flash before his eyes. He waits for the light at the end of the tunnel or the television static of the loss of life that people mention in the articles about a Great Beyond. He waits for a booming voice that reprimands him for not calling his mother when he had the chance.

It doesn’t come. 

Hesitantly, very hesitantly, he opens an eye. 

She’s still there. He’s still hovering. But it doesn’t seem that death is the conclusion. Why not?

Her wide-eyed stare is gone but the glow remains, her eyebrows relaxed and her lips parted. Not confusion. Not despondence. Somewhere in between. His vocabulary has left him. 

Vision tries to scan his words, tries to remember what he had said to change her mind. To his own ears, it had been a jumble of nonsense. Begging for one’s life is not often particularly comprehensible, he supposes, but she seems to have… comprehended. 

Her face falls further. Then, so does he, right back down into the cushions with a thud. Vision plasters himself to the arm of the couch, perplexed and not entirely convinced that his life isn’t coming to an end. 

He opens his mouth. He doesn’t have a plan. Is he meant to keep pleading? He can try.

Her hair is fuzzy with individual strands reaching toward the ceiling as if she’s full of static electricity. Her hands lower, the red mist retreating from around him, and she raises a finger to her lips. 

Vision is more than happy to oblige. 

They sit in silence. It’s the kind of silence that follows a mutual understanding but Vision has never understood something less. He’s been a philosophy major in an ecology class. He knows what it’s like to drown in incomprehension. 

This… 

This is… insane. 

He pushes himself to sit up. The girl flashes a look like a warning light, like a gunshot. Vision closes his eyes, steadying himself, pulse so loud he’s afraid his heart might combust. There’s a momentary hope that this is just another stress dream, that he’s fine and in his bed and it’s still Thursday. 

He looks again. 

Nope. Still there. 

“Okay,” Vision nods shallowly, hand over his face, desperately trying to return to a normal relationship with oxygen. He sounds like he’s been strangled. He almost was. “Okay, okay, okay, yes, right. This is fine.”

The girl tilts her head at him. Her balance is exquisite, he is confused as he notes it, she’s barely moved a muscle from her perch.

Exquisite. Vision, really, keep it together.

“... Uh.” Vision turns to sit normally, feet hesitantly planted on the ground. “Right.”

She studies him. Intensely. Solving him, almost. She seems to make a route in her head and crawls onto the coffee table, sitting across from him, waiting for something that he isn’t sure how to even begin to give. 

“My mum’s gonna kill me,” he whispers. 

Oh, yes, she certainly might. He was trusted to do something on his own. Just one thing - be a normal student at university. Live alone and be independent and, hm, dunno, don’t usher unconscious glowing girls into his apartment. She’ll have a fit at Christmas. Rightfully so. 

“I…” he can’t sit still and yet there is a new fear that moving too much might invite her to lift him up again, “I wanna… I swear I didn’t kidnap you. I should make that clear, probably, you - y-you can leave at any time, I was just - I… you looked… you…” He drags his hands through his hair, bewildered, “Frankly, I don’t know what I’m doing. Or what I’ve done. I’ve never really known, to be honest with you. I’m a mystery even to myself. It’s… u-um...” 

He slows down. Takes a breath. Vision hasn’t spoken to anyone in a long time beyond a sentence or two. He’s having trouble containing himself. He rambles when he’s lonely, rambles when he’s nervous. This is an odd combination.

She tilts her head in the other direction. 

“Do you…” he squints at her, “Sorry, do you… can you…? Understand me?”

A nod. Okay. That is something he can work with.

“Wonderful,” Vision falls back into the couch cushions, already exhausted by this exchange. The girl tries to mimic his movement, leaning back, eyes going wide as she rocks backward into a heap on the floor. He grimaces and moves to help her back up, “Sorry, that was… so sorry.”

She shies away from his touch as he tries to help. He holds his hands up in surrender. Fair. Use your head, Vision. Good lord.

She rubs the back of her head, eyebrows drawn together. Confused as to what happened. They’re on the same page, there. 

“Can you speak?” he winces at the question, “It might help me to know that. If you could… uh, say your name. Or. Quite literally anything, I’d be so grateful for anything you could offer - “

“Wanda.”

Vision’s mouth snaps closed. 

Of all the voices he could have expected to come out of this incredibly small woman, that was not quite it. She sounds rather… like a bonfire. Crackled and rough and low. Soft, but strong. 

“Ah.” Vision can feel how shocked his expression is but he doesn’t have the energy to pretend to be unaffected by this. “Well. Hello, Wanda, my name is Vision.”

Her face screws up at that. 

He scoffs, “I know, okay? I get it. My mum thought it would be cool.”

Wanda looks away. 

“Um,” Vision murmurs,  not blind to the reaction, recognizing a cue to move on when he sees one, “So. Er, Wanda, what… how old are you?”

God, there’s no non-creepy way to go about this, is there?

It takes her a moment to reply. “What is the year?”

Oh, so she has an accent. That must be where the flames are coming from. Her consonants are very pronounced. Vision is beginning to understand why people bring up his voice so often. 

“... It is… 2018?”

She closes her eyes. Her hands come up as if she’s counting on them but even Vision can’t keep up with her method. 

“Nineteen,” she says. It is not a confident entry. More a question than an answer.

“... Okay,” Vision nods. He’s been nineteen before. Quite recently, in fact. Not once was he ever in quite a state as this. “Okay. That’s… you’re…” 

There is nothing he wants more, right now, than to know what to say. But what is there possibly to say other than… well, simply a litany of incoherent screams?

Wanda waits for him to speak coherently where he will never be able to do so. Then, assuming that he hadn’t understood her the first time, she tries again, “Nineteen.”

“No, yeah, I…” Vision clears his throat, “I’m… sorry - would you like some tea? Are you hungry? I’m - I’ve not had anyone around, this is quite unusual.”

Wanda stares at him for a long time. Her eyes illuminate and he begins to panic again but she holds up a hand to stop him. Then, with the most careful movement, she cups her palms around an invisible object and brings it up to her mouth. 

Vision watches her for a second, heart pounding in his chest, before he realizes that she’s miming it. 

“Oh, yes!” He does the same thing, invisible mug in his hands brought to his mouth. “Tea.”

She nods once, curt. 

Finally. A victory.

This is a new place. A foreign place. 

The first instinct is to feel fear. 

How long has it been since she was in a new place?

The new boy walks backwards on the way to make tea, keeping his eyes on her - afraid, she can feel him, and very sleepy - and she looks down to count on her fingers. She tries to remember the last time she had a birthday, the last time she had a little cake with little candles. She tries to picture how many candles were there. Everything is lost, everything before the large, grey room she has been kept inside. 

This is not her large, grey room.

This is a decidedly small room. Full of objects and shapes and colors. 

Full of boy. 

“What… kind of tea would you like?” he asks her. His voice is shaking. She sweeps her eyes up from her own hands to look at him and he flinches like she’s done something at all threatening. “I… I have… cinnamon and - “

“Black,” she croaks. 

He closes his mouth. Wanda can hear the silly voice in his head, the voice his thoughts carry, want to ask her a question. She can hear all of the wavering fears between his ears. 

“I know what you have,” she says. Her throat hurts. How long has it been since she’s spoken to someone, spoken for this long? When was her last birthday? Before or after then? “I can hear you.”

“... You… you can…” He brings a hand up to point to his head, his mind ablaze. 

She nods once and replies within his head: Yes. 

He seems to grab onto the table to keep standing. 

What a curious boy. 

She takes his spot on the couch. Warm.

Yes, the first instinct is to feel fear. New place, smaller and full of images she doesn’t recognize. Her hands are free and the sedatives have worn off. She is no longer contained. She could blow the walls away as she had done the night prior, another blurred memory she desperately grasps at, and return to the street to look for a place to hide. 

She could leave, yes. She could kill this boy. He would make it easy. 

Yes. 

Easy.

This boy is new, too. 

She’s never met anyone like this. So tall and afraid. His teeth are chattering as he stands by the stove, sending glances in her direction and smiling nervously when she meets his eyes. 

Wanda is listening to his head. His fear is amplifying the sound, she can’t help but hear him. None of these thoughts are violent. Not once has he thought to pick up a knife, not once has he thought to defend himself. Even as she had lifted him from the ground, he simply waited for death. 

She has never known a man to simply wait for death. They do tend to try to fight back. 

“So…” he attempts to carry a conversation even through what Wanda identifies as panic. “S-s-so. Um.”

This furniture is nice. Soft. Big. Wanda brings her knees to her chest, staring at him, waiting for him to finish his query.

She watches him struggle to speak aloud. She doesn’t stop him. She doesn’t repeat that she can hear everything he is thinking, that she can flip through his memories like old recipe cards, like manilla folders. She fears he may drop dead if she clarifies.

He can’t drop dead, yet. He hasn’t finished her tea. 

How long has it been since she’s had tea?

The boy with the funny name covers his face with his hands as if hiding. He takes a deep breath. Then a second. “So. Wanda. Where are you from?”

What odd questions. 

“You found me,” she says. 

He doesn’t seem to understand for a moment. Had she misunderstood?

Vision - funny name - is thinking very hard. Wanda tries to sift through the noise and the panic to find a comprehensible thought. It takes a moment.

“... Oh,” she whispers. She pins one of the phrases still, looking across it, and Vision seems to feel that she’s looking inside his head. He places his hands over his ears as if that will do anything. “You want to know… where I started.”

“Yes,” he says. He sounds strange. She hesitantly lets his thought go, small pebble dropped back into its pond. He falls back against the counter as if she just had been holding him by the collar. “Where you started. Right. That.”

Wanda cannot remember a time when she said it aloud. She cannot remember a time when she was asked. 

Her throat burns. “Sokovia.”

The boy knocks something off of the counter, something metallic and heavy. He drops down out of her view to grab it, emerging again with wide, funny, blue eyes. 

“Sokovia, ” he gasps. 

She squints at him. Yes, that is what she said. 

“Sokovia,” he repeats when she doesn’t reply. He scans her. It doesn’t feel like he’s looking at her, he isn’t judging her, but rather searching for an indication of something. “You walked… you walked… all the way from Sokovia?”

Wanda shakes her head. “No.”

Vision’s alarm doesn’t disappear. He is clutching a small spoon as if it might contain some sort of solution. After a moment of silence, he seems to concede the conversation, turning back to the stove. 

She needs a moment to regain her voice. Perhaps tea will help the rough sandpaper in the back of her mouth. 

No one has ever asked her questions before. Not really. Not in recent memory. Everything was a demand, everything was a shouted request for loyalty that she would then have to quietly provide. 

Go in there, they’d say. She would.

Come with me, they’d say. She would.

Who do you obey, they’d say. Those who asked the questions.

Do you see that man, they'd say. She had. 

Kill him, they’d say. 

She couldn’t. And they’d turn out all of the lights.

Wanda is no murderer.

This boy seems to think she is a murderer.

Her brother’s voice is an echo in her memories. He never asked her questions. She knows that there was never a long conversation between them. Her brother’s voice is a thin thread - it will be okay, or not for much longer. 

When had she last seen him?

It must have been years since he had said not for much longer. If the memories are fading, it will have been a long time. He was there in the large, grey room, his hand was cold, he said it will be okay, and then he was gone. 

There’s a distant clink from the kitchen. 

Wanda’s eyes flicker upward - he is holding a large bowl-like mug. She could likely fit inside it. Vision seems to think he’s done something wrong, holding his hands up in surrender, the mug hanging precariously on his thumb. 

She nods once. He hesitantly relaxes, turning back to the stove, taking the handle of the kettle in hand. He seems to think he is being held hostage in his own home. He’s the one who brought her here.

It will have been a long time since she’s had black tea. Hopefully it will be as good as she remembers it to be. The flavor has been lost. 

“Um…” The cupboard hinges creak as he opens them, peering inside. “I only have honey, is that… er, is it - “

“Yes.” She brings a hand up to her neck with a grimace. She sounds horrid. “Lots.”

She watches curiously as he seems to pour half of a bottle into the mug. Part of her thrills at the sight. It has been so long since she has had something sweet. Something hot. 

Vision carries the tea across the room. His footfall is light, almost silent. He’s a bit like a mouse. Wanda has never met such a contradictory boy. 

“Here you are,” he says kindly, still wracked with his overwhelming emotions that begin to pinch at Wanda’s skin uncomfortably, setting it down on the table next to her. Then, he’s scrambling backward and sitting in a chair miles away. He rests his elbows on his knees, looking at her, out of breath for some odd reason. He glances toward the mug. “It’s… um. It’s hot.”

Yes, she knows. It doesn’t matter.

She takes a sip. She hums. It tastes lovely. Sweet. Warm. 

The honey soothes the burn, rounds off the jagged edges of her voice. She drinks until she is confident enough to speak, confident enough that her words won’t hurt anymore. If she speaks inside his mind, he’ll panic and die, it seems. She doesn’t want him to die. He’s good at making tea. 

“I…” she tries again, settling the mug in her palms. It burns, still hot as fire, but she has held fire before. This is nothing. “I am from the laboratory.”

He thinks very hard about her words. His mind is so loud. She wonders how he stands it. 

“The… the laboratory,” he repeats, leaning back in the chair, scratching his chin. He still shakes but at least he is moving. A moment passes before his face changes and his posture becomes rigid.

She can hear a flurry of words, memories that he accesses. Not all of them make much sense. He seems to be familiar with the laboratory. Voices carried in echoes about they’re saying it’s revolutionary and they won’t let cameras in and you didn’t hear this from me. She listens until the pictures begin to show, projected on her eyelids when she blinks, that tall and grey building that beckons. That tall and grey building that she could have shattered if she wanted. 

Wanda blinks herself from his mind. He is too much. She looks down at her lap, fingers shifting on the mug there, reflection staring back at her from the small puddle left inside. 

“I don’t understand,” he continues to speak, curious and trembling, “... why were you there?”

She does not know. The question scares her. She knows what she has done, but she could not possibly know why. 

He expects an answer. He leans forward in his chair slightly, wood creaking, and Wanda cannot break herself away from his eyes. There is no logical reason to give him an answer where she lacks one. There is no logical reason to want to give him an answer. But she does. 

The mug clinks quietly as it shifts in her hands, tipped against her fingernails, and then up in the air. 

Vision watches it rise warily. Then, he flinches as it begins to float toward him. 

She means no harm. He is awfully skittish. 

It hovers over his lap for a moment. She waits patiently for him to reach for it. It takes him a long time, quivering palms cupped together, a perfect place for the mug to nestle. 

He looks up to her, holding it like a precious trophy, “This is… what you do? You move things?”

Wanda is offended. “I do everything, boy.”

He raises his eyebrows. They are funny eyebrows, so light that they disappear into his skin. 

She has never had a name for what she is. For what she does. It is not something she can define, not a list that she can offer, a phrase or collection of syllables that she can give to this boy. 

Wanda lifts a hand again. He winces. Even outside of his mind, his panic is audible as she summons a small, red star in the cage of her fingertips. 

Vision’s panic spikes and then idles. She can see the reflection of red in his eyes even with the distance between them. It is unfamiliar, this response. The longer he stares, mug cradled in his hands, the more he relaxes. He watches but does not seek to extract it. 

She steps into his mind again, just for a moment. 

He doesn’t seem to want to understand it anymore. 

Her power feels quite beautiful in this small and colorful room. It does not seem to fulfill a purpose beyond allowing this boy to look at it, to ease his fear. 

Exquisite, he thinks.

“Wow,” he says. 

She likes this new feeling. The feeling of being beheld. The feeling of being awed. 

He really does look silly, holding that empty mug. He may never let go of it.

“Wanda, this is amazing,” he murmurs. She tilts her chin up a bit. The motion aches. “Is it only you, who can do this? Or are there others?”

The red star of her own design disappears. She closes her hand into a fist. It is not on purpose. 

Her lips pull downward and she meets his gaze. His small smile fades, understanding. Wanda doesn’t have to say anything before he is standing, taking in a breath, likely starting another silly boy train of thought. 

For a moment, it is almost as if he can hear minds too. 

Vision is having somewhat of a crisis. A crisis of identity, perhaps, or a crisis regarding the very fabric of reality. The crises he’s dealt with have been insignificant compared to this. Compared to her. 

She is terrifying. Even more: she is magnificent. 

It’s one thing to be on the receiving end of her ability, to be grabbed at and pulled up into space, to expect death to come very, very soon. It is another to see it idle, resting dormant in her palm, warming her chin, controlled. 

He wants to know more. Wants to know everything. She can do that, she can hear his mind, likely a million further possibilities that she hasn’t yet shared. Goodness. He wants her to share them. He aches to sit with a journal and watch and notate until his hand cramps up to the point of incapacity.

He knows that he tends to… fixate. He’s never had the company to witness it. Wanda seems to be finished with this conversation and he will respect that. 

Frankly, it’s a miracle that she’s still here. 

“Um, I… as I said, I don’t have much. For food. Food… purposes. Er…” he wanders toward the kitchen, sliding the mug onto the counter as he goes. “I’ve never… I’m unsure of the protocol, here, so if you’ll bear with me - “

“Not hungry,” she says. She’s somewhat unsteady on her feet still, though much better than the night before, as she stands. “I would like to sleep.”

Right. Okay. This feels like progress. He hopes it’s progress. 

What the fuck is he doing?

“You can sleep in my… room…” he grimaces at the words, rubbing the back of his neck, already feeling the ache from sleeping on the sofa, beginning the trek back to her, “It’s - you can - I can show you - “

She holds up a hand, stopping him cold. 

“I know where it is,” she says. 

And then she’s padding down the hall, leaving him alone, stuttering, with a full day ahead. Leaving him with the boredom that accompanies her absence.

Chapter Text

Vision went to class that night. 

Of course he did. He’d never missed one before. Granted, the circumstances had sort of… exploded. 

He couldn’t focus in class. He typed down the terms from his spot in the back of the lecture hall, both legs shaking up and down as he fidgeted aimlessly, but it was more muscle memory than anything. He couldn’t tell you one thing he learned. He sat there in that ancient theater chair, knowing he should pay attention while the machinery required for concentration had been unplugged. 

He clicked the pen, drew a few shaky shapes on the edge of his notebook page, clicked it again, and placed it down. Struggled to type the word manoeuvre about twenty times before giving up. 

All of his thoughts were stuck on Wanda. Why wouldn’t they have been? His mind was still planted in his living room while his body vibrated with anticipation a few blocks away. His mind was still staring at her, staring at the ball of energy in her palm, wanting more than anything to reach out and press his fingers into it. She had wrapped him in the stuff and it hadn’t burned.

He desperately tried to remember anything from that moment that wasn’t his pitiful attempt at begging for his life. He desperately tried to remember what it felt like to be held inside. 

Wanda was still in the flat. That was the finish line of each of his racing thoughts, the pointed end of several frayed threads, that she was still there. He left her a note before he left. He hoped that had been enough. He hoped she could read. He hoped she could decipher his handwriting.

Vision almost fell out of his chair once his final lecture ended, trying to stand. Knocked his pen to the floor, down a few steps to the lower level of seats. Someone had to pass it back up to him. It was dreadful. 

At least part of his ritual was the same. He said his greeting to the curb, kissed the light pole goodbye. He ate on the way home, impatient. It was almost like Christmas, like he had expected some sort of gift upon returning home. Wanda, while still definitely distant, hadn’t killed him yet. That had to be a good sign, right? Perhaps that was the gift. How very generous.

All motivation to do anything else, to so much as think about anything else, had completely disappeared. 

He realized this as he stepped back into that stretch of the alley, empty as it always had been before, tossing his white bag into the bins there. There is nothing he could possibly learn from that point forward that would mystify him more than Wanda had. 

Nothing had ever happened to him. And now it felt like, twenty years down the line, a real life had begun. Or, perhaps, the first chapter after the prologue. 

Wanda had still been resting when he returned. Nothing had been moved out of place, the air was just as still and silent as it was when he left. The momentary fear that she had left, that she had gotten the rest she needed and consequently disappeared, led him to walk somewhat fearfully down the hall toward his room. He had to take a breath before glancing inside, had to prepare himself for a vacant space. 

No, she was still there. Sleeping soundly. A mound under the comforter with wild, dark hair strewn over the pillows. 

He sighed in relief. Then, retreating and clicking the door closed, in the dim of the hallway, he made a face at himself. There was no brain power left within him to seek an explanation for the reaction and, so, he wandered back down the hall. 

It is not Christmas. It's important to note that. It's an overcast Friday. Simply a Friday.

When he initially moved in, he hadn’t seen a reason to get a couch that was over six feet long. He hadn’t thought that he’d be lounging on it much, had expected to have many more friends and much more company. The sofa can fit four people sitting side-to-side. No one had ever visited except for his mother, and that was only once. His first day in London, his last day in company. 

He wasn’t sure if he could count Wanda on the list. She hadn’t visited, she had been carried. 

He laid on the couch anyway. He shifted his head on the rock-stiff arm, his ankles propped up on the other end, a concave of a man. It wasn’t two seconds before he knew he’d regret this, that every muscle he had would curse him for it, but it wasn’t as if there was another option.

Sleep came somewhat easily. 

And… Vision is currently dreaming about something very boring. 

He knows this because even his unconscious self is actively criticizing himself for it. 

It’s a meadow, or something boring like a meadow. He’s just walking, touching grass, doing nothing important at all. What a joke. He finally has something interesting in his life, something new, something changed, and the best his mind can come up with is… an empty field?

Surely that’s gotta mean something. He hasn’t taken an analysis class in a while. Hard to put things in their respective places. 

It doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. 

Vision wakes up when his head hits the corner of the coffee table. 

It takes a moment to get his bearings - clutching at the side of his head, cursing under his breath, shooting up to his feet - and realize exactly why he fell in the first place. 

Someone is screaming.

His feet are moving before he can even grasp the concept of why. 

It’s like nothing he’s ever heard before. Not blood-curdling, not shrill (as he would likely describe himself). It is something of a cry, something of a shout, strangled and muffled by something he can’t see. Vision’s mouth is dry and his throat is aching before he can even get the doorknob in his hand. 

He has to blink away the grogginess. He needs to come back to his head, now, needs to be present and prepared for whatever lies behind it. There is not enough time to summon wakefulness. He pushes inside. 

Vision seems to enter just as Wanda finally wrestles her way into consciousness. There is hardly a second between the moment the door is opened and the moment she wakes up, but it’s more than enough time to see the state of things. 

Every single earthly possession that he owns is floating midair, a room-sized grouping of misshapen constellations that carry their own special shape. The lamp is tethered by its cord to the wall, straining against the pull. His reading glasses that he had lost so long ago are unfolded, lenses tense against their frames. Pens and cords and tissue boxes and watches and frames from the walls. The nightstands and the bedframe shake at the center of it all, a sort of planet surrounded by asteroids who are visibly ready to plunge into its atmosphere.

Everything vibrates so fast that they are audible, a hum, looking as if they’re prepared to explode. There is a deadly still before it all goes tumbling down with a crash. 

The screaming has stopped. 

All that is left is ragged breathing (two sources) and the gentle rocking of shattered pieces that haven’t yet settled on the hard ground.

Vision sweeps his attention from the ground to the bed, hand lingering on the doorknob, not having had any time to enter. He looked in and, in a blink of an eye, it all was over. 

She’s upright, small frame in a large bed, one hand on her chest and the other one at her neck, trying to inspire calm breaths in a body that is not capable of such a concept. 

The door hinge whines as he accidentally leans into it, unable to stand as still as he’d like. She looks up with wild eyes and raises a hand, bright red glow, and he has no time to react in a sleep-delayed brain. 

Vision grunts as he’s slammed backward. 

The impact rattles his bones and offers a second blow to his head. The few things left on the wall tumble down from the impact. It’s only half of a second that he spends wrapped in her power, tight grip that almost squeezes the life out of him, but he’s dropped with a quiet gasp as soon as she sees who it is. 

He lands on his hands and knees. His head is swimming and his ears are ringing and he’s pushing himself back to his feet before he can really begin to panic about this. 

This is the second time she hasn’t killed him. She had him there, she had him ready, and she didn’t. 

His brain is only capable of two emotions: worry and fear. 

The fear: this is dangerous. Vision must not fall victim to the impulsive thought that tells him that he knows Wanda well enough to approach, to understand her motivations, to see a second time spared as an indication of trust. He is fascinated by her, he wants to know her, and yet he has to wake up at some point. Wake up and realize that it’s only been a day. No one can know someone in a day. No one can be assured that they are valuable enough to a person in a day. 

The worry: she was screaming. He had worried for her when she was silently wandering in an alley, this is decidedly more than that. He wants to help. He wants to be valuable enough to help. He wants to know everything. 

Worry overbrims. It sweeps fear to the side in a tired mind. In a tired, concussed, disoriented mind.

“Wanda,” he says softly, the red receding back into her hands that move to clutch at her own arms. He holds out for her, cautious, not wanting to frighten her but wanting so very much to help. “I-it’s only me. Vision. Er. Can I come closer? Is that alright? It’s only me.”

She looks at him, eyes wide and frightened and exhausted, before she drops her head to her chest and begins to cry. 

“H-hey, hey, it’s - it’s alright,” Vision crosses the room, clambering onto his own bed (feeling as though he is a stranger to it), not entirely sure how to comfort someone but finding it to be incredibly important right now. “I’m… I’m here.”

Wanda folds forward, burying her nose into the blankets, shoulders shivering. 

“Cold? Are you cold?” Vision glances around in the dark, his head aching and his body still reeling from the almost-death he just experienced. “I’ll - there’s a lovely, very soft blanket in the main room. Is it alright if I get it for you? Will you be alright?”

An imperceptible nod. He pats her shoulder, not meaning to linger, unable to pull away as quickly as he’d like, before stumbling over himself to get to the other room. 

The entire world is spinning in two different directions. He stretches both arms outward, hands braced on the walls as he goes, pinballing back and forth. He grunts as his shoulder knocks against the wall, tries to correct his balance, overcorrects, and grunts again as he falls the other way. 

“Think,” he says, an unhelpful addition to an otherwise panic-inducing circumstance. “Oh, Vision, of all times to know what to do, this’ll certainly be it.”

What did his mother do when he had nightmares as a kid? When the room was too dark or the thunder was too loud or he couldn’t seem to catch his breath? 

The blanket is folded neatly on the back of the sofa. He grabs it, unfurling it, draping it over his arm. It drags across the floor as he half-jog-half-trips around his flat. Something more than a blanket, probably, is required. No time to make tea, no time to learn how to take care of someone, no time at all.

He rifles through the pantry in the dark kitchen. Snacks typically help. It’s not like he necessarily prepared to have company. It’s not like he expected to eat anything in this damn place. He eats one meal a day and it’s from a damn truck on the side of the road. He isn’t prepared for this. 

If he calls emergency services to ask how to take care of someone after they have a bad dream, they’ll laugh him off the line.

In the end, in a fit of worry and fear and with time dragging still, he grabs a small bag of dark chocolate chips and is tripping across the floor and back to her. 

He stops in the doorway, having learned his lesson, offering the items from a distance, waiting for approval and hopefully avoiding a third concussion in the same night. Wanda is looking at him with sore eyes and slumped posture. She scans the hastily gathered gifts and nods, holding out weak arms to summon them. The bag floats out of his hands in a stuttered path through the air, though the blanket remains on his shoulder. Her priorities are clear. 

“Alright,” he says to no one in particular, crossing the threshold again. He hisses quietly as he steps on the sharp shards of some miscellaneous used-to-be belongings. It doesn’t matter. He walks over the pieces. It doesn’t matter. “It’ll be alright, Wanda, don’t you worry. I’ll… we’ll figure this out together.”

Figure what out? his mind cries. Your only solution is chocolate!

Vision returns to his place on the mattress, plenty of room left between them should she suddenly decide that she wants nothing to do with him. He wraps the soft fabric around her shoulders as she struggles to open the plastic bag with trembling fingers. He offers to help but she gives him a weak glare. She’s victorious after a moment, tucking a few small chips into her cheek.

She sighs tearfully.

“Better?” he asks gently.

She shifts the bag in her hands as she thinks about it, snuffling, the plastic crinkling a bit. “No.”

Vision nods. That was a stupid question in hindsight. Then again, he definitely has a concussion. No time for excuses, either. 

“Wanda, I know this is… I know I’m…” He buries his face into his palms, frustrated with his own lack of ability, “Shit.”

Cold fingers wrap around his wrist. He peeks out. 

“Not better,” she says, cheeks wet and lips turned into a wobbly frown, “but thank you.”

He’ll take that. God. Yeah, he’ll take that. 

They sit like that for a moment. Vision remains a blanket-ocean away, keeping her company, expecting to stay until she lifts a hand and sends him through a wall or something. Wanda stares at the seam of the comforter. He feels awkward just staring at her so he shifts his awareness to the floor, trying to peer over the edge of the mattress to see the damage. 

Wanda makes a small sound, apologetic. He turns to her again.

“It’s alright,” he promises. Those two words seem to be his favorites. He hikes a thumb over his shoulder before his arm falls to his side, “I didn’t use most of this stuff anyway.”

She deflates.

“I - I know I’m new,” he attempts again. “And I’m strange and this is all very scary. For both of us. For obviously… very different reasons.” Hurry up. Get to the point. “But if there’s… if there’s anything I can do. Beyond making a mess of things. Please tell me. If you’re able to.”

Wanda presses her lips together. She’s rooting back into the bag, soft crumple, and pulls out an almost impossibly large handful of chocolate bits, stuffing them into her mouth. 

Vision nods in agreement. “Chocolate is a good way to go, huh?”

She hums, then sniffs, chewing with half-lidded determination. 

He doesn’t know what to do with his hands. They stir on his lap. He’s never been conscious for this long in this room. God, there’s never been another person in here. 

There is nothing more frustrating than empty space where comfort should be given, especially when he’s in the position to offer it. It’s hard to define something that he hasn’t gotten in a few years. 

He clears his throat. Wanda looks up at him expectantly, her eyelashes heavy with tears. 

“It… it was only a dream,” he tells her quietly. “I know it likely didn’t feel like it. That it… that it felt real enough to have scared you, but it was only a dream.”

Wanda shakes her head. “Not a dream.”

“A nightmare,” he tries.

“It happened,” she says. There is a firmness, just edging on impatience with his ignorance, and Vision decides that he’s spoken enough for now. “It happened before. Real.” 

She pokes her finger to her temple. 

“Oh.”

“Have you ever seen the heart of a star?”

Vision blinks. It’s not the longest sentence he’s heard her say but it is the heaviest. It weighs more. It pins him down. 

“No,” he replies, a bit breathless. “I can’t say that I have.”

“I have,” she says. He believes her immediately. “Did you know,” she continues, clutching at the bag in her lap, “that the heart of a star is meant to kill you?”

He shakes his head. 

“We were only supposed to look in it,” Wanda says. She isn’t talking to him anymore. “It was meant to kill us.”

“Wanda.”

“How many were there at the start?” she asks herself, searching for the answer. “It was them, and it was Pietro, and it was me. And they were gone, and Pietro was gone, and I…”

He doesn’t ask what she means, who that is, doesn’t ask any of the questions that knock about in his head. She wants nothing to do with them. He only reaches out a hand. She glances at it, flash of red, but nothing happens. He isn’t crushed. He is simply studied. 

Vision offers his hand for as long as he can stand it. At some point, a lack of response should be read as a rejection. Just before he can recede, though, she takes it. 

“Christ, Wanda,” he whispers, enveloping it in his palms, “You’re frozen.”

Wanda sinks into herself a bit. He shuffles closer. He was at risk of falling down anyway, hanging over the side of the bed like that. 

“You…” Wanda’s hand is restless between his but she doesn’t pull away. “You seek to understand it. Me.”

He shrinks slightly. It’s embarrassing. But there seems to be little that is hidden from her. “Yes, I do.”

“There is no way to explain.” It sounds almost like an apology.

“You don’t have to,” he tries to let her go, her fidgeting seeming to grow more and more, but she grasps at his wrist. He looks down between them, language lost, “I… er, I’m…”

“You are fascinated by me,” she plucks the words out of him. He hadn’t wanted to say those. Of all the words to have chosen, of all the thoughts, she chooses some of the most juvenile ones. She brings her free hand to her eyes, wiping away old tears. “Your fascination is not something to be ashamed of.”

He scoffs gently, “Ah. Thank you, I think.”

“You’re welcome,” she replies plainly, closing her eyes, taking a breath. “You are nice. Nice and warm.”

Vision hopes his red face is lost in the dark, “... Oh?”

“I hope to tell you someday,” she says. “What I am.”

Then, as if melting, she settles back down into the comforter and rests her head on the cool pillow. Vision releases her only to catch the bag of chocolate chips before it tips over into the bed, carefully placing it to the side. 

“It still burns,” she says to the ceiling. 

Vision looks down at her, pressing his fingers to his warm cheek. “What does?”

She pokes her temple again. 

“Ah.” He glances around with a frown, “Um. How can I help? I mean, i-if I can.”

Her eyebrows draw together. She considers the question. This is going much better than he could have hoped. Somehow he has managed to cobble together a semblance of usefulness to this unlimited human. 

She lifts a thin hand. It falls and rises again. He waits for some sort of blast to his chest, a dismissal, but it doesn’t come. She’s gesturing. No, beckoning. 

“Close,” she says. 

Vision stutters the word okay for about a minute before making the equally jittery move to complete her request. He scoots forward a tad, almost as if navigating a minefield, and she waits patiently for him to settle where she wants him. His folded legs just barely press to her side through the blanket. 

Cold fingers around his wrist again. It is becoming a familiar sensation. That feels dangerous, somehow.

His arm is tugged so hard it’s nearly dislocated. Another quiet laugh breaks from his chest - maybe it’s the shock or perhaps it is the absurdity of the situation itself. Maybe it’s the fascination with her, the fascination with the fact that he’s still alive. 

He slumps forward, back aching from the odd angle that he leans into, and her hand retreats from his wrist to frame his face. He stills under her touch, expecting the worst. 

Wanda closes her eyes. Her thumb strays beneath his jaw, pressed intently to his pulse.

“Picture something that doesn’t burn,” she says. Then, almost inaudible, “Please.”

It takes him a second to remember how to use his mind. He’s seen what she can do. 

The fear: with her power, the equivalent of a loaded shotgun is currently pressed to his cheek. 

The worry: it has been quite literally two years since Vision has felt the touch of another human being. He’s at great risk to lose himself in this.

Worry overbrims. 

Vision pictures the meadow. Empty field. Soft grass. The wind brushes its fingers through the taller bits, has to bend down to reach the shorter stalks. 

Wanda hums. It isn’t a smile that graces her face but it is an inherent absence of a frown. He sits and imagines until his spine is taut and his eyelids go heavy. He sits and imagines until her arm goes limp, falling back onto the bed. 

He nods once. He stretches his arms over his head, his vertebrae misaligned and his psyche spinning from the still-present feeling of someone who has so casually crawled inside. 

Her face has relaxed and her breathing is normal. It feels like a success, it feels like he’s done something right. Even more, it feels like he’s now watching her sleep. Which is uncomfortable. 

He lets his legs fall over the edge of the mattress with a sigh. He’s taken by the sleeve before he can stand. A tentative glance is shot behind him where two glowing eyes are focused intently on his. 

“If you go, it’ll burn again,” she says. 

Little known fact about Vision. 

He’s a crier. 

Typically, he isn’t in company. There has never been an audience before. There were never two glowing spotlights pointed at him, never a person in his bed when he buried his face into his hands and lost it. 

But, obviously, now there are spotlights. Now there is a person and she is asking him to stay. It’s unfortunate - she likely needs someone invulnerable, someone stable, someone who can help. Someone who is the precise opposite of Vision. It is unfortunate that she’s stuck with him. 

He makes do with what he has, of course. He is capable of repression. 

Wanda feels it, apparently, the fact that he’s so close to breaking in half. Her eyelids flutter a bit. She seems to be waiting for him to collapse into sobs which is a fair assumption based on the many conscious demands that swarm his mind to not do that, all of which she is tuning into. 

He manages a shaky breath, the kind one employs when expeditiously tying themselves together with a piece of string, before he reluctantly turns to lean against the headboard. He lulls his head back against it, chin toward the ceiling, closing his eyes. 

He’s so tired. His temples begin to ache, the sting of a repressed cry. He winces at the feeling of hard wood on the back of his head, the precise spot where his skull had clattered against the wall. He reaches up with a hand to touch the area. It’s a surprise that he’s surprised when that, too, hurts. 

Wanda makes a content noise. 

He lets his chin fall to his chest, focusing on her. Her eyes are still glowing beneath her eyelids, though the brightness begins to fade ever so slightly. Another vague, hesitant victory.

Falling asleep upright isn’t so bad. 

Better than the couch, at least. 

Wanda stirs.

It takes a moment to remember where she is. There are too many differences to discern at once and so the brain often likes to ignore them altogether. It tries. 

This is not her normal bed. She knows this because, based on the feeling of it, it is a real bed. With real blankets, a pillow that cradles her head, the distinct lack of a physical ache to accompany the hurt of everything else. 

There was a weight on the mattress when she drifted away. That weight is gone now. 

Hm. This is an interesting feeling. Emotion? Is it an emotion? 

There is a memory of a night, of this night, a memory of the odd boy with the odd name and his odd gifts and his warm hands that eclipsed hers entirely. 

It was not an attempt to restrain her. It was an attempt at comfort. How strange. When Wanda has the dreams about the star, it is seldom that she is rewarded.

Her mouth still tastes sweet as she braves the light. There is a window, in here, with a real sun outside of it. Wanda pushes herself up to sit, so used to the plank-like cot in her laboratory universe that she almost falls over when there’s nothing but slack beneath her palms. 

The sun seems to be... setting. She lets her legs hang over the edge of the bed. She kicks them. This bed is tall. It does not sit as close to the ground as she is used to.

Her voice is muffled in this cozy room, no tile or high ceilings to carry the noise in an echo, as she looks down at what she’s done. Everything seems to be on the floor. Pieces of things she doesn’t own. She seems to have put them there. A lot of it is broken. There was a reason for the high ceilings and the barrenness of her old universe. Nothing to break in an empty room. 

“Oh,” she says softly. She nudges a shard of something with her toes. It rocks a bit, curved at the bottom and sharp on the edges. Wanda wonders what it was before she smashed it. Oh, dear.

She has to be specific about her steps as she travels over the rubble. Each step she takes is accompanied by a quiet distressed noise. She’s never seen so many belongings in the same place and she broke every single one of them. Hopefully Vision understands that it wasn’t on purpose. 

He held her hand. He stayed. It seems like he did understand. 

That doesn’t mean she isn’t horrified by it. Something in this stretch of debris must have been valuable to the boy. He slept beside these things. 

She creeps out into the hallway. There’s somewhat of a rhythmic clanking, the vague smell of a fire. Her strides are far too light to make sound as she leans forward enough to catch a glimpse of what lies at the end.

Right, her absent bed weight. The boy. 

She stops for a moment, watching him from afar. 

Such an alien concept, to wake up to something pretty. 

His words are clumsy. His hands are too big and too warm to be efficiently wielded. His hair is messy and his face is scattered with little dots and his sweater is all wrinkled and stretched on its sleeves from being rolled up so often. He seems to be very confidently setting a fire on the stove. 

Wanda has never had anything pretty before. He is a pretty thing. 

“Sorry for your head,” she says quietly. 

Vision jumps. He turns, wielding a kitchen utensil, and his shoulders slump when he sees her. “Oh, it’s just you.” He frowns, then. “What?”

“Your head. It still hurts.”

“Ah, right,” he brings a hand up to touch it, wincing, a frankly silly action, “Uh, no it’s - I fall all the time, it’s nothing to worry about.” He bows a bit, strange, before turning back to his fire in a pan, “How did you sleep, the second time around?”

Wanda wanders into the room that the boy stands in. She hasn’t wandered in a while. Autonomy is a bizarre feeling. 

“Well,” she replies. She yawns. Vision smiles down at the stove. “It is nice to sleep in a bed.”

He stops smiling. 

Wanda crawls up onto the kitchen counter. “Where did the field come from?”

“Mm?” he shifts on his feet. He pushes the same blackened piece of bread back and forth. 

“The field you gave me,” she crouches on the edge of the surface, hugging her knees, “Where did it come from?”

“Oh.” The way he reacts, it’s almost like he forgot about that. She knows he hadn’t. She knows everything about him. “I don’t know. It’s… just a… field.”

Anticlimactic. She hums and looks away. 

This kitchen is nice. She hasn’t been inside it yet, not in her own body. The counters are smooth under her feet, pretty eggshell color against the dark blue of the floor tiles. So many colors in this space but they do not overwhelm. His home is a bit like the boy himself - so much going on, so much inside, and it all somehow fits.

She scans the counter that she’s perched on. He must never spend time in here, it looks brand new. Untouched, unscuffed, unloved. Whatever he’s doing in that pan, whatever he is attempting to make, is not comfortable to him. 

What is he trying to do?

Her eyes fall upon a brown-fabric bag that hangs precariously off the edge. After a flicker to Vision, she reaches out and tugs it by the strap to see it better. It appears to be well-worn, quite the opposite of this room. 

Another look to the boy. He is distracted.

The front flap of the bag is heavy as she flips it open. It clink-thuds beside her. 

The sound grabs his focus. He looks between her and his bag, “... You okay?” 

Mm. Silly question. 

She slips a hand inside the bag, making a small noise as she pulls a heavy book out and into her hands. She flips through the pages. She hasn’t seen a book in a long time. 

“Wanda?” He’s standing in front of her, now, holding a spatula, gesturing to the book with it, “You can hold it. And read it, if you want. But that’s a two-hundred-pound rental, so I’d ask that you don’t set it on fire with your glowy thing - “

“Where are you going?” she asks, looking up at him through her eyelashes. He talks too much. 

He pauses, “What?”

“You have packed a bag.”

“Oh. Well, it’s my bag for school.”

“School,” she repeats. 

Vision frowns. “If I… ask you if you know what school is, are you going to be upset with me?”

She shrugs. “A bit.”

He nods once. “Then I will not.”

She shifts the weighty item in her hands. It is fascinating that he trusts her with this after her performance only hours ago. “You are leaving to school.”

“Um…? Not tonight, no.” He returns to his place at the stove, “I only have one class on Saturdays and I thought perhaps that… er, you know, after last night…”

Wanda can hear his thoughts. They’re far more orderly today. He thinks that she’s magnificent. Wanda is almost certain that the word means pretty.

She waits for him to say that thought out loud, eyebrows raised, chin tilted upward, bracing for it.

“Uh,” he says instead, shaking his head, letting her down, “Thought it might not be good to leave you alone, you know. In this new place. My class starts in about an hour, plenty of time to write in and say I can’t come for reasons, you know - “

“Boy,” she waves her hands to get his attention. She receives it. “You talk so much and yet you make little sense.”

He raises his eyebrows. “Noted.”

“School is important,” Wanda says. She hasn’t been in a long while. She remembers uncomfortable desks and sun-warmed lunchboxes. She remembers an older woman with a long stick, she remembers a voice saying school is important. “You are not going to it?”

“I’m sure my professor would understand,” Vision replies. He is kind. He plans to miss something important. What an odd plan.

She hasn’t smelled fire in a long time. Real fire, the kind that smokes and doesn’t smell of burned meat or singed hair.

“You’ve never missed school before,” she says. Her throat hurts. 

Vision looks up at her, surprised. “W-what?”

“You have never missed it,” she says again, confused by his own lack of knowledge. “You cannot miss it now.”

Wanda wraps the most restless of his emotions around her finger. Anxiety, it seems to be called. She holds it for a long moment, wondering if she can possibly slow it down. It is tenacious. It latches onto this boy like a parasite. 

Vision stills. He feels the discomfort of two presences in a single mind. She lets him go. 

“... I could,” he rubs his temple as if to wipe away the last traces of her, “if you needed me to…?” 

“I don’t,” she says, certain. “I am capable of being alone.”

“No, I know that,” he reaches over to turn the stove off, far too late to do any good, “I don’t mean to imply that - “

“I won’t break any more of your things,” she cuts him off. 

Vision scoffs, a ridiculous response, “I don’t care about any of my things. Honestly. You can break them if you need to, if it’ll make you feel better. Just don’t burn the place down and we’re fine.”

Wanda sends a look to the pan he holds. 

He catches her glance and his expression shifts into something close to offense. She ducks her head. It doesn’t feel appropriate to laugh. She can’t remember what her laugh sounds like.

Vision places his brick of coal onto a plate. It may as well shatter on impact. 

“I don’t have much in the house to eat,” he says. He offers it to her. She takes it - as a courtesy to him - and trades him with his book. “I don’t have much money left for this week, I’m sorry. I’ll try to get groceries when I can.”

Wanda frowns. Does he eat? Certainly not, if he has nothing in these cupboards.

He shoves the heavy book into his bag, latching it, lugging it over his shoulder. It weighs more than he does, no doubt, he staggers a bit as he gets used to it. 

“I should be off, then, in that case.” He wraps a hand around the strap that crosses over his chest, “Um… if you need anything… I’ll - I’ll be back tonight - “

“I will tell you if I need you,” she says. 

He stares at her blankly. 

“In your thoughts,” she explains.

Vision almost falls over. Had he forgotten? (He hadn’t.) “Oh. Yes. Right. You… yes. Okay. Alright.”

“This is burned,” she holds his so-called toast up between her fingers. 

“Yes, it does appear to be.” Vision stares at it solemnly. She registers embarrassment. She registers remorse. “Sorry. I’ll bring something back with me. For you.”

Wanda squints at him. “Will it be warm?”

“... Yes?”

“Burned?”

“... No.”

She studies him for a few more seconds before nodding once, “Good.”

The tall boy takes a few steps toward the door. She is confident in her ability to be safe, to not set his home ablaze, but she is less confident in this boy’s ability to simply stay alive. Still, even hours later, she can feel his hands around hers. A comfort he had provided. His worry was heavy, then, almost as heavy as hers is now.

She sets the plate aside, leaps down from the counter, and crosses the room with silent footfalls. Her hands wrap around one of his. Vision freezes before he can touch the doorknob, looking down at her curiously. 

“Stay safe,” she says. “Don’t die.”

He laughs. He laughs for a long time. Hysterically. 

“O-o-ohoho-okay,” he manages through giggles. Wanda is worried for this boy. So, so worried. He pats her hand, “Yeah, Wanda, you got it. I’ll be safe. I won’t die.”

Wanda is suspicious of his humor but hesitantly releases him. 

Vision smiles. His teeth are pretty and white and straight. She gets the urge to run her fingertip across them. 

“I guess you know how to reach me if you have a question. Or a concern. Or…” he comes down from his laughing fit with a heavy sigh. “Yes. Okay. Good, er… goodbye.”

The door clicks shut behind him. Wanda rocks up on her toes and presses her face to the door, to the small circle of glass. She watches him stand there for a moment, running his hands through his hair. He turns, his face looking funny through the rounded lens, and he mutters something under his breath before starting off down the hallway. 

Wanda has been alone before. She has been… confined solitarily. But never has she been alone with so many fun, colorful, pretty things.

It feels wrong to touch them. But they’ve all gathered such a great amount of dust that Wanda anticipates that the boy hadn’t been kidding at all, that he truly doesn’t pay his things much mind. (Of course, having been in said mind, it doesn’t seem that there is much room for anything beyond fear.) 

If no one else in this home will hold these valuables, she will gladly take them in.

She starts in the main room, the room with the couch and the window and the still-present sound of Vision’s funny scream. She remembers what he looked like when he was sleeping. That was when he was at his prettiest, when his head was quiet. 

She takes more books into her hands. They all are different weights, different textures, different widths and shapes. She flips through their pages. She presses the paper to her nose. A new smell, paper and ink and plastic covering. The pages are soft between her fingers. She places each of them back where she found them before picking up another, acquainting herself with it, learning its name and its numbers. She doesn’t want to leave the place in disarray. 

Well, not this room. 

The books run out. She steps to the side. 

There are little figures of men tucked in the back of the shelves. She takes them in her hands, peering at them. Doubtful of their usefulness, she inspects them. Their arms and legs move, but their faces do not. He has them hidden away. Certainly there must be a use for them. When she places them back, she places them in clear view. Perhaps he’s forgotten about them. 

Books and little men. Picture frames that are empty and stacked up upon each other, slipped into the lowest shelf that sees no sunlight. Wanda inspects each one. She touches the glass. Little men on his shelves but no pictures. She sits on the ground, pulling out other papers - she has to blow the dust away, it falls like what she vaguely remembers as snow.

She sees his name written out. It looks even funnier when written. 

“Vision,” she says aloud, thumb tracing the black letters. She wrinkles her nose. She hadn’t said it yet. It’s fun to say. “Vision.”

He said her name millions of times last night. He can’t seem to stop saying it, can’t seem to get it out of his mouth. All Wanda, Wanda, Wanda. She doesn’t complain, she’d never, but it’s… hard to miss the fascination within him. It’s nearly all he’s made up of. Anxiety and fascination. Tall and boy. Pale and pink.

The hallways are void of frames, of pictures. She runs her hands along them as she walks. 

She lands in his room again. She frowns at the mess she made. Again. 

Vision makes no sense. She broke these things with no regard for them, and his first course of action was to comfort her. 

Wanda raises her hands. The shards raise up and attempt to mend themselves. Only some of them are successful. She places what she can mend back in their places, waves the others away. The hard floor is still scuffed by some rogue sharp pieces but it wipes away most of the evidence of her earthquake. 

Wanda hums. She crosses to the small door in the corner of the room. Its handle is warm as she pulls it outward, no need to turn.

His clothes are inside. She steps forward until she’s practically inside them. She’s never seen so many in one place. She brushes her hands through them. The hangers creak against their railing. 

Soft. All of them are soft. They feel incomplete without a body in them. She lifts one of the sleeves of the softest blue sweater, glancing over her shoulder, before slipping her arm through it. Her fingers peek out through the collar. She wiggles them before receding. 

Wanda cannot remember what she looks like when she isn’t in this stiff dress she wears. She glances down at it, reaches down, tugs at the hem of it. No two items that Vision owns look exactly the same. Wanda has only ever known uniformity. 

She steps out of his closet eventually. There is no telling how long she stands inside it. She makes sure to leave it cracked as he had it before. Wanda is somewhat familiar with the idea of snooping. She can hear the voice in her head, still: stay out of there, 0211, snooping is not tolerated. 

Mm. Nothing in that universe was quite as interesting as this. 

Wanda leaves his room. She touches the walls as she goes, liking the feeling. She passes the kitchen entirely, having had enough of it for the day. 

Her feet stop mid-step, eyes focused on the big, soft, boy-warm couch. It is too small for Vision, but it seems to be vast enough for her. 

She scans what she knows to be an empty room. 

Then, breath caught in her throat (Emotion? Excitement?), she winds up and runs toward it. She’s in the air for half of a moment before she’s crashing in the cushions. 

She isn’t sure what noise she makes when she lands. It’s not very flattering. She rolls on her back, hands on her chest, breath uneven. She bites her own smile as it occurs. 

Yes, she decides. This place is fantastic. She would be very happy to stay here forever. 

She wiggles her toes and taps her own chest. She sighs. 

Hm.

This home doesn’t make much sense without the boy inside it. 

Wanda pushes herself to sit with a huff. 

Suddenly, without warning, there’s a loud noise to her left. 

She shoots upright, one foot per cushion, wobbling. Her hands glow and her eyes glow and she squints at the source of the noise, prepared to defend Vision’s little men and books with a vengeance. 

The glow fades immediately when she sees the television there, lit up, people dancing and speaking and smiling. She frowns and glances between her bare feet. A small, black remote is wedged between the cushions. She falls to her knees, bouncing for a moment, taking it in her hands. 

Her finger presses the buttons one by one until the volume gets quieter. She settles back into the sofa, legs folded over one another, settling the remote in the space between them. 

Her lips part as she watches. All of her attention is captured. 

She is fixed to this spot for the foreseeable future.

Vision falls on his face outside of his lecture hall building. 

He was a bit overzealous, to be honest, so he likely deserved it. Too big for his boots, thought he could step over the curb as if it hadn’t bested him at every turn. He got to his feet before his classmates saw him, however, which could be construed as a win. 

He grabs two bags worth of food from the vendor, this time. It’s odd not having exact change. It’s odd having to specify what he wants for the first time. Although no words are received from the man, he receives a confused look. 

No distress calls were received in his head while he was in class. This feels like a good thing. 

He pushes the emergency exit door with his hip, hands occupied. He trips on a few steps but manages to avoid any further bruises. His palms sting from where he’d landed on them earlier but it feels like a very productive night.

He hadn’t anticipated this. 

He’s… excited to go home. He’s excited even as he climbs the stairs that could cave at any second, the stairs that have their own bacterial ecosystem. Vision had always scoffed under his breath in the lecture hall as he sat there and tuned into other people’s conversations, their girlfriends and their partners and their bodies at their flats prepared to sweep them up at a moment’s notice. 

Vision’s been swept up. In an admittedly different way, sure, but that doesn’t make it any less thrilling. 

If he had someone to talk to in those big, echoey rooms? If someone ever sat in the very back with him, if they’d ever asked him for a pen to borrow? He’d blow their stories out of the water.

It takes him a hot second to get in the door. One extra bag to keep up with, the uncertainty of whatever chaos may or may not lie inside, and… the always elusive nature of his keys. If he weren’t so horrified by the concept of a stowaway in his place, he’d just keep the damn thing unlocked. 

Speaking of a stowaway in his place.

Vision peers inside. He searches for some indication of fire or red mist or a distinct absence of the glowing girl.

It doesn’t take long. 

Wanda has really made the couch her home, it seems, a village of pillows and blankets created around her small form with little room for accompaniment. Her eyes are wide and glazed, staring forward at the television that plays old black-and-white reruns, volume far louder than Vision’s ever had it.

He steps inside. The door is hardly silent. Wanda isn’t broken from her reverie in the slightest, face illuminated in the dim room, hands folded on top of the pillow that rests in her lap. 

Vision makes a face. He flicks the lights on. Wanda doesn’t budge. 

He slowly lets his courier strap fall from his shoulder, setting it on the ground by his feet with a thud. He tilts his head, nudging school to the side, full attention focused on Wanda. He could stand here forever and wait for her eyes but his feet hurt and his stomach is rumbling and, frankly, his thoughts are completely useless when Wanda isn’t looking at them. 

Vision clears his throat. 

The girl jumps, looking at him with wide eyes, grip on the pillow tightening. He shakes his head before she can even begin to form an apology - he knows apology eyes when he sees them. Every morning in the mirror, probably. Ha.

“No, no. Not in trouble,” he clarifies. He nods to the show. “Do you like them?” 

She tucks her lip between her teeth, unsure if she’s meant to answer. 

He continues, noting the challenge, “There are more of those, here, somewhere. The old shows. My mum gave me some old box sets. Which… I suppose, you don’t… know… what those are.” He is really, definitely terrible at this. He reroutes, holding up the white paper bags in his hand, “I brought food.”

“More small bits?” she asks. 

Vision smiles, amused and definitely not comprehending. She holds up a hand, miming a small item between her fingertips, and he melts. “Oh. No, not chocolate, I meant actual food. Those were snacks.”

“Snacks,” she repeats. She wrinkles her nose. The word fits oddly in her accent and she seems to notice. She holds her hands out, palms toward the sky, “For me?”

“Yes. Absolutely. I don’t know what you like, so I had to just guesstimate what - uh - oh, okay,” he resigns himself to this new reality as the bags are taken from his hands, warm red buzz on his fingertips as it recedes to fly across the room. 

“For me,” she decides, unloading everything onto the coffee table. 

Vision watches, amused and slightly hungry, but he’ll figure something out for himself. If she doesn’t know what snacks are, it’s unlikely that she’s ever had something quite like this before. He can handle a night without. One meal and no meal are rather similar concepts, in the grand scheme of things.

He glances around for somewhere to sit, grabbing at the back of his neck. She definitely won’t give up any space on that sofa. His eyes land on the dining room chairs, old and wooden and never used, and he slowly drags one over to sit across the floor from her.  

Wanda tentatively approaches a cheese quesadilla. She sends wary glances up to Vision as if it may be a predator. She's so funny. He doesn’t laugh.

“It’s good,” he says, sliding down in the chair until his chin is on his chest. He watches her reach out and recoil, reach out and recoil, before finally taking the damn thing in her hands. She stares at it like an art piece. Vision is not jealous. But he is impatient. “... You bite it.”

She gives him a look. Sharp. “I have eaten before, boy.”

“Yes, yes, you have.” Vision closes his eyes, waves a hand. “Ignore me. Eat.”

Wanda does. She tears small pieces off, tucks them into her cheek, sends glances over to him as if expecting some sort of disagreement. He only smiles, nods, and she relaxes. 

She eats both. Vision is half-asleep by the time she finishes, too exhausted to even fall out of the chair when Wanda lifts a hand and disintegrates all of the paper left behind. It’s there on the coffee table one moment, gone the next. He can only manage a pitiful noise as he pushes himself to sit, rubbing his eyes. 

Wanda huffs. He peeks out between his fingers. She’s staring at him, waiting for his praise. Has she not gotten enough already? Is the slowly brimming bucket in his head not enough?

“... What?” He kicks off his shoes and pushes them under the chair. “Don’t look at me like that.”

She frowns and stands. Vision is well familiar with the look of a woman prepared to give him a piece of her mind. Before she can manage it, though, his eyes drop to her collar and the worn numbers on her chest and he’s suddenly wide awake. 

“Fuck!” he says, startling Wanda. She holds up her hands, red threat in the making, and he grimaces as he stands, “No, sorry, shit, I - I just - you’re still wearing that.”

She drops her arms. “What is the problem?” Her gaze drops down to herself. “I have always worn this.”

Vision tugs at his hair, walking down the hallway with stumbling feet. Wanda’s so light that he can't hear the floor creak but he knows she’s following.

She didn’t have a good time wherever she came from, this much is certain. She’s still wearing the clothes, some sort of label or medical uniform numbers over her chest. There's no possible way that she'll be able to relax with that thing on. God. What an awful host he must be. 

“I don’t know if anything I have will fit,” he mutters, pulling open his closet. He rifles through hangers and kneels to pull open his drawers. “Just my luck, we’re... exactly the opposite size.”

“Fit?” Wanda’s voice is quiet behind him, “Size?”

“Uhhhhhh…. here, sure, this’ll - yeah.” He hops up to his feet. Wanda yelps, practically having been standing on top of him. The clothes are folded heavy over his arm, pivoting to face the girl, “I… would you… Would you want a bath?”

Wanda looks offended. He closes his mouth. Treading lightly is likely the way to go, here. 

“I just… sometimes after a long day…” he says softly, carefully, lightly, a bit terrified, “... a bath is… nice. And, um. Bath plus soft clothes equals… c-comfort?”

She glares. She grabs Vision’s clothes from his arms and storms off down the hallway. It takes him a second to follow. By the time the idea occurs to him in his tired brain, the bathroom door is slamming closed. 

Vision groans. “Wanda.” He stands outside. “Wanda.” He knocks twice. “Wanda. C’mon.”

“Wanda, Wanda, Wanda,” comes the grumbling voice, vague shuffling on the other side of the door. “All he says.”

“Wa - uh.” He pinches the bridge of his nose. There’s a long silence. He can hear Wanda make a confused sound. “Right. Er. The faucet is complicated, okay? It’s broken but I don’t know how to fix it, so there’s this thing you have to do where you kinda press it in first, really push it with all your body weight, and then - “

The door swings open. Wanda frowns up at him, arms crossed over her chest. They're both impatient it seems. And stubborn.

His mum will tease him for years. She'll write this into his obituary.

He brushes past her, rolling up his sleeves, “Here. I’ll show you. You little demon.”

Wanda zaps him on the hip. He falls forward, hands braced on the tub, before looking over his shoulder. There's no use in waiting for an apology. She's the boss. 

The girl stands over his shoulder, practically folded over him, watching as he fumbles with a part of his house that he has a life-and-death battle with almost every day. When she’s certain that she understands, which takes quite a while, Vision is lifted up and floated out into the hallway, his own door slammed in his face. For a second time. 

“Alright,” he chuckles, sliding down the opposite wall, “I’ll be here, I guess. If you need anything.”

Vision taps his feet on the ground, his knees to his chest. He doesn’t hear any screams or receive any radio signals behind his eyes, simply acts as a guard to the most powerful person on the entire planet. 

He almost falls asleep to the sound of the water sloshing around, eyes shut and arms locked around his legs. Sleeping on the floor is hardly a foreign concept to him after the past few nights. The ache that settles in his spine is almost entirely familiar. 

He actively tries to focus on making this seem okay. 

Of all silent moments to sit in, this one contains what could actually be described as a panic-worthy situation. He’s sat in silence for roughly two years. He’s panicked for much of this time. But over small things, inconsequential things, things he’d be so mortified about crying over the morning afterward. 

His entire life is changing. It isn’t a simple routine. It’s his life. He never paid much thought to his life. It was just something to endure.

Wanda is magnificent - 

“Thank you,” she says through the door. 

- and she has so easily shifted everything he knew to a different hemisphere. Different universe, even. He has to start over, and he is concerningly happy to do so, but he has no clue where to begin. 

His stomach creaks, hungry. He hugs his legs closer. 

The doorknob rattles. He opens his eyes and looks up just in time to see Wanda peek out, just her eyes visible. She seems calm again. If a bit… bewildered. 

“Alright?” he murmurs, stretching his arms over his head, “How’d it go?”

“Mmh.” She closes the door, making him snort, before emerging again - poking her entire head out, this time. Her hair is damp, looking much longer as it’s smoothed down against her head. “Was okay.”

“Great…?” he squints at her, “Why are you hiding, then?”

Wanda sighs. Her face is flushed from the heat of the bath. 

Light filters out into the dim hallway. Wanda stands there in Vision’s clothes, the pants puddled around her feet and the sleeves hanging far past her fingertips, looking very much like a drowned woman. 

Vision squeaks at the sight, covering his mouth with his fingers. Wanda glares, white-hot red pointed like a sniper shot between his eyes, and he immediately shuts up. 

“I’m tired,” she says, sounding very much like a demand. Vision pushes himself to stand, truly baffled by her new foray into royalty-like maltreatment. She stares at him, waiting for him to do her bidding. 

He’s too tired to resist. He leads the radioactive duchess down the hall, hand on the wall to keep himself stable. Wanda steps under his arm in the doorway, pushing ahead as if she owns the place (she may as well), launching herself onto the mattress. 

Vision watches her struggle to crawl under the blankets due to the new length of her limbs. It’s only then that he notices that the room is clean. 

“Um… Wanda?” he steps inside, scanning the floors, “Did you… what happened to the…?”

“It was a mess,” she says simply. 

Then, she raises her arms pin-straight over her head. Waiting. She shifts under the blankets, losing patience.

Vision sighs. He begrudgingly drags his feet across the ground of his own room, tucking her in as he’d done the night before, blankets straightened over and around her. She hums, content, and her eyes immediately close. The lamp on the nightstand, the lamp that had been shattered and the lamp that still has visible seams from where she fixed it, flickers off on its own. 

He slips his hands into his pockets, offering somewhat of a cynical bow. He misses his bed so much. “Is there anything else I can do for you, Your Highness?”

“No.” Wanda turns over on her side, back to Vision, folding her hands under her pink cheek. “I have more than I ever had.”

Vision melts. He sticks his tongue into his cheek. His eyes sting. Fuck.

“O-o-okay,” he manages through a closed throat. He almost falls on his face as he turns to leave. 

He barely makes it out of the room, barely closes the door in time to cover his face with his hands and sob into his palms. 

Little known fact about Vision. 

He’s a goddamn disaster.

Chapter Text

Vision falls against the brick of the hallway, his professor’s voice filtering out behind him before the heavy door clunks closed. The sound carries around the empty space, dark walls and night-black windows, and he tries to remember how to stand. 

It has officially been a week. A week of Wanda. 

It is inherently difficult to feel pride in this fact when he can barely keep his eyes open. 

He almost passed out during the lecture. He's lucky he was tucked in the very back, no one often notices him there as the light bulbs that illuminate that space have been broken since before he arrived. If he falls asleep here, he’ll never wake up again. Frankly, his heart might just stop. 

The fact is abundantly clear. He can’t keep sleeping on the couch. It’s more than the couch, obviously, but the couch is the only thing he can possibly hope to control. 

He isn’t small enough to fit on the thing, he’s hardly able to close his eyes. Wanda’s nightmares have him up and down in the night regardless - which, of course, he doesn’t mind. It’s fine. It is only another addition to the lack of efficacy of their sleeping situation. Of their everything situation. 

Vision presses forward, stumbling through the hallway. His shoes squeak and he blinks for a second that turns to five seconds, almost enough time to convince himself to just drop dead then and there. The security cameras are broken in this hall, he remembers his professor last quarter ranting about the budget and the absence of safety. Vision didn’t care then - he’s thankful for the lack of surveillance now. 

He slumps against a vending machine, forehead against cold glass. He feeds money into its mouth, punches buttons with a numb hand, eyes crossed as he watches the small bar fall into the pit below. 

Food would be nice. He hasn’t eaten more than a few chocolate chips and stale crackers for the past week, giving all of his food truck items to the fussy glowing girl in his flat. 

God. He’s trying his best. He really is. 

Wanda seems happy. She’s settling in nicely. She only threatens his life once or twice daily, always implied to be in jest and always in an attempt to get him to move faster or go to school earlier so that he’ll bring things back sooner. 

He finds himself making sure Wanda drinks at least three glasses of water a day. He forgets to pour his own. She sleeps at least nine hours per day and he can barely wrestle himself down for one. She eats at least two meals a day, one before he leaves and one when he returns. Vision… well. Vision is thankful for this granola bar.

He slumps back against the wall, working at the plastic wrapping with his teeth. 

It is frustrating that his best isn’t working. 

He’s light-headed and exhausted. Hasn’t eaten, can barely sleep. Probably not a very sustainable arrangement. 

He was only built to half-sustain his own life. He is happy to displace it, happy to give everything to Wanda - but fuck. He can hardly keep upright. He can hardly walk home to give her anything. 

His machine purchase was, very luckily, not a million years old. He finishes and trips his way back into the hall, manages a very delicate level of focus for the next hour and a half. He waits until everyone files out and the professor is distracted to shuffle his way outside. 

He grips the railing with two hands. He feels like an idiot the entire time he descends. He dreads going home and tucking Wanda in and he dreads having to say goodbye to his beautiful bed for yet another night. 

In fact, he may just sleep on the floor. The floor is big enough for him to fit on. 

No, he’ll never be able to get up again. 

It is an uncomfortably difficult mental debate, either to sleep on the floor or reclaim his own bed. 

Wanda never had a bed. She said so. He’s slept comfortably for twenty years, surely he can spare a few more nights. Surely he can get used to this, he can keep Wanda happy while not slowly sinking into himself like quicksand. 

If anyone has another option, he is open to suggestions. 

His face hits the street as he steps over the curb, his knees buckling under him. He sighs into the cold asphalt, fully considering taking a nap, knowing he has a hungry fire woman waiting for him at home. 

He likes Wanda. She’s great. She’s still just as fantastic as she’s always been - granted, it’s getting more and more difficult to be awed by her as his cognizance turns to putty. 

She’s waiting for him on the couch when he returns. She really does like these old sitcoms. All of these dozens of box sets had been piled up out of view, collecting dust, and he’s glad that they’re finally being put to use.

His bag falls in a heap on the table. He sees Wanda safe and sound, eyes bright, wrapped in comfortable blankets. She lifts a hand and summons her food, both bags, as is tradition, Vision’s sleeves hiked up to her elbows and rolled so many times it seems like she’s wearing somewhat of a poofy-sleeved dress. 

He stares at this space that feels warmer and more human than it ever has, his first-ever guest, and he decides that he doesn’t think he’ll be able to do this anymore. 

“I need the bed tonight,” he hears himself say. 

Wanda hums. Her words are muffled around her confident, wide bite. “That is fine.”

“And every other night.”

She stuffs an entire half of a quesadilla into her cheek. She looks over at him and nods. Casual. Unbothered. 

Vision collapses back against the front door with a thud. He presses at his aching eyes. “Jesus Christ.”

The couch is absolutely silent as the girl shifts. Her mouth is still full. “What’s wrong, boy?”

“I’m so fucking tired,” he whispers. 

It’s not negative. For once, it isn’t a resignation. He’s thankful. He thought he’d have to negotiate. He thought he’d… 

God. She’s fine. She’s staying. She’s happy. He’s so fucking tired and he’ll finally get to sleep in his own fucking bed. He’s too tired to laugh victoriously. He’s too tired to do anything else but stand here and breathe. 

He listens to the drone of the television and Wanda’s content back-of-the-throat noises as she watches. He listens to a silent moment in his own body, stomach not crying out for something to eat. He listens and breathes and waits until Wanda’s hand is cold around his wrist. 

“Thank you,” she says. 

Vision manages a smile. He means it. It burns energy to do so. And he’s under the meter at this point. 

“Alright, Wanda,” he slowly rocks up to his feet, “Let’s see what we’ve got, here.”

A bed is made on the ground beside his own, couch cushions dragged from the living room and laid side-by-side, draped with a sheet and the many blankets she seems to favor so much that she practically lives in. It isn’t much. It’s not very pretty. But it’s much better than sleeping alone. 

“Sorry it isn’t super fancy but I couldn’t fit anywhere else,” he says, rubbing his eyes, swaying slightly. “I can… I mean, there’s probably an air mattress for sale somewhere… I’m sorry. I’ll be better at this, I just need to save up and I…” 

Wanda crawls onto the cushions and curls up. It’s the perfect size. 

Vision blinks at the sight. Then, very hesitantly, he bends at the knee to tug the blankets over her as she so often requests.

He rocks back to stand, rests his hands on his hips, misses them the first time and has to try again. “Is that… okay?” he asks hesitantly. “I know it’s still the floor, I don’t mean to make it seem like you don’t deserve the bed, you do, I just…”

She looks up at him, pulling the covers up to her nose. She does look quite comfortable. 

“Okay,” he sighs, closing his eyes, so relieved and so, so tired. “Okay. I think… I think we’re gonna be okay, my friend.”

Wanda closes her eyes and seems to go to sleep almost immediately. 

Vision belly flops onto the mattress, making an obscene noise. He buries his face into the sheets, muttering a thank you to an unknown party. He falls asleep above the covers before he can tuck himself in.

He dreams about getting stuck in a vending machine. He slams his palms against the glass as his classmates walk by but they don’t seem to hear him. 

It’s morning before he’s ready for it to be.

He’s read countless academic journals on the psychic staring effect, scopaesthesia. He knows it like the back of his hand. No one ever focuses on how it feels.

Vision is more than happy to pick up the mantle, here. 

It is not as blatant as a hand on the head or on the shoulder. The hair on the back of the neck doesn’t stand up - of course, unless you’ve caught the attention of a predator while you slept, God help you - and the adrenaline doesn’t yet make its appearance, though it prepares to. 

It is a game of preparation.

To be watched is to feel as though someone is holding a palm inches away from your cheek. Not the warmth of the skin, but the electricity of it. It’s the anticipation of a slap or a caress, the mental image of the arm attached to the hand, the red eyes beyond it.

He is too blissful from what he assumes to have been approximately a decade of sleep to treat this situation with the enthusiasm and panic that it deserves. He commends himself with the casualness with which his eyelids slide open to see Wanda standing at the foot of the bed. 

The collar of his shirt is too big for her, almost reaching the edges of her shoulders, and the seams that should rest on her shoulders rest far, far down on her arms. She looks like an Alice who had just downed a full bottle. 

“Right,” he mutters, bringing his duvet-warmed hands to his face. “If you need me, you can wake me up, you know.”

“I know,” she says calmly. He’s never quite ready for her voice. He always seems to be swept by it. “But it would be rude.”

“You can be rude, you have fire in your hands.” He braces himself up on his elbows, noting her posture. “What’s wrong?”

She points behind her toward the door. “Do you have any more of the white bags of food?”

“Not in the house, no.” Perhaps he should not have set such a high standard for the food he can provide. He doesn’t even have groceries here yet. “No class today. I’m unsure when the truck opens, but I’ll… once I get my bearings, I’ll run out and get some for you.”

Wanda nods as though this has been a successful transaction, “Thank you.”

Then, she’s padding out of the room as if she knows this place like the back of her hand. Which, if the past few days of her getting lost in the hallway is any indication, she definitely does not. So, he follows for her safety. 

“I can make toast again,” he says, adjusting his twisted shirt around his torso as he jogs after her, “Breakfast. If you’re hungry now. It’ll be a while until I can get the… uh, white… bag.”

“No,” she says plainly. “You’re not very good at toast.”

Vision stops for a second, genuinely hurt, before hesitantly pressing on. “Wow. Okay.”

“I can wait.” She climbs onto the couch, sitting in the box of the wooden frame where the soft padding would normally be. It doesn’t groan under her weight. Because she weighs nothing. “Thank you.”

He physically draws back at that. Wanda frowns. 

“Don’t… don’t thank me for not being able to do this right,” he scrubs his hands down his face as he wanders to the kitchen. “Really. You’re very respectful but I assure you that I definitely do not deserve your respect.”

Even when he isn’t asleep, there’s an invisible hand over his face. She just stares and listens to his thoughts. When she’s wearing his clothes and buried in blankets, it’s hard to focus on the power she wields. It’s a miracle that he manages to forget, really, until he’s mid-pour of boiling hot water over a cinnamon tea bag and suddenly she’s saying:

“Your stomach hurts.”

Vision glances up for only half a second, having to focus on getting the water into the mug and not all over his hand. “Sorry?”

“A lot of you hurts,” she says thoughtfully, resting her chin on the arm of the couch. Vision hisses as a droplet of scalding hot tea splashes over and onto his wrist. He brings the burn to his mouth. She gives him a look, “Be careful.”

This is insane. This is ridiculous. This is impossible.

So why does it feel more normal, in this very moment, than any time he spent before this?

Maybe it’s the fact that there’s someone else to talk to. That must be it. Maybe it’s the fact that time passes slower when there are words spoken outside of his head. Things weigh more when there's someone to notice them. To notice him. 

Yes, a lot of him hurts today. But there is a person here to make it real. For some irrational reason, that makes him feel better.

“Would you like some?” Vision asks instead. 

“Cinnamon,” Wanda says curiously. He feels her tugging at his thoughts, seeing through his eyes, and he has to actively fight the urge to close them. “What does cinnamon taste like?”

“Oh, I’m not… I’m not good at describing things.” He brings a second mug down, “I’ll make you some. If you don’t like it, I’ll have it. But I won’t have you on an empty stomach.”

“Empty.” 

He feels a pinch on the back of his neck and he yelps, fumbling with the ceramic in his hands. He looks over to the girl who sits several feet away. 

“What was that for?” he asks, rubbing the skin. “What happened to be careful?”

“You are empty,” she says. It’s meant to be a scold. “That’s why you hurt.”

“Well, a certain someone has taken to eating all the food,” Vision mutters, taking a cold spoon from the drawer. 

Wanda glares. “You said it was for me.”

Vision returns it, either too tired to fear for his life or too frustrated by his own lack of forethought. “Two bags, two people, Wanda.”

“I did not know. You could have said.”

“What would I have said?” he asks, bewildered. “For all I know, if I said anything, I’d be - you’d - I mean - I mean - h-h-how am I supposed to know what you need, what you don’t need? I know nothing about you.”

“You would know…” she says slowly, “... if you asked.”

He sighs. The sharp handle of the cupboard digs into his thigh as he slumps forward, stirring his tea, “You’re right. Sorry. It’s my fault.”

He hates the sound a spoon makes against a ceramic mug. Too obnoxious. He divides the rest of the honey between the two teas, tossing the empty container into the bin with a clatter, tries to reclaim a sense of calm. 

When he brings the scalding hot mug over to her, she places it in her palms. His attempts to warn her go without response as she stares forward. She holds it as if it’s lukewarm. Vision feels like an idiot having to very deftly place his fingers around the lip of the container so he doesn’t singe his fingerprints off. 

He hesitantly sits in the cradle of his sofa with her. The frame creaks. He feels like he’s two feet tall, the barrier coming up to his shoulder, and he stares forward at the black television for a long time. 

Wanda stares at the side of his face. She does seem to observe him often. Vision fears that, one day, he’ll wake up and she’ll actually have put him in a jar. Like a butterfly. Or a… rock.

He braves eye contact. She brings the tea to her mouth, takes the smallest sip possible, and takes it down again. Doesn’t blink once.

“You’re… um.” Vision studies her. She studies him. The couch fits four people and they seem to occupy barely enough space for one. She overlaps him. “Forgive me for assuming, but my assumption is that you plan to… stay here for a while.”

Her eyes go cold. “Yes.”

There’s a voice in the back of his head. He can’t be sure whose it is out of the two of them, but it whispers: Forever. 

“Okay,” he nods, biting the inside of his cheek. “I’ll… okay.”

Vision is notoriously bad at forward-thinking. It is unfortunately one of many traits he did not inherit from his parents. 

There was so little planning in the initial decision to bring her here. It was meant to be a harmless act of good will - you see a girl on the street who you assume to be drunk, she gets all glowy and passes out, the decent thing to do is give her a place to rest. 

But that was the extent of things. He tucked her in with absolutely no consideration of the future. And now it’s the future - weeks in the future, and she’s… she’s going to stay. 

A week is small when held up to forever. A week is vulnerable in comparison.

He’ll have to buy her a bed. He’ll have to start buying groceries - he’s going to have to get a job, a real one. He’s barely getting by with the overflow of these stupid scholarships, it was never going to last for one person but for two? 

He’s not cut out for this and yet… selfishly, he cannot imagine a scenario where he lets her go somewhere else. There is no other option, this is it. He’s going to buy her a bed and he’s going to be a person and do person things because there is now another human for which he must provide. 

If he was even ten percent less sleep-deprived, he’d be terrified. 

There’s no room for terror, right now. Just vast swathes of anxiety that he’s always drowning in. And a vague sense that he’s created a sort of dependent circumstance - but the extent to the dependence is undefined. He provides to the extent he can, hoping blindly that he’s doing this right.

She keeps him company. 

This is new. Vision quite likes having company. 

“I’m…” It’s somewhat of a fight to the death, trying to crawl out of the abyss of a padding-less couch. “I’m going to grab one of the cushions to sit on. I have homework.”

“Hm.” Wanda faces forward in a swift motion, tea sloshing up and almost over the brim. The television flickers on by itself. Her eyes glow. 

“Would… would you like a cushion?”

“No,” she says. “I like it down here. Safe.”

“Well, you’ll want to scoot over,” he tells her, making his way back to his room. “Don’t want to crush you.”

Wanda makes a noise. He assumes it is a laugh. “You can’t crush me, boy.”

Vision knows. 

The single cushion re-installed, he settles in the left-most corner of his own furniture, the rest of the space occupied by Wanda. It’s somewhat of a moat of soft blankets with her tucked among them, Vision sitting cross-legged on the edge of the precipice with his laptop wheezing in his lap.

It isn’t the first time he’s had to work around her. The term is in full swing and his professors seem to expect the brightest and the best, both of which he decidedly is not, and the list of responsibilities only grows. If they keep it up at this pace, he’ll be sleeping underneath the theater chairs with his bag as a pillow, studying around the clock.

Wanda is familiar with this routine. He sits and he stares and he does either all of his work in one go or it takes him hours to complete fifty words. He is incredibly boring during this time. 

But she remains next to him, even as the television plays episodes of her now-favorite shows, and stares at his face intently. 

She stares so hard he worries he may have two holes in his cheek by the time she’s finished.

“You alright?” he asks.

“Mhm,” she replies, though quite uncertainly. It seems like she has something to say but she isn’t sure how to word it. Vision’s been there. She has all the time in the world. 

He only wishes he could hear her thoughts, it seems so unfair. Whenever he’s withholding something, particularly something embarrassing, she has no issue bringing it up. 

“So stop thinking embarrassing things,” she says wisely.

He clears his throat, pushing all of his effort into the garbled words on the screen and not… everything else.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Sixteen-eighty-nine. Lady of letters. Educated secretly. A writer - two volumes of poetry and a short novel. Wedded with children. Taught herself Latin - 

“Do you want me to stay?”

Vision’s hands stop on the keyboard. He lulls his head to the side, looking at Wanda. “What?”

Her attention is impossible to escape from. She sees him and sees through him at the same time. “You’re different, today.”

“I’m... different.”

“Yes. Your eyes are puffy.” She pokes just under his eye and he makes an indignant noise, “And you won’t look at me.”

“I’m looking at you.”

“Not seeing me.”

He frowns. “I’m sorry.”

“Do you want me to stay?” she asks again. It is understood by both parties that she cannot go anywhere else. 

“Hey.” He goes to pat her leg and immediately recoils to let his arm fall between them, hanging off the lip of his personal cliff. “Yeah. ‘Course I do.”

He does. There is a worrying pull in his chest, now, at the thought of an empty flat. It’s embarrassing. It’s damn near improper. 

She narrows her eyes as if she doesn’t believe him. She picks up his arm by the sleeve and drops it back onto the laptop keyboard. She’s done with the conversation, it seems.

Vision scoffs and continues what he was doing before. It takes him a minute to remember his plan, to remember why he was on this tab, to remember why he would do anything but talk to the special person who stares at him as if this ridiculous assignment is at all impressive.

Ah, yes. 

Montagu in agony. Young woman in turmoil. Brother gone. Herself, ill. A solution was found, dismissed by the medical community. Reasons of superiority. Reasons of higher power. Reasons of experimentation.

The opposition only seemed to energize her. 

There’s a hand on his face.

Wanda presses her fingers into a bruise on his temple, almost healed. He isn’t sure how it got there - if it was the faceplant into the street from the night before, the faceplant into the light pole from a few days prior, if it was from hitting his head on the coffee table on the way to Wanda when she’d had a bad dream, if it was the way his skull had clattered on the wall when she pushed him back. 

So many options. It doesn’t matter, though, it’s almost healed. 

He leans away, still staring at the screen, but she shuffles close and continues to touch. 

“Wanda,” he says.

“It doesn’t hurt,” she says. 

“Yes, I am aware.”

“Mm.” She pushes harder. He resigns. “You think so much and yet you never say what you think.”

“Does it matter?” he reaches up to pull her hand away, pushing it into her own space, knowing it won’t stay there long. “If you know what I’m thinking, it’s almost as if I said it. Right?”

“Words take effort. Thoughts do not.” She leans forward, eyeing the words there, “When will you be finished?”

“... I’m barely five pages into a thirty-page reading.”

“Read faster.”

Vision laughs. He nudges her away. “You said you knew what school was. I assume you’ve been.”

“Yes, I’ve been,” she mumbles. She’s funny. She pouts, drowning in his clothes, so far below him in the basin of a sofa. She could crush him anytime. She looks the size of a mouse.

“Then surely you know what I’m expected to do.”

“I never did this,” she pokes the screen. The laptop flickers under her finger. Vision panics and pulls her away by the wrist. “The woman only told us to color.”

He turns back to his work, heart pounding, thinking for a moment that the computer would burst into flames from the smallest prod from the girl beside him. 

He tries to read again. 

Montagu saved the children first. Three male and three female, at the start, though the lot of them were - 

“Hold on,” Vision turns back to her, “Color? What?”

“The woman,” Wanda says, clearly baffled by his lack of comprehension, “The woman with the stick. School is important, she’d say, and we’d be told to color.”

“...” Vision closes his laptop screen. He leans forward to place it on the table, picking up his now lukewarm tea. He has to take a sip, has to gather his thoughts. “... Okay.”

After his sip, he opens his mouth to say something - but Wanda is taking the mug from his hands and holding it close to her chest. 

“Cinnamon tea,” she explains, bringing it to her mouth, “is good.”

“Wanda…” Vision shifts a bit, back against the barrier, facing her entirely. Wanda hands him his tea back. He shakes his head, “You can have it, if you want.”

“Sharing,” she says.

Vision will not cry. 

“Do you know what your school was called?” he asks softly. The mug is warmer after she drank from it. Or maybe he’s overheating. “Or… or the year you’d been?”

Her eyebrows draw together. “No.”

“Okay.” He drinks, needing at least something in his stomach today, and Wanda is immediately taking it after he’s finished. “What did you... color?”

“Dunno. Shapes.” She goes to tap the screen again and he blocks the action. “Never this.”

“I don’t… I’m not familiar with the Sokovian curriculum… er…” He scratches his jaw, “You… o-obviously, you know how to speak.”

Wanda puffs out her chest. “Yes.”

“Do you know… sorry, this is… there’s no way to ask without sounding awful. Do you know maths?” He waits for another zap but one never comes. “Wanda?”

“Maths,” she repeats. “Two bags, two people.”

“... Mm.” Vision is stuck somewhere between perplexed and horrified. “Okay. Alright. Fuck.”

“I haven’t gone to school in a long time,” she says. The words aren’t sorrowful but the eyes speak volumes. She thinks about it. She drinks tea. She allows Vision his turn. She counts on her fingers. “How long has it been since I’ve gone?”

Vision is afraid to reply. He hasn’t picked up a crayon in over ten years.

Wanda counts for several minutes. Her method makes no sense because she isn’t counting at all. She seems to lose patience with herself or with the numbers that make no sense. She continues anyway. 

She’ll never find an answer. 

“Um…” he says softly. He glances down into the now-empty mug. A team effort. Wanda drops her hands. “... I think now’s a good time for a break.”

He hasn’t walked through the streets in broad daylight in a long time. The truck is there, the man inside, just about to close from lunch. Vision places all of the cash he has on the steel shelf, asking for whatever that’ll give him. He receives an odd look in response. 

Sixteen bags. Two people. 

Wanda has one, Vision has his first warm meal in a week, the rest are placed in the otherwise empty fridge for later. 

Sharing seems to work wonders between them. 

On an unrelated note, Vision doesn’t need to buy her a bed anymore.

It must be… what, five in the morning? Far too early. It’s that sort of annoying ache when he begins to wake up, realizing that it’s barely been a full four hours since he laid down in the first place, his mind needing rest and yet the world around him positively shaking all the same

Maybe it isn’t the world that’s being shaken. Just him.

He opens an eye. 

Wanda has both hands on his chest, pushing him up and down, trying to get him awake. 

To be fair, he did say she could do this. 

“M’up,” he rumbles, patting her hands to get her to stop before he gets nauseous. “What’s th’matter?”

Wanda huffs, out of breath “Bad dream.”

He frowns. “Oh, um.” He hadn’t heard her screaming. He’s hardly a heavy sleeper. “I can get the chocolate again, if you need.”

“No.” She stands by the bed, leaning over him, hair hanging down and almost brushing against his face. He sweeps it away like a curtain. “What were you dreaming about?”

“I don’t think I was dreaming.” He tries to summon wakefulness that he knows is just not gonna happen. “D’you wanna talk about yours?”

“No.”

Then, with no warning, with absolutely no room to be explained, there is a small woman burrowing under the blankets to rest beside him. The cool air of the room filters in followed by the ice block herself, pressed to his side, cheek on his shoulder.

One bed and two bodies for the first time in his adult life.

Maths, someone whispers in his mind.

“...” He doesn’t know if he’s meant to prepare to die or scoot over to give her room. He is in no state to react correctly. 

There’s a cold hand on his face, arm over his chest. “Dream of something happy.”

“Wanda,” he whispers. “I don’t… I don’t know if I can - “

“Anything you dream will be better,” she says firmly. She is just as tired as he is and beyond. Only she knows what it feels like to be inside her head. Then, quiet as a mouse, he hears, “Please.”

He tries to breathe calmly. Hesitantly, leans into her hand and nods. “Okay. I’ll try.”

The field doesn’t come to him tonight. 

All he can manage is a fuzzy memory of primary school, crayon in small fist, purple wax on yellow construction paper. Questionable artworks he had made for his mother, stick figures with circles for hands and five lines protruding for fingers. 

He can remember a time when his mum was taller than him, when he drew the two of them side by side, holding hands. When he’d have to reach up for her. He would trip over his sneakers as he ran down the light-beige sidewalk that led from his school’s doors to his mother’s car, bright yellow paper flapping in his hand. The sun was warm in Seoul. His mother would get out of the car and lift him up onto her waist, looking at his scribbles as if they were worth millions. A kiss to his temple. His mother’s hair is sleek and black. His hair is bright blond. She calls him her sunspot. 

He misses his mother. 

Vision opens his eyes in the dark room. Wanda is sleeping soundly, small puffs of air on his neck. Her cheeks are wet. Her hand fell from his face a long time ago. 

“Wanda,” he whispers. Her fingers twitch on his chest. He looks at them for a long time. There’s an impulse, here, but he can’t identify it. “Hey.”

She’s out cold. She wears something of a smile. He’s glad to see it.

“This… this is simply insane,” Vision says to the equivalent of an empty room. Wanda’s hand falls from his chest, slipping it behind his back, tugging him closer. She’s concerningly strong. “Fuck.”

He stares at the ceiling for long enough in the dark room that his eyes begin to identify individual molecules swimming in the air. His heart calms down. Wanda’s hand is cold through his shirt, pressed into his spine, and her breath is warm. 

He is trying to keep himself together. He misses the sun in Seoul. He can’t remember a single overcast day there. His mother’s house was almost exclusively windows, innovative blinds that would lower themselves with just the press of a button. She doesn’t live there now. She moved last year. He hasn’t seen her in person since he left, hadn’t been to the house. He wishes he could have seen the windows one more time. 

He tries to keep himself together right up until the moment he falls asleep. If he dreams about her again that night, he doesn’t remember it.

Vision knows he didn’t set an alarm for this morning. But there seems to be a loud, obnoxious, shrill sound coming from his nightstand anyway. 

Wanda has migrated in sleep. She overlaps him now as she always tends to do, limbs sprawled as wide as she can manage them, half of which reside on top of him. She’s light but she’s sharp, her ribs slot between his through their shirts, he anticipates many new bruises to emerge over the next few days.

He can’t really understand where to begin with this. 

His analysis brain will never come back to him, he knows this. 

He also knows that, if this phone keeps going off, it’s going to wake her up. 

Vision scrambles with sleepy numb fingers to answer what he now realizes to be a phone call before it wakes the sleeping glowstick on top of him. He presses the accept call button, holding it to his ear, catching his breath. 

He spares a glance down to Wanda. Her face is covered by her hair but she appears to still be sleeping. 

Thank God. 

He shifts under her. Her ribs threaten to cut him in half. He winces. 

“H’llo?” he manages through a closed throat. 

“Why haven’t you called me.”

Vision blinks a few times, “... Hi, Mum.”

“Don’t be cute. Every month, you said, you were going to call me and give me updates. Do you know how long it’s been?”

“Have you been counting?” he looks down to Wanda, shifting his arm around her a bit to get comfortable. Then, he rolls his eyes, “Who am I kidding. Of course you’ve been counting.”

“Of course I’ve been counting! Three months! And fifteen days!”

He brings the phone away from his ear to check the time before yawning and pressing it back to his cheek, “Past midnight. Sixteen, now.”

“And you’ve been counting too.” She sounds genuinely disappointed. Vision sighs. “Vision. Don’t sigh at me. We had a deal.”

“I know, I’m sorry. Just… college is…” How to describe it? “Um.”

“Are you struggling?” A brief pause. A mum-conclusion made. “Vision… you know you can tell me anything.”

He grimaces, “Mum.”

“If you’re… dabbling in anything, you know, there are tests you can take in order to ensure that - “

“I’m begging you to stop. Please.”

“It’s embarrassing to talk about with me, I know, but it’s important to talk about it anyway - !”

“I’m not dabbling.” Hm. Another glance is spared to Wanda. Does this count? Dabbling in the dark arts? Cuddling with a small witch lady? “I’m not struggling. I’m just busy.”

“Oh, I see. Too busy to talk to your mother.”

He makes a noise in the back of his throat, “Okay, that’s dramatic.”

“Oh, he’s faaaar too grown to uphold previously made promises! Okay. Yeah, I see how this is going to go.”

“I just - okay.” Vision has a need to pinch the bridge of his nose but both of his hands are occupied. “I’ll get better at it, I swear. I’m sorry.”

Helen makes a faux-devastated noise into the receiver.

“School is going well," he tries again. "I’m… well, I guess I’m… meeting people?”

There’s a small shift in the body on top of him. Small breath taken that morphs into a yawn. And then she’s looking up at him, hair a bird nest atop her head, eyes glowing. 

Don’t, he mouths. 

“Meeting people? What people?”

“Uhhhh…? Ffffff… Friends. Haha. Mates. From class.”

“... Friends.” She is doubtful. And she has every right to be.

Vision hadn’t inherited forward-thinking from his parents. He also hadn’t inherited extroversion. Or… how to say this… the ability to hold eye contact with a human being. 

“Yep. Um - ? Why are… why are you…” He works at his lip for a second. This feels like too great of a coincidence. “May I ask the purpose of this call?”

“The purpose of this call, he says.” She mutters for a moment, distant from the phone, certainly in Korean, certainly badmouthing him. “Well, if you must know, I was sitting at my desk and suddenly… hm, this is going to sound farfetched. I was sitting at my desk, and I… I suddenly had this voice in my head that sounded a lot like yours. Clear as a bell. And I… I missed you, Vision.”

Vision bites down. He tastes iron. Wanda’s eyes go wide. 

“I missed you too, Mum,” he says quietly. 

Wanda brings her hand up to his mouth, “Don’t do that, boy, you’re bleeding.”

“... Who was that?”

Vision panics. He doesn’t know why. 

“Uhhhh - ! That’s! The! Um! I’m! Uh!” Vision has to take a breath. This is getting ridiculous. He’s never been a good liar. “Just watching a movie! Ha, ha!”

“...”

“Ohhhh, maaaan, look at the time,” Vision says. He sounds like an insane person. Wanda’s eyes are sparkling and the phone starts to slip out of his hand, floating toward the ceiling. He grasps for it before it can get too far, clutching it to his ear, “Um! I’ll call you tomorrow, Mum, okay?”

“This is why I told you not to drink so much caffeine, you get all peaky after you sleep it off - “

“Yes! Yes, I do! Good morning! Love you!” 

Vision waits for the first syllable of a response before he’s hanging up and placing the phone back where it belongs. Far away from Wanda. 

She stares at him, waiting for some sort of explanation. 

“Didn’t mean to wake you,” he says miserably, sinking into the pillows. His heart is pounding in his chest. “Please, by all means, go back to bed.”

She settles back into his chest though her eyes don’t leave his face. She almost looks wounded by her sudden drag into consciousness. Another unspoken thing they seem to agree on. 

Vision closes his eyes, fully intending to sleep for another few hours.

Hey, Vision? says his own voice in the back of his head. What the fuck is going on?

Right, yes. 

He was rather hoping he’d be able to ignore the impossibly present weight on his chest. Wanda’s arm is underneath him and she’s on top of him and - and it’s - this is - it’s - what is going on?

She shifts closer. Her foot brushes against his leg, the bare part where his pants had ridden up as he slept.

He hisses, eyebrows drawn together, trying to shift his legs away from her. There is no escape. “Fuck, Wanda. You’re made of ice.”

“I am not,” she whispers, offended.

His mother calling this morning definitely doesn’t help with all of the stupid memories now knocking about in his brain. He remembers tunnelling into her bed, early on into the days when half of the room had been emptied, and the way she’d always check his pulse. Something about circulation, something about adverse health effects that he never really grasped because he was ten years old. 

He takes her wrist out from under his back. He checks. He counts. Wanda tries to wring out of his grasp. 

“Seems normal,” he says. He drops her hand. She immediately reaches under him again. “Fuck, what do I know?”

Wanda opens her mouth to reply. 

He shakes his head, “Rhetorical question.”

“Rhetorical question,” she repeats. 

Vision smiles. Words fit so oddly in her accent. It’s wonderful. He has half a mind to write out a list of words he wants to hear her say. It would be miles long, no doubt. 

“What is a rhetorical question?” she asks. 

“Mm. S’a… it’s a question you ask that doesn’t need an answer, that you don’t expect an answer for.” He can feel her fingers dig into his side as he turns on his side to face her. He is content to pretend that this is normal. “I already know what I know, and so do you. I was just… er, being… dramatic.”

“Oh.” She nods. Her nails are sharp. She seems to notice that she’s piercing the skin and lets up a bit. “You are dramatic.”

“Yes.”

Wanda brushes her hand over his shirt, over the undoubtedly crescent-shaped indentations in the skin on his hip. “Who were you speaking to?”

“On the phone?” His eyes are heavy. He’s never going to outrun this sleep debt. He smothers a yawn with his hand. “My mother.”

Wanda nods. She draws him closer again like a doll. Her hand is on his face again, cool, while the other keeps him stationary. As if he’d ever want to move. His eyelids flutter closed as if on command. 

“The sun was warm in Seoul,” she recites like a poem. 

Vision hums. The image appears in his mind. He isn’t sure, out of the two of them, who summons it. “Yes. It was.”

Chapter Text

Vision is currently sitting in a room with seventeen other humans. It is a nightmare. 

Too much eye contact.

The table is round and dark, just enough space given so that their knees don’t knock when they shift. The light is dim. It feels more like a location in which people would play poker and exchange human sacrifice than discuss philosophical theory. 

But, as it turns out, this is the only place in which people discuss philosophical theory. 

Vision is only half-listening after the first twenty minutes. He idly writes terms he hears. The discussion occurs around him. He hears himself hum, witnesses his own forged active listening, lifts his head and utters a theory, connects it to a classmate by name, drops his head again. 

They’re discussing the fabric of reality again. Trying to define the mind, all the while knowing that they can’t. They mention a logician whose theory of reality was that if it exists, I should be able to put a pin in it. This excludes concepts like mind, like soul, like love - which is to say, consequently, that they must not be held, ownable, tangible, real.

That line of thinking exhausts him. If he tried hard enough, he could find someplace to put the fucking pin. 

It is in these moments that he realizes how different he is from them. From his peers, from humanity at large. The way they speak, the way they hold themselves, it’s easy for them. Their notes are straight and concise, abbreviated, purposeful. Vision uses three different types of bullet points but that is the extent of his intent. They sit tall and proper. They seem to color-coordinate with one another mindlessly. Vision’s red jumper is an unseemly addition to their blues and greys. There hadn’t been a dress code on the agenda. It’s as if someone has dropped a broken red pen on the table, unsightly ink blot on a dark page, and no one’s looking at it long enough to think of grabbing a towel. 

Even more, it isn’t just their words - it’s their sound. Vision is meant to participate and so he does, he gives his thoughts, he underlines his points with his pen as he goes… but their responses knock him back. He has lived two lives, one in London and one in Seoul. He has lived with his mother’s accent, with her research team’s different accent. He has listened to hundreds of hours of lectures that carry a particular lilt, has listened to the voices on the street that tilt the other way. He’s a scrapbook of noise. Never is it more clear than in the rooms like these, made for uniform noise. 

Vision crosses off his final bullet point. He leans back in his chair. He wears the posture of someone who belongs here. 

The others speak, they bounce off of one another, they fit like a puzzle. They pronounce demonstrative differently. He pronounces it like his mum. 

Did you know it is impossible to make eye contact with seventeen people at once? Did you know that it is a requirement of participation to attempt to do so?

His vocal responsibility practically finished, he attempts to look them in the eye. The person talking for three seconds, a nod offered as if he at all agrees, swept to the side as the voice moves. Stare, three seconds, nod, move on. He shifts the way his arms are crossed, he folds his fingers on the table. He laughs when they laugh, even if he’s finished far before everyone else is. 

Everyone here plans to do something with their lives in which eye contact will be necessary. If all goes to plan, Vision won’t have to speak but two words every day. Morning and goodnight. 

“The conclusion I think we’ve begun to draw here,” the professor offers, so pleased with their progress, “is this: who is to say that what is real today will be real tomorrow?”

There’s a bit of a buzz around the table. They seem to like that statement, they seem to think it belongs in a museum, they all rush to write it down.

Vision doesn’t like it. He looks down at his hands for a moment. 

People in this field have a penchant for social pretension. They can’t help themselves. They read fifteen million lines written by the most established scholars, they select the ones they like, assimilate them. If Vision is a scrapbook of sound, they are a scrapbook of recycled language. They like the words that sound important, the phrases that are empty but seem profound. They speak them and smile afterward as if to say, chew on that for a moment, as if the sentiment behind the fun words is at all meaningful enough to analyze. 

Who is to say that what is real today will be real tomorrow?

Of course, if Vision had the bravery to continue this conversation beyond what is so clearly a ploy to end the discussion, he’d say something along the lines of: well, we’d need to define reality first. 

But you can’t. It is not static. It does change - second by second, person by person - it is not something that needs definition. But they know that already. They ignore it, however, for fear that someone may look them in the eye and identify that void of knowledge in them. 

Vision would be more than happy to ignore this too. If keeping this life undefined means that he gets to keep it the way it is, he will gladly look the other way. This life is… improbable, sure, but it is real today. 

If he were to wake up one day and everything had changed, changed back to the way things were before, if the couch cushions weren’t on the floor and the lamp was fixed, he’d not know what to do. 

Who is to say that what is real today will be real tomorrow?

“That seems like a question for tomorrow,” he hears himself say. 

They laugh at that. They file out one by one. He rubs his eyes until they ache. The door clunks behind them as they leave. 

He sighs into the blissfully empty air. He taps his hands on the desk. He clicks his pen twenty times in quick succession because he’s been aching to do so for an hour.

Vision emulates his professor’s voice, calm and absolutely awful, to himself. 

“If it exists, I should be able to put a pin in it,” he mocks, sinking down in his chair. He pronounces the T sound so hard it echoes. He covers his face with his hands, returning to himself. “God. My flatmate is a supernova in sweatpants.”

Wanda pulls her sleeve up. It falls right back down. 

She pulls it up again. Tucks it in. Rolls it. It unfurls down beyond her hand. 

She frowns. She swings her arm a bit, a propeller made of soft grey fabric, until even that is robbed of its whimsy. She slumps back into the couch. 

Vision said he’d be back soon. He said it’d not be a long day, that he’d be back before the sun set. He said I hate going to these things anyway, but at least I’ll be here at a normal dinnertime, eh? 

Wanda finished the television show. Vision said he had more. He’s meant to be back by now so that he could tell her where they are, so that she wouldn’t have to watch the silly shows anyway. The shows fill the time when he isn’t speaking. 

It feels like a normal dinnertime. The sun is up and the boy is gone and there are only so many ways Wanda can roll up the same sleeve before she has to accept defeat. 

She takes a breath. In and out. Then, louder. Such a loud and forceful breath that it makes her dizzy. 

There is no boy here to ask what is wrong when she makes such a breath. There seems not to be any use for breathing at all. 

Wanda rolls over onto her stomach. She folds her arms under her head and kicks her legs, staring at the front door. There are no footsteps outside, no rattling of the door handle. She has spent a life being patient. She is unsure as to why, in this cavern of color and ridiculous objects, she is solely interested in watching the door. 

She buries her nose into the crook of her elbow. 

Another deep breath.

Vision was wearing this, this morning before he left. Wanda had seen him in it, saw the fabric and the way the sleeves were funny at the ends, and asked if she could have it. She knew she could have it. She can have anything here. It is simply a matter of making it seem like she cannot live without it. 

She cannot live without this sweater. Soft. Grey, but a warm grey. Grey that feels like yellow. 

Wanda’s laugh sounds different than the boy’s. She laughed this morning when she had asked for it, laughed at the way he frowned and immediately turned back down the hallway to change. It is nice to be able to ask for something and receive it. It is even more nice to demand.

Vision has different laughs. He has one that’s only air, like a valve undone slowly. He has one that’s high-pitched when he’s nervous, afraid, anxious, tired. In the memories that she can drag her fingers across, distant and forgotten, there are other laughs. Louder ones, deeper and sounding like his normal voice. Laughs that carry for miles or laughs that he doesn’t mean. 

Wanda only has one. She has just recently discovered it. 

Try as she may, she can’t get it to sound like the boy. It’s low in the back of her throat, far rougher than she ever intends. Vision smiles when she does it. 

The room remains empty.

It’s impossible to keep still. There’s too much emptiness for such a loud-looking place. After so many days spent with Vision, with this new voice, with this new laugh to listen to, with all of these new thoughts at her disposal, it’s hard to exist without them. 

After a moment more of unbearable quiet, Wanda stands and stretches, looking pointedly at the door. 

Then, she wraps her fingers in the collar of the fabric and brings it up to her nose. 

These clothes are big and soft and warm. She misses the boy that they smell like. Soap in the clear bottle in the shower. Cinnamon tea. 

Luckily, he’s just tall and nervous enough to act as a satellite. She finds him easily, consciousness plucked from the air. As she settles back into the noise of his mind - something about supernovas, something about de-monster-ative - she decides that she can’t wait any longer. His inner voice is good to hear but it isn’t quite the same. 

She brings the shirt up to her face again for a moment. 

Vision seems to be thinking about her too. He isn’t far away. She would be happy to meet him. 

She closes her eyes, steps into his memory. He takes an odd route through the city, self-planned. It isn’t difficult to follow. Three turns from a dim stairwell, a left then a right then a left, a few more rounded corners after that. The map he creates is much like Vision himself: strange but simple.

Wanda leaves. She trips over the boy’s silly pants, bends to try and fold them upward, and continues. She hasn’t been here yet. The rest of the building is not as fun as Vision’s portion. She’s wary of the stairs, her balance a bit off-kilter, as she’s never walked down them by herself. 

Arms behind your back, they’d say. The metal was cold on her wrists, an inhibitor as they called it, they’d hold onto it and guide her where she needed to go. Stairs became ramps when she began to drag herself on the ground. Her skin was always so red and burned from the gritty floors, she couldn’t sleep on her stomach because the tops of her feet would sting against the rough sheet. 

She holds her arms out to the sides. She steps once, tentatively, then again. She is hopping down the stairs by the end of the flight. It’s so strange to be free. It feels as though she’s doing something wrong. 

The sun is not warm in London. It simply lights the way. 

It’s almost as if she’s following Vision’s ghost down the streets. He walks so quickly, spans entire streets in seconds, Wanda is half-running to keep up with even his memory.

London is quite loud in the daytime. Vision’s voice in his head is always mumbling about it, about the noise and the people and the way they all make him feel. He nods to them in greeting, seeming very normal to the outside eyes, but the turmoil within is enough to bake him from the inside out. 

Wanda has never felt something like this. Every time she listens to him, every time she feels him, her heart rate always increases. She assumes that it’s mimicry. His heart must be very close to exploding. 

The streets are rough on the soles of her feet. She steps around glass and holes in the concrete where the city seems not to want to mend itself. As she avoids them, she can pinpoint every place that the boy has fallen. He does fall a lot. His palms are always red and his face is always bruised. Wanda wonders what he looks like without them. 

She finds the pieces of his thoughts that never made much sense before, finds the tangible objects. The light pole and the curb, his self-proclaimed nemeses. She reaches out to touch the wooden totem, covered in small metal clips and torn pieces of paper. It’s sharp under her fingertips. She doesn’t mind it.

Vision’s thoughts of this street are so dramatic. He is dramatic. It’s dark and full of murderers in his memories. 

Wanda is waved to by a small child whose sleeves resemble her own. Certainly this child wouldn’t be able to kill the tall boy. The child could hardly reach him. 

Wanda stands on Vision’s enemy curb, looking up at the building that he’s occupying. She has to tilt her head all the way back to see its peak. The clouds hide the sun. She doesn’t understand how everything is still so bright. 

It takes a few minutes for him to appear. There’s a crowd of strange-looking people that emerge first, sans-Vision. Vision labels them as friends, but not his own. A definition rather than a connection. Mostly men, far shorter than the blond boy she knows so well, wearing muted colors that could never hope to step foot into the flat. They talk to each other and smile and clap each other on the back. 

Wanda frowns. Vision never does that, but he calls her a friend. A real friend.

She perks up when she spots his silhouette through the glass door. He’s a blurry image but she’d recognize his sweater anywhere. He moves slowly, languidly, much like what Wanda thinks to be a tortoise. The door squeaks open, the boy emerges, and he stumbles down a few of the concrete steps. 

He always looks so tired. Wanda doesn’t understand. She sleeps beside him, practically inside him, she knows how much rest he gets. So why does he look like that? Stumbly and frowny. The fascination is gone, all that’s left is the anxiety. Wanda can help him redeem it, she thinks. 

Blue eyes flicker up from his feet as if he could hear the thought. He spots her. 

Wanda smiles. She lifts a hand to wave. Her hand is covered by the sleeve again. It swings of its own volition. She waits for Vision’s smile, for the crinkle by his eyes, but it doesn’t come.

Vision suddenly looks… afraid. He walks forward with quick (stumbly, frowny) steps, hands outstretched, and she vibrates under his touch as he places them on her shoulders. It isn’t a grab necessarily, but she can feel that his nails are blunt as he holds onto her like she may drift away. 

“Wanda,” he whispers, eyes wide, “What… what are you doing here?”

“I finished the show,” she says. Then, in her head, missed you.

Vision freezes. Wanda wonders for a moment if she’s managed to pause time. Then, he blinks. “Oh.”

Wanda waits for reciprocation by word of mouth. When he doesn’t say anything more, just stares at her blankly with his hands on her shoulders, she checks inside his thoughts. It isn’t hard to find his emotions, they are readily accessible. Nice to be missed, even if she doesn’t know what the words sound like aloud. 

“You said you’d be back soon,” she says. She can’t manage to sound as frustrated as she feels. It is just good to see him. 

Vision blinks several more times. “... I… I… er… I…”

“Boy.”

“Jesus, Wanda,” he mumbles. He begins to walk, taking the very end of her sleeve in his hand, pulling her along. “You walked here?”

She frowns. She had wanted a warmer welcome. “How else would I - “

“And - a-a-a-and - and?!” Vision stops on the edge of the sidewalk, wobbling a bit, his bag heavy and his proportions terribly inefficient. He’s skipping like an old record. He does that often. “How did you even find me? What - how - Wanda, I - “

“Quiet, boy,” she says. She reaches out a sleeved hand to press it to his face, covering his mouth. “I followed your memories.”

Vision laughs into her hand, pushing it away. It’s his nervous laugh. Within it, she registers relief, “Oh, you can do that, can you?”

“Yes,” she says proudly. “I’m here.”

“Yes. Yes, I suppose you are.” He calms down. She watches his eyes change. He glances around the street, releasing her other hand. Wanda hadn’t noticed it was still engaged. “Sorry. I’m sorry about my - I’m - I just - are you safe? Are you alright?”

Wanda looks down at herself, “... I’m... here?”

Vision sighs. “Okay.” He nods, “Mm... Okay.” He sighs and then nods. “Okay.” 

He steps forward and immediately trips over the curb. 

Wanda laughs. She sounds a bit like a creaky faucet handle. Vision looks up at her from the ground, his hair flopped into his face, palms braced on the road and bag askew on his shoulders, standing again. 

“It isn’t funny,” he says, brushing the front of his sweater with his palms. 

Wanda thinks it’s funny, so she continues to laugh.

Vision stands there on the very curb he fell from, hands on his hips, looking at her miserably. She has to lean against the pole, arms tight to her chest, eyes squeezed shut. She laughs until she makes no noise when she tries to, until her throat hurts. She isn’t used to laughing. It’s an alien feeling. 

“Are you done?” Vision asks impatiently, tapping his foot. He’s standing like the woman with the stick from her school. She has no more sound left in her chest to keep going, so she nods. “Alright, then. Back home.”

Home, he says. He really is letting her stay forever, then. 

Vision starts on his route. Wanda follows. Her bare toes clip the backs of his shoes as she walks, having to hold onto his shirt to keep up with him. He mutters to himself as they go, something about reality and tomorrow. She isn’t able to focus on the words, she’s too busy trying to keep up. 

Her fingers slip from the fabric after a few minutes. Vision glances back at her but she dismisses the concern. She is fine. Simply slow.

Mmh. London is tiring. 

She only gets slower. She trips over her limbs, over the legs of her pants, she keeps her eyes locked on the sidewalk that she steps on. It isn’t clear how far behind she is until Vision’s calling out to her. 

She hums, looking up. He’s walking in her direction, eyebrows drawn together. 

“Hey,” he says. His voice is soft like this grey sweater. She blinks but it lasts a lot longer than she expected. London is tiring. “What’s the matter?”

“Mm. Nothing.” 

Vision scans her for some sort of indication. He doesn’t need to search for long. “Shit. You don’t have shoes.”

“I’ve never had shoes,” she corrects him. 

“Shit.” He’s standing upright again, “Do they hurt? Are you okay? Why didn’t you - “

“I’ve never had shoes,” she says again. She closes her eyes. “I’m tired.”

“London is tiring,” Vision says. She perks up at the shared thought but she’s sinking back into drowsiness in seconds. He presses his lips into a line, making a decision. “I can… uh. Okay.” He pulls the strap of his bag so that the heavy part rests on his back, thick brown band diagonal across his chest. He reaches for her, tentative as if she might bite him, “I… Do you need a lift?”

Wanda frowns. “We are close to home.”

“Yes, but you’re about two steps from collapsing. And I know what that looks like.” He smiles. She feels a little better. 

“I won’t collapse,” she says anyway, taking a step forward. She hadn’t anticipated the fact that there was a boy in front of her, however, and ends up bumping into his chest. “Oh.”

Vision smiles even wider. She feels mocked by it. He bends a bit to hook an arm under her legs, a vaguely familiar feeling from a night she wasn’t quite present for, and she pushes him away. He staggers backward, not afraid but rather frustrated. Yes, Wanda often feels frustrated with him. They are a frustrated pair. 

“You just want me to let you fall asleep here?” He gestures to their surroundings. “Please, be my guest.”

Wanda shakes her head. Now that she knows what a bed feels like, it is difficult to see herself sleeping anywhere else. Soft pillows, fluffy mattress, boy with happy dreams. It’s all she needs. 

“Then let me help,” he says. She registers… earnestness.

She lets out a long breath now that the boy is here to witness it. If he is to help, he will help on her terms. 

She steps forward, impossibly closer, and climbs up onto him until her arms are around his neck. Vision’s unwieldy on his feet for a moment, not having expected it, but he holds onto her anyway. 

“Uh…?” he says. His hands are interlocked under her. She crosses her ankles that rest on his bag. “... God, I… nothing’s ever going to be normal again, is it?”

“I’m tired,” she says again, not in the mood for his rhetorical questions. 

“Right. Sorry. Erm.” He spins a bit, looking around, and she yelps, grasping at the back of his shirt. “Well… Put, um… if you could put your… head on my... uh, shoulder. I can’t see past you.”

Wanda listens. She scoots up a bit, her cheek to the side of his neck. He hisses at the feeling. He always calls her cold but he never seems to consider that he is the one with a worrying temperature. 

This must be what the world looks like to tall people. She can see the tops of cars. She can see the tops of people’s heads. She shimmies higher to see more things and Vision grumbles, lifting his chin to rest on her shoulder, peering over. 

She feels safe. Vision’s arms are surprisingly strong. She hums, holding tighter. If he were ever tired, she could lift him like this. It would just be a matter of convincing him. It is simply a matter of making it seem like she cannot live without it. 

He adjusts her as they turn into another alley. His hands are underneath her legs to keep her steady. His thumb brushes against the seam of the pants she wears. It tickles. Wanda creaks. It’s supposed to be a laugh.

“Sorry,” he says. He means it, apparently, but she can’t think of one thing he should apologize for. 

It’s fun being carried up steps. Wanda’s eyes are heavy by the time they get there, her cheek smushed against his shirt, but it’s a slow bounce of a motion that makes her stomach feel funny. 

She’s never been carried like this, only ever dragged places. This feels like a long hug. Wanda can’t think of the last time she’s had a hug. Does this count? She clutches to him as he unlocks the door, just in case it does. Her first hug.

“Watch the nails,” Vision says. He nudges the door open with his foot and steps inside. Wanda clings to him even still, not ready to be put down. “Wanda.”

“To the bed,” she commands. 

“Not so fast.” He pries her off anyway, much to her disdain. “I need to get you a change of clothes. You’ve got London streets all on them, now.”

She frowns down at her feet. The pants are rather raggedy at the edges from her journey. “I’m sorry.”

“No, no. It’s quite alright.” He pats her shoulder. “I’ll wash those tonight. And… well, I haven’t hemmed anything in a while, it may benefit us both for me to try.”

Wanda’s hands go to the waistband of the pants. He clears his throat, takes her wrist, and leads her down the hall before she can do anything. 

“I’m sure I have some… short… trousers… somewhere.” Vision stops in the center of the room, setting his bag on the floor before wandering over to his closet. “They’re likely well buried by now. Haven’t had a use for them.”

He kneels on the ground, rifling through drawers. Wanda looks unhappily at his bag placement. He treats his things so poorly. She stares at it until it floats, until it hangs itself on an invisible nail midair. 

“Short trousers,” she says quietly. 

“I didn’t know how to pack to move here so I simply… brought one of everything… er… ah, yes, here.” He presses his hands to the floor as he stands, a small item of fabric hooked over his shoulder, but he freezes as he notes his ghost bag. “... Wanda?”

She places her hands on her hips. “It doesn’t go on the ground.”

Vision doesn’t move for a long moment. Then, for an unknown reason, he smiles. She registers something warm inside it that she can’t name, can’t identify, an emotion that he can’t hide. 

“Quite right,” he says. The words sound funny through the grin. He crosses, handing her the short trousers with one hand while he retrieves his belongings with the other. “Here. I’ll leave you to change.” He lifts the bag slightly, “And I’ll… hang this up, I suppose.”

“Thank you.” She rolls the fabric around her fingers. Soft. She slips her hands into the pockets and wiggles her fingers. Pockets for belongings. 

Vision leaves. Wanda changes. She settles into bed, the sheets soft against her legs. 

She can still feel the warm emotion long after Vision stops smiling at her. She can feel it long after she falls asleep, empty stretch of bed to her right. 

It occurs to Vision the next day that, perhaps, it is important to discuss this. 

He’s heating up a quesadilla for the girl who’s perched on the kitchen counter, wearing the most antithetical outfit known to man. This is the life he’s been given and it is the life he will live. 

“So…” he says after the unbearable silence, two red dots on his cheek. “... About yesterday.”

Wanda rests her head in her hand. “Yes.”

“What, uh…” he crosses his arms over his chest, “... What did you think? Of the city?”

“Tiring,” she says.

“Right, yes, but beyond that.” Vision isn’t sure why this is such a difficult question to ask. “Were you… hm. Hmmmm. Why… would… um.”

He can feel her worm her way into his thoughts. It’s a fair effort, he’s not articulating well. Or, at all. 

She flicks through his thoughts - he winces at the feeling, not a pain but a flick nonetheless - until she finds what he’s desperately trying to say. 

The thought she finds is not necessarily a thought but a worry. Several worries. He overthinks, it’s in his blood. He worries that she left because she doesn’t like it here. He worries that she’ll be hurt. He worries that she’d rather risk getting hurt than stay with him.

She makes a noise as if she’s been pushed in the chest. “I don’t want to leave.”

“It’s okay if you do,” he says. He shifts. He squirms. This is hard. “I know I’m not… the best… at this. If you want to explore more, if you want to… um… try to find someone… uh… I…”

“I left to find you,” she squints at him. “I missed you.”

Vision is surprised by the laugh that comes out of his body. Disbelief, probably, is a good descriptor. “Are you sure?”

She doesn’t respond, opting instead to stare at him so hard that his face goes hot. Waiting. 

“Right, yes, I… I missed you too,” he mumbles. She seems pleased with that. “I just… If… I don’t want you to think you’re held here without - “

“I want to be here.”

Vision nods. Yes, he wants her to be here too.

He slides her lunch onto a plate and hands it to her. He takes his place leaning on the opposite counter. Wanda picks up the damn thing, likely millions of degrees to the touch, and stuffs half of it into her mouth. That’s how she’s content to eat, it seems. All or nothing. 

“Okay.” He taps his fingers on his arm. “I just… Sorry. If you want to go places, by all means. You’re an adult, you know, and I…” He trails off as Wanda fits the other half into her cheek. He tilts his head, “That’s actually quite impressive.”

She smiles. Obviously she can’t respond. 

“To make a long, winding effort… less so… um.” Vision crosses his ankles, “Maybe we could go outside again sometime. Together. So that you don’t get lost. And, so that… you know, the next time you want to walk around, it isn’t so tiring.”

Wanda chews for a long time, thinking about that. Vision just stands and waits. He isn’t sure why he’s offering this as if he’s at all acquainted with the main streets. It isn’t about his own hangups he supposes. The last thing he wants is for Wanda to get lost - 

“Can’t get lost,” she says, muffled, tapping the side of her head. 

“You don’t know that for certain,” he counters, which makes her very visibly upset. “There are parts of this city even I haven’t been to, Wanda. If you’re operating off of my memories alone, you’ll - “

“I can find other people’s memories, then.”

He presses his fingers into his eyes. He forgets that her powers are applicable beyond him. “Of course you can.”

Wanda finishes. She hops down from the counter and walks around it, into the living room, standing by the front door. She looks at him expectantly. 

“Oh. You - you want to go now?”

She nods. “Yes.”

“Alright. Erm. Lemme… grab my shoes.” He pushes himself to stand before pointing to her, eyes wide, “We need to buy shoes.”

Wanda peers doubtfully at his finger. “Yes.”

The way Wanda walks down stairs is fascinating. She treats them like individual stepping stones, jumping from one to the next with her arms out to the sides. He trails behind, hands in his pockets, observing. She waits patiently for him at the bottom. 

This is the first time Vision is leaving his flat for anything other than school. When he first moved here, he had all of these stupid dreams where he had friends, where he had met someone nice, where he’d be spending late nights out with them. He remembers how bewildered he’d been after none of his attempts to meet people had been successful. 

All those weird daydreams of dating, of having someone to text between classes, all those goals that he gave up on after the first few months. 

Wanda is staring up at him. He stopped walking downstairs, it seems, pinned mid-flight.

She’s wearing his clothes. She sleeps in his bed. They’re attached at the hip based on a frankly unknown and terrifying circumstance. They… well, technically, they live together.

Fate is cruel. The one friend he’s made and she could kill him. The one person he’s slept beside and she simply needs him for the dreams. Truly tragic. 

Vision checks his bank balance as they walk through the alley. He can probably afford shoes. He’ll have to sell some of those old action figures, maybe put up a few of his old textbooks. Wanda needs things, more things than just shoes. Clearly she won’t want him working anywhere far. Money is present but it is tight. She needs more than he can give, at the moment, and that terrifies him.

God, how much are shoes? He doesn’t fucking know.

Wanda slows down once they get to the main sidewalks. She grabs onto his arm. He nearly drops his phone. 

“Um… there’s… I remember there being a shop this way,” he says, slipping the phone into his pocket. Wanda presses her cheek to his arm, looking around for danger (or, alternatively, more quesadillas). “We’ll start with shoes, then go from there.”

Wanda walks beside him, behind him, close, practically part of him. Walking with four legs is hard when you’ve only had two your entire life. They weave through people. Wanda tells him what people think about him. He immediately tells her to not do that. 

“She likes your jumper,” Wanda says into his shirt. 

“Wanda. Please.”

She’s spooked by the bell on the door as they push inside. Vision remembers coming here when he first moved, bought the only pair of shoes he wears to this day. It’s never crowded, just as he likes it. Another quiet pocket in the city - that doesn’t mean it’s any less nerve-wracking.

He guides her through the aisles as if he is an expert. She takes a liking to the high heels but Vision tactfully explains that they’re much more difficult to walk in than she’d expect. 

He has a mother. He’s taken his fair share of heels for a spin. It is chaos. 

Wanda touches every display shoe. Vision opens and closes his hands at his sides, restless, as she gets to the more expensive ones. He knows he can’t say no. After all this time spent with her, he’s managed to avoid what she looks like when he disappoints her. He will not let today be the day that breaks this streak.

She makes a quiet sound, soft ohhh, and he turns his attention to her. 

She holds a clunky white sneaker in both of her hands as if it may be made of gold. She lifts it up to Vision, right up to his face, and he gently pushes it away. 

“You like this one?” he asks. 

Wanda holds it up again. “I like this one.”

For some reason, he’s excited about this. Sure, it costs eighty pounds. Sure, that’s about a third of what he has. But her eyes are sparkling and she’s never had shoes before, so what is he meant to do?

It’s mostly about the smile on her face. He’d do anything to keep it there.

He buys them, cardboard box tucked under his arm. Wanda bounces up and down on the soles of her feet. The cashier is confused and a bit alarmed by her, and Vision simply says, “Contacts. They’re contacts.”

He plucks a small pack of socks from the basket on the counter and buys them as well. They have stars on them. It feels right.

Wanda hops out into the sidewalk, the bell ringing behind them. Vision shifts the box in his hands, looking around for someplace to sit. Wanda grabs his free hand with both of hers, pulling him toward an empty bench. He, surprisingly, does not fall on his face. 

She leaps onto the bench as she would the couch, clearly displeased with the lack of softness that greets her. He sets the box beside her, kneeling by the bench, ripping at the sock wrapping. 

“I am assuming you don’t know how to tie these,” he says. Wanda shakes her head. He hands her the socks and she coos at the feeling. “You put those on first.”

“I know,” she mumbles. She hikes the socks up nearly to her knees, the fabric stretched beyond recognition. “I know how they work.”

“Just making sure. Don’t get grumpy.” He unfolds the box, taking the right shoe into his hands - it’s a heavy fucker - and pulling out the small paper filling. He tosses it into the open box, offering it to the girl, “Would you like to do the honors?”

She looks between the shoe and Vision’s eyes. Then, she lifts her foot, tilting her chin up, “No.”

Vision chokes on a laugh. “I see the penchant for luxury hasn’t worn off yet.”

She tilts her chin higher. He rolls his eyes and works at the laces, loosening them. 

The world is passing behind them, people and cars and several moments of time. He has no interest in that anymore. No interest in the old dreams of friendship or late nights spent holding someone’s hand, they simply won’t come true. If he is to live this life, to be on the ground in the middle of London and assisting an otherworldly being into her first pair of trainers, he will not complain. 

“Alright,” he takes her ankle hesitantly, genuinely waiting for her to kick him in the face. “Ready?”

Wanda nods. She scrunches up her nose as he helps her into them, the right and then the left, and he checks to make sure she doesn’t hate them. She doesn’t, eyes glowing as she stares down at her shoes. Vision figures there’s no use in telling her to stop that. Glowsticks often can’t help that sort of thing.

She rests her shoe on his knee as he ties them, double-knotted, patting her leg to switch. Vision likes this moment for some reason. Maybe it’s the look on her face or the way he’s being helpful. Maybe it’s simply the act of being outside, being seen with another person. God. He’s with another person. It’s so nice not to be alone.

Once he’s finished, he leans back to sit on his heels. “Alright? How do you feel?”

Wanda swings her legs. She lifts her feet up in the air, definitely almost knocking Vision out in the process, alternating them both up and down. Feeling them out, getting used to them. 

“Thank you,” she says quietly. Her legs fall to rest in Vision’s lap. “They are exquisite.”

Vision bites his tongue. He will not cry. He sets her legs to the side, standing, offering to help her up. She wobbles a bit, gripping tight to his fingers, not used to standing in shoes. It’s a bit like she’s on ice skates. 

“Want to keep going?” he asks. She might genuinely break all of his bones, she’s so fucking strong. “We can walk to my class building again, if you’d like. So you’re familiar with it.” He tries to wring his hands away, hearing something crack inside them. “But I would suggest you don’t come to visit every day. I promise I’ll always come back.”

She hesitantly lets him go. She wobbles like a piece of paper placed upright. He has to muffle his laugh. 

It isn’t difficult to access his building when he isn’t constantly weaving through the city. It’s quite accessible as the crow flies. Wanda trips and scuffles next to him, gripping his arm. It feels nice to walk next to someone who’s less stable on their feet than he is. 

“I can’t believe you went out on your own,” Vision says, unprompted. It’s mostly the fact that he isn’t used to making the journey like this, the sun up and a friend on his arm. 

She makes a noise, confused by his words, then another noise, afraid, as she nearly trips over a crevice in the street. She digs her nails into his arm when he snorts. “I am not a child. I can do things on my own.”

“I know. I just…” He pats her hand to get her to let up, so sharp. “I was practically on my way back to you. Couldn’t you tell? If you could hear my thoughts.”

She seems to struggle with that. Vision looks down at her, slowing his pace, worried she’s falling asleep standing up again. No, she’s quite awake, eyebrows drawn together. 

He stops. Wanda wobbles. He scans her face as she thinks, holds onto him, cold through the thick sleeve of his shirt. 

Her eyelashes are a light brown. They catch the cloud-muddled sunlight nicely. They curl outward, thin, almost invisible at the ends where they’re practically translucent. She blinks a few times, thinking so hard that Vision smells something burning. 

“Wanda,” he says, moving his arm a bit to inspire a reply. 

“I…” She lets her head fall back. Vision wonders if she saw the sun at all in the laboratory she came from. Her face is smooth and pale, not a single mark. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“I wanted to see you, not hear you,” she says. “I was impatient.”

He wrinkles his nose. She mocks him. “Well, that tracks.”

“You are the impatient one,” she says. She tries to let go, tries to stand tall and on her own, and she’s falling into his side again. “You are a bad… an… you’re…” 

Vision waits. Not for long. “... Bad influence?”

“Yes. Bad influence.” 

Vision likes the way she pronounces the D sound. Soft, tongue on the teeth. It falls from a height to land in soft snow. It hits him in the chest like an arrow every single time. The d in bad. The d in I missed you. 

He still doesn’t know what his name sounds like in her voice. 

“Well!” he says, trying to shake himself free of whatever questionable train of thought has begun to leave the station. “We’re almost there. Ready to keep going?”

Wanda is employing the posture of a still-drying papier-mâché statue. If he pressed his fingers into her cheek, a dent would be left. It is difficult to fear her when she’s so offset by a pair of sneakers. 

“Fear me,” she wavers, an unconvincing sell.

“Yes, Wanda,” he bows slightly before lugging her forward. 

They must sit on the bench in front of the building for an hour. At least. Wanda needs a break from walking, needs some time to sit and stare at her feet in wonderment. Vision needs to reorient himself away from her eyelashes and her accent. It is a mutually beneficial break. 

He counts the stone shapes on the front face of the structure as Wanda undoes her laces, bends her legs, inspects them, and tries to tie them again. He gets to about thirty-five before Wanda’s spinning around, legs thrown across his lap, silent demand. 

“I’m glad you like these,” Vision says. It’s difficult to tie shoes sideways but he does his best. Wanda studies his hands with intention, memorizing his movements. “I can give you a more detailed tutorial when we return. I’ll teach you how to tie them yourself.”

“But you can tie them for me,” she says. She lifts her leg to inspect her newly-tied laces, actually clipping Vision in the jaw this time. She does not apologize. He hadn’t expected her to. 

He rubs his face for a moment, grumbly, before working on her other sneaker. “It’s good to know how to do things yourself, though. I have a feeling I’ll still tie them for you even if you know how. That’s alright.”

She hums. Vision knows to lean back before he’s kicked again. Wanda sticks her legs up in the air, blocking out the sun with them. He averts his eyes, going back to counting.

It feels wrong to sit here, so close to all those dusty rooms, and not have to think. He doesn’t have to count the stones, he doesn’t have to do anything. And yet, he feels he should. It feels wrong to have free time. 

The pretentious scrapbooks in his class are likely home, now, studying. Finishing assignments. Holding hands - but for the right reasons. 

Vision, at the least, can find comfort in the fact that no one on the planet has ever had a day quite like this one. 

“Boy?” Wanda asks. She’s sitting up now. He feels more comfortable making eye contact when she’s not halfway to heaven. 

“Yes?”

“What do you learn?”

He blinks. He lets his head fall back a bit, peering up at the peak. The clouds aren’t dark today, so close to white that he almost forgets he’s in London. White clouds carry light better than the dark ones. 

“What... do I learn,” he repeats. “Big question.”

“It isn’t a big question,” she says. She points to the building and Vision immediately has a hand on her wrist to push her arm down. “You go to that building so often. What happens inside it?”

“... I…” He shakes his head a bit. “It’s not interesting enough to talk about.”

Wanda doesn’t resist that at all. She’s been very prone to boredom recently. She lays down on the bench and folds her arms on her chest. Vision goes back to counting. He gets to one-hundred by the time Wanda grows tired of staring at the clouds. 

She hops up, all or nothing, and Vision’s arms shoot out to catch her before she topples over. She slaps his hands away, standing a bit like a newborn deer with her large shoes and small legs. Vision retreats, allowing her the independence she so badly wants. 

They walk in the opposite direction of the curb. He wins today. 

Wanda leads the way. She tells him it’s because she isn’t a child, but Vision only trails behind so that he can catch her if she were to fall. They walk away from his established route, past all familiarity. He narrowly avoids panic by focusing all of his attention on Wanda, making sure she’s steady, that she’s alright. 

She’s sort of… clomping her way down the street. Vision walks close behind her, hand on her side as somewhat of a training wheel. He walks close to help her. He walks close to make it clear that they are walking together. 

“Alright, woman,” he says under his breath, “Where in the world are you taking me?”

“Forward,” she says. “We’re exploring.”

“Yes, right, of course.” He smiles. Her hair is sticking up again. He has to check to make sure she isn’t levitating anything. She’s not. As it turns out, she goes static-charge mode both when she’s using her power and when she’s simply concentrating. He pets her hair down with a palm. It doesn’t help. “Well, if you have a goal in mind, perhaps I could - “

“Oh,” she says. Then, Vision’s hand is grasped in a cold one and he’s being pulled forward so hard he very nearly faceplants.

“Wanda - ?”

She doesn’t reply, too focused on whatever she’s got her sights set on. Vision succumbs to her ever-present tenacity, mostly thankful that she’s too stubborn to remember that she can’t walk well. 

They land in front of a small location with an awning, somewhat frosted glass through which Vision can make out the flicker of candles. His throat goes dry. He pauses, interrupting Wanda’s forward momentum, and she’s crashing back against his chest. 

A candle-lit restaurant. She has chosen a candle-lit restaurant. Vision doesn’t need to check his phone to know that this place is expensive. He doesn’t need to check his phone to know that he can’t afford it. 

Wanda scratches him as she clings to his sweater. She waits for an explanation for his hesitance. What she wants, if history means anything, she often gets. And she wants to go into this very expensive restaurant.

Vision hesitantly glances down at her. His grey jumper hangs from her shoulders. Her star socks are neon yellow and dark black, stretched so that the white underneath shows through. Her shoes are… well. They are shoes, at least. 

A man exits the front doors with a woman on his arm. They both wear suits. 

Vision looks down between them again. Vision hasn’t owned a suit since he was eight years old, the last time he attended a wedding. (He remembers his mother wore a yellow dress. She tucked a yellow flower into his breast pocket so that they’d match. He worried at the petals so much during the day that it was only a stem by the time they returned to the hotel. They went to the doctor soon after that. Two anxiety disorder diagnoses.)

“They have candles inside,” Wanda says. She can’t seem to pick what she wants to look at, Vision or the lights. “Candles, boy.”

“Wanda,” he says miserably, “they’re definitely not going to let us in there.”

“Why not?” she asks. There’s the disappointment. Fuck. 

“Uh…” He rubs the back of his neck with the arm that she’s not actively piercing with her fingers, “Because… I’m… I’m not dressed for the occasion. They expect fancier dress.”

She frowns. “Then I will find a place they will let you in.”

Suddenly, Wanda is the tour guide. Vision needs to bite his nails or stuff his face into a pillow until he goes unconscious but there’s no time to do so, led by a stomping girl whose confidence is something to aspire to. 

She settles in front of a new place. Still a restaurant, no candles to be seen. Vision opens his mouth to disagree when he spots a mother and child sitting outside. The little girl wears bright white, clunky sneakers. Well, there goes that excuse. 

His heart is beating out of his chest. He’ll have to adjust his budget for the month. He’ll have to switch around his priorities, which he hates doing. He has the urge to scratch at his arms. There are still enough bags in the fridge for Wanda to eat until the end of the month when his grant renews and he’ll be given another hundred pounds.

Two people can’t live on a hundred pounds, a voice in the back of his head whispers. 

Perhaps not. But he’ll have to find a way.

Vision has never been a science guy. The human body can survive off of a few cups of tea every day, right? As long as he still drinks water, he won’t die? Being alive is so expensive. 

Wanda is buzzing with excitement next to him. He can’t say no. He can never say no to that face. She flutters her eyelashes and he’s a goner.

What’s… what’s two-hundred and fifty-three minus eighty? He tries to calculate as he’s tugged toward the door. Surely he won’t spend over a hundred here. 

They’re seated by the window. The waiting staff only give them one or two odd looks as they walk to their place. Vision sinks into his seat, shielding his face with a hand. 

Wanda brings her legs up to her chest in the chair, hugging them tight, staring out the window. She must not be in his head right now. Thank God. He’s about to have a panic attack. 

Too many new things at once and no one to talk to about them. Wanda is so happy, red eyes and wide smile. He brings his fist to his mouth as two glasses are brought, tall-necked bottle of water poured in each and then settled in the center of the tablecloth. Wanda looks at it, so clearly wanting to lift it. Menus are placed in front of them. 

Vision smiles around his fist. The woman leaves. He slumps further. His knees bump against the tips of Wanda’s shoes. 

“This is amazing,” she whispers excitedly. 

“Un-huh,” he says, muffled by his knuckles. His teeth dig into the skin there. He has to let up before he takes a chunk out of himself. “I am g-glad you’re having a good day.”

In and out, Vision. Breathe. Don’t embarrass yourself. 

Wanda flips open the menu, so large that it hides her from view. Vision is afraid to look for himself. She drops it down in seconds, saying, “I want everything.”

Vision sits up a bit straighter. “Probably not.”

She flutters her eyelashes. He has to physically look away. 

“Please? I’m hungry.”

Vision’s legs shake under the table. He grabs at his own thighs to try and stop. This was such a bad idea. Why did he think he could do this? He’s never been able to do this. Wanda gives him confidence, however misguided. He wants her to be happy. 

In and out. Don’t embarrass yourself. 

It is not a helpful mantra. It only makes things worse. 

“Mm. Hm. Um. Why - w-why don’t you choose... two things you’d like?” Very nice. A slightly less bankruptcy-inducing path. “They give you more than one quesadilla here, you know. It’ll be more than you’ve had before.”

She pouts, lifting the menu again. Vision hesitantly reaches out with his finger, flipping his own menu open. It opens with a thud, the glasses tinkling. He immediately closes it with a grimace after only catching a glimpse of one number, bringing his thumbnail to his mouth. 

It’s fine. It’s fine. He isn’t hungry. He doesn’t need anything. He’ll have tea when he gets home. He’ll have tea and water and he’ll curl up into a ball when he sleeps so his stomach doesn’t make so much noise. 

Wanda lets her menu drop. The woman returns, notepad in hand. Wanda points to the things she wants. When it’s his turn, Vision only hands the menu back and shakes his head, “Just water for me.”

He calms down a bit once the menus with the numbers are gone. 

Wanda eats two huge portions of two different types of pasta. She gets so noticeably excited about the flavors that the silverware hovers over the table. Vision has to hold them down the entire time she eats. It seems he vastly underestimated her appetite. He anticipates somewhat of a consequent bellyache for her but as long as she’s smiling now it’ll be worth it. 

He pays. He can feel his banking app burning a hole in his pocket. It’s fine. 

He’s with another person now. Change happens when you gain two legs. 

Vision has to duck as a fork is shoved in his face. On it, propped safe, is a single noodle. 

“Here,” she says. 

Vision stares at it, eyes crossed. 

“Eat,” she says. 

Vision, very hesitantly, parts his lips. The fork clinks against his teeth as she shoves it inside. He doesn’t have to chew it, it’s a single noodle, but he does anyway. Wanda smiles at him, ever the fan of sharing, and places the fork in the center of her second empty plate. 

“Thanks,” he says quietly. He feels himself share her smile. 

He likes her laugh. He likes her smile. There’s some missing piece, here. 

His card is returned on a little dish with two silver mints on it. Vision nudges one toward Wanda before taking the other one for himself. This will be his dinner. The height of luxury. 

He tucks the small candy into his cheek. He tucks his chair in - and Wanda’s, as she stumbles toward the door with no prelude - and follows her out. 

“Look, friend,” he says, holding the door for her, letting her lead out and onto the sidewalk. “I… I don’t… I know that was fun, and maybe we can do something like that every month or so, but I can’t have dinners like this every night, so if you - “

Wanda takes in a sharp breath. The kind you hear when someone burns themselves on a pan. 

He looks down. She tugs at his sleeve. He turns, expecting her to want to hold on, but she only continues to pull. 

“Wanda?” he asks. 

She wrenches her eyes closed, teeth clenched. 

“Wanda, I - “

“The people,” she chokes.

Vision frowns. He looks around. “The people?”

“They’re…” She clamps her hands over her ears. “Help.”

“H-how? How can I help?” he bends a bit to look at her, to try and catch her attention. Her fingers spark and he winces. “Wanda?”

In the back of his mind, with noise and clarity, he hears her voice: the people are thinking too loudly. 

“... Oh,” he whispers. “O-o-okay, Wanda, let’s… I can… yeah, hold onto me.” 

God, he really does say her name all the time, doesn’t he? Wanda, Wanda, Wanda. 

She blindly grasps for him. He presses his arm into her reach, half-leading her and half-carrying her out of view. They duck into an alley system he isn’t familiar with, just off the side of the restaurant, much wider and much brighter than any Vision’s ever seen. He leads her down and away from the overwhelming noise that he can’t hear, a left and a right and a left, weaving and trying to memorize the way he’s walking as he creates the route. He’ll need to know how to get back, after all. 

He walks until her expression loosens and she goes limp. She falls into a wall, head lulled back, looking exhausted. Looking different. 

“U-u-um,” he says, helpful as always. He rests his hands on her shoulders, settling in front of her, pretending as if he’s the expert in this. “You… you’re going to want to… try to breathe, okay? In and out? Slow? Steady?”

Wanda presses at his chest. Then, without warning, he’s being shoved back. He makes a conscious effort to keep his head forward as he slams into the opposite wall. Navigating back home with a concussion is not a good idea. 

“Quiet,” she says. “You are loud too.”

He groans, the wind knocked out of him. He bends, elbows braced on his knees, wheezing. “Sorry.”

Wanda stands in silence long enough for Vision to reclaim control of his lungs. He sticks his hands in his pockets, watching her. Even with her star socks, she is so clearly serious now. Her throat is taut and her lips are pressed together. It reminds him of when they first met. Right before she passed out. 

God, he hopes she doesn’t pass out. 

“Wanda?” he whispers. 

He makes an embarrassing noise as he’s pulled back across the width of the alley to rest in front of her again. She didn’t even have to raise a hand. He blinks. Waits for the other shoe (haha! his mind supplies) to drop, waits for his value to have expired, waits for Wanda to lift him up as high as she can and drop him into the concrete chasm below. It was a lovely last day.

Instead, Wanda takes his hand. She begins to walk. He is in no position not to follow. 

Wanda’s cumbersome in her body and in these shoes. The sparkles are gone but the confidence certainly remains. Vision stopped paying attention to their route a few turns ago. He can only look at Wanda. Her face is so close to blank that he almost doesn’t recognize her. It’s somewhat of an autopilot-like expression, nothing behind the eyes though the feet continue forward. 

She interlocks their fingers. Vision trips over his own feet at the feeling. 

He keeps looking at her like he expects her to look back at him. She doesn’t. Just holds his hand, blank and silent, cold and red. 

Vision bites the inside of his cheek, turning his attention upward. The sun’s getting low in the sky. Late night spent holding someone’s hand. But she isn’t really present, is she? He can’t feel her in his head, he can’t hear her - even when he ducks his head to look at her, she’s absent. He’s holding the hand of someone who isn’t even here. 

He sighs. He really must give up on that stupid dream. He swings their arms a bit. Hm. He’s always wanted to know what that felt like. Feels strange. Once started, it’s quite hard to stop. 

Wanda stops in her tracks. Vision is yanked backward. 

“S-shit, sorry,” he says, reeling from the change. “Sorry, I - I was just - I thought - I’m sorry, I…”

He goes to let go of her, embarrassed, but she holds him tighter. His bones creak. He doesn’t move a muscle.

Vision traces her focus like a bright red line. She’s staring up at the building in front of them, light grey concrete with dark triangular segments where water refuses to dry from the last rain. It looms. It feels like… it’s odd, but it feels like it sees him. As if it has eyes, as if it could reach out and pull him inside. 

“Wanda?” he squeezes her hand, then steps in front of her to try and break the trance. “Hey. What’s wrong?”

He can feel her crawl inside his mind. For warmth, for safety, he doesn’t know. He struggles to handle it. 

Want to go back, she says once she’s inside. Want to go back, now.

Vision nods slowly. He waits for Wanda to turn but she can’t seem to move, frozen in place by invisible eyes. He works his wrist away carefully, somewhat of a puzzle of contortion, before standing in front of her and lifting her up. She latches to him as if this is the only place she has ever been. 

“Okay?” he murmurs. 

She digs her nails into his back in reply. Don’t let go, she sends. 

He glances over his shoulder one more time, searching for a painted sign or for a shadow in one of the glossy windows. He doesn’t find one. No identifying markers, no exit door that leads outside. It appears to simply be a fortress of grey cement. Wanda burrows her nose into his neck. Her cheeks are wet. 

He begins to move. He has to. Wanda is crying. He has one hand on the back pocket of her shorts, the other on the back of her head, keeping her close and as safe as he can manage. She cries steadily, reservoir in his collarbone that puddles into his collar. He walks faster. 

He steps back into the street, though he isn’t certain how he found his way back. 

The mind is a two-way street. It is a pair of double doors. It is easily accessible once it is made to be so - and, if Vision tries really hard, if he lets muscle memory lead them back home and loses himself to the repetition of his steps, if he presses his palms to the doors and pushes with all his might, he can just barely see the inside of Wanda’s mind. 

He isn’t as strong as her. It isn’t a clear radio signal to behold, to tune and explore. But it is enough. 

This must be what her fear feels like, what he can tell. He can feel her fear. It slips through the cracks like a draft. 

As soon as he can even make this connection, it is as if the doors of her mind slam closed. They almost catch him inside, cutting him in half, but he pulls away. 

Wanda knits her fingers into his hair, her hands so cold and her presence suddenly so sharp, and there is a moment where he worries he’s done something wrong. Her legs are tight around his waist as he walks through the crowd. 

Her lips brush his neck as she says, “What are you looking for.” 

It is meant to be a question, Vision knows, but she doesn’t seem to want to entertain this any longer. Her voice is rough. Bonfire. Low. Beyond a scold. Beyond disappointment. 

This is not a Wanda who laughs. 

This is a Wanda who stares into stars and lives to speak of it. 

“Nothing,” he says, looking forward. “Sorry.”

Wanda is in his mind and on his person. She envelops him. Long after she breathes again, long after the tears dry and she’s only here for the ride, she doesn’t speak. Vision worries that she might never speak again. 

The street lights flicker on as they walk. The sun is completely gone. 

He makes a mental checklist of the things in his flat. He thinks about the things he’d be willing to sell. The answer, of course, is all of it. Everything but the bed and the couch, the kettle and the mugs, the blankets and pillows Wanda loves so much. Nothing else is important. Nothing else compares. 

They both sigh with relief as they climb the stairs. Wanda has the strength and the will to lift her head again, cool cheek pressed to his left ear. It sounds a bit like the ocean, like when you hold a shell to your ear, and he can vaguely hear her pulse inside the waves.

He unlocks the door. Nudges the door open with his shoe, nudges it closed. The living room is dim. He doesn’t bother turning on the lamps, he has no use for them now. The bedroom is pitch black as well. He knows these rooms well enough to navigate blind. There are pressing matters to attend to. 

For the first time in his life, Vision carries a woman to bed. It is not at all in the sense that he had ever expected.

He sets her on the edge of the mattress, helps her out of her shoes, sets them beside his own in front of the dresser. She’s tucked in as always, two pillows under her head as she likes. She sniffs, only a vague silhouette of white noise in the black. 

Vision crawls beside her. He leaves space between them. Wanda only tolerates that for a few seconds. 

There’s an arm shoved under him. She turns to face him, pressed close as she always is. He doesn’t expect the other arm that covers him. He doesn’t expect Wanda to shuffle so close that she shares his pillow, that she shares his breath.

He doesn’t know what to do. He closes his eyes, thinking he knows what she wants - a dream, she always wants a dream - but he doesn’t feel the hand on his face. 

Wanda squeezes him. He rolls onto his side. Their noses brush on accident. Her hands press to his shoulder blades, chin pointy on his shoulder, a horizontal embrace. 

“Thank you,” she says. It’s more air than voice. Quieter than a whisper. 

He shifts. Her hair is soft on his cheek. Soap in the clear bottle in the shower. Cinnamon tea. 

“You’re very welcome,” he replies. 

Sometimes there are no words that Wanda can say. 

She is held by the boy. He hugs her. A second hug. She doesn’t fear a mistranslation, this time. 

She can only thank him. He replies as people are meant to do, but he doesn’t know what she thanks him for. How could he know? How could he know anything? How could he ever understand what today has meant to her?

She remembers the inhibitors of the laboratory, heavy and metal. She remembers the sedatives. They tasted of chalk. They were meant to silence her. 

They could never quite silence her mind, though. 

She remembers nights spent away from Pietro. Two rooms on opposite sides of the facility, they said. But she still spoke to him, spoke to him without a voice. Mental letters transmitted, received, signed and wax-sealed. Sometimes they meant nothing, empty words of comfort. Sometimes they weren’t words at all, sometimes they were the feelings. The fear or the hope that things will be alright. 

Now, Wanda is not alone. She is not inhibited but she cannot seem to find her voice. 

She is feeling… gratitude. She is feeling full. Her mouth tastes of two different meals, her feet cradled soft and unblemished from a day of walking. She is feeling… something more. Something warm. 

She scoops the feelings up. She hesitantly pushes them (transmitted, signed, wax-sealed, accidentally burned at the edges) to Vision. He tenses when he receives them - they are heavy, they are alien, they are new, she understands.

She waits for him to recoil as they settle inside him. She waits for him to retreat from the embrace he gives, waits for him to recede to his side of the bed. 

Vision lays in her arms for a while. He always seems to read things so cautiously, not wanting to miss a syllable. She spends much of her time watching him read anyway. 

He reads her feelings. Mental pen taken, underlining, notating, cherishing, accepting. 

He holds her tighter. She knows he can’t respond but, for some reason, she waits for one all the same.

She falls asleep like that.

Held.

Understood.

Chapter Text

From then on, it is rare that Wanda is not in his head. 

She crawled in that night, hug in the dark, exactly two words spoken, and never left. 

It felt like something just short of a headache for the first few days. He gives her credit, though - of all the headaches Vision’s had, it is a manageable one. A small victory on his part, feeling that a fire in his head is something he can handle in any capacity. Can’t handle eye contact, is completely fine with... whatever this is. 

It’s a pressure, like someone’s grasping the back of his neck to keep him from wandering off. Or, maybe, it’s… maybe it’s like someone’s stuffed a cloth into his ears, right up into his brain. Yes, that’s how it feels. Noticeably fuller.

Where he had previously doubted that he could think about Wanda more than he already did, he is proven wrong. There was plenty more room. 

There’s no vacancy for half of his own thoughts, now. He wonders if she’s done it on purpose. The cloth dampens half of his worry, half of his fear, makes room for her to sit. Where the worry would be, her voice takes its sound. 

Only half of the worry, of course. Half of the fear. The rest of it speaks.

(The fear: this isn’t healthy. She didn’t ask to enter. It is one thing to be invited into a home, to stay inside tangible walls. She could burn him from the inside if she wanted. He doesn’t know what she wants from him.)

(The worry: he… doesn’t… care. He doesn’t care. Beyond the ache, it feels nice. Why does it feel nice?)

In class, she prods in his mind, keeping him company. As he sleeps and she lies awake - even as she sleeps, she finds her way inside. Not always words communicated. Not even communication - she just stays. Stays and makes noise, tiny radio, tiny person. 

It doesn’t hurt as bad as you’d expect, two people in one brain. His mum always said he thinks enough for a village. If anything, this is a logical evolution. 

Not wise to use the word logical, here. 

The double doors remain locked. Wanda speaks to him, echoey behind his eyes, and he can’t reply back, not the way he wants to. He isn’t sure how to form a reply within his head - of course, he isn’t meant to know how. It’s not something he’s equipped to handle. He isn’t equipped to handle two consciousnesses, he doesn’t have power like she does. He supposes he is capable of whatever she wants him to be capable of. He only holds a miniscule portion of her and he fears that any more than this would tear him apart. 

He isn’t quite sure what it is that Wanda has. 

His browser history is… odd, now. All of his late nights are spent in bed, glowing girl fast asleep on his chest, as he scrolls through thousands of search results. He knows he said he wouldn’t define his reality but he just can’t help it. It’s how he works. He likes words, he likes putting things together. Having a purpose, something to do with the parts of his mind he can still occupy. 

There are many phrases to choose from as he searches for something particularly Wanda, phrases that seem to exclusively exist in theory (or in fairytales). 

There’s the standard telepathy, a broad term. A good starting point. There are scientific articles on it. Vision almost gets sucked into the technicalities of it, really, he loves theories on the mind, but Wanda mewls a bit in her sleep and digs her nails into his hip and he remembers exactly what he’s meant to be doing. 

She rolls over in his head somehow. He winces. He opens a new tab. 

It’s a tree of definitions. Vision has difficulty mapping it out without paper. It’s pitch black in the bedroom, his phone blinding him and Wanda bruising his skin, and so he has to make do. 

Telepathy is at the top. Then, for scientific disasters like Vision, there are the feasible scientific terms - extrasensory perception, a pair of words that, if you say them fast enough, would get anyone nodding in blind agreement. It’s simply a perception, though, which Wanda transcends. She perceives and then she alters. She looks and then she takes. He clicks away. 

Clairvoyance isn’t quite right, far too Saturday-television-esque to apply. Thought transference is somewhat accurate, but not enough, only one sliver of understanding where he’ll never be pleased without the whole picture. 

He never gets the answer he wants. He clicks his phone off and tosses it away in a fit. 

It’s so frustrating to have all that power in his head and yet lack access to it. It’s frustrating to have blurred himself with someone he barely knows. It’s frustrating to be happy about it.

Yes, he knows he’s unable to do what she does. He’s weak and he’s nervous and he’s too normal to ever consider doing what she does. 

… But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t try. 

Vision has tried and tried again to reply mentally but he can barely get past the first syllable, a cognitive stutter trapped in a vacuum and magnified to madness. Wanda laughs at him when he tries, small squeaky faucet in the corner of the couch. 

Have you ever heard the laugh of someone who taught themselves how to? 

It’s magnificent. 

Until he can game the system and fashion himself a bootleg form of telepathy, he simply speaks out loud. Wanda keeps him company as he walks to class, he replies to her in the stretch of the empty alley. Her voice echoes inside and his echoes outward. He doesn’t bother holding a phone to his ear, it doesn’t matter.

People talk to themselves all the time. Right?

Wanda’s often quiet during his lectures. She finds them boring, just as he knew she would. He can picture her tucked up in a ball on his sofa, her own throne on which he is only allowed two square feet of space, watching those old sitcoms with wide red eyes. When she really gets into an episode, she doesn’t speak until the credits roll. 

Vision sits in his normal uncomfortable chair, edge of the desk digging into his wrists. He takes notes, listens as intently as he can with a blanket stuffed in his skull. Wanda laughs at his handwriting sometimes. He gets it.

Class is dismissed. The hall is filled with the noise of rustling blazers and clicked pens. Wanda knows this to be the cue to speak, because she’s immediately reclaiming his attention. 

Boy, she says. 

Vision shakes his head a bit. Too many people around. 

Booooy.

He draws an X on the page in front of him. Right by her name. This is how he has to speak while in his classes. A litany of checks or an X, a yes or a no. Terribly juvenile. At the top of each notebook page - the date, the course, the chapter they’re covering, and Wanda. 

Hmph, she huffs. 

If he concentrates, he can picture her hair sticking up in the air. If he concentrates, he can picture her in one of the many empty theater chairs beside him. If he really concentrates, it’s as if he never left her in the first place.

Tens of students file out beside him, taking their sweet time. He doesn’t move to stand yet, folding his notebook and leaning back in his chair. He presses the heels of his hands into his eyes. His stomach rumbles and he sighs.

Empty again. 

“Yeah, I got it,” he mutters.

There are still bags left for you. 

“No, they’re all yours,” he whispers. Vision read somewhere that it takes between twenty-one and sixty-six days to form an eating habit. He’ll adjust to this new diet soon. “I’ll have tea when I get home. The bags are for you.”

Does it make you feel better?

Vision scoffs. “It will in sixty days.”

“Um...?”

That… that voice was outside of his head, this time.

Vision jumps, hands falling from his face, nearly knocking everything off of his portion of the table. He scrambles to keep everything in place. He looks up with wide eyes to find a girl standing in front of him, dark brown hair pulled back from her face. She holds a single notepad with both hands to her chest. The notepad is empty.

He realizes he likely looks insane. 

He sits up a bit straighter, “Sorry - sorry, I… uh. Long day.”

She smiles and offers one of those patient, not-freaked-out-but-almost-there laughs. Nice. 

“You take notes?” she nods to his things. He smooths a hand across the cover of his book self-consciously. 

“... Um? Yes?” He tilts his head. He was under the impression that everyone did. “Me, specifically?”

“You just look the type,” she says. It’s not meant in a bad way, he doesn’t think. 

Come home, boy. School is over.

Vision clears his throat, bracing his elbows on the table, leaning forward as if he can lean away from Wanda’s words,  “Er, I guess that’s a fair assessment.”

She shifts her grip on the pages she holds. She didn’t even bring a pen. “I usually don’t have to write things down but I… in all honesty, I have no idea what he was talking about today.” 

She laughs, one arm brought up to mess with her necklace. Vision recognizes the design from somewhere, some young-adult novel craze that his mother’s research team was really into a few years ago. He grimaces as he realizes that he should probably focus on her face. 

There’s no way to explain hey, sorry, just looking at your necklace. And, you know, not the… not your… uh… you know.

Vision is very bad at this. 

“Right, right,” Vision glances toward the now-blank projection screen. “Well, he certainly speaks fast. And… I mean, he’s notoriously convoluted so your confusion is completely warranted - er, I think he mentioned that all of the presentations are uploaded after the fact to the online course, so - “

“Could I see yours?” she asks, cutting him off. He rambles (lonely, nervous), grateful to be interrupted. “Notes? Maybe? I never really understand the slides on their own.”

“My… notes,” he repeats. He glances down at them. He scrunches his nose, “My handwriting’s atrocious, I feel the need to tell you.”

“That’s fine,” she smiles, bringing her shoulders to her ears. “I’ll probably understand it better than the content within the handwriting.”

“Ha,” Vision offers lamely. He flips the book open again, flicking through to the right page. He covers the Wanda Tally with his palm, sliding it across the desk to her. “Are you sure about that?”

The girl scans, finger pressed to her cheek in thought, and nods, “I understand perfectly.”

Vision is almost certain that she’s lying. It’s fine.

“Great. Er, I can… I think I can find your email through the mailing list. I’ll take a few pictures, send it to you?” He closes it with a thud, dragging it from the surface to slide in his bag, “And, if you need, I can type them. I… I think I’m the only person in the world who can read my writing, sometimes.”

I can read them, says the girl in his head. 

“Oh, I’m sure I can read them,” says the girl standing in front of him. 

Hmph. 

“Fantastic. I’ll… I’ll send both, then. Is that alright?” He runs a hand through his hair, highly uncomfortable with this exchange. He wishes she’d stop messing with the necklace. “If you get an email with an odd name at the top, that’s… er, that’ll be me.”

“Yes! Brilliant, thank you!” She goes to pat his arm or something but Vision knocks his pen off of the desk. She reroutes to pick it up. “Woah, there.”

“Sorry. I’m - I’m - ha, thanks,” he takes the pen that’s offered, “Lost half of my brain, recently.”

“Ha!” 

He wishes it was a joke.

Mm. No, he doesn’t.

Come home. 

The girl goes with another exchange of thanks. Her shoes click as she leaves. 

Vision slumps in his seat until his chin is on his chest. It’s so hard to talk to people. His hearing always goes muffled and his ears go bright red. Every word that he says is more stupid than the last. He really doesn’t know how to talk at all. 

Wanda’s back. Louder than before. 

Who was that?

“Um…” Vision looks around in the empty hall before shrugging, figuring it’s safe to talk to himself now. He pushes himself up again, closing his laptop, managing a deep breath, “Not sure. I think her name’s Emily.”

Emily-something, yeah. She’s one of the people that puts a picture on her student profile. Vision doesn’t think he has a single picture of himself. He always notices the people who do. He always envies them - well, half-envy and half-concern. What’s the point of decorating your student account? 

What did she want? Wanda asks.

“You know what she wanted, you were there,” he says, shoving everything into his bag. His fingers slip on the buckle as he closes it, “My notes.” 

I don’t like her. 

He scoffs. She lives in his head and she’s never been more transparent. Doesn’t she know how much he thinks about her? There’s no room in his head for anyone else. Literally. 

He jests anyway, “Not to worry, Wanda, I don’t think she’ll be moving in anytime soon.”

Vision doesn’t know, even with his absent standards and crippling self-esteem issues, if he’d ever allow himself to go out with someone who has a picture of themselves on their student profile. 

Wanda is silent for a long time. He feels the need to clarify that it was a joke but she already knows. She knows everything. 

… She is not allowed.

“Alright,” he stands, the seat slamming upward as it folds shut. He lugs his bag over his head with a groan, “No need to be jealous, Your Highness. My bed remains yours.”

Wanda is eerily silent on the walk home. 

Vision has not yet sent his funny handwriting to the Emily from his school. 

She stood at the door and waited for him, trying to remember what anger looked like and felt like on her own face. She couldn’t figure out precisely why she was angry with him but she was angry nonetheless. 

He pushed the door open. He didn’t seem to notice that she was angry. She tried to push the feeling to him but he was too fast - patting her head, hanging up his bag, and heating up her dinner. 

She got distracted. 

“How was your day today?” Vision asks through a yawn. He folds over the counter, pressing his forehead to the surface. He does this so often. She has no idea what the benefit is. “How many episodes did you get through?”

“I started with the part where the woman with the tall hair was moving to a new place,” she says, crossing her legs as Vision often does, pulling the blanket around her shoulders, “And I finished with the part where she was getting married.”

“Oooooh,” Vision lifts his head to look at her for a moment, “You got pretty far.”

Wanda beams. It felt like a long time she was watching, a longer night than usual. She blinks at the television and it flickers off. Vision doesn’t like it when she does that, he thinks she’ll break it, but the remote is too hard to use when she’s wrapped up like this. 

He folds over again with a groan. His arms come out in front of him, hanging over the edge. He looks like… what are they called… a scarecrow. Empty boy full of straw. His hair looks like straw. 

“God,” he mumbles. “I still have to type up all my notes… fuck.”

Wanda frowns. The machine beeps and he stands upright to fetch her food. 

His notes. 

That girl. 

Yes, anger. 

She stares at him as he crosses, hot plate in his fingers. It never feels as hot as he warns her it will be. She holds it in her lap as he falls into his place beside her, reaching out a long arm to fetch his computer from his bag. He sweeps again to grab his notebook. The notebook that has her name in it. 

She glares. There is no attention given to her. This is infuriating beyond all else. She stuffs her food into her mouth. 

He types and types. He doesn’t type her name. 

Wanda isn’t sure what to do with her frustration because she doesn’t know where it comes from. It’s the girl’s fault. The girl had normal eyes. She had a necklace that Vision liked.

Vision makes a noise in the back of his throat. He closes his laptop. He sets his notebook aside. 

Wanda is confused by this, as she wasn’t done glaring at him yet. 

“I can do it tomorrow,” he says. He slides down into the cushions until he’s the same height as her. Finally, he meets her eyes, “Wanda?”

“... Hm?” She hugs her blanket tighter. Is it really anger if it’s so easily taken away when he smiles at her? 

“Question.”

“Okay.”

“When you’re…” he lifts a lazy arm to point to his head, “... in here.”

She nods. Vision’s weight caves the cushions like a shallow ramp, making her slide down into his shoulder. “Yes.”

“Do you feel as tired as I do?” he asks. “As hungry?”

“Hungry?”

“Empty, I meant.”

Wanda shakes her head. “Not unless I want to.”

He seems relieved by that. He sinks lower. Wanda falls further into him. They overlap. 

When he let her stay in this home, forever, and in this loud mind of his, forever, she could not have anticipated how it would feel. The emotions are readily available, they float freely, but the senses do not. She has to reach for them, if she wants them. If she wants to see through his eyes, wants to see his funny writing or the normal girl, wants to see his hands mess with his pen. If she wants to hear the muffled sounds of the city or the shuffle of his footsteps as he walks alone. If she wants to feel his heartbeat again. 

She hadn’t thought to sense his Empty. His Tired. She has known they were there, little labels on filing cabinets or little lights that flash when he feels them. She knows that he is always empty and he is always tired but she cannot know what exactly that means. She knows the words. She has felt tired before. But everything Vision feels seems so often to be amplified, tall and delicate radio tower.

“I just want this to be a good place,” he sighs. “For you.”

It is, she sends him. 

A laugh that he doesn’t mean. “You don’t have to say that.”

Wanda studies him. His eyelashes are blond. Invisible. His eyes are closed and she knows very well the precise shade of blue that lies beneath them.

She reaches out and presses the pad of her finger to his eye. He makes a funny noise but doesn’t open them. 

Wanda reaches for his Tired and Empty as she drops her touch away.

She sucks in a breath when they come to her, as she pulls them out to view. 

It’s pain. It is a different pain than she has ever felt - nothing like the burn of a star or the stab of a loss. It does not happen immediately. This is something that builds within a person, builds and builds until it becomes normalcy. Uniformity. Hurt that is accustomed to. Tolerated. 

For someone who has never seen the flame of the glow, this must be incredibly painful. 

Wanda holds her hand to his forehead. He makes a face, opening an eye.

She tries to heal him but it isn’t a wound to mend. There are no broken pieces that she can reassemble. It is simply everything. 

Even as she knows she can’t help him, she holds her hand there. Both of his eyes open and he smiles in that funny way that means Wanda, what are you doing? or, Wanda, you’re already inside my head, what else could you want? or simply just, Wanda.

He has her name in his notebook. He wears her name in a smile. 

“You need to make tea,” she says quietly. She drops her hand to poke at his stomach. He squirms away. “You said you would.”

He pushes her hand away as she pokes him again. “I know, I know. Would you like your own or are we sharing again?”

“My own.” The cushion returns to its normal shape as he stands. 

“Cinnamon, right?”

She turns, knees to her chest, blanket falling from around her, “Yes. It’s my favorite.”

He is no longer thinking about the girl. 

Wanda watches him as he turns the dials on the stove. He is getting more comfortable in the kitchen. Apparently, he hadn’t used it much before she came to stay. Vision’s eyes go wide as he almost drops a mug. 

She laughs. He sends her a look. She laughs anyway. 

Vision doesn’t talk for a long time. He just clanks around, metal spoon in ceramic mug, metal spoon in sugar bowl. Wanda listens to his head as he goes. It’s quiet for the most part, which she likes. He is calm. He often is when he makes tea, dinner that he sips and often doesn’t finish. 

A few memories begin to develop as he leans on the counter. They hum when they flicker on like an old machine whose switch was just engaged for the first time in years. They are older ones, ones he hasn’t thought of in a while. 

Wanda wishes he was facing her so she could see what he looks like as he remembers. 

A house full of windows. The sun was warm, there. Blue carpet on stairs. One small bedroom with a bed tucked against the wall, stars on the bedspread. One larger bedroom with a bed in the center of the wall, heavy wooden headboard, the sheets were grey - warm grey. It seems like a home that would fit happiness well. 

Vision pushes himself up from the counter. Wanda perks up, ready to see the smile and his bright teeth, but… he’s frowning. He frowns as he picks up the kettle, as he shifts it on the burner, as his hands are restless.

Had she misunderstood?

She looks again. 

He’s thinking about the outside of the house now. Long neighborhood street, green grass lined with clean white sidewalks. There’s a blue car, there, and two people. There are bags at their feet. The car is running. 

The woman is thin. Tall, but not taller than the boy. She leans up to flatten his wild blond hair before she recedes to tuck her own behind her ear. Her hair is black. She wears yellow. The boy wears red. She pulls him into her arms. 

They hug in that narrow driveway for a long time. Wanda tilts her head at the sight. Her bare feet hit the rough pavement and she walks over to see them clearer. They’re speaking, muddled dialogue in a memory. Something about eating, something about Christmas. Something about you’ll do so wonderfully. Something about I don’t know if I can do this.

It isn’t a happy hug. Wanda has never seen an unhappy hug. 

The boy steps away. He laughs as his tears are wiped away by manicured hands. He disappears into the back of the car, his bags in his lap, and he watches out the back window as it drives away. 

Wanda recognizes the woman, she thinks. The woman that held the little boy in the dream Vision gave her once. It takes a moment to understand, to step away, to return to the thoughts that occur now and not so long ago. 

Vision seems to miss her, the woman. A mother. His mother. His family from the house with the windows. How long has it been since they hugged? Since he left in the car?

Vision pulls at his hair. Wanda watches him sway as he waits for his dinner to be finished. She waits for him to say something. He doesn’t. Simply tangles his hands on his head and sways. 

She can help. She helped before. 

She takes the thoughts, the seconds of his voice that repeat over and over. She lifts them and presses them outward, searches for the vaguest consciousness that looks like the woman with black hair. She’s so far away. 

Vision curses and knocks a mug from the counter as his phone rings. Wanda lifts it up to its place. She doesn’t lift a hand to do so. 

“Thanks,” he mutters, eyes wide, clicking the burner off and fast-walking over to the table to silence the screeching device. “Christ. Thing gives me a headache.”

Wanda observes. She feels a bit excited. Vision’s memories are beautiful. His mother is beautiful. 

He flips the phone in his hand and stares at the screen. He seems surprised. He lifts it to his ear, “Uh… Mum? It can’t have been a month already.”

She tugs the blankets over her legs, watching as he wanders through the living room. It’s difficult to keep her face in a normal expression when she’s excited like this. 

“What do you mean it happened again?” he says. He settles by the stove, pouring the water, eyebrows knitted close together. Vision listens intently before he freezes. He glances over at Wanda. She smiles and waves at him. “... A voice in your head that sounded like me, you say.”

Wanda smiles brighter. Pride.

She receives a blank look in response. For a concerning period of time. There must be something said because Vision stutters and rubs his eye with his free hand, “S-s-sorry, yeah, that’s - that’s definitely… er, odd.”

Wanda can feel how much better he is as he speaks. He acts inconvenienced as he makes their tea, phone pinned between his face and his shoulder. He grumbles and makes faces. 

“Yes,” he says grumpily, pinching the bridge of his nose, “I’m eating. I’m fine. It’s fine.”

Even through the display, Wanda can register thankfulness. She can register something warm. 

Vision presses a mug of tea into Wanda’s palms before he’s wandering off again, blabbing on about how wonderful he’s doing as if he’s confused why anyone would ask. 

He can’t seem to sit still while on the phone. Even after he’s made the tea, he stands and wanders in circles in the kitchen. The hallway sees about fifteen trips. 

“Yes,” he mutters, “I’m eating. I’m fine. It’s fine.”

She listens intently to his side of the conversation. He says a lot of yeses. He says a lot of important, stern no and not right nows. He asks about the girls, which makes Wanda frown, and he fights a smile as he listens to the response. It isn’t a smile he wears when he speaks to Wanda, though, so she doesn’t feel the anger. 

It’s so… what is his word… fascinating. She reaches for the way he feels as he speaks and it… it makes no sense. Happiness and bitterness. He is solemn but he smiles. 

As he talks, as she tries to listen, she understands less and less. A different language. Vision sounds different when he speaks it, a different curve to his voice, a different placement. It’s almost like a song. He wraps an arm around himself as he leans on the wall, his back to the room, forehead to the barrier. He looks as though he’s put himself in time out.

Wanda didn’t know this about him. She hadn’t seen it in his head before. She thought she knew everything, she should. All those labels and lights she hadn’t tried to view before. She must need to keep trying. She must look closer. 

She used to speak a language, a fun language. She can’t remember it now. She remembers that it fit better in her voice than English does. She remembers whispering to Pietro, she remembers that there were many sh and tk sounds, she remembers how they echoed off the walls. It wasn’t quite a song like this. 

It was more of a… hm. How to describe. 

The language she lost was… very similar… to… the way she walks down the stairs. It hopped. It slid down the rails and landed with a thud on the floor, it ran back up, and it jumped back down. A child on a playground, her old language, or a plastic cup dropped from a counter. 

The boy stutters a bit. Wanda can hear a small, tinny laugh ringing through the speakers. 

“O-obviously I’m rusty! I haven’t spoken it in two years!” Vision cries, face bright red as he leans on the wall, “Don’t - ! I haven’t abandoned it.”

Wanda laughs. He looks over at her and frowns, turning his back to her again as if she won’t be able to hear him that way. She does.

“Fine. Fine, yes, I’ll… I’ll… practice.” The grimace is audible without the visual. “Yes. Yes, Mum, I said - yes.”

He’s so grumpy sometimes. Wanda drinks her tea. Vision’s will be cold soon. 

Vision knocks his head into the wall a few times. She frowns at the action. 

“Academics are fine, it’s just… you know. I’ve only ever been good at the word part.” A long pause. He takes a deep breath. “Yes, I did say I made friends.” He exhales. His forehead thuds against the wall again. “Yes. Many friends.”

Wanda’s tea is gone in seconds. The mug hovers over to its place on the table. She unfolds her legs to rest them on the edge, right next to it, looking at the back of the boy’s neck. His hair is still unkempt from sleep. She doesn’t know if she’s ever seen it brushed. Little light curls, little spikey bits. It likely wouldn’t truly look like Vision if he was put-together. 

“Mhm. I’ve got a whole party planned. All my friends will be there,” he brings a hand up to his neck. She thrills as he combs the curls with his fingers and they don’t budge. “Most people my age just ask for money, you realize. They don’t even want a party, they just - yes, I know it’s important, but I…” 

She’s beginning to grow bored of this. She had wanted Vision’s spirits to lift but it seems he’s unhappy enough to give himself a bruise on the face. There is the impulse to grab a pillow and throw it at his back to get him to stop. He missed his mother, so why is he still so sad when they speak?

“Of… of course I had one last year. Lots of… friends a-and presents. Nothing too extravagant. I’m… I’m… I-I’m really doing well, you needn’t worry.” 

This is bizarre. Wanda feels as though she’s looking at a map of his thoughts scrawled on a piece of paper. He thinks one thing and he says the opposite. No friends in the brain becomes many friends in his voice. This party he’s describing never occurred, a blank place where a memory would be. 

“Once again,” he laughs, “I’m not dabbling in anything. Unless you consider… er, friendship to be a vice.”

Such an inconsistent boy. Every time she thinks she has a grasp on what she expects to be a relatively simple mind, he accidentally opens another door. 

Vision listens for a long time. He sinks more and more into himself.

“It’s alright, Mum, really. I understood why.” He clears his throat, “I don’t - I d-don’t - I should probably… get… going.”

The phone call is ended, quiet beep. Wanda sits up straighter, ready for the gratitude that is certain to flow her way. 

The boy turns, phone limp in hand, and slumps against the wall. 

He lifts his head to look at her. She waits. 

“Why did you do that?” he asks. 

That’s not what she wanted. “Do what?”

“Tell her that I missed her.”

“… Because you missed her.”

“You… you can’t do that,” he says. Wanda can tell how much better he’s feeling and yet he still scolds her for giving him happiness. “She’s… she’s a scientist, Wanda, she knows when something’s more than just a thought. The last thing she needs is to think she has psychosis.”

Scientist? 

“You didn’t like it?” she asks. She doesn’t want to feel hurt by his words. It doesn’t work. She’s still a bit raw about the girl with the necklace.

Vision walks in a small circle, gathering his words. His phone is slipped into his pocket. Then, his hands.

“Wanda,” he says. It sounds like a plea.

“Say thank you,” she interrupts him before this can carry on any longer. “I did something for you. I gave you what you wanted.”

He sighs his head to his chest. “Right, yes. Thank you, Wanda.”

“Are you not thankful?” she murmurs. 

“I am. I am, I’m… there’s… A lot is going on right now that I’m having to balance. And I miss my mother, yes, but I’m…” A breath sucked between his teeth. “She asks questions. About things. And I have to tell her that… that I’m…”

“... Having a party with many friends?’

“Precisely,” he taps the side of his head, “Brilliant. Yes. I tell her that I have friends and that they care very much about me and are going to celebrate my birthday and... that I am healthy and… it’s, ha, it’s just a hassle, you know. So. Please, try to refrain. But thank you.”

Wanda is vaguely familiar with the concept of a birthday. She finds the date easily in his thoughts but she isn’t sure what today is. She struggles with keeping up with the days. She often doesn’t. 

“Okay,” she agrees. “Rude not to thank someone.”

“I’m sorry,” he closes his eyes. “I’m sorry, Wanda.”

Vision is complicated. He cannot seem to have happiness without a counterbalance.

“I want to take a shower,” she tugs her sleeves down. “Please.”

Vision starts the water for her. He makes sure it isn’t too hot. He knows that it wouldn’t matter but he does it anyway. 

Is Vision bitter that Wanda had to telepathically convince his mum that she missed him in order for her to call? Two times? 

Is he allowed to be bitter even though he never called her first? 

He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know on either front.

Wanda is napping. A good Sunday nap. He said he’d join her soon (as per her orders, constantly requiring his presence for all the less flattering reasons) but he also hadn’t anticipated just how many of his things he’s willing to give away. 

He has many more things than he even remembered bringing. 

The living room floor is scattered with cardboard boxes. A pixel-esque semi circle around his bare feet, keeping him contained to one area until he’s finished. He’s about five boxes into what’s clearly at least going to be a twenty-box effort. Best case scenario, at a hundred pounds per box, that should be… that should be alright for a while. That should work for a few weeks at the least. 

He empties out his bookshelves, save for a few that he can’t allow himself to part with. Old clothes that fit neither him nor Wanda, the comics he had brought with him to London in order to have something in common with the students in his classes. (He had a very movie-based understanding of what university was like, back then. No one in his lecture halls tends to strike up conversations about Psylocke. Honestly, he isn't sure what he expected. No one in Seoul wanted to talk about Psylocke either. Vision cherishes her.)

He has to sneak silently into the bedroom to lift the heavy box of fabric without waking the snoozing bonfire buried in the blankets. It’s a bit like saving a princess from the dragon’s keep. Except the princess is a box of old clothes and the dragon really likes soft blankets. 

It does begin to look quite empty, once he steps back into the room. He sighs and sets the box by his feet. 

There’s barely a moment of consideration given to this. That maybe it isn’t worth it, that maybe Wanda doesn’t understand how much he’d give for her, that he’ll sell everything he owns and he’ll wake up the next day and she’ll be gone. If he thinks too long about it, he’ll curl up into a ball. 

This is the issue with this one-sided mental connection. She knows how pathetic he is at all times. He can’t tell if his efforts are at all valuable. 

Vision stands at the bookshelves. He lifts a couple of his old action figures, rotating them in his hands. People often like old memorabilia, they pay more for the things that hold sentiment. He brought these with him from Seoul. They were in his childhood bedroom. He named them after influential women in history. He has a G. I. Joe named Beatrix Potter.

He brushes a thumb over their little faces before glancing toward the box they’ll go into. He opens his hand - they tumble toward the void. 

It is necessary. Leave an old home behind to make a new one for Wanda. 

He waits for the clatter of plastic in a paper basin. It doesn’t come. There’s a silence where they’d hit the ground - and, then, a very familiar hum. 

They buzz red and float toward the ceiling. He looks over to the doorway to find Wanda standing there, her eyes wide and hair tangled from tossing around in an empty bed.

“Those are yours,” she says, aghast, one arm in the air where she keeps the figures afloat. 

“Wanda,” he groans as he leans up onto his tiptoes, grabbing them down. “It’s fine. I haven’t looked at these in years.”

“They’re yours.” She steps inside, wringing them from his grip. He simply allows her to. She cradles them in her palms, looking around at all the boxes, lost to the will of a very powerful fret. “What are you doing?”

“Making money,” he says, sweeping the figures from her fingers and letting them fall into their box. “You do want to eat, don’t you?”

She squints at him like he’s speaking nonsense. “I don’t want to eat money.”

Vision laughs. Once, a bit of a bark. Embarrassing. He clears his throat, “Money buys food.” He tosses empty picture frames into a nearly-full box, “And I’m running low on money.”

“So get more.”

He gestures to the boxes. She shakes her head. He nods. She shakes her head again. He nods again. Silent argument. He wonders what Wanda sounds like when she yells. If she even would. 

“It’s nothing to worry about,” he assures her. That doesn’t work. “It’s… listen, there’s nothing else I can do. Okay? It’s either this or we starve.”

Wanda squints at him. “Starve?”

“... Starve. Go without eating. Until we die.”

She scoffs. “You don’t eat.”

Vision pinches the bridge of his nose. She keeps forgetting that he does, in fact, need food. Eventually. If he had money, he’d eat more of it. He’s reminded her several times. “Sure. Yeah. But you do. So.”

Wanda makes a miserable noise. She dips her hands into the boxes, holding the figures up again. “Not your little men.”

“Wanda - “

“Please.”

He sighs. He nods toward the shelves. Wanda poses them the way they were before, now surrounded by an empty stage where all of his old friends had been. The girl rocks back on her heels when she’s finished, eyeing her handiwork, clearly feeling a little better. 

She turns to him as if to say, silently, see, isn’t that better? Her eyes are so bright. It’s as if he’s in a forest at night time with a torch and she’s hiding somewhere in the woods, irises catching the beam of the glow and handing it right back to him. Just full circles of red, uninterrupted by shadows or pupils or anything at all.

Vision likes her eyes. 

He blinks at himself. 

That wasn’t necessary.

“Money buys food,” Wanda repeats curiously. 

“And clothes,” he averts his attention to the parcels that are ready to go. He needs to put them up for sale before he changes his mind. “And the place we live. And quite literally everything else.”

Vision kneels on the ground, beginning to close some of the boxes. He folds them in that beautiful four-flap way, no tape required. It relieves a bit of his stress. There is no way for him to relieve his stress these days. Nice to sit on the ground and fold some boxes. Nice to sit on the ground.

There’s a quiet hum in front of him. The cardboard catches a momentary pulse of red. He finishes his fold, brushing his hand across the seam, before glancing up. 

He freezes. 

Wanda stands there, palms cupped together. Overflowing with paper money. 

Vision pinches the inside of his wrist. Nope. Still there. 

“... W-Wanda?” he hears himself ask, a whisper. “What…? Where…? How…?”

“Here,” she offers it to him. A few pounds flutter to the ground. Vision traces their path with his eyes. “Now you can keep your men.”

“Where… Wanda. Wanda. W-Wanda - “

“Now you can keep your men,” she repeats, raising her hands. 

He stumbles to his feet. He’s afraid to even touch them. Holy shit. “Where the fuck did you get these?”

“Dunno.” She offers them, arms outstretched. He shakes his head as best he can manage. “You said - “

“I know what I said,” he breathes. His eyes are so wide that they ache. “Honestly. Seriously. S-seriously. Tell me where you got these.”

“Is this not money?”

“It is. It is. But it’s… it’s a lot.” He runs his fingers through his hair, “Wanda, I c-c-can’t take this.”

She steps closer. He backs away as if she holds a gun. “Boy, you said you need it.”

“Yes, I do. We do, but - I - I - this - you can’t just - oh, fuck.” He holds his own face in his hands, counting his breaths. Five things he can see doesn’t help when one of the five things is the fucking problem. “Is… did you… did you take this from a person?”

She shrugs. Another few notes fall to their feet. 

“Did you make them?” He feels like an insane man. He is an insane man. “Because that - t-that - t-t-t-that could have irredeemable effects on the economy - “

She smiles, curious, “What’s the economy?”

Vision sinks to his knees, weary. Gravity is heavy. He’s tired. He’s hungry. Nothing is easy. “Put it back. Put it all back where you found it, please.”

“No.” 

“Wanda.”

“No.”

God, it’s so tempting to just take this and run. Wanda holds more than his entire life savings in her hands, he doesn’t even need to count to know this to be a fact. And, frankly, he does like his action figures. He takes them for granted. 

“See?”  Wanda asks. She pushes the money toward him and he leans away. “You are dramatic. I am helping.”

“Yes,” he says, accompanied by a hysterical laugh because he thinks something in his brain might have snapped, “but you don’t know what you’re helping me with.”

“It doesn’t matter. You are worrying. I’m helping.”

Vision shakes his head. He lifts a box into his hands and walks away on his knees, sliding it to rest against the door. He thinks he can do it again, thinks he can move the boxes, but suddenly all of his strength is gone. He just sits in front of the door on his knees, staring at the box that holds his empty picture frames. 

“You are… ridiculous,” he whispers. He isn’t sure if it’s to himself or to Wanda. 

He turns to see her standing there, still holding it, waiting for a cue as to where to put it. The red of her eyes is reflected in the small holographic bit of the banknotes. God save the Queen.

“Fuck.” He will not hyperventilate. He will not hyperventilate. He will not cry. “Fuck. Okay. Fuck.” 

“Boy,” she reprimands him. She holds more money than Vision’s entire life would cost and she has no clue where she got it from. Fuck the power - the audacity she has is frankly aspirational. 

“Just… just…” He waves a hand blindly, needing to not be in the same room as the money, or the girl who got it here, for a second. “Put it… put it somewhere, y-you don’t have to hold it.”

Wanda sparkles. She runs down the hallway with light footsteps, paper pounds floating in the air around her.

Vision sits back on his heels before bowing forward, forehead to the ground, palms on either side of his head, taking deep breaths. He slides his hands back to interlock behind his back, bent legs parting a bit, just enough so that he can fit his head between his knees. 

There’s a cold hand rubbing his back, ghosting over the ridges of his spine, and his lungs are absolutely useless. 

“Hello,” Wanda says gently. He would laugh if he was capable of it. 

“You didn’t… d-didn’t have to do that,” he whispers, lips brushing the floor. “W-Wanda, I - you - you don’t - “

“Shhhh.” There are fingers in his hair. Hesitant at first. For some reason, Wanda just curls the hair at the nape of his neck around her index finger. “I am looking closer at your feelings. Paying more attention.”

“Mhm?” he wrenches his eyes closed. God, this is stupid. 

“Your stress is very strong,” she says, “Like a weapon.”

“Thanks,” Vision says. He’s miserable. It sounds like someone took a cheese grater to his vocal chords. All this over money that he so badly needs but can’t allow himself to take. 

She pats his head. It’s sort of funny, like he’s a dog, but it’s quite nice in the moment. Vision misses being cared for. He missed backrubs when he was sad.

His head is sore from pulling at his hair. Both he and Wanda hiss at the same time when she cards her fingers through his hair. 

“Oh, boy,” she sounds wistful, concerned, different, “I don’t know where to start, when I feel what you do.”

“It’s a lot,” he sniffs. There’s a little puddle on the ground between his eyes. He sighs, swiping his sleeve across it and wiping at his face before he sits up. It’s hard to be so emotional all the time. It’s hard. “It may be easier to not feel what I do. You said you didn’t have to.”

“I want to,” she says. For some reason, that’s absolutely devastating to hear. Wanda pokes the space between his eyebrows. “I want to understand how it works.” 

“Well, if you figure it out,” he mumbles, “please explain it to me.”

Whatever time Wanda was spending in his mind before, she doubles. 

Privacy doesn’t exist, apparently, in the quest for understanding. Vision has to drag Wanda by the hand and point to the bathroom door, make a copy paper sign to tell her that, once he enters, the connection goes off. No exceptions. 

(He had been mid-shower a few days ago, forehead pressed to the cool wall, sulking and stressing and half-crying as one does in the shower. Wanda’s voice was clear as a bell in his mind, nearly made him pass out. He has no idea what she has seen of him. He doesn’t want to know.)

Where the internet hadn’t assisted in his research of Wanda’s abilities, this certainly does. 

Everything has an indication.

When she takes over his senses, watching or hearing, there’s a flicker for a half second in whatever place she’s occupying. Everything goes dark for the smallest moment, like a blink, or there’s white noise for a second. It’s started to wear off a bit, though, not as drastic of a change. Maybe it just takes his body a while to get used to it. He’s weak, afterall. Perhaps it’s a delayed reaction. This time next week, he’ll be completely fine. 

When she’s feeling his emotions - she calls it reaching for them - it’s almost as if the feeling goes away for a moment. Taken away, enough time to blink and take a breath, and it’s crashing down again. 

When she’s looking through his thoughts, his words, his anything, it’s just like always. Blanket for brains.

He’s in the kitchen when she crawls back in after several minutes worth of solitude as she had been distracted by the television. He stumbles a bit. He doesn’t fall on his face often in his own home. Of course Wanda will be the one to change this - she has been quite the catalyst for change. The only catalyst, as it turns out.

Vision looks over at the couch. Wanda sits upright, legs crossed, shoulder to the back cushions of the sofa as she stares at him. 

It’s as if he can feel her hands in his hair. It’s as if he can feel her individually taking his thoughts into her hands. He can’t tell if she’s trying to hide it or not. 

“Wanda,” Vision says. 

“Mm.”

“You know I can feel you.”

“Mhm.”

He crosses his arms over his chest, leaning on the counter, “Anything you ask, I’ll try to tell you. You don’t have to search for it, I can say it.”

“I am not searching,” she replies easily. 

“Then…” he gestures to himself, “what are you doing?”

“I like it, your head.” 

That he hadn’t expected. He thought this was just an experiment. He decidedly doesn’t want to be flattered. He decidedly doesn’t want to focus on how content she is as she says it. 

“You… like it?”

“It is fun to sit inside.” She leans back, closing her eyes, “You are different than you think you are.”

It is an objectively terrifying concept and yet it makes him relax. He likes the scary sentiments exclusively when she says them. “Yeah?”

“You speak so much, so fast,” she says, smiling at something she seems to find in his thoughts, “But you never say what you are thinking.”

Vision can feel it, the vaguest pressure on the back of his neck. Grasping, keeping him still. He leans back into the phantom hand involuntarily. “W-what… uh. So. What am I thinking?”

“It is not something to be spoken.”

Absolutely terrifying. (He’ll think about that for days.)

He scoffs, pushes himself to stand. If they’re just going to talk in circles, it does no use to keep expecting some sort of explanation. He’s looked for explanations, they often end up as somewhat of a cycle in their own right. It’s his own mind, afterall. 

Surely he knows what he’s thinking. Whatever she could tell him, he’d know. 

He is incorrect. 

She does something. He doesn’t know what. He doesn’t know how. There’s the phantom grip on his neck and then there’s something else, new, stronger.

It’s like something is… dislodged, in his mind. A wound ripped open or a dam broken or a cork pulled from a bottle stored upside down. Rush of pent-up noise. Purposefully ignored noise.

It seems that she was right that whatever this is shouldn’t be spoken - it is something tactile. It is a temperature or a texture, it is an emotion or a pain, but she drags it out from its hiding place and settles it right in front of him. 

His legs go weak. 

A memory. Several of them, all connected by a thin, red thread. They all feel warm, terribly loud, overlapping and speaking over each other. Pent-up noise that should have been kept hidden. 

His mind has no definition for this, no true history to compare, so it tries to come up with an alternate picture. 

It’s a classmate from secondary school. Vision had been so nervous to hold his hand. He was obsessed, first kiss behind the metal stands on the football pitch, a bit of a mess of a memory blurred by conscious efforts to forget. He was picked up on the Monday, special and loved for a week, and was dropped on the next Sunday. 

Then, beyond that, it’s the bus in Seoul, it’s the girl with the red backpack that he never spoke to but always imagined sitting next to, asking about the pins on her bag, what the different flags meant. She changed routes. Someone else took her place. They had a yellow bag. Vision complimented it. She had smiled. He was red for the rest of the day.

But it’s not that. It’s more than that - more than unspoken conversations or week-long allowances of care. This isn’t secondary school. This is more than a bus ride or a hand-hold hidden underneath the flap of a jacket. More than a kiss, metal structure digging into his back, inexperienced and thrilled to be involved, more than the feeling he felt after he was told that, perhaps, it would be a good thing to stay apart. 

Held up to the light of those memories, this piece of himself that Wanda holds between her fingers is worse. 

It’s… oh, fuck.

It’s the first time he saw Wanda’s smile. The way the room was dark but he could see it all the same. It’s the first time she crawled into his bed while he was in it, the way she had grinned at a shared memory of the sun. Fuck. It’s her laugh - he can hear it now, if he concentrates, it’s spectacular. It’s the red in her hands and the red of her eyes. It’s her accent and it’s the way she’s begun to take his hands when she wants them, it’s the feeling of her hands on his face, it’s the sight of her in his sweaters and it’s the fact that she asks to wear them, and it’s… it’s… it’s...

Wanda is there with him, grinning to herself with her eyes closed as she basks in the heat of it. 

Vision grasps at the countertop to keep himself standing. 

This isn’t good. 

He knows what this is. 

No, it isn’t something to be spoken - but that isn’t to say that it is impossible to say. 

There are words. Three of them. Very specific. 

“Wanda,” he chokes, pressing his fingers to his temples, eyes screwed shut. “Enough. Please.”

“It is a good thing,” she tells him, still present, still holding his consciousness by the collar. Her nails are sharp as they dig into the memories that he hid because he’d never have anything like them again. He can’t have this. “It feels nice.”

Vision takes the three words and he balls them up, throwing them as far from her presence in his head as he possibly can. They sink to the bottom. But she can find them, can’t she? If she looks for them. 

In truth, she has already found them. She holds them like a delicate dish, but she holds them over a ledge, and she doesn’t know how delicate they are and she’d likely be fascinated to hear the sound they make when they hit the ground hundreds of feet below.

“Out,” he says softly. “Please, get out of my head.”

It is a good thing. A good feeling. It is less the genre of the thing and more the person who it pertains to. It is less the fact that he feels what he feels, less the fact that he hadn’t realized it, and more that it is incredibly wrong to feel this way. 

Wanda only needs him for one thing, and this is not it.

Wanda recedes. He can breathe again. Her eyebrows are drawn together, eyes open and illuminated as she stares at him, waiting for an explanation.

His head goes quiet and he nods shakily in her direction. His legs are still made of jelly. “Thank you.”

“Are you alright?” she asks. 

“Yes. Fine. Um. I… I need to… take a shower.” He rakes his nails through his hair, breathless. “I… I need to… um…”

She straightens her posture. Her face falls. He knows what she’s thinking. 

“It’s not that. You’re fine,” he holds out an arm. To comfort her or to keep her at a distance, he isn’t sure. “Feel free to root around in there all you like, just… tomorrow. Okay? I need to be alone in here, now.”

“Okay,” she says. She settles back into the sofa cushions. “I will see you when you come back.”

Little known fact about Vision: he likes to run away. 

Run away from Seoul, run away from busy streets. Run away from his mother when he realizes he isn’t as good at being alone as he thought, run away from home a few times as a kid when he gets bad marks on his schoolwork. 

Little known fact about Vision: until Wanda, he was never really ever the oldest person in the room. If he ran away, he’d be caught and lugged over a shoulder (metaphorical or otherwise) and he’d be held accountable. He’d be scolded or he’d be hugged, he’d be tutored or he’d teach himself not to make the same mistakes. 

Wanda is younger than he is. She has gone through something that he could never imagine. He has to be the one to catch her, now. He can’t run away. 

He falls into the bathroom door. He rips at his clothes and he kicks them into a pile and he steps into the water and he… he just…

He should have known it would happen. Two years spent alone in this place, all of his adult life spent in an empty bed. Wanda has changed everything already, what’s one more alteration? What’s one more feeling? 

Vision places his face right in the lee of the spray, jaw clenched. 

It is impossible to hold her every night and not fall in love with her. 

It seems she doesn’t know what love feels like. She held it between her fingertips right in front of their eyes and still couldn’t identify it. It felt nice, she said, and that was all.

There is the inclination to call this some sort of hero complex. But he hadn’t felt like this the first few nights, he hadn’t… he didn’t know what he was doing. Heroes have a plan, typically. They plan to fix an already present issue or they create one themselves. Where does he fit, here? 

She has escaped an impossible situation that she has yet to explain - she doesn’t have to explain. There is a canvas dress folded in his closet with numbers painted on it, the one dress she ever owned. She is here because it is the only possible safe place. She didn’t come here because she found him interesting, she came here because he brought her here. It was not a decision she made, it is one that she is acclimating to. 

Certainly, if there was another option, she’d prefer that. There are millions of people on the planet that could handle this better, that could keep her safe, that could provide more.

But there is no other option. So she will stay, and he will love her, and that is how it is. 

“Oh, Vision,” he says, resting his head against the wall. Sulking. Stressing. Half-crying. It is all he can do. He lets out a pitiful breath, knocking his head on the surface a few times for good measure, “Of all times to know what to do… this would certainly be it.”

The answer doesn’t come. Just him and the thrum of the spray that stings his back and flushes his skin. 

The joke of it all is that he misses Wanda in his head. How funny. It feels empty without her. 

He dries off, grumbling to himself. Water’s in his eyes and in his ears. He isn’t sure what he was trying to wash off but it’s definitely still here. The same clothes are placed on his body, like nothing happened at all. 

He stands and looks at himself in the mirror for a few minutes, just reacquainting himself with his situation. Eye contact is most difficult when it’s held with yourself. Just silent mantras that blend, mantras of being okay, that in an hour, you’ll forget what this feels like, that you can see the gold frame of the mirror, the broken lightbulb, you can see the wrinkles on your sweater and the water droplet on your nose, and you can see the bruise on your cheek from God knows when. 

He touches four different textures. He can’t bring himself to do any other steps, he can’t bring himself to focus on the fact that he can’t hear Wanda inside. He’s tired, he wants to lay down.

The door handle is covered in condensation when he grabs it. His fingers slip. 

Wanda is on the other side of the door. She’s sitting on the ground. In the basket that her legs form is a blanket, folded to the best of her ability (not well), and the bag of chocolate chips, their old friend. 

Vision has never in his life had a pre-cry migraine. First time for everything. 

She hops up to her feet. A few chips clatter to the floor. He’ll deal with them later. 

Vision holds himself together right up until the point Wanda reaches up and begins to wrap the blanket around his shoulders. He grasps it by his collarbone, fuzzy blue cape, takes a deep breath, and pulls her into a hug. 

She makes a small noise. She holds the small bag in both of her hands, unable to reciprocate, but she pushes her cheek against him hard enough to get the message across. 

“I am sorry…” she says into his shoulder. 

“No, no,” he says, resting his chin in her hair. This feels like the wrong way to go about this. She doesn’t know what happened, what he feels, why he’s acting like this. She rewards him all the same. He shouldn’t be rewarded. God. “You don’t need to be sorry. It’s my fault.”

“Your head isn’t mine to live inside.”

Vision laughs quietly. Clearly she has no idea. “It’s all yours, Wanda.”

They crawl into the same bed. Wanda’s legs fit between his. She’s cold but he’s burned himself up enough tonight. Her fingers dig into the same spot in his side that they always do, a templated and assigned fit. She turns the lamps off without moving. 

“What do you want to dream tonight?” he asks. 

She hums. She adjusts her head on his shoulder. Her cheekbone is sharp, it pierces him. How many bruises will he get just from holding her? He hates that he’s excited to keep a tally. 

He hates that this is the most comfortable he has ever been in his entire life and he hates that his brain tells him it is a wasted comfort. He hates that he always thought he never had any standards and yet, somehow, he has decided to tie his everything to the one person who he could never possibly be eclipsed. She is the thing that eclipses. 

“Mm,” she says. She has taken a liking to putting a hand on his chest, over his heart. It’s humorous. Perfect position to reach inside and rip it out. “You said you didn’t want me to hear tonight.”

“Eh,” he shrugs slightly, staring up at the ceiling. All those impulses he’s been having, the ones he didn’t understand, make a lot more sense now. A hand on a chest often begs a hand atop it. A head on a shoulder begs a kiss. If he stares at the ceiling, if he focuses on the molecules that swim in the dark, the impulses go away. “I changed my mind.”

She crawls inside. He sighs. 

“The field again,” she mumbles. She’ll be asleep before he can even conjure it. She falls asleep so quickly these days. “But let it have flowers.”

“Flowers,” he repeats, nodding shallowly. “That’ll be nice.”

Chapter Text

The first time Wanda protects him, it’s from a real threat. 

Class is as it always is. Emily thanks him for sending his notes. Wanda grumbles in his head the entire time. He keeps the exchange brief for both of their sakes. 

It's another Thursday, really. A Thursday on a Wednesday, overcast. Nothing has changed to their new routine, save for his fun realization. He goes to class and he comes home. The Wanda Tallies take up half of his notebook pages. He waits for everyone to file out, packs up his things, and leaves.

He ducks into his sacred alley system. Wanda immediately launches into a synopsis of what he’s missed on the newest series of her show. She’s very good at storytelling, even when it’s second-hand.

“And then what happened?” Vision asks, taking long steps between fresh rain puddles, arms out to his sides to keep from falling over. “What did she say?”

She said… she… she said…

“You don’t have to remember the exact words,” he assures her. He wobbles a bit, nearly diving face-first into the ground, and decides that he’s had enough puddle jumping for one night. “I won’t be able to watch the episodes fast enough to catch up, just give me the… er, summary.”

Oh. Summary. Long pause. She said no.

Vision doesn’t know why he’s so invested in a television program he isn’t even watching. He’s sure that Wanda’s left out plenty of details that bored her but, for some reason, Vision gasps. 

“She didn’t,” he says, scandalized, pausing mid-step before continuing on. “How ridiculous. I thought she wanted to go with him.”

I thought so too, Wanda says solemnly, but she has a job in the city. 

“Fuck her job in the city,” Vision mutters. 

Once again, there’s no telling why he cares. Wanda doesn’t even know the characters’ names. He’s only caught bits and pieces while he’s studied on the couch, Wanda transfixed, Wanda halfway in his lap, Wanda hitting his shoulder to tell him to pay attention when the credits roll. 

How was school?  asks the echoey girl. 

It’s a question he isn’t asked often. Nice to be checked in on. Nice to come home to someone. He’s been ignoring everything else - you know, the who he’s coming home to and the why he’s so happy to return. It’s nice when he doesn’t overthink it.

“Was fine,” he shrugs. His shoes are soaked. He’ll have to wrap them in towels. “It’s just school. Certainly not as exciting as television.”

I like school, she offers. I like television more. 

Vision stops in the alley. Four turns from his flat. Four turns from Wanda.

Television, she says. Half of his name. Or, all of it, hidden. Television, she says. His name in her voice, no matter if spoken on purpose, is just as thrilling as he’d hoped it’d be. 

He is a wimp. And a coward. 

“Nearly home,” he says quietly, adjusting his bag on his shoulder, “I still have some energy left in me. We can do something else before bed, if you want.” (He kicks the three words out of view as they latch to his leg.) “You know. Er. Watch another episode.” (The words play with my hair are swiftly punted across the concrete.) “Read a book.”

Mmmm, she thinks for a moment. I’m tired. 

“Okay!” he says, a bit too enthusiastic for his own good. “That’s good.” Less time to be awake, less time to be an idiot. “Well, I’ll be there in a few minutes, so. You can go ahead and tuck yourself in.”

Wanda laughs in his head, finding that to be absurd. No. 

Vision swings his arms at his sides as he walks. He takes his time, slows his pace, tries to get himself together. He tries to prepare himself to be jumped on, sharp woman clinging to his body as soon as he enters. He tries to prepare himself to let her go, not keep her close.

Wait, she says.

Vision freezes. She sounds serious. He needs to be more careful with these stupid thoughts. Immediately, he begins to explain. 

“U-um, I, Wanda, I - “

Silent. 

Vision listens. His mouth snaps shut. He wishes there was someone to talk about this, he really does. He wishes there was an outlet for all of these things he’s feeling. There is no casual conversation that will ever contain this life he has. 

Would it be redundant to use the money Wanda created/stole for him in order to get a therapist? Would that be enablement?

A few seconds pass, silence in his head. Vision has no idea what she looks like, what she's doing, and that’s frightening. He can usually picture her based on the noises she makes in his head, the sigh or the groan or the laugh. He has no idea if she’s on the couch, wrapped in blankets. If she’s standing on the cushions, arms outstretched - or, shit, if she’s frozen like she plans to do something. 

Her hair is likely standing up. Yeah. And her eyes are glowing. But that’s all he has. The silence encourages a blank image. 

“Wanda?” he whispers, heart in his throat. “This is getting to be a bit scary now, friend.”

Boy. Danger.

“... D-danger,” he repeats. 

There is a man around the corner. 

Ah. Wonderful.

The bomb under the table theory comes to mind. 

Of course it does. Always the scholar, always with the misorganized priorities. He wrote ten pages on it, once, the theory. He got great marks. He considers himself to be an expert. 

Imagine a bomb. 

Got it?

Good.

Imagine that this bomb is planted underneath a table, set to explode in five minutes, and no one knows it’s there. Not the people that crowd around it, not the audience that watches them. In this case, the crowd often does not fear the explosion. Because, to them, it doesn’t exist. 

If you tell them that there is a bomb underneath their table set to explode in five minutes, they will often become very, very afraid.

Vision is very, very afraid. 

“Ha,” he tries. “Funny.”

Not funny, boy, danger.

A serious Wanda is nothing to mess with. 

He hasn’t had to do his confident posture in a while. He attempts it again. Stand tall, flip his coat collar up, nod and look menacing. It was always easier when he didn’t know it was going to be needed. It was always easier when there wasn’t a voice in his head chanting danger, danger, danger. 

His shoe knocks a small segment of broken concrete as he shifts. 

He heard you. 

“Wanda, I’m - I-I’m quite literally begging you to stop,” he says, hands trembling as they fumble with his collar, “It’s fine. It’s fine.”

It has always been fine before. 

The building has a front door.

“It’s locked,” he says. 

Where are… She forgets the word for a moment. ...your keys?

“It’s a keycard entrance.”

Then…?

“I lost it my first week living here, the keycard,” he says, bending down to uncuff his trousers (for good measure). “It’s fine. I’ll just nod and I’ll - “

He is moving. 

“Christ,” Vision shakes his head, “It could just be someone like me. Or someone who needs money. In which case I will simply have to tell him that I do not have any.”

I gave you money. 

“Yes, but I’m not going to use it,” he whispers somewhat harshly.

Come home. Come home, now. 

Vision is very skilled at being in denial. There’s a rush of adrenaline coupled with the forced feeling that nothing is amiss. He takes confident steps forward - Wanda repeating the words boy and home between his ears - and rounds the corner. 

Hm. 

No, yes, this is danger. 

The shadows in the alleys are always out to the sides. They sit or they lean and his presence is merely an inconvenience and nothing more. They look up, he nods, and they look away. 

The man Wanda warned him about seems to be locked on him like someone with a mission. 

Boy, Wanda warns. He wishes she’d just use his name. Especially now, seconds from his death. 

Vision shouldn’t say anything. He should nod, now. 

“Hey,” he says. 

Fuck. 

There are a few options to choose from, from here. 

He could dig his wallet out of his pocket and scream and throw it and run in the other direction. He could walk forward and attempt to go around the shadow, definitely ending his life in the process. He could go around the front, like Wanda had half-suggested, bang on the front door (crying, screaming) until someone comes down to let him in.

The man takes a step. 

At some point, he has to stop making jokes about these things. There is a line in the sand where his vulnerability stops being funny, stops being something to be ignored, and begins to be seen as what it is. Serious. Serious Wanda, serious moment, serious thoughts. 

Vision wraps his fingers tight around the strap of his bag. Resigns himself to whatever is going to happen.

Wanda makes a noise in his head. At his resignation or the entire situation, he isn’t sure. 

It’s panic. 

If Wanda is panicking, it’s probably a bad sign.

There’s no time for him to try and talk his way out of (or, likely, further into) this situation. There’s no time to ask for privacy. 

It is fast. Wanda makes a noise. There’s a flash. Loud noise.

And that’s that. 

Vision thinks he’s been shot, he shuts his eyes and waits to fall backward. He suddenly feels warm, enveloped by heat. He’s read one or two articles on the moments following a gunshot, casual morbid curiosity. You get warm, you feel the pain, you fall in the direction that the bullet drags you.

He would continue to fear that he’s been shot, would wait for the pain and the fall, if it weren’t for the familiar hum that surrounds him. 

Vision slowly opens an eye. 

He immediately trips over his own feet, falling into the barrier of red that’s been placed in front of him. Around him. A small red bubble, protective dome. He braces his palms against it.

So funny that he stands here, wrapped inside this, and all he can think is: thank God. It is so bizarre that this, of all things, is familiar. 

“Wanda,” he says quietly. The barrier isn’t entirely opaque. He can vaguely see the lack of a man in front of him. He immediately worries. “W-w-w-w-wuh-Wa - “

Are you safe? Did I do it?

It’s a fifty-fifty chance that Vision is going to collapse into sobs or laughter. He has no idea. He’ll have to find out. Maybe Wanda can tell him. 

“Er, yes, you’ve done… something,” he drags his fingers across the red, it ripples like water, “T-though I can’t be certain exactly what.”

A moment passes. Vision’s breath is somewhat metallic as he pants in the small space, afraid and surprised and shocked and so fucking grateful. He continues to feel, to press and touch, making sure that he isn’t hallucinating something in some odd, mid-death limbo. 

Her voice is back. Quiet, a whisper, amazed. Wow. I did it.

Vision nods. He nods for a long time. “Yes. You did it, Wanda, thank you.” He lets out a shaky breath, “Thank you. God. Thanks.” He’s a little light-headed. “I-if you wouldn’t mind, perhaps you might… release me so I can… I can… come home.”

Oh, says Wanda, the savior. 

There’s a flicker before the light goes away, the warmth and the red, and he’s left alone in the alleyway. Just one turn from the stretch of street he met Wanda on. Just two turns from the home he shares with her. 

He runs. He sprints, much faster than he’s moved in a long time. His bag knocks against his back as he goes. He only falls once. His palms take the brunt of it, rough and rain-damp asphalt, but he doesn’t stop, sweeping himself back up and forward. 

He remembers the second time he ran away from home. Not the first time - the second time, when he knew what was waiting for him when he was inevitably taken back. The feeling in his chest and the look in his mother’s eyes and how glad he’d been to jump on his bed again. 

Vision is an idiot. Resigning himself and giving up when now, for the first time, he has something to lose.

Both his hands grasp the handle to the door of the building, both of his hands grasp both railings to propel himself upward. He’s fumbling with his door key before he’s even close enough to worry about it. His hair is in his face and his collar’s only half-popped at this point and he’s quite literally shouldering his way inside. 

Wanda is on the couch. It’s so strange to see her sitting there and not completely wrapped up in her blankets. He can picture it now, after the fact, small woman hopping up from her cocoon to help him and falling right back down when she was finished. 

Vision drops his bag on the ground. Wanda makes a noise, unhappy with that. 

He doesn’t know if he’ll ever be able to forget this. Wanda is looking at him, waiting for him to pick up his mess, waiting for him to tuck her in. Worried behind all of this, still panicked. 

He crumbles. He crosses the floor, kneels by the couch, and pulls her into a hug. She overlaps easily. It appears to be mutually beneficial.

“Thank you,” he says. The words are raw. His palms sting, sore from the fall, as they press to the soft fabric of Wanda’s sweater. “God. Thank you.”

Certainly he must be valuable. At least a little bit. Valuable enough to have been saved. He’ll take that. He doesn’t even care if it’s just the dreams she wanted to keep. He doesn’t care what it is that makes him important.

“I’ve never done that before,” she whispers. Her nose is pointy against his jaw. “I didn’t know if it would work.”

“Oh, it did,”  he says, and he’s definitely laughing now and he’s definitely not letting her go. “Fuck, Wanda, you’re amazing. You just… you...”

Wanda presses something into his head. A feeling she has. Something thankful. 

She shifts in the embrace, prolonging it, getting comfortable, ready to remain for years. “I told you to use the front door.”

“I know,” he says, still coming down from the high of a laugh, from the high of whatever this night has been, “I’m sorry.”

“What if it didn’t work - “

“I know - “

A hand on the back of his head. “What if you - “

“Just… shh.” He hugs her tighter, closing his eyes. “Not the time to argue.”

“Boy,” she says, displeased.

“You can yell at me tomorrow,” he offers. 

“I don’t yell.”

“Well. You can. If the spirit moves you.”

Wanda isn’t satisfied with that but she folds into him anyway. Vision sits there until his knees ache and the water in his shoes becomes unbearable. There’s a small inhale by his ear as she goes to inform him that his knees ache and there is water in his shoes, but he pats her back and leans away before she can do so. 

“Way ahead of you,” he says. His hands linger on her arms just as she lingers on him. “I’m going to get changed. And then we can lay down and pass out.”

Wanda yawns. It’s all the reply he needs. 

He grabs the sweatpants from the drawer by the heater, warm to the touch. He puts on a pair of socks, lame ones without stars. Wanda is already half-asleep by the time he’s finished, a puddle on the sofa. 

“I haven’t used it in a long time,” she says, eyes sliding closed. “So much of it, so quickly.”

“I’m sorry that I made you do that,” he attempts. 

“No.” Her try at a scold is too weak to wound. “You made me do nothing. You did nothing.”

Vision laughs. Good summation of their friendship. He makes her do nothing, she does it anyway, and he watches uselessly while being helplessly amazed. He stands in front of her, she looks so small. “Need a lift?”

She sighs. A weak nod. 

To hold someone as sharp as Wanda, one must pinpoint the most squishy parts of their arms and deposit the majority of the jagged recipient evenly upon these places. Vision is getting quite good at this. 

He can count the amount of times he’s carried someone that wasn’t Wanda on one hand. Those were often just emergency scenarios. Random plastered people on the street. Once, when he was ten, he picked up one of his mother’s researchers because she was razzing him about how little he was. His mother’s researchers have always been sisters to him. Older sisters. Older sisters who would joke with him, let him have a go at lifting them, cheer when he sort-of-kind-of succeeded. 

“There we are,” he murmurs as he lets her down, watching her clamber into her spot. He eyes her warily, so exhausted and yet afraid that he’s missing responsibilities, “You ate, correct?”

“Mhm. Cold.”

“I can teach you how to - “

Tired, waved hand of dismissal. “I like them when they’re cold.”

He folds. God, he’s tired. The blankets are cool and Wanda is freezing and, as always, it is his responsibility to heat everything up. Wanda’s dinner, Wanda’s blankets. All his terrain. 

They settle into their pair. 

How long has it been since they met? Weeks, surely. A full month, at least, or two. He isn’t sure. 

How long does it typically take for two strangers of completely different construction to fit together like they were meant for it? How long does it take for two strangers to grow comfortable with each other’s bruises or otherworldly powers? He doesn’t know what the date was when she first cuddled up into his side. It feels like yesterday and two years ago. But it’s neither. More and less, up and down. It feels new and yet also feels like he has always been made for her. 

Vision wonders if there are any articles on this. On the slow creation of a routine on accident. He doesn’t even have to think about how to hold himself, how to reach for her, because it happens without effort. 

“You’re warm again,” she says, curling up in his side while tangling herself in his thoughts.

Embarrassing. He can hide three words but he can’t hide the feeling they represent. She knows how to reach for them, now, his feelings. She seems to enjoy it, at least, the love he feels. He wants to be glad that it’s useful. 

“Sorry.” 

“It’s a good thing,” she tells him, patting his chest, and he finds it hilarious. Just fucking amazing. To be comforted by the person he fell in love with, to be told it’s a good thing, to hold her close and give her everything, and to just fall short of what he so badly wants. She doesn’t mean it to sound pitying. Vision feels pitied anyway. “It makes no sense, but I like it.”

“I’m glad.” Now would be the time to put his hand over hers. He doesn’t. 

It usually only takes him a few weeks to have a complete repression cycle so this (intense, insane, terrifying) crush he’s managed to develop will go away eventually. It gets easier with time - his stomach has stopped growling at him so often and he doesn’t panic every time Wanda jumps on him. He’s healing, in a way. Adapting to the changes.

Only a matter of time, he promises himself. He’ll stop being hungry and he’ll stop loving Wanda in just a few weeks. Everything will be fine in just a few weeks. This will be a perfect home for her in just a few weeks.

He lays there for a long time. Wanda’s exhales are longer than her inhales. Her ribs slot between his as she breathes, in soft and out heavy, staggered pressure for staggered rhythm. 

He thinks about how dull his day had been, how it could have been his last overcast Thursday. He thinks about how he’d missed the majority of the event, it was as if he’d blinked and suddenly he was safe. Like a flicker of lightning that you miss unless you have your eyes locked on the sky or a power outage while you sleep. 

He’s literally never going to be able to tell anyone about this. He can’t even tell his own mum. How would he explain? How?

There are at least twenty stacks of money in his closet drawer, stored out of view until he can decide what to do with it. Wanda did that for him. 

Vision, at this very moment, is not another London crime statistic. Wanda did that for him. 

What he wouldn’t give to have had an outside view to that scene. Empty, black corridor interrupted by an illuminated dome, half of a glowing planet cutting through puddles and creating a barrier. What he wouldn’t give to have seen the look on the bloke’s face. Ha. 

Shit. 

Right. There… there was a man. That was the whole issue in the first place.

Where had he gone? Vision had opened his eyes and he had vanished. 

“Wanda?” he asks. 

She shuffles upward. He grimaces and has to lean away. Her nose presses to his all the same. This is a problem. “Yes?”

“What… er…” He turns onto his back, not wanting to invite any unwelcome thoughts. She’s even closer, each blink brushing against his cheek, listening intently. “What happened to the man?”

“Mm?”

“The man. The guy you so heroically saved me from.” He turns his head slightly and her nose prods his cheek. Wanda scrunches her face at the scruff there and gives him room. Only a little. “Where’d he go?”

She thinks about it. He begins to feel concerned. “I moved him.”

“You…?”

“... Picked him up…” she fills in his blank, “... and moved him.”

“...” Vision nods after a moment. “Okay. And… a-and do you know where… you moved him?”

Wanda is thinking so hard that he can feel it in his own mind. “... No.”

Vision laughs until he’s too tired to make noise. 

It feels so good to save someone.

Wanda had never known. 

The more she seeks to remember her time in the big grey building, the beast that sits within walking distance and the beast she can still feel staring at her, the more she realizes that, perhaps, she was meant to be somewhat of a bad thing. 

She was never taught to protect. She was taught, it seems, to defend. Read minds and identify maps, identify thoughts, identify weakness. She is so very good at identifying weakness. It whines like an injured dog. 

(In truth, she has always quite wanted to heal the dog of weakness. It always seemed to call to her rather than repel. She always wanted to pet it, touch its fur, cover it with a blanket. This was not her purpose. She was always confined to cold identification. To keep it warm was to do something wrong. Something wrong meant no dinner.)

Doing bad things made her feel bad. It was chalk in her mouth and ice in her lungs and she’d often look away from her hands when they began to glow. They would speak, and she would listen, and she would do what she was asked. She would wait for the very good, 0211. She would wait for the wonderful job, 0211. She would never receive them. Bad things are not rewarded, they are cultivated. They do not receive a pat on the head. They are sent to hurt the dog. 

She was meant to be a bad thing. Yes. The more pieces she finds, the more they affirm. 

Her power is red. Red is meant to be a mean color, meant to say stay away, meant to say this is the end. Even when her hands don’t glow, her eyes do. She can’t remember what it felt like to see with normal eyes. She can’t remember what it felt like to appear normal.

She is a bad thing and she cannot hide it. 

But… but… 

She has done a good thing. Something more than an inspired phone call or a lifted little man. 

The boy was in danger several sunsets ago. Danger that he did not put himself in. 

Acid was in her throat. He spoke to the man, to the danger, tried to take a step forward. Wanda watched through Vision’s eyes, then through the other man’s. She watched through an eye in the sky. She searched for other doors, for other options, for ways for him to come home safely. There didn’t seem to be one that he’d take. She spoke in his mind, told him to leave, and he told her it was fine. He was wrong. 

Wanda has never protected anything. 

Vision was thinking about her, was thinking about his fear. He was thinking about the bed and he was thinking about her beside him. He was thinking wrongly. He was not thinking about a way to keep himself safe, he was too busy and too full of Her to see beyond the moment he stood inside. 

The man across from him thought about money. Thought about something sharp. Something painful. The man across from him saw Vision as an injured dog. 

She hadn’t known what to do. She only knows how to lift or to search. She only knows how to squeeze or to choke or to break. Her attempts at mending are unwieldy because they are foreign. They leave traces of the injuries. 

Wanda had panicked. She had tried to say his name but it hadn’t worked, then she had closed her eyes tight, and she had… well, she doesn’t know what she had done. 

It seemed as if she had put Vision in a jar. 

(And the man, she had put him… somewhere else. Somewhere far. She can no longer hear his thoughts.)

There was a moment where she feared she had hurt him. He was wrapped inside her power, she could feel it, she worried she was crushing him. But he touched the barrier, curious, and it was as if he had taken her hand. He was alright.

It feels so good to save someone. 

Each thank you he whispered, uttered, mumbled by the hundreds, they all… they felt so wonderful. Each of them a pat on the head. A very good, 0211. A fantastic job, 0211. Even better: a Wanda, you’re amazing. 

She wants to save Vision all the time.

She wants to save him from the bed in the mornings and she wants to save him from the kettle in the kitchen. She wants to save him from the little men on the shelves and the television. She wants to sweep him away from danger that may or may not even be present and she wants to lean her head into his hand when he thanks her. 

She wants to be amazing. She wants to be magnificent.

“I think I’ll try my hand at making toast again,” he says one morning. 

Wanda perks up. Danger. 

“I mean, what’s the harm?” he asks, a rhetorical question (apparently), “First, toast - then the rest of the culinary arts. Right?”

He speaks nonsense. Wanda follows him into the kitchen anyway. 

She takes her post by the stove, watching it attentively. She crouches on the counter, arms folded on her knees, as Vision takes a spatula in his hand. 

“You alright?” he asks. 

She presses her lips into a smile and nods quickly. Her hair falls into her face. Vision thinks about sweeping it from her eyes, Wanda appreciates the warmth of it, but he doesn’t. 

The boy hums as he puts a piece of bread in a pan. Such an odd visual. He seems to think that this is the correct method, and Wanda doesn’t truly know any better, but it doesn’t appear correct. It hadn’t worked before. 

“Don’t look at it like that,” he says, shielding it poorly with a hand, “I’ve just started.”

Wanda nods, “You will do great.”

Vision’s shoulders slump, eyebrows drawn sadly, “... Really?”

No. “Yes.” 

She is counting on the fact that he will not do great. 

He stands a bit taller. He pushes the singular piece of bread around. Something is already burning. Wanda taps her hands on her knees in anticipation. 

It takes no time at all for the bread to burn. Vision either doesn’t notice or is content to pretend nothing is wrong. He is pretty when he concentrates. 

All goes according to plan, Wanda prepared to sweep in and save him at the first sign of trouble - but the first sign occurs much larger than she had anticipated and she is thrown off guard. 

Underneath the pan that Vision holds, the stove makes a quiet hissing noise. Wanda glares at it. Immediately, as if reacting to her attention, it flares upward in a quick blast of flame. It makes a noise. Wanda hates its noise. 

Danger. Real danger. 

Vision stands there all the same, making no move at all, and she wraps him in her power and sends him flying across the room in a boy-sized bubble. Vision’s mouth parts to say something but she’s too busy taking up her station by the stove, hands raised, prepared to save and protect. 

“Wanda,” Vision says, voice muffled like he’s underwater. “No.”

“Yes,” she argues, arms straight up in the air, “I’m saving you.”

“Please get me out of this,” he says, shifting to no avail, “Wanda.”

“Not now, boy.”

“The fire extinguisher is by the fridge. Do you know how to use it.”

Wanda places the fire in a bubble itself, slowly making it smaller, choking it. She focuses. She knows how to choke things. She watches it grow small, flickering, the bubble filling with black smoke. 

“Wanda. It’s okay,” he wrings his hands free to press them to the barrier, “Put me down, please.”

“It burned you,” she says through gritted teeth. 

“It didn’t. It really didn’t. Look at me.” She does, hesitantly, not letting up on his attacker. He holds up his hands, showing her both sides, showing her an absence of a burn. “See? I promise. I’m fine.”

Wanda relaxes a bit. “You’re fine?”

“Yes. Yes, I’m good.” He shows his hands again before knocking on the bubble, “There isn’t much oxygen in here, friend.”

She frowns. She glances to the red spot where the fire had been, small vault of smoke, and she releases them both at the same time. Vision falls to the ground with a thud and the smoke rises toward the ceiling. The tall boy pushes himself to stand, taking a gulp of air. She hadn’t meant to smother him.

She waits to be scolded. 

He doesn’t. He wanders over, standing beside her, waving away the clouds. He holds an arm in front of her as if to shield her from the fire she just killed. She is meant to be protecting him. 

“Thank God I still haven’t reinstalled the smoke alarms,” he mutters. “When they go off, they drive you mad. And the Brigade and I are already on sour terms. What a mess I’ve made.”

Wanda… is devastated. 

She steps to the side as Vision cleans up, shuts off the stove, wipes away the soot with a rag. The pan is tossed into the empty sink with a clatter, the toast shattering on impact, and he wipes his eyes with his hands. 

He hasn’t made any mess. She had.

“Sorry, Wanda,” he says, patting her shoulder. “Something so simple and I can’t… hm.”

Perhaps it wasn’t very kind to encourage him. Perhaps she should not have allowed him to sacrifice himself because she wanted the funny chest feeling that comes with his gratitude. 

Instead, she has accidentally given him grief. 

“Ah, well,” he sighs. “Maybe next month.”

He steps out of the kitchen and stumbles toward the sofa. He falls onto it, pressing his temples, before reaching for his laptop. 

Wanda is left pinned to the kitchen floor, watching him, waiting for some sort of pointed finger in her direction. Her lip quivers. 

Vision’s face is illuminated as the laptop screen stutters on, he taps the space bar a few times to get it to hurry up, and he glances in her direction for approximately a second before he’s slamming it closed. “Wanda?”

“I’m sorry,” she says quietly. 

“Whatever for?” he stands, studying her, concerned. 

“I…” she shifts on her feet. She misses her shoes. “I only wanted to… to…”

“Oh… hey, it’s… it’s alright,” he moves to stand in front of her, not reaching for her as she so desperately would like him to. “Really. It’s nothing too awful.”

Wanda’s chin is wobbly. “I just wanted to do a good job.”

Vision’s eyes are suddenly very watery. He cries so often. She doesn’t have the energy to cover his eyes with her hands. She just stares and waits for something. To be dismissed or to be patted on the head. She wants a pat on the head terribly. 

“... Oh,” Vision whispers, wavering. “Oh, you… you were… i-it’s about the… thank you thing, isn’t it.”

She nods miserably. 

“... Fuck,” he gasps. His hands are on her shoulders, wild behind the eyes, his mind full of her name, “Sorry - I - you - you - you did a great job. Great job. Very good, Wanda.”

Wanda sniffs. “I didn’t mean to smother you.”

“You didn’t,” he says, holding tight to her, speaking so softly and high-pitched, “Wanda. Thank you. Yes. Thank you. You did a wonderful… wonderful job, and I’m so grateful. And… a-a-and… amazed.”

She squints at him weakly. “Are you sure?”

“Yes. Yeah. I got - no - yeah - you’re fantastic.” He pats both of her shoulders at once, somewhat stiffly, “Thank you for saving me.”

Wanda sighs. She drops her head forward and waits. 

Vision’s emotions shift into confusion, easily identifiable even when she isn’t seeing the expression, “... What…?”

She squeezes her eyes closed. She pushes her feelings to him. Patience is required. 

She feels Vision’s hand hover over her hair. It tickles. She receives a small tap on the head. Once, then twice. Tentative pat. 

“T-thank you,” Vision says again. He’s laughing nervously. He does that so often. He cries and he laughs. Fascination and fear.

“You are welcome,” she manages, standing upright. She feels better. Her chest doesn’t hurt anymore. “I am sorry for letting you make toast.”

He laughs quietly, nodding, “It’s quite alright, Wanda. I’m glad you were… er, there with me through that journey.”

Yes, much better indeed. 

Vision begins to thank her for things. 

She doesn’t have to ask. She doesn’t have to save him. She only has to… hand him things. Even when she does nothing, he pats her shoulder as he stands from the couch, wishes her luck for her television shows before he leaves. Small expressions of gratitude. 

It doesn’t matter if she earns them. It feels good all the same. 

Before he goes to school one night, she asks to have help with her shoes. Her socks are already in place - she knows how to do that part. The yellow stars are scratchy to the touch. She likes them a lot. 

“You’re…” he shifts his bag on his shoulder after she asks, looking a bit worried, “... I’m sorry, you can’t come with me.”

“No, I don’t want to. It’s boring.” She lifts her legs anyway, “I just miss them.”

Vision laughs. It’s his funny air laugh. He tosses his bag onto the couch next to her and wanders down the hall to retrieve them. His voice is distant as he goes, calling, “Yes, Your Highness!”

This boy has so many names for her. Wanda, the one he says the most. Then, there’s this Your Highness that she doesn’t understand. He uses it when she asks to be covered up or when she asks for her shoes or when she asks for a second dinner. Wanda, Wanda, Wanda. Yes, Your Highness. Then, of course, there is demon, used only when she’s being what Vision describes as a terror.

“Alright, I’ll have to be fast. I’m a bit behind schedule.” He sits on the ground in front of her, patting his thigh like a summons, “Which one are we starting with?”

She drops her left ankle on his knee. He laughs again. She doesn’t know what was funny that time. 

“Make sure you don’t untie these while I’m gone,” he says, making quick work of the strings. She watches and watches and she never understands. “I’ll not be able to fix them until I return. And, if you ask me how to do it while I’m in class, I’m not going to be able to teach you either.”

Wanda nods. Untying them is the most fun part. “Okay.”

He taps her leg. “Switch.” 

She does. 

For some reason, when she lifts her finished-shoe leg to rest on his shoulder, he forgets how to tie the strings. The knowledge disappears from his thoughts, replaced by her name. He struggles for a minute, tying and untying and doing it again. 

Wanda hums. She reaches forward and runs her hands through his light hair that sticks up like a flower in a field. Bright and yellow and wild. 

Vision stills. His hands are unsteady, wrapped in thin white cords. “Wanda? What are you doing?”

“Your hair is soft,” she tells him. 

“This… this is… this should be… this is just unfair,” he mutters to himself, which makes no sense. She scoots down a bit, knee hooking over his shoulder, and his mind goes completely blank. It’s the first time she ever hears nothing between his ears - ears that are now bright pink. “... Uh… u-um.”

She plays with his hair, tries to braid it and gets frustrated when she can’t, for another minute. Her shoe brushes against his back as she swings it side to side, waiting. He finally manages the knot, reaching up to untangle himself from her and stumbling to his feet. 

“I’ll… um. I’ll… be back. Obviously.” His cheeks are red. She wants to poke them so badly. His hand reaches for his bag and misses the strap a few times, “Okay. All good? A-anything else?”

Wanda thinks about it. She shakes her head, her hair falls from its tuck behind her ears. “No.”

“Great. Wonderful. Um.” Vision offers her something of a thumb-up gesture before tripping toward the door, “Back soon!”

She has to prepare herself for somewhat of a slog of a day. The home is not boring, never boring, but it is now familiar. She knows what everything feels like to touch, knows what all the individual books smell like, what all of Vision’s shirts feel like to wear. 

It is fun to watch television and miss him. It is fun to wear her shoes in the house. 

But he is back soon, just as he said. So soon that Wanda worries she may have accidentally messed with time again. 

It’s almost as if she has blinked but she can feel the ache from her odd position on the sofa, the kind of ache that occurs after many hours, and she can’t recognize anything in this episode in front of her eyes.

There’s no time to miss the boy, no time to wander or jump on the bed or scheme about less fiery ways to save him. There's no time because she missed all of it.

The keys rattle and break her from the trance. 

Vision pushes the door open just as quickly as it had closed. He steps inside, looking positively frightened, and he freezes when he sees her. 

“Oh, thank God.”

She just stares at him. She brings her hands up to rub her eyes. Had she been blinking? They hurt.

“You… you quite literally have not moved since I last saw you,” he adds, leaning back into the door to close it with a thud, sounding very out of breath. “Fuck.”

“What…” she blinks a few more times. “What’s wrong?”

His bag collapses on the ground and he drags his nails through his hair. He laughs breathily, high in the back of his throat, “Y-you were silent during the lectures and I thought you were sleeping but you don’t often sleep the entire time, you know, and you often talk on the way home so I - I - I - I thought p-perhaps that you were gone...” He lets his head fall to the side, looking at her, smiling, relieved, “But I’m… you’re… sorry. It’s okay. We’re okay. Thank you.”

Wanda hugs her blankets tighter, “I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened.”

“It’s okay, I’m just… I’m… I know it probably gets dull, my head, you don’t have to talk to me all the time.” He stands, tugging the hem of his sweater, “I have a... I tend to worry, and you're... I panicked, that was my fault.” 

Wanda wanted to talk to him. She likes him. She likes his funny handwriting and she likes seeing her name written down. He acts as though he has done something wrong by missing her. If she had been present, she would have missed him too. 

“I’m sorry,” she says again. 

Vision makes a face, kicking his shoes off, “Oh, please.”

Wanda doesn’t know what that means. Please what, boy?

The sentence is left unfinished and he’s wandering down the hall. She hears the bathroom door close. 

(It’s a door that sounds different than all of the others. She has learned all of the home’s shortcomings through the boy’s commentary. The faucet in the bathroom, the hinges the door sits on, the creak in the floor in the hall, the leak in the ceiling on particularly rainy days. She loves all of them. She isn’t certain why he dislikes the flaws so much. He acts as if they are bad things, apologizes for them as if she dislikes them. She likes the creak in the floor in the hall. She makes sure to step on it each time she passes it.)

Wanda isn’t allowed to be in his mind when he’s in that room. It seems she hadn’t been in his mind all night. She feels cold. She wants to know the rest of his sentence and she wants to listen to his head, find the warmth, wrap it around herself. 

She can hear him curse. The clanky noise of the pipes emerges, then the rush of water. She huffs and falls back into the cushions. He takes long showers. Perhaps it’s because he’s so tall, more boy to wash. Still, she is impatient. 

Gracious. Impatience. She is embarrassed by her impatience. Embarrassed. There is no telling where these came from - if she accidentally took some from the boy’s head, accidentally placed it inside herself, accidentally learned the feelings while learning about the home. She can’t tell if she had these things before Vision, if they were dormant until he stumbled onto her and helped them grow. 

The flowers of impatience and embarrassment. They are not particularly pretty. 

Wanda rolls off of the couch and onto the floor with a thud. She sighs. She kicks her legs. The tips of her shoes squeak when they bump against the hard ground. Now that time is moving so oddly, she can’t be certain if it will be seconds or hours before he returns. 

She carries her flowers down the hall. She imagines the creak of a floor beneath a boy. She smiles. 

The wall is cold and the floor is cold and warm steam leaks underneath the door. It is scary how easily she lost a night. It is scary because she doesn’t know why. Had she missed him that much, that she’d lose a night just to skip to the part where he returned? What does that mean? 

What does any of this mean? 

What does it mean to be given a home and a person to save? What does it mean to get her first pair of shoes? What does it mean to blow away the walls of a grey room, step into a colorful one, find a boy who gives her his mind willingly? No one has ever given their mind willingly. She was taught to take. To steal. 

Vision asked her once, why she was there in those grey rooms. He doesn’t know about the rooms, he doesn’t know about her. He asked anyway. 

It would be nice to know. She remembers every second of the hurt and the training. The way every moment tasted and sounded and felt beneath numb fingertips. It would be nice to know why she was hurt. 

If she was a bad thing, surely there was a reason to be bad. A good to corrupt or a dog to kill. They left her alone before they told her why. Turned off the lights, clunk, their voices and footsteps growing dim as they walked away. 

How many days did it take before she realized they wouldn’t come back? Before she decided to leave too?

She looks down at her fingers. She holds up fingers. She doesn’t know how to count. 

Are bad things meant to be embarrassed? Do they pick flowers? Do they miss people?

She was never told what she was supposed to do. 

Surely it was more than obeying. More than taking. Smothering. Killing. 

The door opens. Vision pokes his head out, scanning with wide (not afraid - she registers revelation) eyes. His hair is still wet, coiled into irregular and water-bonded curls that sit on his forehead. 

She stumbles to her feet. She is full of questions that she cannot answer, that he cannot answer. She so badly wants to say something but none of her thoughts, for once since staying here, feel relevant. 

Luckily, Vision appears to have a plan for conversation. 

He opens the door wider.

His conversation doesn’t matter anymore. His shirt is gone. His shirt is in his hands, not gone, but gone. 

Wanda stares at his chest. He’s so pale. He’s meant to have seen the sun more than she has, the house with the windows in his head should have done him some sort of service, and yet she sees no evidence of any sort of sunlight on his chest. 

There are bruises the size of Wanda’s fingers on his sides where she holds him at night. Scattered down his ribs, on his hips. Groups of four, an occasional fifth where her thumb fits snug underneath his ribcage. They are deep and purple like… what is the word, the word he dreams of… verbenas. Like verbenas. Purple blooms, purple flowers.

Wanda has never touched a flower. 

They disappear beneath his blue t-shirt as he tugs it over his head. Little dots form, dark-blue, as undried drops of water seep into the fabric. 

“Wanda,” he says. His face is flushed from the steam. 

She hums. She waits for the conversation. She will ask about the verbenas later.

He steps out into the hall. She doesn’t step back. They overlap. “Can I see it again?”

Wanda doesn’t understand. His mind is hers now, though, and she searches for an answer. The mental picture he has of her power is so different than the way it is. He remembers her strangely. She narrows her eyes - mental image of a small girl on a couch, Vision’s couch, holding a star in her hands. 

Is that what she looks like?

She brings a hand up to her hair. She pulls it through her fingers. 

“See what?” she asks, though she knows. 

“The, um…” he snaps his fingers. He tries to come up with a name. Wanda can relate. She doesn’t know what it’s called either. “The little…” He cups his palms together. “Your…”

She smiles a little. She peers into his empty hands. They’re scuffed and red from falling. Had he fallen tonight? Had she missed it?

She wishes she could heal things. Retroactive protection. They must hurt, his hands, dragged across concrete and yet still so soft. 

“Yes,” she breaks her eyes from his injury, “You may see it.”

She takes his wrists, not wanting to hurt his hands, and drags him back to the living room. (She forgets to ask why he calls it that.) Creaaaak. It creaks for two. 

“Sorry, I was - I was just - “

“It’s fine.” He apologizes for nothing. “Why do you want to see?”

“Dunno.” A lie. Revelations are not things one doesn’t know. “I just… I haven’t seen you hold it in a while, so I - I was - “

“You talk so much,” she laughs, and he smiles, “Sit.”

He does. He sits on the couch, his small spot in the corner, and she sits next to him. 

This is a foreign circumstance. Or... half-foreign.

This is a showcase.

Wanda remembers showcases. Different grey room, large, unbreakable glass panel with a group of people on the other side. They wanted her to hold it, ball in her hands, then she wanted her to break something with it. It was difficult when her hands were bound but it was not impossible. They never clapped, she always thought they would. 

Vision is right in front of her. His legs fold as he turns to face her, eyes sparkling and small water droplets tracing down the side of his face. He doesn’t bind her hands. He doesn’t know what showcases used to be. 

“Will you clap?” she asks quietly. 

He nods so fast that she feels water on her face. She wipes it away. “Yes. Yeah. Absolutely. Please.”

Wanda sits taller. She folds her legs too, knees knocking against his. She summons the star, glowing red planet in her hands. They sit close enough that they’re both illuminated, chins painted bright crimson. 

The reflection offers an illusion - Vision’s eyes match hers. Wanda has never seen anyone’s eyes match hers. Even if it is an illusion, it feels wonderful to be in company. To share these eyes. 

Vision claps. He applauds. He stands up on the couch cushions, nearly toppling over. He calls it a standing ovation. She likes standing ovations. 

She basks in his praise. It is warm. She could hold this small star for years if he kept looking at her like this. 

He falls back into the cushions with a thud. She’s jostled a bit. 

“Does… how do you do it?” he asks, leaning close. His nose almost bumps it. “Do you know?”

“I… It comes from my mind,” she says slowly. “I don’t… I speak to it, it listens.”

“Speak to it?”

“... Not speak… maybe… whisper?” Wanda has never had to explain this. She doesn’t have the words to. “It is part of me, it does what I ask it to.”

He nods. His hands are restless. He wants to write something down. “Wanda, it really… you’re just fascinating. Do you know how… how special you are? That you can just do this?”

Wanda tilts her head. 

She finds the picture of herself in his head. She finds the care that surrounds her. Warm and steadily growing. 

She is special. She is fascinating. 

She is all he thinks about. 

“Would you like to hold it?” she asks. 

Vision’s attention flickers to her face. His lips part. “What?”

“You can hold it. It won’t hurt.”

“Are you sure you want me to?” he frowns, “I don’t… I don’t want to make it seem like I’m…” Vision leans back a bit, “This is your only real thing that you had, Wanda. If you want to keep it to yourself, you can. I don’t have to.”

“But you want to.”

“But do you want me to?”

“Yes,” she says, fast, no need to consider. She wants to share it. “Hold out your hands. Like me.”

He does. 

She shuffles closer. Overlap. She pours her power into his palms. He makes a small noise. She registers awe.

“This is insane,” he whispers. “It’s like… it’s like a little… creature.” He lifts his hands slightly, right up to his eyes, “Hello.”

Wanda isn’t sure what she feels. It’s something strange in her chest and in her throat and behind her eyes. No one else has ever held it. 

People had tried. They tried to grab it from her fingers as if it could be pulled off like a ring. As if they hadn’t put the thing inside her in the first place. They attached it somehow, attached it so it would grow like a vine through her arms and her mind, and it’s a part of her now. It cannot be stolen. Only given. 

Vision keeps it safe. He rolls it around like a rubber ball in his palms, he laughs at the feeling of it. He can’t break his eyes from it. 

“I can’t believe you have this,” he murmurs. “I can’t believe - I can’t believe I know you.”

Something inside Wanda shines. 

He shakes his head, bewildered, smiling, “I… how funny.”

“Funny?” she asks, prepared to be offended. 

“In the alley. You saved me with this. It was tens of feet wide. And now it’s… now I’m holding it.” He lifts the star as if to prove it, as if he holds a trophy. “What did you tell it? To save me?”

Wanda shrugs. The sun has taken residence between her arms, right under her heart. “I didn’t tell it anything.” She drops her gaze to the piece of herself that Vision holds so carefully. “Maybe it is a cree - cray - c-creature.” She stumbles over the word, not fitting well in her accent. Vision smiles. “It has its own mind.”

The boy nods. His thumbs move inward, brushing a gentle touch down the sides of the orb. Petting it. He speaks to it, “Thank you, then, I suppose.”

Wanda feels the sudden urge to run around. There is too much energy building, static in her arms and legs. She wants to jump on the bed and she wants to yell (she doesn’t know how) and she wants to fly. 

“Tell me when you want it back,” he says gently. “This is… I worry I might not ever let it go.”

Wanda shakes her head. “You can have it until your arms ache.”

Vision looks up at her. Blond eyelashes. Invisible, catching red light. He stares at her for a long time. She worries she said something wrong. 

Oh, God. He loves her. He’s really in love with her. 

“... Thank you, Wanda,” he says. 

Wanda smiles. “You are welcome.”

She is special. She is fascinating. 

She is not even in Vision’s head, now, having stepped out in order to give him the star. But she doesn’t have to be in his head to feel the warmth of that nameless, labelless emotion he holds for her. It shows in his eyes, the eyes he shares. It shows in the way he keeps laughing, rolling it into one hand to drag his fingers across it. 

She feels every touch. He holds her hand without realizing it. 

Of all the things she was meant to be, she was not meant to be weak. She was strong 0211. She was the winner. She took and she kept and she placed the things she took into metal boxes for the men in jackets. She identified the dog in people, the weakness, and she lifted it into her hands. She picked people’s flowers and she crushed them. Their impatience and their embarrassment and their emotion. 

Perhaps that is it. Emotion is weakness. 

Wanda cannot be certain that she had emotion before Vision. 

Vision makes her weak. 

He gives her blankets and food, anything she requests. He gives her his mind and the things inside before she asks for it. She has smothered him and replaced so many of his thoughts with her own - and yet, he was so afraid that he had lost her. 

Would it not be easier to breathe, for him, if she were to go? 

She is weak. She twirls something new around in her head, now, something new called selfishness. It feels nice to be selfish with him. It feels nice to know that he wants to keep her, just as she wants to keep him.

It feels like Wanda feels better and better (feels more and more ) everyday while her friend sinks further and further into himself. His face is thin, the red creates shadows where his cheeks are. He is empty and he is tired and he has this warmth inside that he seems so, so desperate to get rid of. 

Wanda will take it, the warmth. She wants it. She wants to hold what he feels in her hands and she wants him to invite her to do so. He gives her anything else she wants. She wants this last part. 

She wants him. 

Maybe he will give her that, too.

This is bad. This is a bad idea. 

Wanda had woken up this morning feeling particularly peckish. The first words in his head that morning were I’m hungry in someone else’s voice. He opened his eyes to find Wanda standing in the doorway, hands interlocked behind her back, fluttering her goddamn eyelashes. 

There’s no way she doesn’t know. There’s no fucking way she doesn’t know what she’s doing.

It’s a home day, a Wanda-Vision-quality-time day, oftentimes spent on the couch as he finishes assignments and as Wanda begs him to pay attention to literally anything other than his assignments. 

Not today, it seems. She has a mission. And the mission is to eat more than she weighs. 

Vision’s standing at the microwave for most of the day, up and down. He sits, two paragraphs typed on the laptop, a tug on his sleeve, and then he’s up again. He doesn’t mind obviously - it’s more that, at some point, they’re just going to run out of food. 

“I don’t want you to get a stomachache,” he warns, pressing the buttons with his thumb, “After this one, I’ll make you some tea, alright? You’ve eaten three of these things in an hour.”

She huffs from her perch on the countertop. “Am I not allowed to have more?”

“They’re all for you, I’m just saying that money’s tight and - “

“Money is not tight.”

“Money is tight, actually,” he reminds her. The stacks of unknown notes are burning holes in the wooden drawers. “I told you I’m not going to use them. I told you that.”

“I want them all, today.”

“...” Vision presses his hands to his temples. “Okay.”

“I’m going to eat them.”

“Okay.”

“I’m hungry.”

“Are you alright?” he asks for the fifteenth time today. “I’m glad you’re eating, friend, but I just - we’re sort of going one-to-one-hundred, here.”

“I think it is hungry too,” she says. 

Vision looks between her eyes. “Your… red. You think it’s hungry?”

“Mhm.” She adjusts her stance, knees to her chest as she crouches on the counter, “Takes a lot of energy to save you.”

“Fair point,” he mumbles. The machine beeps. He opens the door. “I’m not discouraging you, I promise. You know you can have whatever you want - “

“I want it.”

“Yes,” he snickers, “I know. After your third quesadilla and a cuppa, if you’re still hungry, you can have more.”

“I will,” she grabs for the piping hot plate, “Thank you.”

Wanda wasn’t kidding. 

She eats ten of them. Vision can’t help but feel impressed. He’s happy she’s getting more comfortable, noticeably more combative, noticeably more demanding and polite all at the same time. 

He is obsessed with the way she has grown into his space. It is dangerous, his history with obsession. It does tend to end in a loss.

“Last one, boy!” she calls, holding up the bag. 

Vision raises his eyebrows at her, slowly closing his laptop screen. “Wow.”

She sprints and launches herself onto the sofa beside him. He gets a foot to the rib. Well. Could have been worse, he supposes. 

She eats so quickly. She has eaten more today than Vision has eaten in three weeks. He’s her biggest fan. 

“That’s really impressive, Wanda,” he says, setting his laptop aside. “I’ll go tomorrow and see how many more I can get for you. If you can hold off until then.”

“I can wait,” she says sweetly. 

Vision is too dazed to complete any coursework today. He wrote a few paragraphs, he should be fine to pick up tomorrow. He crosses his arms over his chest, watching Wanda’s show.

He likes her retellings of things better, he realizes this as he watches it for real. She summarizes information well. She’d be a fantastic researcher, if she wanted to be. If she had more than a primary education. If she could… could… do math. 

All of these character names. All of these subplots that do nothing but fill time. Wanda can summarize five-minute-long scenes into two words, when she wants to. She knows what’s important even when she doesn’t understand it. Just like a researcher. 

Shit. He probably needs to call his mum soon. 

It’s not but thirty minutes before Wanda’s staring holes into his face again. 

He keeps his eyes forward. He focuses on how funny the costuming is. 

He can feel the cushions dip as Wanda slowly crawls closer to him. He bites his tongue. No, he refuses to fold. He warned her. He warned her. 

“... boooy,” she whispers. 

Vision closes his eyes. He will not bend to her will. Not this time. Not after all the warnings. 

“... it’s still hungry.”

Her nose is cold against his cheekbone. 

“Wanda,” he says patiently. His pulse is worryingly high. “I told you. I can make you some more tea, if you’d like.”

“Not enough.” 

There are cold hands framing his face. Vision holds his breath. She turns his head to face her, less than an inch away. His eyes are so wide that they hurt. 

Impulses. Impulses abound. They will be his unravelling. It would be so easy to tilt his head back. It would be so easy to do anything. 

He stays still. 

“I… want…” she says, measured, and Vision needs to cross his legs, “... pasta.”

Vision presses his lips tight together. He leans away from her hands, away from her mouth. 

“Wanda, I can’t,” he shakes his head, “I can’t, I’m sorry, there’s no - “

“I gave you money,” she says. “You needed it and I gave it to you and I’m hungry.”

Vision isn’t strong enough for this. Truly. 

“... I’d need to… God. Fuck. I’d… I…” 

“Please,” she adds. 

Vision is standing in the queue of his bank within the hour.

He can’t stand still. Wanda didn’t come with him. He’s thankful for that. He’s a wreck. 

He holds a stack of money. He’s never seen a stack of money in his entire life, much less held it. He holds it in the way someone would hold a stack of money they definitely stole. He’s a bad liar. 

The entire time he waits, he is prepared to be either arrested or killed. Wanda has no clue where she got this. Vision holds the money with one hand while scrolling through news stories with the other. No articles within the past month regarding a heist, no wealthy families miraculously having lost thousands of pounds overnight. 

What in the world does Wanda do? What… what does she do? How does it work? Who is she? 

She tells the red mist inside her to get some money, and it does. Fucking absurd. 

His social battery is drained before he even gets to the teller. He speaks briefly. He can’t even look her in the eye. He’s ready to be taken away any moment. 

Can we get pasta after you are done? asks the Wanda in his head. 

He nods shallowly. 

Somehow… it works.

It… works? 

He wanders out into the street afterward, empty-handed, not a single handcuff in sight. He feels like a robot that was just powered on. A bit stumbly. A bit lightheaded. 

One term comes to mind as he walks home, Wanda in his head, more in his bank account today than there ever has been since he made the damn account.

He… it’s… it appears that he’s somewhat of an imposter, here. Everything feels… fine, for once. The crazier his life gets, the less consequences he is dealt. Is that how it works? Is that all he needed to do? Stop taking care of himself more than he already had, enjoy the company of an impossible human being?

He was so devastated by his lack of success in a boring life. He just can’t seem to wrap his head around the fact that there was a life, in all possible universes and dimensions, that he would succeed in an exciting one.

Wanda is sitting on the kitchen counter when he steps back inside. She is holding an empty mug that she would like refilled. 

“Got it,” he nods, toeing off his shoes, already exhausted. “I’ll make some tea and then I’ll… I’ll order your pasta. Alright?”

Wanda grins. He’s weak in the knees. 

There’s some sort of light sensation in his chest as he watches her drink her tea, as he thinks back on the majority of this day. He remembers Wanda approaching her first meal in this house like it might hurt her. Strides made, comfort cultivated. She demands, now, and she does so easily. And, despite the endless dread that he deals with on a daily basis, he’s more than happy to provide. 

It takes him about an hour to summon the courage to order food online. He’s thankful for the leave it at the door and fuck off option. He can’t handle eye contact anymore today. 

The exception, as always, is Wanda. But he doesn’t have much of a say in the matter, she’s going to stare at him like that until the sun dies. 

He orders three things from the restaurant she likes. One is for himself. He can’t remember the last time he had a real dinner. He’s been going off of granola bars and the few bites Wanda offers of her quesadillas. It might be nice. 

Of course, it’ll only be nice if it works. This seems like prime time for another shoe to drop on his head.

“If I click this verification,” Vision warns, holding up his phone on the final-step screen, “and I pay for this and I get arrested due to whatever bloody unknown source you got this money from… I’m going to be rather upset.”

Wanda nods, so excited she vibrates.

“And I would hope that you’d mind-communicate with my mother to inform her that I need to be bailed out,” he grumbles, taking a deep breath. “You’re insane.”

“Insane,” Wanda repeats. She says it again, “Insane.” She drops her legs from the counter, swinging them, “You like that word.”

“I had no use for it before you,” he says. He presses the button. A small green check pops up. He slides his phone across the counter with a clatter. Wanda reaches out to stop it before it falls to the ground. “It’ll be here in half an hour. Alright? Will you be able to wait for that?”

Wanda squints at him. She lifts a leg to kick him. He not-so-gracefully dodges it. “Don’t be rude.”

“I was being genuine!”

“If I couldn’t wait, what would you do?”

He brings his shoulders up to his ears. “I’d figure something out.”

Wanda is pleased by this. 

There’s somewhat of a silent staring moment, an impasse of sorts. It feels like they’re trying to compete for something but he can’t think of a single thing that he’d fight for that he wouldn’t give to Wanda anyway. 

Absolutely pitiful, he is. Just… truly… unendingly tragic. 

“How long has it been?” she asks, restless. 

“Shouldn’t be too much longer.” Vision looks toward the stove. Then, he chuckles, “Wanda, do you have a black hole in your belly you need to tell me about?”

“I don’t know,” she replies, genuine enough to make him concerned. “It doesn’t happen a lot.”

“What doesn’t happen a lot?”

“The hunger.” A hand is lifted. The red appears again but, this time, it’s noticeably brighter. “They say it is like a fire, it needs coal to live.”

Ah. So he’s got two glowing things to take care of. At least, apparently, it only happens once in a blue moon. Each new thing he learns about Wanda is exponentially more terrifying and it only makes him want to do better. 

Vision scratches his jaw. He thinks about this (as if he’s never not thinking about this) (it’s more that he’s thinking about it with more to work with, another thread, another portion, another lens). “Who says that? Who is they?”

Wanda drops her hand. She looks away.

She did that before, when he asked. But it… it feels like she wants to say. Perhaps it’s only wishful thinking.

“Wanda?”

A knock on the door breaks the conversation in half, lets the tension fall like dust to the floor. It scares her so badly that she falls backward. Vision laughs and immediately feels awful about it. 

“Shit - sorry,” he walks around to help her up, sharp nails embedded in his wrist, “Um. I’ll - I’ll get it.”

Wanda rubs the back of her head, pouting at him as if he’d pushed her over. He tugs an old wooden chair to the counter for her to sit before hesitantly making his way to the door. 

He’s going to get arrested. 

He’s going to have to explain to his mother why he got arrested. 

She’s going to be so cross with him. Genuinely. She might pinch his ears, even. Say she’s disappointed in him. That’ll be devastating.

The door creaks open. He’s trying to come up with an explanation, should one be needed, but there are no words to his name right now. 

He looks down. There’s… a bag with food in it, as expected. He peeks his head out further. 

Vision looks around the corridor. Hm. He’s actually been given the pasta he ordered and not the lifetime sentencing he had feared. That’s… good. Ideal, even. He bends, takes the handle in his fingers. It isn’t a trap. It doesn’t explode upon contact.

“... Okay,” he says cautiously, reentering the flat, plastic bag rustling in his hand. “Perhaps… perhaps this might be okay.” He looks to the girl sitting at his kitchen counter, sitting normally but twisted around and grasping the crest rail, peering over the wooden backing. “Maybe we… God, maybe we can have real dinners, now.”

Wanda is so proud of herself, that smile nearly undoes him. Her ankles are crossed under the chair she sits in. 

“B-but no more,” he clarifies, pointing at her with his free hand. He tries to use a stern face. He doesn’t know what a stern face feels like. “No more summoning things. Seriously. You’ve given me more than enough. My heart can’t take any more. Do you hear me?”

She nods. 

A real dinner. Wow.

He unties the bag handles, two containers slid across the surface to his hungry friend with a fork set on top. She takes them eagerly. 

Undeserved, says his own voice in his head. He bats it away. Unearned. Unfair. 

If he’s to go to jail, he will go to jail having fed two very powerful beings. And himself. He’ll go to jail with a full stomach. That’s… that’ll… it could be worse than that, technically. 

His own paper box thuds against the table as he places it across from Wanda. They’ve never sat down together like this, not at home, not for dinner. He’s never seen her glow so bright. There must be some candles around here somewhere. Maybe, next time, he could light some. She likes candles.

He waves that thought away. Stop setting yourself up for failure, idiot. Candlelit dinners should likely be kept to a minimum.

Vision turns. He scans for a chair of his own, dragging it over to sit opposite his friend. 

He groans as he falls into his seat, exhausted by the day. He always is. He hopes there is an adaptation period for exhaustion. He hopes he’s nearly to the end of it.

There’s a quiet clink as a fork is placed on the table. Vision glances up to find that Wanda’s already finished, both containers completely empty, a small dot of sauce on her chin. 

“Thank you,” she says. 

Christ. “You have a talent, did you know that?”

She smiles. She brings up a small hand to nudge the empty plates away. Vision watches her do so, watches her wipe her chin with the back of her hand, watches her settle back into the chair. 

She pushes another feeling to him. She is thankful. He speaks this language now, he knows what everything feels like - and he can tell that there, among the gratitude, is a lack of contentment. 

He glances down at his plate. Up to Wanda and back down. 

He sighs. Quickly, before he can change his mind, he pushes his food across the table toward her. 

Wanda hesitantly takes it into her hands, confused and absolutely thrilled. 

“For you,” he says, resting his chin in his hand. “I’m not as hungry as I thought I was.”

Wanda seems to settle for thirteen meals for the day. The contentment is pushed and he accepts it gratefully. If he tries really hard, he can apply it to himself. Wanda is giving him the emotions of someone who is full, he is happy to attempt to relate to them. He sweeps up the trash, one fork placed in the sink basin while the other, unused, is returned to the drawer.

He does the dishes while Wanda sits there, sated, hands folded on the cool counter and her head rested atop them. 

“I’m sorry I didn’t share,” she says after he’s finished, knocking the faucet off with the back of his hand before grabbing for a towel. “I… I should have shared.”

“No, no, Wanda. You don’t have to share anything.” He swipes the rag down his arms, dries his hands, “I’m rather tired anyway. I may go to bed early, read a bit.” Distract himself. From everything. 

Wanda’s in his head, then. “You’re empty.”

“I’m not,” he lies. 

“Will you have tea?”

“... If you want me to.”

She makes a noise. “Yes. I want you to.”

He bows a bit. She smiles. “Yes, Your Highness.”

(He only drinks half of it. Wanda finishes the rest.)

It’s been a while since he’s cracked open a good memoir, since he’s actually, unironically, curled up with a good book. 

Nice to step into someone else’s shoes for a moment. Nice to reacquaint himself with what a dull life looks like. Of course, his conceptualization of dull has changed. A dull life is a life without Wanda, without a girl who has a black hole in her stomach and fire in her hands. This book has no such thing.

He hasn’t read a paper book in at least a month. Since before Wanda, a still undefined period of time. He missed flicking the corner of the paper with his thumb as he read, the feeling of the paper, the noise it makes when you flip the page. He missed wearing his stupid reading glasses. The bridge is tight and it hugs his nose and he missed the sensation so much. 

He has a thing for reading. It’s embarrassing. He gets… genuinely worked up about it. Displaced intimacy, his first (and, for a long time, only) bedfellow. He’s drawn to things he can hold in his hands, information and learning and newness that he can brush his fingers down. 

Speaking of that. 

Wanda is raiding his closet. 

“What’s this?” she asks, taking a hanger down, holding something over her head in the corner of his eye. 

He presses his finger to the word he’s on before looking over at her, scanning what she holds, and returning to the page, “That is a blazer.”

“Blazer,” she repeats. Has he said recently that he adores her voice? “You’ve never worn it.”

“I’ve worn it,” he laughs, shifting his legs under the heavy comforter, “I know it may be hard to believe but I did exist before I knew you, you know. For a very long time.”

“Mm,” she says, as if displeased with this factoid. There’s the unmistakable sound of someone running their hands through a rack of clothes. He hides his smile. Another hanger lifted, cling, “What’s this?”

Mark the word. Glance over. Return to the word. “That is a scarf.”

“Ooooh.”

Vision can’t help it. He knocks his glasses further up his nose, closing the book around his index finger. He watches her get tangled in a bright red scarf for about a minute. She wraps it around her shoulders, up her arms. Vision hates that he knows how he’s smiling, hates that he knows she can feel the warmth that comes from it. 

“It goes around your neck,” he instructs. 

She frowns for a moment, fingers brought up to her throat. She taps at the skin there, deep in thought. Debating. 

“Why?” she asks eventually, frustrated, looping it around her waist. It falls in a puddle at her feet. “How?”

“You almost had it. You wrap it around, like, er…” He mimes the motion. She lifts the fabric in her hands and tries again. “There you go. Perfect. Well done.”

Wanda huffs, clearly still angry at it, but she flips the longer end over her shoulder and continues her search. 

“It’s soft,” she mutters. 

He clears his throat, closing the book all the way. He sets it aside. He can read about a dull life another day. “What else would it be?”

“Cold. Metal.”

Vision opens his mouth to say something about that - why do you say that? or Wanda, what does that mean? or I want to kiss you so bad - but the sky rumbles and crackles above them. 

He’s excited in the way a child might be. It’s been a while since there’s been a rumbly rain. All they’ve had are silent, mediocre showers and overcast faux promises. 

He missed the thunder. 

His attention strays to Wanda, who has gone absolutely silent in his periphery. 

She stands, back to the open closet, eyes wide. Her hair is standing up almost straight on her head as if someone’s held a balloon above it. 

“... Wanda?”

Her teeth chatter. Her eyes have gone so bright that Vision fears he may go blind by looking at them. He does anyway. Two little red suns.

Before he can say her name again, his favorite word, she’s running and jumping on him.

It knocks the air out of his lungs - he isn’t sure how he isn’t constantly prepared for this, it happens very often, but he isn’t. He gets a foot to the face as she scrambles to disappear under the covers, a sharp elbow between the legs. He sucks in a breath, ow, but has no control over this. It was inevitable that there would be casualties one day.

Her arms are a vice around his torso, sharp cheek pressed to his ribs, and she’s halfway to hyperventilation, warm puffs through his shirt. 

He doesn’t even jump as the dome appears, sparking red, around the bed.

There’s a moment that he allows to happen, a moment to tilt his head back and study the fortress she’s created. He didn’t get a chance to study it, before, because there was always something to fix or a problem to solve or something to be saved from. 

Not this time. 

For once, he knows things will be okay.

Vision remembers going to a science museum as a child. Those crystal-ball-like plasma orbs by the front desk, covered in small, sticky handprints. He always had somewhat of a fascination with them. He wanted to shrink down and live inside one. 

Better late than never.

His arms have fallen over the Wanda-shaped lump under the blankets on instinct. He raises a hand to reach for the red. It meets his fingertips. He wiggles his fingers. It follows. 

Another clap of thunder. It rattles the windows. Wanda yelps. 

He laughs quietly, peering under the covers. “Wanda, it’s alright.”

“Don’t laugh at me,” she chokes, shivering. “It isn’t funny.”

“No, I’m not laughing at you.” He slides his glasses off his nose with one hand, the other still holding up the duvet to see her, “It’s only thunder.”

The sky is exploding, she whispers in his head. 

He frowns. He glances toward the curtain-covered window, listening to the quiet patter of a slowly emerging rain. 

“You’ve... never heard thunder, have you.”

She’s trembling like a leaf. Her fingers grasp at the duvet she hides underneath, keeping it stationary over her, then the shirt he wears. Unsure where to hold on, unsure what she wants.

“I never heard anything,” she manages through a closed throat, “The… the walls were… too big. Heavy. Wide.”

“I see.” He wants to understand. He wants to know where she was, before. He wants to see the room she knew, the walls she had. “Well, I’m sorry my walls are so thin.” He means it. He pats her back gently. “It can’t hurt you. It’s only a noise.”

“But why?” she rasps. She digs her nose into his side. He hums. “Why make the noise? Why be frightening?”

“Well, it doesn’t know it’s making the noise, da - ah - ba - uh, Wanda.” Fuck. “It doesn’t mean to scare you.” 

It is difficult to draw lines in his head, strict boundaries between impulses. There are impulses for comfort and there are impulses for everything else. Impulses between friends and impulses for more. 

The sky rumbles again. Wanda cries out, so soft he’d miss it if she weren’t tangled in his mind for warmth, and he figures that anything would be better than nothing. 

Vision sinks under the covers with her, kept safe in a little tent of their own design. He slides down until they’re eye-level, yellow filtering through the white sheets and red light filtering out. She blinds him. He likes it. 

“Hey,” he says softly. He carefully unwinds the scarf from around her neck, pushing it to the side until it slips over the edge of the bed. 

“It may not mean to scare me, but it does.” He hears her fear and he wants to take it away. He feels her fear. She pushes it into his thoughts. “When will it leave?”

“Um…?” Vision scans over her face. Her hair is in her face, sticking up and out and down, charged enough to reach and cling to the blanket over their heads. “I don’t know.”

She noticeably despises that answer. Her fingers dig into his sides. They drag upward. For a moment, he fears she might rip him open. Vision winces, reaching down - he places his hand over hers, gentle pressure, please, don’t. 

Wanda wrenches her eyes closed. The light is visible through her eyelids. He wants to press his thumb to them as she always does to him. He doesn’t. That’s where the line is, he thinks. 

“I don’t like it,” she says. “I don’t want it.”

“Unfortunately, my friend, the sky is out of my jurisdiction,” he tries to sound comforting. 

Wanda’s breaths are quick. In soft and out heavy. In soft and out soft. In-out-in-out, far, far too fast. 

“Wanda,” he says gently. 

“I don’t w-w-want i-it,” she says again through shallow breaths, only growing more and more ragged. She sounds a bit like him. 

Vision raises his eyebrows. He steps over the line. He takes his hands from over hers, allowing her to continue to split the seams up his sides, and he… he just… 

He threads them through her hair. Up the nape of her neck, palms firm against the back of her head. Her hair is soft and clean and tangled. It’s dark as it curls around his fingertips and brushes down his wrists. 

She looks at him. She wraps her fingers around his arm. 

She stutters for a moment. The thunder rolls. She holds him tighter. 

“V-Vi-Vision,” she whispers. 

The sun was warm in Seoul. 

It takes residence in his chest and it stays there. 

Wanda searches his face. He can feel himself smile. 

“Thunder is nice,” he says, voice broken, voice quiet, voice fond. “I actually quite like it.”

She rests her head back into his palms. He brushes his thumbs in small lines up and down behind her ears. He’ll hold her until his arms ache. 

He continues, mouth dry, “I can tell you what it is, if you’d like. The thunder.”

She looks at him, weak glare, doubt. “You know what it is?”

“I know a lot of things. A lot of very, very useless things.”

He knows that it takes a person who has never had shoes about two to four hours to grow accustomed to them. He knows that Lady Montagu had two children. He knows that a star, when hungry, can eat up to thirteen meals. He knows that glowing girls like to jump on the bed when he’s gone but refuse to confess when he asks. He knows that Wanda likes her quesadillas cold. 

He knows that it takes between twenty-one and sixty-six days to form an eating habit. He knows that the feeling he has for her won’t go away and he knows he will never, ever stop trying to deny that. 

He knows that this is the first time that he feels fully equipped to protect her. The first time he is truly useful. 

Wanda tenses at the sound as it returns. She shuffles closer. He shifts his hands to hold her better. 

“What is it?”

“It’s coming from the clouds,” he tells her. He’s trying to find a way to word it where she might understand, where it might not confuse her or make things worse. “Sometimes they get so full of energy that they have to… er, release it.”

Wanda doesn’t understand. “Energy like mine?”

“Not like your power, no, but… you… you do have energy, yes. It’s…” He presses his lips together. “Do you ever get the feeling… where you’re so excited or so… happy that you just need to... move? Make noise? Make room inside yourself for something else, something that isn’t so big?”

She blinks at him. Her grasp on his arms loosens. “Yes.”

“That's energy. And that’s what the clouds do, when it thunders. When it rains." He desperately hopes this is comprehensible. “There’s a flash of light and a loud noise, a movement of energy. The air moves so fast that it… um, it rumbles.”

Ice cold legs overlap with his own. She doesn’t look terrified. She still shakes. “Like a voice?”

“Precisely,” he says, thrilled but still attempting coolness, “Yes, Wanda, excellent. Like a voice. It vibrates the air like a voice does.”

“It’s yelling because it is excited,” she summarizes. He loves her summaries. Always so pointed, always correct.

“It’s yelling because it is excited,” he confirms. Hesitantly, he twirls a lock of her hair around his finger. “I know it’s new. And it’s surprising. But it’s nothing to fear, you know? It’s quite neat when you understand it. Just a movement of energy. Science.”

“Neat,” she murmurs pitifully. She nods. The sheets rub against her cheek and her hair clings to the duvet. “Yes. But loud.”

“Clouds are big. Typically, the bigger something is, the louder they yell.”

Wanda seems to understand that concept the best out of all of them. She closes her eyes, drained, and her head goes heavy. He slowly lets her go, tugs a pillow down to tuck it under her. She hums, folding her now-free hands under her cheek. 

Oxygen is getting low under the blanket. He doesn’t know how to accept that. He doesn’t want to leave. 

He laughs gently at the porcupine-like spikes of her hair. Vision remembers the static exhibit at the science museum, the big round orb you put your hand on and all your electrons go wild. He looked like a sunflower when he tried it. Wanda does it all on her own. 

He pets her hair down, smoothing it back to where it needs to be. She sighs, adjusting her head on the pillow. The lights turn off outside of their tent. He chuckles. It’s as substantial of a goodnight as he’ll be getting these days. 

“Goodnight, Wanda,” he says quietly. 

The thunder grumbles above them. 

He pulls the blanket from their heads. The air is cool on his face. He pulls his own pillow down, his legs hanging over the foot of the bed, far too tall for this and yet not quite caring. 

There’s a sound that comes from her throat that could be interpreted as a goodnight. He’ll take it. 

They lay there for a moment. It’s the first time in a long time that they don’t share a pillow, that her arms aren’t around him, that they don’t overlap. He isn’t sure if he’s meant to be grateful or if he’s meant to mourn. 

He interlocks his fingers, rests them on his stomach. His hips still sting, he’s afraid to check if she drew blood. Most days, he does tend to act as somewhat of a scratching post for her. The majority of the sentiment is lost, of course, because her nails never get any less biting. 

He takes a breath. He takes another. 

Is he going to be able to do this?

It feels nice to hold her, to hear his name, to keep her safe. It feels nice to say goodnight. It feels so good to be useful and, for even a moment, to pretend that this is more than it is. 

He can go without dinner. He can go without sleep. He can ache and he can fall on his face and he can be painted with purple under his shirt. He can do that for years. He can do that for millennia.

He isn’t sure if he can battle with this, though. Battle with himself. Battle with what's left when she leaves to sleep or to explore. He is a bedfellow but it is not real.

He’s never loved anyone before, he has no idea how long it takes to repress it. The cycle is unknown. This isn’t a crush, it’s the kind of feeling you have when you’re certain you’re going to spend the rest of your life with someone. 

And he might. He really might spend the rest of his life with Wanda. She wanted him forever, she said. But not in the way he wants her. 

Wanda is still awake. 

She grabs for him, so incredibly strong, and tugs him further down beside her. He grunts quietly at the feeling, prepared to laugh, prepared to be pierced and to close his eyes and imagine a field with flowers. 

He turns to face her. 

He stops.

The red. It isn’t gone, no, but it… is… decidedly less. Diluted. A backdrop, a lightbox, to the beautiful, brilliant green that he can now see poised in front of it. 

“Hello,” he whispers. He knows now that Wanda’s eyes are green. 

She gives him the sensations she has, the ones she can’t voice. She gives him her calm. She gives him her green. 

“I like them,” he hears himself say, completely unallowed. He reaches up, brushes her hair from her face to see them better. When his hand drops between them, Wanda grabs it and brings it around to rest on her back. “Did you tell it to do this?”

I don’t know where it went, her voice echoes in his skull. It’s never hidden before. 

Vision nods. “It gets hungry. Stands to reason it might get tired.”

Nothing stands to reason anymore.

I’m tired, she says.

“It’s been a day,” he agrees. He needs to stop himself. He needs to stop this. He rubs her back and he needs to stop this. 

She hums out loud. Her eyes are heavy and yet she doesn’t appear to want to close them. 

“Wanda?”

“What if they don’t come back?” she asks softly, slurred, tired, beautiful, fuck. 

“What?” 

“These eyes.” She’s so hazy with sleep that she can’t even focus on him. She looks in his direction but can’t really see. “What if they don’t come back?”

“Oh.” Vision needs to stop. He touches her hair again anyway. “Oh, I’m… they’ll be back, Wanda. They’re yours. You have them.”

She’s falling asleep halfway through the last sentence. Her eyes close and the green goes but the red doesn’t shine through. Something new, something changed. He’s in love with her. 

She pushes her calm and her green to him all night, long after the both of them are asleep.

Chapter Text

Vision clicks his pen. He lets it go. It flies for a second before clattering on the desk beside his hand. He picks it up, clicks it to reset, and does it again. 

Wanda must be asleep. Class ended thirty minutes ago and she hasn’t said a word. 

There is still a lot of time left before his next lecture. The hall will be empty for at least another hour and a half before people start filtering in, low voices and conversation partners. They’ll discuss last weekend’s plans, this weekend’s plans. They’ll discuss how insane their life partner’s being and they’ll laugh and they’ll talk about the holidays they plan to spend with all their friends and family. 

Vision’s conversation partner is asleep. Likely in his bed. Wearing his clothes. Hugging his pillow. Dreaming dreams that he created.

Vision’s conversation partner, to the rest of the world, likely doesn’t exist. 

He sinks down in his chair. He clicks his pen. It rockets into the air and falls into his lap. He sighs. He has an intrusive impulse to take it and launch it across the room into the sea of chairs in front of him. Narrowly, he avoids it. It’s his only pen. 

Something’s happening with Wanda. He doesn’t understand. When he leaves, she goes radio silent. She zones out or she sleeps and yet she’s in perfect condition when he comes home. Tangled in the sheets or lounging on the couch. 

She’s thinking about something. Something she just can’t seem to talk to him about - whether it’s a secret, whether she doesn’t have the words, whether it’s just not something to be spoken. It kills him when she wears that expression, lost in her own thoughts that he’ll never hear, and he can do nothing but wait until she blinks herself back into the room. 

Vision values information. He values her. In the moments where he lacks both, he doesn’t know what to do with himself. 

He gets restless when he doesn’t know what to do with himself. He fidgets - fidgets in his head, with his ideas and his remembered terms and his emotions. Rolls them between his fingers (like one might, for example, roll the stem of a flower until it wilts). After so many weeks of having that purpose, keeping her warm at all times… after holding the very power she contains, looking at it, feeling it… It feels as though the progress reversed. They got so close so quickly, he fell on his face and his heart tumbled out through his mouth, and she bent down and she picked it up and she looked at it, and now… now, they’re… 

There’s no use in finishing that thought. 

Starvation, that’s all this is. He’s just hungry and he’s not thinking straight. That’s all. If he were eating, if he were sleeping, he’d not be in love with Wanda. (Don’t be daft, a voice in the back of his head says.)

He’s starting to consider asking Emily-something to dinner. If just once. 

This is something akin to desperation, he thinks. He dreads the dullness that exists outside of his flat but it might be good, you know, to remind himself what most people do. Most people make eye contact with people who have non-glowy hands and eyes. Most people don’t get bored when they see people who don’t have a star inside them. 

Vision gets bored when he sees people who don’t have a star inside them. Do you know how many people don’t have a star inside them? Nearly every single person on the planet. 

Emily turns around in her seat somedays. She tries to find him in the dim light. She can never see him and she gives up before she can wave and smile at him. If that’s not the most boring and symbolic thing Vision has ever had happen to him, he doesn’t know what is.

Sure, does she exclusively talk to him about schoolwork? Does she only need his notes? Does she ever refer to him by name? Yes, yes, and no. But, in the grand scheme of things, Vision isn’t unfamiliar with being attributed solely to something he can provide. Dreams and notes, that’s all he has. All of his value lies anywhere but in the parts he wants so badly to be valued for. He wants so badly to be cared for.

If he asked her out, she’d say yes at least out of pity. Pity could get him one dinner. One dull night. 

He couldn’t date her, though. Not with Wanda as his flatmate. She seems to dislike other people. She can’t stand Emily in particular. The one person in two years who has spoken to him and it’s at the exact moment that he can’t - or, rather, isn’t allowed to speak back. 

(For the best, likely. Emily-something decorates her student profile. That still is an unwavering red flag for him - who puts the effort in to drag a high-quality image into the portal and then never take notes? What’s the point?)

It doesn’t warrant too much consideration, having more than one dull night spent in non-radioactive company. It’s unfeasible. Wanda plans to live with him forever, so... that’s... a forever spent like this. No dating, no hands held in moonlight, no opportunities to call his mother and finally be able to say yeah, Mum, I met someone. No more dull nights.

It’s fine. It’s such a silly thing to mourn over. If Wanda hadn’t come along, he’d likely not have thought to look for love anyway. It’s good to have a friend, at the least, good not to be completely alone. 

Even in the moments like this when Wanda is asleep and leaves his mind vacant, when his own mind feels lonely. 

Just… Just one dinner would be good. One meal. One night spent talking to someone that doesn’t already live in his head, scratching open old wounds on accident. One night with someone who might… ah. It doesn’t matter. 

It would be easy to move on from this if it weren’t for the curse of his imagination, widened by Wanda, new experience and horizons extended. 

He keeps having these dreams, dreams he doesn’t permit or outline or plan. Wanda smiles through them, focusing on the warmth of them and not the pictures. She doesn’t see the pictures, doesn’t see the kisses and the embraces Vision wants so badly. She doesn’t see the glowing red border around each and every one of them. 

He finds himself waking up early on purpose to avoid any embarrassment. 

Just one dinner. He clings to this concept as if he would ever have the courage to ask anyone anything. He’s never asked for anything. He just sort of… lingered around the people he liked, stared and wished (and dreamed, apparently), waited for them to notice him, waited for them to sweep him up for a nondescript amount of time. Often a day or so, they’d keep him, sometimes a week. 

Forever, Wanda says. 

Vision groans and buries his chin into his shirt. He sniffs. He drags the fabric up to his eyes and presses it tight to keep everything inside. 

“Ugh,” he says tearfully, then laughs at himself. 

Every noise he makes in this grand theater echoes for seconds afterward. Every sniff and shift and click of a dry throat as he cries into his sweater.

He’s as happy as he’s ever been and yet he still feels so miserable. 

Another tick on the chart of reasons that he shouldn’t have been a person. Constant corporeal dread, even in the good moments. He can live for weeks on just a bite or two and a glass of water, he can stay conscious for days after an hour spent asleep, and yet one stupid crush might be the thing to kill him. 

He’s built incorrectly. He’s weak and fundamentally flawed and yet he can hold a star in his hands like it’s nothing. 

Hm. 

Right, yes, that’s… that’s curious.

Vision thinks about the way her powers fit into his hands, the way she had let him hold them. 

He sometimes forgets how they met, amidst everything. He forgets the alley and the way she had been walking - oh, God, it terrifies him now that he knows her well, the image of her alone and wandering - and the way she didn’t seem to have a destination in mind. 

He hates the thought of Wanda alone. 

He thinks about the dress, folded in his closet. 

Vision wipes his eyes with the backs of his hands, sitting up straight. 

Yes. Fuck, yes, how could he have forgotten? 

The dress. The numbers, 0211, worn, and the shirt collar that was slightly greyed as if repeatedly covered by something metal. 

A memory in his head of Wanda baffled by the texture of a scarf. 

Cold. Metal. 

Her voice has changed since they met. He can remember how she sounded that first day, and a few days afterward. Smoke and fire. Gruff from lack of use. The last time she ever said the word laboratory. 

I am from the laboratory. 

He asked why she was there and she never answered. He had gotten distracted.

He isn’t distracted now. Empty mind, empty body, empty room. 

Vision’s hands shake as he opens his laptop. A blank document flutters onto the screen. He dismisses the tab and opens a browser. 

He’s spent two years doing near constant research. This is the one place he should be able to thrive. 

An empty search bar is just as intimidating as a blank document. It’s all about starting. 

He runs a nail between his teeth, staring, trying to figure out exactly what he wants to know. What he can know. He’s looked up things about Wanda for weeks (months?) now. Everything is theoretical or simply doesn’t occur within the realm of reality. Just out of his reach. 

He hits the space bar about twenty times before pressing his finger to the backspace button. The cursor glides back to the start. It’s difficult to come up with a query to something he doesn’t fully understand. There’s no beginning, no ending. No finish line to trip toward or target to line himself up with. 

There’s only Wanda. The pieces she barely gives him in her sentences, the countenance she wears when she undoubtedly disappears into the memories. 

That’s where she’s been. Safe in his flat, lost to the thoughts of… what had she said, again?

The walls were too big. Heavy. Wide.

Vision scrubs his hands down his face. 

He’s the biggest fucking dunce on the face of the Earth. 

He keeps looking for answers where he always has before - when there’s an influential woman to research, to define, he looks up their name. He doesn’t know Wanda’s full name. (He tries: Wanda 0211 Sokovia. Nothing.) Wanda is an influential woman in the making, unknown, hidden. She is influential and she doesn’t know how or why. He has been searching for answers in a void, as it were.

There are no definitions of her power - but there will always be addresses for buildings. Laboratories. Buildings. 

Buildings are tangible. They have stake to them, they have weight. They aren’t hidden. 

Wanda brought him to a building once. He can remember her hand in his, his first time interlocking his fingers with someone (he’s still on the fence on whether to count it or not, as she was so clearly not thinking about him). She was blank, cold and red, stumbling feet leading them through the alleys, and Vision hadn’t been paying attention to the route - but fuck. 

She had been retracing her steps. A trance broken at the end of a pathway. They looked up at the building together. The building that stared back. It took her voice and it took her smile. 

“Oh, Wanda,” he whispers, aghast, “What did they do to you?”

He shifts forward, elbows braced on the table, finding a layout of the streets. He finds the shoe shop they went to, the restaurant Wanda had wanted to eat in so badly. The alley system from there leads to a block of vacant, equally grey structures. He drags the map over to the corner of the screen, opens a new tab. He squints, eyes still stinging from an interrupted sob. 

Wanda’s still asleep but her voice is so clear in his head as he remembers, as he pushes through his idiocy, as he tries to create a full picture. 

How many were there at the start?

He pulls up the local property records. The registry of the area.

It was them, and it was Pietro, and it was me. 

And they were gone, and Pietro was gone, and I…

He scrolls through the addresses, eyes flickering over to the map, tracing the tiny words there, finding them in the long list. 

The dangerous thing about this is that he is attempting to solve the mystery of Wanda, yes, but her mystery is interlocked with what he had long heard to be a rumor. All the while that he scrolls, he plans to find pictures. Pictures of the inside of the lab, pictures of the Pietro or the others she mentions. He plans to find something. 

But he can’t. There is nothing to be found. This is the beauty of rumors, he supposes, they often lack evidence. 

The address isn’t in the list. Vision falls back into his chair, tapping his foot, thinking, before falling forward again. 

He finds images of the outside of the building. Wide shots where it pokes out and into frame, nestled among its brothers. Vision drags the image elsewhere. He loads up a cheap reverse-image search. His laptop fan wheezes as it calculates, combs the internet for a matching grey building. Luckily, it protrudes outward at the top like an… admittedly menacing Tetris piece. 

The speakers chime. 

Dozens of trillions of results. Such is to be expected with a grey building - however. 

An article is attached to one of the images, the building with eyes. This must be its front-most face, the face he hadn’t seen from their vantage point in the alley. 

Two and a half months ago, the article is dated to have been posted. He clicks the link. 

The front of the building… is torn open. Black, jagged void where grey concrete would be. Vision leans so close that his nose bumps the screen. He touches the image, outlines the indentation as if he could feel the heat coming from it. 

This must have been her. This must have been when she left. 

Two and a half months, then. They’ve known each other for two and a half months.

“Christ,” he whispers. 

The article is unhelpful. They know nothing. But, they offer the street name and a brief history. Which he can work with. Vision is good with history. 

There are six grey, nearly identical buildings on Pheles Street. They sit in a tight block - all of them are listed in the registry but one. The one Wanda brought him to, the one she blew a hole in the side of. Big, thick, heavy walls. Walls that muted thunder. 

Fine. The one building he needed is unreachable, unlisted - it technically doesn’t exist. Great. Wonderful. 

But the others do. 

He clicks through the registry. 

203 Pheles Street. Purchased under the name John Bronson. 

204 Pheles Street. Purchased under the name John Bronson. 

Vision taps his fingers on the desk. He scrolls through the rest. All five of the available records are purchased under one name. Not a company, a man. 

Now, a man has a name. And Vision can work with a name. 

A quick Google search turns up empty. This is boggling but he’s already been stumped by a name tonight. He keeps pressing. He looks through library guides, scientific journals. He looks through scholarly articles, published works in various fields. Big grey laboratories? Certain to have been used for some sort of study. 

Revolutionary science, Vision recalls them saying. The rumors were mysterious but they all held equal parts secrecy and glowing reviews. 

Vision knows scientists. He bumps elbows with them in the stairwells. 

They’re not one for secrecy. They like recognition. They like their names, they like to flaunt them, like to publish and publish until their bookshelves are full of their own words. 

Vision looks up and down for an indication of this Bronson. 

He searches through public records, searches for doctors and researchers in London. Any men named John Bronson are… well, average. Barely educated. Postal workers or construction chaps. 

Not what he’s looking for. 

He... doesn’t exist. 

He can’t. It’s an impossibility. Vision has seen plenty of pen names in his day, plenty of aliases. Never like this, though. This isn’t in the name of publication. So what could it possibly be used for?

A cover-up. Obviously.

Vision takes a tour of London via images, via records, via names, via digits. He walks the streets, clicks through them, follows the trail he can access. He hops from adjacent building to adjacent building. Coffee shops and restaurants and… office blocks. 

It’s so brainless. God. It’s frankly indecent, how easy this becomes. 

An office in the building supposedly perpendicular to the building Wanda had been so afraid of. Painted up and down in red and black. No obvious signage. It masquerades as a normal building. A normal building bought under the same John Bronson. 

So, of course, it is connected. 

The names flow like honey once he has a real property in his hands. An actual thriving business with a website that is, from what he can see, merely propaganda. Empty promises and pictures of employees working at desks and holding blank sheets of paper. 

Red and black and empty pages. 

Red. 

Fifty-five employees work in the building. Vision clicks through them. How odd, a block office space with individual introductions for each of their employees. It seems as useless as a student profile with an image on it. Useless decoration, ornaments no one needs. Profiles that no one else would read. 

Vision reads them.

They’re all well-fleshed out, the profiles. Roughly fifty-fifty division of men and women, all different educational backgrounds, different writing voices, different uses of punctuation. Sal from Brighton uses excessive commas, Herb from Oxford enjoys exclamation marks. Different spousal status, different numbers of children. Lives lived and plucked and summarized. 

He almost believes it. Truly. He almost clicks off the page. 

If only they hadn’t used the same actress for two of the employees. 

Marta from Canterbury and Debbie from Cirencester. They share the same face. Same asymmetrical dimple, same brown hair swept to the side. The pictures are different but the eyes are the same.

Yes, the names flow like honey because they aren’t real.

It feels very much like Vision stands at the edge of a precipice, his toes hanging over and his heels planted where it’s safe. There is a choice to be made, now, about where he wants to be. This isn’t a pointless academic paper, this is real life. He has found the frayed end of a rope that leads somewhere, somewhere dark with answers that will ache. 

If… If he continues from here, he will be stepping off of a cliff. He doesn’t know how long he’ll fall or where he’ll land. This is bigger than he’ll ever be. He has stumbled onto something that was meant to be hidden. He has walked himself up to this cliff and he is looking down into it, leaning as far forward as he can without tumbling over. 

This is what frightens him: if it were anything else, he’d let it go. 

If it were the normal tragedies, the normal injustices, he’d do what the rest of the world does when they see someone hurt on the ground. People look away. They step over the bodies and they get where they’re going because it doesn’t matter. At the end of the day, the bodies get swept up and the road gets cleaned. 

Vision looks over his shoulder. He checks the time. They’ll be here any minute. 

If there’s one thing that gives Vision even the smallest inkling of courage, courage that he never has… it’s the fact that, clearly, they have no idea what Wanda is capable of. 

If they did, they’d have done a better job, here. If they knew who she was, what she held - if they knew what they had done … they’d not have made a fake fucking website in the first place. They’d have wiped it all away. They’d have cowered and hidden and run as far as they could. Changed their own names, not made extra ones.

They don’t know what Wanda is capable of. They scared her and burned her and left her alone. And she still shattered the side of their building. 

Vision has never missed a class before. 

He’s never had a reason to.

The rumble of humanity is rolling down the hall like a wave. He’s getting that energetic feeling that people often get when they’re about to make an awful decision, the lightning part of a thunderstorm. Fast and bright and stupid. 

Spontaneity. Change. Priority. 

Wanda is the priority. Class can wait. And besides, he read the chapters, he took the notes. He’ll check the slides later. (He is very skilled at panicked rationalization.)

Decision is made. He jumps off the cliff. Vision swipes all of his things into his bag. He fumbles with his pen, stuffs it into his pocket, hugging his bag to his chest. 

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,” he whispers to himself as he moves, tripping out and into the hall. 

There’s a pack of non-star humans walking toward the room. They talk about last weekend. They talk about… God, it doesn’t matter. 

He shoulders his way through the crowd, a barrier that spans the entire width of the hall. He wishes that their fake definitions of reality included common decency. 

Fate has the courtesy to wait until he’s out of sight of everyone, down one flight of stairs and safe on a short landing, to send him tumbling to the floor. His laptop and notebooks slide across the hard ground. Nothing is broken. He shoves it all back inside and is on his way again. 

He was fine when he was sitting down. Research is the one thing he knows he can do. As soon as he stood, as soon as he moved from the set routine, as soon as he launched himself into the canyon, he set somewhat of a panic into motion. 

God, he could use Wanda right now. 

“Wanda,” he says out loud, falling sideways into the front door. It does nothing, talking to someone who isn’t listening. It’s just a comfort at this point. 

He avoids the curb. He follows old footsteps, ducking into the circles of lamplight. He walks away from his class building, away from his flat. He hyperventilates. He feels nauseous. The concept of turning back and returning to his night, starting to climb his way back up to the top, occurs to him but it is not an acceptable course of action. 

They burned her. He can’t just close his eyes. 

No matter how many times he says Wanda’s name, she doesn’t reply. He knows it’s idiotic to be so afraid, he knows it’s idiotic to seek comfort from the person he’s meant to keep safe. 

He wanted answers. He’s getting them. He’s getting them for Wanda. 

150 Pheles Street. 

He brushes his hands through his hair, hooks his bag over his shoulder. It knocks against his legs. No time to adjust the strap. No time to miss Wanda’s hands in his hair. 

190 Pheles Street. 

What does he expect to find? Damned if he knows.

Whoever these fuckers are, they know their way around a digital footprint. They know how to wipe their slates clean. That means they know people who have the resources to wipe the slate clean. They have the power, the money, the everything they need to hide this. 

They were confident enough to deliberately make a flawed cover.

200 Pheles Street. 

Whatever they did to Wanda, whatever they did to the others. They were so confident they got everyone. 

Did you know that the heart of a star is meant to kill you?

They missed one. 

Vision feels ill. He wants to hear her voice, wants to know that she’s okay. He wants to ask about her day and he wants to hear her talk about television or blankets or pasta or sneakers. It’s a shame that he’s too weak to call to her. The double doors are locked, in here. She won’t let him in.

He steps into the alley. He feels her phantom hand in his, the memory of this place filled with low sunlight as he followed her through the system.

“Wanda,” he pleads. He raps his knuckles against his temple as if it’s a foolproof way to summon. No one’s home, he knows, but he tries. “Please, tell me where to go.”

She doesn’t. His footsteps echo. All the puddles are gone, the stretch of street in front of him cracked and lonely. He grasps at the strap of his bag so tight his fingers ache. 

If Wanda were here, she’d tell him to stop. 

He remembers… a left… then… a right, then a left. Yes. 

Nearly the opposite of home. 

This is where she pushed him away, where she pulled him back. The light of the street begins to fade around this point, sharp line of black drawn by his feet. 

Typically, when one encounters a pitch black alley, they turn back. 

He grabs for his phone light. 

Vision would turn back if answers didn’t lie at the other end, if Wanda weren’t at home asleep, if this weren’t his only fucking possible option. This is the only thing he can do. Find answers for her, fill in the blanks. She loses herself in her own head grasping for something and, if he’s right… if he’s right… she wants what he’s come here to find. A name. 

He trips. He doesn’t fall. He moves forward, fuzzy white illuminating circle in front of him. 

He doesn’t have Wanda’s muscle memory. He doesn’t have the map pulled up, none of the buildings are marked in the back. Frankly, he has nothing but his wits - and his wits aren’t that good. He walks blindly. Resigns himself to the terror of not knowing.

Somehow, as if puppeteered by a Wanda who has abandoned him, he ends up standing in front of the building anyway. It towers. It stares. The torch's strength is weak, it can’t even reach halfway up the thing. 

He slides his bag to rest around on his back. 

He feels like one of the explorers at the very beginning of the Indiana Jones films his mum liked so much. You know. The explorers with the hats and dumb bags (like he has), the explorers who enter the temple and touch the wrong brick and fuck everything up and die as the stones crush them.

He needs Wanda’s odd genre of compliment, right about now. Something about how he’s tall enough to run fast from the danger or that he’s too tall for the bad men to reach or… a lot of her focused comforts are about his height, actually. Tall people die all the time. He never tells her that. 

Vision walks up until he’s close enough to reach and touch. The building is solid concrete, through and through. In the picture of the damage Wanda left behind, he could see thick steel paneling through the blackened cross-section, metal columns that would take years to tunnel through. She blew this place halfway to hell, made herself a doorway. She could slice through the planet like butter. She digs her nails into his hip as they sleep. This just serves as a reminder. 

Her power is more than a ball in her hands or a dome to protect. It’s more than just crawling inside his head, leisurely strolling through his consciousness at a moment’s notice. She is gentle with him. The past two and a half months spent wrapped around her in soft blankets, soft clothes, soft touch. She’s slammed him into walls a few times, now - she could have sent him through them, could have knocked him into space, could have… could have done anything. 

I do everything, boy.

He presses his hand to the outside. It’s rough and nearly sharp against his constantly bruised palms. Curious, he presses forward as if it’d do anything, as if it’d crumble. It doesn’t. 

He sweeps the light around, scanning for some sort of logo or branding. He doesn’t know why. All that effort they put into hiding… They wouldn’t have written their names down in clear script, but there will have to be something. 

The perimeter is clear. He brushes his fingers along the rough surface of it. It won’t be something simple. They won’t have gift-wrapped themselves for him to find. He’s an idiot. If an idiot can find it easily, then…

Vision turns around. He shines his light around the abyss he stands inside. 

Real life isn’t as easy as the internet. He can’t drag each individual thought into different corners of his mind. If Wanda were here, he could. She could help him. If Wanda were here, she’d… well, she’d… probably not like that he’s here, right now. 

Vision sighs. He squints through the dark, pivots to look back at the building, turns back again.

The adrenaline/panic/worry/lightning is beginning to wear off. And now it’s just him. Standing alone.

What the hell does he think he’s doing? 

He’s not the kind of person who unravels things, conspiracies, important things. He’s the kind of person who reads articles about it over tea, legs crossed, pinky out. What does he think he’s capable of? This? This? 

Vision puts already present pieces together. He writes them down. He underlines words already written, connections already made, highlight-and-drags everything into a bright-white document. There is no part of him built for solving. There is no part of him built to save. 

He likes definition. He likes Wanda. He is drawn toward these antitheses as if, when he loves something enough, they’ll suddenly make themselves understandable to him. That isn’t how it works. 

Vision pinches the bridge of his nose. His fingers snake up to pull at his hair. He’d bang his forehead against the concrete behind him if he wasn’t entirely convinced he wouldn’t literally knock himself unconscious. 

“Well done, Vision,” he mutters, more venom for himself than he could ever hold for another person, “You really did, old chum. Walked out into the middle of nowhere to solve a mystery, got yourself lost. Brilliant. Pack up, now, head home. You didn’t solve shhhhiii…”

Vision trails off. He blinks. The t is lost. His lips remain parted. 

What was that, that he said? 

Something about being so simple, even an idiot could find it?

Just in case his tired mind is playing tricks on him, he walks toward it. A smaller building that lies to the left of the laboratory. It catches his phone light easily. It doesn’t look like the others. Small and made of some thin metal. It’s… it’s a garage of some sort, storage unit. 

Storage unit with a large, dust-covered and time-faded gate. The kind you pull up, the kind that retracts up into the ceiling. 

The kind that has a huge word on it.

No way. No. There’s… there’s no way. All that careful action, seared digital fingerprints and bleach-sterile trail. 

They practically signed their work. 

Vision adjusts the phone, raises his arm, tracing the half-dissolved letters with the beam. His hand shakes as his thumb opens his browser. 

He tells himself not to get excited. That it’ll be something unrelated, that he needn’t get his hopes up. It’s too easy. Nothing is easy. 

Vision stands on Pheles Street, hidden by a stretch of buildings bought by a man that does not exist. He stands in front of the building Wanda was kept in, the building that does not exist. 

The search buffers for about a minute. Vision feels ill. He’s homesick. 

One-hundred and thirty nine results. 

Hydra Biotech. 

Red and black. 

“You…” he clicks the first link, “... fucking… idiots.”

He… finds… names. Of founders. Of donors. Five research labs in Europe. Fifteen overseas. Millions of pounds worth of stock according to Euronext. 

Numbers and dates and real things. Real things. Not a goddamn trace of this building they held Wanda inside, not a trace of what they’ve really been doing - but certainly enough to be linked back, fed through like a conveyor belt.

Vision looks up at the large door in front of him. He bites the inside of his cheek.

The adrenaline is back. It’s a dangerous thing. There is no Wanda in his head to tell him to come home.

It takes about ten minutes to work the thing open. The locks are surprisingly juvenile. (Vision learned to pick locks in intermediate school to try and impress his schoolmates. It is difficult to impress people that do not know you are there.) It screeches as it runs up its tracks, old and abandoned structures often make the most horrifying noises.

He doesn’t know what he’s searching for. Maybe some sort of sign that this Hydra is responsible for this, that he isn’t linking two unrelated events, that he isn’t rushing to judgment. If he came here for answers, he’d better get the right ones.

As soon as he turns his light into the dark unit in front of him, he’s blinded. Almost as if he’s drowned in a floodlight, the reflection of the smallest flicker becoming something so, so much more.

“Fuck,” he hisses, shielding his eyes. It takes a moment to grow accustomed to the barrage of light. 

It’s… it’s just full of metal. Scraps, really. Vision steps further inside, blinking the white dots from his eyes. He opens and closes his free hand at his side. It feels like he’s full of static.

None of these seem to fit together. They aren’t meant to be assembled. There seems to be an assortment from chairs to guardrails to… to…

Vision finally reclaims his sight. None of these are interchangeable but they all have one thing in common.

They’re all burned. Scorched. Permanent branding, bubbled and blackened. Vision walks forward, unsteady, his pulse loud in his ears. 

He expects to hear the door shriek as it’s tugged down, the click of locks as he’s trapped inside. Instead, it’s just… silent. His breath and his footsteps and that’s all. No one knows he’s here. No one expected him to come looking for this. It’s completely unguarded.

He tours the space. Metal on metal on metal, all burned, all warped. It’s somewhat of a junkyard. 

“Wanda…?” he asks the air. “Was this… you?”

No answer. 

There’s a rounded arch that peeks out from a pile of barbed pieces. He fishes it out with careful fingers.

Not an arch, but a ring. He inspects it, face pulled into a permanent grimace. It’s cold, only burned on the inside. The outside remains polished. It’s difficult to grasp in one hand, heavy, difficult to see all the way around it as he shines the light on it. 

There’s a clasp system to open and close it. A small light system long dead. His arm begins to ache just from holding it to his eyes. The parts that aren’t black are smooth and chrome. Vision can see his warped reflection in it.

There’s an inscription. It’s barely noticeable through the soot. He brushes it away with a thumb. Narrows his eyes. Holds the light closer. 

0211.

Vision immediately drops it. It makes a loud clang at his feet, rolling for a moment before settling hard on the ground.

Cold. Metal.

He scrambles backward, eyes wide, hand burning as if it was at all hot. He wipes his palm down his shirt to scrub away the feeling, panting. 

This… this was all her. Not a junkyard - a graveyard. Things she burned. Things she broke, things she tore apart. Things they clipped her to, clasped onto her. Things that hurt. 

He runs before he can identify anything else. 

He tries to. 

Some of the objects on the floor clip his shoes and he falls, pushes himself up, keeps moving. It’s a larger unit than he wants to admit, so full of years and years of things Wanda touched and held, things she was locked inside. He runs for what feels like years, eyes forward, head aching. The light catches the mirrors that lie around him - he doesn’t want to see himself in these things. No, he refuses.

Vision stops only to reach up for the gate, dragging it down to slam and click shut. He broke the locks on the way in. He wishes he could lock it back, he wishes he could do so many things. He wishes the ground would open up and swallow this thing whole. 

He falls back onto his ass immediately, knees buckling. His shoes scuff against the ground as he scrambles back with static-filled limbs. He blinds himself with his phone in his rush to get back to the page, back to the list of names, the names of the people who did this. 

None of them are familiar. He walks the barrier between blinding anger and nauseating despondence. It’s a delicate line. He isn’t sure where he is, but he shakes as he looks through. He worries he may never be able to stand up again.

None of the names are familiar. 

He pauses.

Except one. 

The final name in a long list of faceless people. No hometowns given, no pictures or relationship status. Real people. He stares. His heart is in his throat and his mind is empty. 

Strucker. 

Every memory he has of that name is in his mother’s voice. It makes him sick. She recounted grueling meetings, read off an agenda, complained point-by-point to a seventeen-year-old Vision who could care less, nose buried in his Gameboy. 

He dials her as he sits there on the cold ground, staring at the thin barrier between him and a collection of tangible memories that Wanda likely doesn’t know sit here so close to where they live. They stood feet away from this. Why do they keep them? Trophies?

As the phone rings, he pushes himself to his feet. Yes, despondence it is. 

It rings out. It’s late in Seoul, later than it is for him. She’s likely asleep. He could wait, he could wait until morning. 

His feet drag against the concrete as he blindly presses redial anyway.

He must ring his mum a million times. It goes to voicemail, he hangs up, he tries again. It’s a repetitive action as he trudges - right and left and right and beyond - back out into the street. The drone echoes in his empty mind. He misses Wanda. 

At some point, somehow, he’s back in front of his class building. He collapses onto the bench - the bench he sat on with Wanda, counting stones, tying her shoes - digging his laptop from his bag. The dial tone purrs. He can’t get the image of charred metal out of his mind. He can’t imagine what that heavy thing would look like around Wanda’s throat and he’s glad that he can’t. He saw his face reflected in it. He doesn’t want… he doesn’t… he can’t...

The laptop is cold as he settles it on his lap. The internet signal is low but manageable. It takes him a few tries to remember how to type his password. To remember his birthday. 

Finally, there’s a quiet click in the speakers. He lets out a breath. It sounds very much like a cry. 

“Vision! You actually called!” she cheers, and he wants to be relieved at the sound of her voice, though she immediately pauses, “Vision, you called me thirty times. It’s so late - are you alright? Safe? Panicking? What’s going on?”

Alright? Safe? No. 

Panicking? He doesn’t know anymore. His chest feels like it does when he panics but he can’t bring himself to move. When he panics, he falls to the ground and he puts his head on the floor and he tries to sink through it. When he panics, Wanda sits behind him and presses her hand to his back. 

“Strucker,” he whispers. He stares at the fogged glass door, the steps that lead up to it, he can’t blink. “Who is he.”

There’s a long breath on the phone. “... Strucker?”

“Yes.” He wants to tell her that he misses her, he wants to tell her that he’s afraid and he’s angry and he’s afraid of how angry he is. He wants to tell her everything. But he can’t find the energy to do that. He can’t blink. “You know him?”

“Oh, barely. He attended a few of my meetings, a few conferences. He was a quiet one.”

Vision’s legs are moving. The laptop nearly slides off and onto the sidewalk. He grasps onto it so tight that he might take a chunk out of it. 

“Meetings,” he repeats. His mouth is dry. “What meetings.”

“You know what I do,” she replies, nervous and concerned sort of Mum laugh. “Are you okay?”

No. He can’t breathe and he can’t blink. His sight goes blurry, something rolls down his cheek. “What does he do.” The words slur, his lips curling, crying and ill and empty. “What’s his title.”

“Vision, you - “

“Mum,” he croaks. There’s a warm tear clinging to his chin and he brings a shaking hand to wipe it away. “Please.”

“Oh… oh, um…” Rustling. Muffled in Vision’s ear. He clenches his jaw. He has to cover his eyes with his fingers to close them. “Well, I don’t… I don’t know. He was always attending as a trusted colleague of the U-GIN chair. He never took notes. I assumed he was there to… moderate.”

Vision thaws. He pins the phone between his shoulder and his cheek, typing feverishly with clumsy hands.

Wolfgang von Strucker. He has a name and yet there is nothing else. A ghost of a man in an international database. And yet he attends meetings on genetics, meetings held by the leading bioengineering company in the world?

“You don’t know his title?” he sniffs, sleeve dragged over his face before he’s typing again, dragging tabs, trying to organize things. It is difficult to organize things. “Is he not a… a s-scientist? Geneticist? Is he not like you?”

“Dear, I don’t know. I’m sorry. What’s wrong? You sound a bit ill.”

“I… I think…” 

The words leave him. 

He hasn’t seen his mum in two years. Everything he has given, every piece and fact and anecdote he’s given… they’ve all been lies. Every party he hadn’t gone to, every girlfriend he never had, every gift he never received. All those texts he had sent saying he couldn’t answer because he was out with mates - all those texts he had sent as he curled up under his coffee table and tried to remember how to breathe.

There was no plan to tell his mother about Wanda because how would he? How to explain? He doesn’t know how. How to explain the fact that he was going to sell everything he owned because he didn’t have money for food, he’d never had money for food. How to explain that he walks through the alley systems instead of the main streets. How to explain that he picked her up and carried her home - how to explain that she could have killed him, that she didn’t, that she has the sun inside her chest. 

He needs her help. He can’t lie his way around it. He can’t run. 

Wanda needs help. She won’t be safe - not with everything so close. 

He scrubs a hand over his face, fingertips lingering on his mouth as his brain begins to wake up, begins to realize, begins to plan, begins to panic, “Oh, fuck.”

His mum is the leader of U-GIN. The most renowned bioengineering company on the planet. 

Bioengineering. 

Bio. Fucking. Engineering. 

“Vision.”

“Mum,” he whispers, closing his eyes, slipping down until his head clunks against the back of the bench, “I… I think I need you to come to London.”

The boy is different when he returns. 

He is early. Wanda blinks herself out of her head at the sound of the door opening. 

She doesn’t understand why she keeps losing her grip on Vision. It feels as though her power takes her by the hand and drags her away from his funny thoughts, setting her down in front of memories of him instead. Memories of being carried, memories of hugs. The star is hiding something behind the memories, Wanda isn’t blind to the pull of something Bad beneath them, but she also likes the hugs. 

A mind of its own, her power has, but she doesn’t want to miss him. His classes are boring but his notebook has her name written in it. 

She has missed something important. 

The boy is different. 

He walks slower. He closes the door with his hand instead of his hip or his leg or his foot - this is wrong. His eyes are red and his face is wet. He does not smile when he sees her. It hurts her feelings. She waits for him to congratulate her on how far she’s gotten into this show since he left. He does not. 

He is preoccupied. 

Wanda doesn’t like it when he’s occupied with anything other than her. His attention is warm. His time is warm. She doesn’t like that her power keeps dragging her out of him. She feels far away.

“Hey,” he says. His voice is different. His attention is different. 

She can look inside his mind again, if she wants. She can find the differences and pull them out in front of her eyes, lay them in rows, and swathe them in red. She can highlight them. She can see them, hear them, do whatever she wants with them. His mind is hers, he says. She is allowed inside.

But the boy is different. It is something different than sadness, something that bites more than sadness. 

She worries that this is a goodbye. 

She worries that she’ll look and she’ll hear and the words she will find will be offers of other places to stay, places that are empty or places with different boys who aren’t as funny. 

“I saved you a dinner,” she says, pointing toward the fridge. An extra pasta all for him lies inside. 

Vision looks in that direction. He speaks slowly, sounding like a cracked glass, “... Why? You didn’t have to do that.”

The boy is getting thinner. He’s starting to feel like she does, like his bones are on the outside. She fears that she did that, that she’s burning him from the inside out. She hadn’t meant to. He is shrinking. 

“Sharing,” she lifts her chin. 

Vision doesn’t melt like he always does when she says that. “You don’t have to share, Wanda.” He wipes his face with his sleeves. “Christ.”

Wanda doesn’t like this. “Boy?”

“Sorry. Sorry, just…” he turns, his back to her, burying his face into his shirt. “One second.”

She doesn’t know what to do. 

He cries so often but this is so different. He is different. Something has changed. His mind has changed and he is different and she missed it. 

She sits in her place, immobile, as his shoulders shake and his breath grows shallow. His back is tense and it invites her hand. Vision rubs her back when she is afraid. Wanda doesn’t need to be inside his emotion to know what this is. 

“Shit,” he whispers into the fabric. He sniffs. He huffs. He makes sad boy noises. “God. What do I even…?”

For a moment, she thinks he has forgotten that she is here. He isn’t alone and yet he treats this room as though it is empty. 

When he cries, it is often funny. This is not funny. 

I’m here, she sends him. She does not stay in there for long, leaves her sealed letter and recedes back to the couch. 

Vision laughs sadly. He rubs his face dry, rubs his face raw, before turning to her. His eyes and nose are red, the space above his cheeks aches. If he would only come close, she could press her cold fingers to them, make them better. 

“Yes, you are here, aren’t you?” 

Wanda nods. She wants to climb onto him. “I don’t understand.”

Vision makes another sad sound. “Me neither, friend, but we’re… we’ll… er…”

He just stands there for a moment, biting at his lip. She worries he’ll bleed again. 

“Boy,” she says. 

He breaks. He walks in a tiny circle like he does when he needs to think, hands in his hair. If he would only come close, she could help him. 

“Okay. Okay, I… yes. It’s - it’s - it’s fine,” he says to himself, then again to her, “It’s going to be fine.”

Wanda frowns. Was there another man? Danger? “How was school?”

“Wanda,” he says instead. He takes a few steps toward her. Shaky hands pull his bag up and over his head, placing it on the ground. He steps over it. It feels like she’s done something wrong. “I’m sorry.”

He kneels in front of her. The blue of his eyes is brighter when surrounded by pink. If possible, she’d like to swim in them. He shuffles forward until his knee is pressed to the couch. He keeps moving forward still as if he can go further. 

Wanda meets him in the center. She rests the soles of her feet on his leg, knees to her chest, waiting. She makes her eyes glow brighter on purpose. He likes them. She wants him to know that she likes being here. 

“Vision,” she says as cheerfully as she can, “my friend.”

He sighs his head to his chest. She places her hand in his hair. She doesn’t know why. He doesn’t move for a second. 

His hands are warm around her wrist. She expects to be pulled away, but he takes her other hand as well. He holds her hands. Lifts his head, meets her eyes. The power inside her tries to pull her away but she holds onto him tightly. She wants to be here. He is afraid.

(Sometimes Vision dreams about taking her hands and bringing them to his mouth. She expects him to do so now. He doesn’t.)

“Wanda,” his voice is gentle. His thumb is soft on the back of her hand. It is slightly black, which confuses her, but it doesn’t leave a trail on her skin. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, we… I… We need to talk about something.”

Her chest hurts. “I don’t want to leave.”

“No, no - no, God, no, not that.” He squeezes her hands and she is quick to trust him. “No, I… it’s not that. I don’t want you to leave either.” 

“Good. I’m not leaving.”

“Right, yes. Listen,” he taps his fingers, thinking, “I... found something today. And we need…” Vision clenches his teeth together for a moment, “I don’t want to hurt you, Wanda, but it’s important… I... if you can, help me understand.”

How could he hurt her? He can’t even make toast.

(A goodbye would hurt.)

Her face falls. “What is it?”

Her hands are lifted. Vision allows her to frame his jaw with her hands. He keeps her there, searching over her face, and she feels the warmth of him that she missed so terribly. She presses the pads of her thumbs under his eyes and he hums. He wears a sad smile. She wants to take it in her hands, warm it up, keep it.

“I’m thinking about what I need to ask you,” he tells her. She nods. “You can look. You can listen. I don’t even know where to begin.”

The vine in her veins is stubborn. She presses her fingers up and into his temples but it doesn’t come immediately. 

“Wanda?” he asks quietly. He covers her hands with his. “Are you alright?”

She concentrates. “Mhm.”

It only takes a moment, mental effort akin to throwing a small body against a locked concrete door, for it to give.

Where she had first braced for goodbyes, for you have to go, for just one more night. Where she had braced for a different address or a different street… Vision is thinking, now as he always does, about her. 

She shifts her fingers, presses hard, tries to fight through the pictures of her to get to some sort of question. He thinks so highly of her. He thinks so much of her. 

The question he asks makes no sense. He asks about words and names that she doesn’t understand. She knows two names other than her own. These are strangers. He seems so convinced that she’ll recognize, that she’ll be able to answer. 

She goes to drop her hands, mouth pressed into a frown. “Boy, I don’t - “

“You do,” he whispers, keeping her close, “I’m sorry. Wanda, I’m so sorry, but you do. You know them.”

Wanda shakes her head, “I only know you.”

Vision is thinking about her nose. “Wanda - “

“Ask a better question,” she demands, impatient. She smushes his face, “You want to understand but I can’t understand you.”

There are things he is trying not to show her. No - things he is trying not to show himself. People don’t know how to lock up their thoughts, they aren’t very good at them. Wanda knows how to find them. She knows where the dog likes to sleep. 

She finds where he’s tucked them away, the events of the night that she missed. They are not labeled. Where she likes his warmth, these are frost-covered. 

She closes her eyes. “What are these?”

Vision grimaces, “Wanda, if you - if you’re not - I don’t want you to be afraid.”

“Afraid,” she repeats. She scoffs. She holds his face. “You are the one who is afraid.”

She starts with the older ones. Tonight can wait. These are painted with dust. Vision makes a noise as she drags them out into the light with both hands. They’re heavy. Something inside them clunks when she sets them down.

There's a memory of a night with grass, a tall metal structure, a bright light in the sky that isn’t the sun. The grass is wet and there are hands in Vision’s shirt. He is happy in the memory but it is remembered sourly. The emotion is called Hidden. 

“Wanda,” Vision says. “Not that.”

There are so many things to choose from, tagless luggage with zippers that catch when she tugs on them. A lot of them take place in this home. A lot of them take place in the house with so many windows.

“Why don’t you look at these?” she asks, walking around the memories she’s gathered in the center of a dark attic floor. 

“Because they… are not… fun,” he sputters. 

“Not fun.”

“They hurt.”

Wanda pauses at that. She focuses on the events of the night, new and dustless. “You want to show me something that hurts?”

“I don’t want to, no.” Vision shifts from his place on the ground. “But I need to know if I’m right.”

“Right?” she asks. 

Vision only leans into her hand. 

He is afraid of something both inside and outside of himself. It is odd. He doesn’t want her to find it, doesn’t want her to crush it or smother it or protect him from it. He only wants her to see. 

It should be simple. 

Wanda enters it, the night she missed. 

It is the big room he always sits in, but it is empty. He thinks about her. He misses her. He sits and does nothing. It doesn’t seem to be as painful as he had said. So, she moves forward, presses the time to move faster. 

Wanda stands behind a memory of a Vision. She rests her chin on his head and watches him. He clicks and types nonsense. Traces lines and words with a finger. Dull. 

Before she can push time, though, he leans back in the chair. She blinks at the image he’s found. He looks at a picture of the beast. The building she lived inside, the building she broke apart. She tries to reach out and close the screen but it’s only a memory. 

“What…?” she whispers, wrenching her eyelids shut, focusing on the image. 

People know it? They have seen it, what she’s done?

“They say it was a fire,” Vision murmurs. 

“It was not a fire, it was me,” she says. There is no use in being upset. She doesn’t want people to know. 

He begins to leave the big room. He takes the image with him. He isn’t meant to leave the room, he’s meant to stay. Stay and write her name. 

She follows him. It’s all she can do. He falls and he breathes heavy and he… he says her name. He says her name many times. She hadn’t heard him. The streets go dark. She begins to recognize things. 

No. 

“No,” she brings her hands up to rest over his eyes, “No, you aren’t meant to be there.”

“I’m sorry,” he says. 

Vision’s voice asks her to help. It asks her to lead the way. If she had been there, she would have told him to stop. 

He holds a light in his hand as he gets closer. He walks toward the building and he finds it and he touches it. 

“What have you done?” she whispers. “Boy. What have you done?”

“I’m sorry.”

She’s tired of this memory. She doesn’t want it. Wanda tangles her fingers in time and drags it away. She expects to pull until he is home. 

It stops. It nearly tugs her to the ground. Time goes heavy and it goes still. 

Wanda’s palms hit the ground. It suddenly doesn’t feel like a night she had missed anymore. It feels like a night she is trapped inside. A building she’s never been in, thin walls and no light. The ground is real and hard under her hands as she looks up to see Vision. He can’t breathe. He steps over pieces of metal. He reaches into a pile. He brings something to his eyes. 

Wanda stands. She is far away. She jumps at the loud noise it makes when Vision drops it, the noise he makes, the way he runs away from it. He runs past her, falls, escapes. He reaches up for a heavy door and pulls it down. He leaves her inside on accident. 

She can do nothing else but glow. The room illuminates red. She finds what he found, takes it into her own hands. It is heavy and it is cold. 

No. No. 

Wanda doesn’t mean to hurt Vision when she rips herself from the memory, but she does. She wrings her hands away, reels back, away from his hot hands and his awful night.

Vision falls backward. His head hits the coffee table. His mind is swarming with apologies long after she pulls back. She has burned a hole in the memory. She can’t quite shake off the hurt he feels, the burn of the red and the throb from the table. 

Wanda grasps for the power that had tried to save her from this. She presses herself back into the cushions. She tries to keep going. It is no use. 

He was in a room full of things she had burned. She hadn’t meant to. If she had meant to, they would have evaporated. If she had meant to, they’d not be left at all. 

Vision held an inhibitor in his hands. She can remember the way it could shock her until she fell asleep. Vision was not afraid of it until he knew what it was for. Who it had housed. 

The boy was in a room full of things she had burned - and he ran away. He isn’t meant to run away from her. 

“Wanda,” Vision manages, voice closer, “Don’t… don’t hide. Stay out here. Please.”

She wants to hide. She is upset. She is embarrassed. She is a bad thing. 

“Wanda,” he says again. He takes her hands as if he doesn’t now know how many things she has broken with them. “Hey.”

“No. No,” she wrings herself away, “I want to leave.”

Vision holds her hands up to his mouth like he wants to. She now understands why. It feels nice. He makes her weak. 

“You don’t want to leave.” She knows that. “Talk to me. Please. I’m sorry.”

“Why.” Wanda’s throat hurts. “Why did you go there.”

“I wanted to find answers,” Vision covers her fingers to warm them, “That’s all.”

Her lip quivers. She forms a line with her mouth to stop it. “Did you?”

“Yes, Wanda, I did. I found answers.” He says this like a promise, like it is good news. 

“You… f-found…” Wanda wants to hide. His eyes are too nice. He is afraid. “You found me.”

Vision blinks at her. “What do you mean, found you?”

Wanda doesn’t want to cry. Crying hurts her head. She shoves her hands against his mouth again. 

“Wanda…” he says against her knuckles, pulling them away. “I don’t need to find you, you’re already here.”

Her confusion must register on her face. He pushes himself up from the ground to sit next to her. She slides into his side. It is an overwhelming feeling, this guilt she has as he holds her close. It fades the closer she gets to him. It does still remain, only less.

“I found the people who did it, Wanda, that’s what I went to find.”

“You did not run from people,” she tells him. 

“I ran from what they did to you.”

Oh. 

She braves eye contact, lifts her head, cheek to his soft shoulder. 

Vision’s face. She likes it. She brings up a hand to press three fingers into his cheek. He’s rough and stubbly. His face is still red and sore but he smiles down at her in a way that makes her want to fly. 

“But you don’t know what they did to me.” She wraps her arms around him. 

He nods. Wanda watches him intently. She squeezes him tight. Something cracks inside him. He doesn’t mention it. 

“Do you want to show me?”

It is difficult to answer. Vision is afraid enough to run from something he doesn’t even know. Does she want to show him, give him something to run from? Something real? He thinks so much about reality, about what it means. She doesn’t want to scare him. 

Vision rests his head back on the couch. He winces. The bruise that is forming is not visible. She hopes it is merciful. She hopes the memory she tore doesn’t hurt for much longer. 

“I’d like to see,” he continues. He turns his head to the side. Wanda’s nose bumps his chin. “If you’ll let me.”

“You won’t like it.”

“Of course I won’t,” he says. She makes a face. “But it happened. And I… if I understand, if I see… I think I can help.”

“Help?” she tilts her head, cheek resting on the cushion. “It already happened.”

“I know someone who can catch him,” Vision says.

Wanda is intrigued. She was caught, in the beginning. She was caught when she was empty and now she… as Vision says, has fire in her hands. 

She thinks she’d like to share this. She’d like help to understand it. Maybe Vision will know what she was meant to do, what she was made for. 

She chooses the memory before she goes inside. She chooses a showcase, one that she can remember well, one that she was proud of. 

They put her in the heavy collar. She will never forget the sound it made when it clicked shut or the whine when it powered on. Her feet ached as they dragged her across the floor. Glass window, five viewers, one captor. There is a long bar that connects the metal around her neck to the metal around her wrists. 

She is told to shatter a tank. Large, heavy, black. It is an easy task that they give but they seem not to understand this. They look at her like she is a weak thing. They look at her like she is not precisely the thing they have made her to be. 

The sound it makes as it fractures is loud enough to deafen. Pieces lodge into the concrete walls. Pieces lodge into the metal she wears. She turns back to the window. She waits for the applause. The collar is activated instead. 

She knows what electricity sounds like. She knows what it feels like when it mixes with the vine in her veins. 

Wanda opens her eyes. She basks in the pride of her strength, she knows that Vision is always impressed, and she smiles wide at him as she steps out of it. 

Vision’s face is wet again. 

She panics, hands brushing tears away, “No, no, no, boy, it is a good thing.”

Vision turns and gathers her up into his arms. She yelps as she’s pulled into his chest, tight hug better than anything in her memories, and she latches on. He cries into her neck and she murmurs apologies that go dismissed. 

She isn’t let go as she always is. Vision faces her completely, sways her, hand on the back of her head. She waits for his applause. He is too busy crying. 

“I’m going to find a way,” he says. He is warm. “I’m… we’ll find a way. We’ll get him.”

Wanda doesn’t know how Vision found out about the captor. She hadn’t seen his face in the boy’s night, hadn’t heard his voice. And yet he says him, like he’s certain of it. Like he’s certain of anything. 

The boy is new to this. He doesn’t know anything. 

She lets her arms fall from around him. She has to wrestle herself away in order to see him. “You make no sense, boy.”

He lets out a sad laugh, sniffing, pawing at his eyes, “Do I not?”

“He didn’t burn you,” she says, “It shouldn’t matter.”

Vision’s face changes. She has to study it closely. He is disagreeing with her, but it is more than disagreement. There is a fire behind his eyes. There is something more that she cannot recognize. 

“Wanda…” he says, bewildered, “I hope you realize that I have a great deal of care for you.”

She squints at him. 

He squints back. It’s a weak gesture. He is still crying. She very much wants him to stop. “Surely you have felt it. You said you had.”

“I feel something,” she admits. “That’s what it is? Care?”

Vision hums, bringing his fingers up to his eyes to press the tears away. “Yes.”

“The warm?”

“Yes,” he says, sounding different but closer, “the warm.”

Wanda goes to ask him to applaud. She goes to tell him about television. Vision sighs heavy, shaking his head, muttering something about idiots, and he’s pulling her into his chest again.

She closes her eyes. He hasn’t had any tea recently. The cinnamon is gone.

Wanda has a bad dream that night. 

He wakes up to the feeling of an emotion pressing sharp behind his eyes. He can’t see what she’s picturing. The doors are locked. 

“Wanda,” he rolls over on his side, squinting through the dark. He takes one of her hands. She grabs on so tight that his bones knock together. He’s used to it. This happens all the time. “Mmh. Hey.”

The pain in his hand helps wake him up a bit. It shoots up his arm, triggers a migraine. He reaches over and clicks on the lamp with his non-taken hand. 

“Jesus,” he has to take a deep breath, clear a mind on fire, in-out-in-out, “Ow. By the way.”

Wanda makes a quiet noise. Not quite a cry. Vision sighs. He never knows how to wake her up. All the immediate options are probably inappropriate. 

“Wanda. Hey. Friend. Good friend. Red… glowing friend.” He nudges her shoulder. He can’t squeeze her hand because his is out of commission. She’s flooding his mind with a feeling he’ll never understand. It’s hard to keep above water, here. “Wanda.”

She doesn’t stir. 

Vision hates that he knows what works. 

“Alright,” he says, sitting up, back to the headboard. He knocks his head back into the wall, immediately remembers why he shouldn’t have done that. “C’mon, woman.”

Wanda weighs nothing. He gently brings her up, legs across his lap, wrapped up in warm blankets. She wakes up nearly immediately, arms falling around his neck.

“Just a dream,” he promises. He always says that. She always disagrees, but she lets him say it anyway. 

“Hurts,” she says. 

Her nails are digging into the back of his neck as if she thinks he’ll leave. Vision brought her to this home, he brought her into his lap. God. He doesn’t say this, though, just lets her scratch so hard that she draws blood. No one sits behind him at the lectures, it’s fine. 

“I’ve got you.” It feels like the thing that people say. “I’m here.”

He can’t stop thinking about it. She gave him… the smallest possible portion of her experience. Maybe a minute and a half, maybe two minutes or what had to have been years of torment. He couldn’t handle that. It ripped him apart. 

He held that thing in his hands. It had her on the ground in seconds. 

“It was hiding it from me,” she whispers. 

“Hm?” he tilts his head to see her. “What was that?”

“I didn’t remember all of this before,” she says. She’s ice cold. Vision tugs the blankets further around her.

“I’m sorry.” His hand is in her hair and he can’t be certain when it got there. “I’m so - “

“You said you’d get him.”

Wanda’s eyes are dim tonight. He has no idea what that means. If she’s calm, if she’s safe, if she’s the opposite. If he’s made this worse, if he’s made it better. 

His head hurts for three different reasons. His hand and his neck. His chest. His heart. 

“Yeah,” he says. Hand in her hair. Wanda in his lap. Absolutely in love. Absolutely terrified. “Yeah, we’ll find a way.”

Wanda sniffs. 

Vision doesn’t know how one finds a way. He knows two influential people, the only people he knows. Sandwiched between someone who needs help and someone who can provide it. 

He doesn’t know if this helps, holding her like this. It seems like it does. She’s dim and she’s looking at him and it feels like he’s done something right. 

“Wanda,” he says. 

She stares at him. It’s almost like a challenge. “Vision.”

He laughs. Has no idea why. “Sorry, I… sorry, I’ll… be… quiet.”

She rests her cheek against his shoulder. A head on the shoulder begs a kiss. He rests his chin in her hair instead. 

“No one has ever said my name as much as you do,” she murmurs. Her cheekbone is sharp and her nails are sharp and Vision is definitely shedding blood. 

He hums quietly. He’s cried so much tonight. He’d ask for mercy if he felt like she had some to spare.

“I…” she exhales heavy, the nails on his neck letting up, dragging down to rest on his chest. This is a problem. “I don’t think I can remember what it sounds like in any other voice.”

He values information. He values Wanda. 

He doesn’t know what to do with himself.

Chapter Text

The boy’s mind is overbrimming. 

It is the funniest and most useless thing to worry about and yet it consumes him. 

He has been on the floor all morning. 

Wanda lays on the bed with her chin on the edge, hair falling below, watching him. He lays on his back with his hands interlocked on his stomach. He seems to be measuring his breaths - albeit, he is measuring them like a liquid lifted via a teaspoon riddled with holes. 

Her power is pouting today and allows her to stay inside. Whatever its goal had been has been foiled and now she is allowed to run free. There’s a great likelihood that he may overflow. She listens to a clamor between his ears and his lips hardly move. 

He has not spoken in a while, no, but when he does? When he does speak to her, she shines. She can’t help it. It doesn’t matter what words he offers, she likes all of them. He says sorry and he says don’t look at me like that. He says I’ll get your food in a moment and then says Wanda, where is my phone? 

Each sentence spoken seems to require hours of preparation. Wanda doesn’t mind. It is nothing unmanageable. While he’s spooning out his breaths and his mind is drowning in worry, he does not cry. And it gives Wanda a full day to look at him. 

Vision always thinks of her as something to understand. She likes that feeling, to be magnificent enough to be sought after. She likes the way he thinks of her. He thinks of her as something to sit and stare at, marvel at, write about - though not behind a glass pane. He underlines her in his thoughts. He writes her kindly, he writes her prettily. His handwriting is perfect for his imagination of her - scrawling, disorganized, fast and blurred as he tries to get all of her at once. He cannot fit all of her at once, though he tries. 

Wanda thinks of Vision as something to understand too. 

He still doesn’t make any sense.

She rests her head in her hands, kicks her legs as she lounges on her stomach. She learns about him just by seeing the way he lives when he is silent. She goes to school in this way. Wanda doesn’t know what it feels like to hold a pen. She doesn’t know what it feels like to make the ink glide, to form the words she thinks and feels and crushes so often. 

Her feelings for Vision make no sense. She could burn through notebooks if she knew how, cover-to-cover filled pages, based on the things she can see. She’d write about his eyelashes and his eyebrows and his sweaters and his legs and his hands. She’d underline his eyes. Circle them. She’d write his name. She’d write it a million times. 

She cannot see what her feelings look like, she can only… feel… them. She would write them if she knew how. 

If she were to have to put the feeling she has for Vision on a page…

Wanda imagines a big bucket of ink. She imagines that she dips a finger inside and presses a small dot in the center of a blank page that is precisely Vision’s height. She would step back, look at the dot, think about him. Think not enough. 

The ink would be warm as she dipped her hands into it, then. All the way up to the elbows. It would be deep and black, liquid shadows dripping onto the ground, dripping onto her clothes and her socks and rolling up to pool under her arms. 

She’d think about him. 

She’d slam her palms onto the page. Two soot-like explosions, a spray of black in all directions. She would step back and take a running start, jump as high as she could, touch as much as she could reach. 

She’d smear and color and smother, she’d draw smiley faces and grin at the fingerprints in the eyes. 

The feeling she has for Vision is a mess. 

It drips and it puddles and it’s so saturated that it rips the page she tries to paint it on. 

(That’s part of it, though, that it rips. An important part. Wanda breaks things when she likes them, she doesn’t mean to. She hadn’t ever liked something like Vision before, something pretty. She wraps her fingers in pretty things and tries to pull them along with her. They get thin and they get tired and they get empty.)

In her head, she imagines Vision running her a bath as she makes an ocean of ink in the hallway. The water would turn black and he’d have to drain it and start again. She’d find ink for days. 

Vision sighs. She perks up, lifts her head, waits for his words of the hour. 

“No one’s ever met my mum,” he says to the ceiling. He sounds like he has nothing inside him. “I’ve never… known anyone. And no one has ever met my mum.”

Wanda has met his mum. Just not in the normal sense. (Black, shiny hair. Like ink.)

She knows that Vision’s mother wears yellow and lives in a place with sunshine. She knows that, every time Vision’s thoughts turn to missing the woman, the woman misses him too without Wanda’s influence. She knows that, in all of the memories Vision has, his mother sleeps on the left of the mattress. Vision sleeps on the left of the mattress.

“God.” Vision covers his face with an arm. His shirt lifts. Wanda stares at his stomach. She wants to touch it. She might. “The first person I know. The first person I introduce to my mother. And it’s… Christ.”

Wanda squints at him. “Boy?”

He turns over on his side. He curls into a ball, his back to her. Wanda wants to tap a stick to all of the pieces of his spine that jut out through thin fabric. Would they make a noise?

He presses his cheek to the ground. Wanda wants to jump on top of him, change his thoughts back to her. He shifts until his mouth is pressed to the floor and he muffles out a gentle, “My mother is coming.”

“... Okay.” She doesn’t understand the issue. He likes his mother. 

He rolls over onto his stomach, still facing away from her, “She’s coming to help.”

“... Okay.” This is a good thing. And yet his thoughts are full of a planet being brought to an end. 

“I don’t… I…” he brings his hands up over his head, fingers interlocked, hiding from something unseen, “... how do I do this. I can’t do this.”

Wanda wants to join him on the ground but it’s not comfortable. Between the choice of looking at him all day while the mattress is soft on her tummy and looking at him all day while she lays on the opposite, she chooses the former. No hesitation. 

It makes no sense. He seems distressed by this but he won’t lay on the bed. Wanda, now that she has the option, is quite partial to this bed when she is in distress. 

All of Vision’s distressed memories in this flat are on the ground. His first and only decision is to lay down and wait for the distress to go away. But it never does go away, that she can see. He only ever falls asleep there, wakes up worse than he felt before. 

Wanda sighs. She will have to do it herself. 

“Boy,” she says. (She has become him. Wanda, Wanda, Wanda. Boy, boy, boy. ) “You are not helping yourself.”

He makes a miserable noise into the floor his face is pressed against. He lurches on his side again, curling up tighter than before. He protects a wound that does not exist. Anticipated wound, perhaps. Imagined. 

She scans him. He won’t be able to breathe like this. When she can’t breathe, he tells her to - Breathe? He says, Slow? Steady? As if it doesn’t occur to her that she needs oxygen. It never really helps, but it is an effort. 

“Breathing is important,” she tells him. 

Vision sniffs. “Don’t wanna.”

Wanda was not aware that she was now in the company of a small child. 

She pushes herself up to sit on her knees. She waits for him to come back to himself, taller and schooled and not the age of someone who colors with crayons. Wanda forgets the word for what he’s doing. A silly word. Hm. Throwing… he’s throwing… something. 

After a moment of observing a frustrating and pretty boy, she lets her feet hang over the edge. She stretches to nudge his back with her toe, not wanting to leave the bed. He doesn’t do anything. She has to shuffle a bit further, kicking his leg. He doesn’t make a sound. 

“Boy…” she warns. She kicks him again. As if a small disc, he skids across the floor. Unfazed. 

“She doesn’t get here until tomorrow,” Vision says into the legs he’s bent himself toward. She never understands how he can twist like this. She knows he has bones, she feels them, but sometimes… she doubts. “I have time.”

“Time to what?”

“Fix everything.”

Wanda stares at his back. “You said she is the one who is going to fix things.”

“No. I mean, I mean yes.” He hugs his legs tighter. “She’s going to fix your things. Hopefully. Help crack the case.”

She takes a long, measured breath. (She learned these from Vision.) (He does them when he’s frustrated with her, when she is being demanding.) Wanda folds her arms over her chest. (She learned this from Vision.) She likes to understand him but sometimes he is too boggling to even attempt to decode.

Vision only ever thinks about her. She was not aware there was another problem. 

“What else is there to fix?” she asks. “I am the one in need of help.”

Vision pauses. 

He lets himself go, reluctant, unfurls like a loose paper ball, letting his limbs stretch out. His head lulls to the side, focused on her.

His eyes are blue and his eyelashes are invisible. He stares up at her for a long time, silent, lips parted. Wanda feels like she said something wrong. He doesn’t explain. He doesn’t explain why he looks like this, like her words aren’t a comfort. 

She reaches for his emotion. She finds Hidden among them. She finds warmth, but it is hesitant to apply itself here.

He opens and closes his hands where they lie on either side of him as if they are thawing from a freeze, “... Y-yes. Right.” 

Wanda waits for more. Even his thoughts are unhelpful, swarming with agreements. Agreements and undefined feelings. She gets nothing else.

“Your mother will fix my problem,” she says, nodding, waiting for the applause. She swings her legs. Vision hasn’t blinked in a while. “You don’t need to worry.”

His head is full of worries. Wanda could crush them, if he asked, she could tear them out.

Vision curls into himself again. 

Tantrum. Yes, that’s the word. Vision is throwing a tantrum. 

She hops down to the floor. He’s muttering to himself. Every word he speaks that he doesn’t give to her is endlessly exasperating.

“You always ask how you can help me,” she reminds him, wandering over to the lump on the ground. “You are having a tantrum. That is not helpful.”

“I’m never going to be able to fix this,” he says into his shirt. He keeps forgetting that she can hear him. “Everything I’m ever going to do… is always gonna be… about her.”

“You are not helping yourself.” Wanda stands over him, one foot on either side of him, peering down. “Get up.”

“Fuck. Oh, fuck.”

“Vision,” she says, because that always seems to work. 

“Just a vessel. You’re just a vessel, Vision. That’s all you are.”

Wanda bends down and grabs his arms. He goes limp, refusing to stand, even as she drags him up to her eye level. Something in his wrists creaks and shifts in her grip. He seems to either not be aware that she’s holding him up by the arms or he simply doesn’t care. 

“Wanda, just let me sulk, please.” He sways a bit, his knees hovering above the ground where she hangs him in the air, “I need this.”

“No,” she says. 

She releases him. He hits the ground with a thud. He doesn’t come back up. 

She kneels next to him, nudging his back. Vision makes a quiet noise.

After a quick glance to the soft bed, she regrets not having dropped him there. 

“Sorry,” she says. 

Vision shakes his head. He seems to think that he’ll melt through the floor. He seems to be counting on it. “Don’t worry about it, friend,” he mumbles, lips brushing the wood beneath them. “You’re fine.”

Wanda sits back on her heels. She places a hand on his back. She pats twice. He doesn’t laugh like she expects. She tries again. 

She doesn’t understand. She has his mind in the palm of her hand and yet there are moments like this where it feels like she knows nothing. Vision’s worries are funny up until the precise moment they aren’t. 

“Maybe I can fix it,” she offers quietly, tapping him again. “If you tell me what’s broken, I can fix it.”

Vision laughs at that. It wasn’t meant to be funny. 

“No, Wanda,” he says. It takes him a moment to move, pushing himself up to sit. He rubs at the wrists she grabbed, fresh verbenas forming, “No, it’s fine. I’m…”

Is dismissal an emotion? Is hidden an emotion? Did she get it wrong?

He drowns in the sentence, he can’t seem to finish it. 

“... Dramatic?” she gives him a word. 

“Yes. Dramatic.” He stands, then, leaving her on the ground. She shouldn’t have lifted him. He feels far. “Mum will be here tomorrow to fix your things. She’ll focus on you, she won’t see everything else.”

Wanda follows him. It isn’t fair how fast he changes. He walks as though he is normal. Slower and stumblier but normal. When Wanda is distressed, it takes a very long time to crawl out of it. 

She’s on his heels, accompanies him into the kitchen, watches warily as he crosses to the stove. He doesn’t cry and he doesn’t look sad, he is simply… Vision, again. Wanda wishes he would slow down, sometimes. She needs more time to look at him.

“We need to talk about this, I guess,” he says, sweeping the past away, reaching for the kettle. She takes her spot at his side, hip to hip, looking up at him. “Er. Other people are different than me.”

“I know,” she promises. He reaches up to grab the tea. She doesn’t touch his stomach. 

“They don’t… they don’t react well to… stars, like you have.” Vision places the paper box to the side. It makes a neat sound when it hits the counter. She reaches over and picks it up to drop it again. Thwap. She goes to do it again but he brushes her hand aside. “So we have to set some rules.”

Wanda wrinkles her nose. “I don’t want rules.”

“They’re not… shit, no, they’re not - it’s…” He clears his throat, knocking the knob to the front burner to the side, “Not scary ones. Easy rules. Just for when she’s here to make sure you don’t overstep.”

She opens her mouth to argue.

“The rules are about her. Don’t worry. You can’t overstep with me, since I’m… me.”

“Oh.” Good. “Okay.”

He leans on the counter, arms folded over his chest. Wanda mirrors him. He smiles. She feels a little bit better. 

“People… um.” His fingers pinch at his sleeves, “People typically value their brains.”

Wanda nods. She feels like she should take notes. She doesn’t know how to hold a pen. 

“Mhm.”

“So.” He holds up a finger, “Don’t lift her up off the ground.” Then, another, “Don’t go inside her mind without permission.” Another - a lot of rules, “Try, please try, to be kind.”

Wanda frowns, “I am kind.”

“You kicked me not even five minutes ago. ”

“Because you were having a tantrum,” Wanda argues, rightfully so, “Mums don’t have tantrums.”

Vision shifts on his feet. 

“Right, alright, uh - mm - one - one more thing,” He drops his hand to smack against his leg. “Don’t… just don’t… tell her anything about me. Focus on you. Talk about you. Okay?”

This feels wrong. He feels far. 

“But she is your mother,” Wanda explains to him. He must have left his common sense on the bedroom floor. “She misses you.”

Vision snorts. He scratches the side of his face and fidgets with the kettle handle. “Believe you me, Wanda. When she gets here and meets you, she’s not going to want to talk about anything else.”

Wanda likes that idea. She likes being special. 

The boy warms back into himself as the day bumbles along. He drinks cinnamon tea and he leaves room in his lap for her legs to go as they watch television. He rests his schoolwork on her legs like a desk. He gets her dinner and accepts the bite she offers, his nice teeth clinking on the fork, food tucked in his cheek as he types on his laptop machine. She tries to give him more but he shakes his head, leaning away from the fork she pokes his face with, typing so fast Wanda worries for his fingerprints. He wipes away red sauce with the back of his hand and continues. 

Wanda sees through his eyes for the first time in a while, closing her own, settling back into the couch. It’s a bit like a television show in its own way, viewing the world as he does. His laptop is warm as it rests on her shins, her plate heavy on her stomach. She watches him work. He knows many words she’s never seen, uses them easily. 

“What are you doing?” she asks. 

So odd to see herself through his sight. He looks at her, focuses on her closed eyes before looking at the plate. She feels the weight lift, feels him shift under her as he sets it to the side. 

“Schoolwork,” he says. 

Wanda makes a face. Vision laughs and she opens an eye to see him. She carries two viewpoints for a moment, the way he sees her and she sees him. They are similar. 

“You are really going back to normal?” she asks, bewildered. 

He raises his eyebrows, “Hm?”

“School. You are being normal.”

“... Yes?”

She props herself up on her elbows, “Your mother is coming tomorrow.”

He grimaces, “Don’t remind me.”

“Why not?”

“Because. That’s tomorrow. I have things to do today. Things to worry about right now.” He gestures to the screen. She looks at it. Seems like a jumble of nothing. “I can only handle so many things at once. I have to ration my energy.”

(Wanda knows that one thing he handles, constantly and without exception, is her. She is locked in place, everything else is rationed around her.) (She is special.)

“So… get more energy.”

“Not all of us have a nuclear reactor in our belly.”

She huffs. “I don’t understand you.”

“I’m…” Vision looks over her. She wants to sit up, give him a better view. She doesn’t. “Well, you don’t need to. No matter what… er, insanity occurs, I still have to complete these things. Understanding or not.” He returns to typing, shaking his head, “I anticipate that the insanity will only increase from here. Best to try and get ahead while I have some say in the matter.”

Wanda hums. She falls back into the cushions. “You make - “

“ - no sense, I know.”

Wanda’s eyes snap open. She looks at him. He grins over at her, pleased with himself. (His smile is changing, his face is getting narrow.) 

She knows that he can’t see inside her head. But, for half of a second, it feels like he can. 

“If you are aware of it, you can change it,” she tells him. She lifts her legs, wanting to sit up, and Vision fetches his laptop before it tumbles to the floor. 

“In truth, friend, I don’t think I can change it.” He clicks and types and makes words and drags them to other places. “Hard to solve nonsense. My nonsense, anyway. Hard to find where it begins.”

“I can find where it begins.” Wanda crawls over close. Her knees press to his hip. “I can change it.”

Vision works at his lip with pretty teeth. His skin draws tight over his jawbone. She’s pressing her fingers to it before she knows why. He leans into the touch despite a vocal cry in his mind to not do that. They both hear it and he does it anyway.

“I might take you up on that, someday” he says. “I have quite a few things I’d like to get rid of.”

Wanda pats his head. 

“Thank you, Wanda,” Vision reaches up and tussles her hair. 

It is her new favorite memory. 

Vision can’t sleep. 

Wanda breathes smoothly. His head is full of whatever good feeling she’s dreaming about, he’s enveloped in sharp and cold limbs, and it is one of the calmest nights he’s had in a while. If he ignores the greater circumstance, if he really tries to live in this second and nowhere else, it is objectively nice to lay with someone you love. As long as he keeps it objective, it’s manageable. 

He just can’t shut himself off.

There are so many things he needs to do before she arrives. There are so many that he can’t keep them straight. The flat hasn’t been rearranged since he moved in, everything is clean and tidy, it’s nothing that he can pick up and move or stuff under the couch cushions. 

He needs to relive the last two years but better. He needs to get a haircut and buy new shoes and fix the faucet. He needs to be the son she expects to see when he opens the door. 

Wanda knows the plan. She knows the rules. She knows that, when Dr. Helen Cho arrives, she is meant to duck into the bedroom for a moment so that Vision can explain. She’s meant to wait to be called out, offer a handshake, and, in his own words, don’t lift my mother off the ground, Wanda, I’m begging you.

He has it all planned but planning, for once, does not offer comfort. 

(Comfort is a blurry memory. Maybe this is it. Maybe it always felt like this, somewhat smothering and unhelpful. Maybe he doesn’t want it as bad as he thought he did. That would make it a lot easier.)

It takes about an hour to peel himself from Wanda’s arms. He has to unhook her nails one by one, has to figure out how to unwrap her legs from his waist without being weird about it. It feels wrong to be anywhere else but he genuinely feels like he wants to crawl out of his own skin. 

He tugs his shirt off on the way down the hall. He tosses it into the hamper and blinds himself with the bathroom light, shielding weak eyes with shaking hand. He closes the door quietly as to not rouse the duchess. 

The reflection catches his eye before he can turn to start the water. 

“Oh, mate,” Vision whispers. He gives himself a good look in the mirror, at the Pollock of half-healed green and purple marks, faint red scratches connecting them like constellations. 

He may be weak in every avenue of his life, but good Lord. He looks like a soldier. 

He raises his arms over his head. He can see where Wanda fits against him, all of the different methods she uses to keep him near. He is a treasure map. The room is just filled with quiet shuffling as he turns in small circles, looking over his shoulder, audibly laughing at the claw marks down the nape of his neck. 

(Wanda is so strong. He can’t stop thinking about the tank. He can’t stop thinking about her, bound and yet not afraid. She blinked and it shattered. She smiled at him. She could shatter him if she wanted, he’s easily shatterable, but instead she chooses to simply hold him. She holds him so tight that it hurts. But she has someone to hold. And he is that someone.)

He’s really in deep, isn’t he? He’s never going to be a normal color again. A forever of nights spent with Wanda. He’s excited to see what he looks like in ten years. 

Vision runs a cold shower. His skin feels tight and hot and itchy. He vaguely remembers an article citing cold showers as a reservoir for increased willpower. Whatever that means, he wants it. 

He takes quick breaths through his teeth as he steps in. It isn’t the most dignified display, bouncing up and down on the soles of his feet as he rotates and tries to get used to the feeling. The cold is helpful. It reminds him he has a body beyond Wanda’s reach. (The cold reminds him of Wanda.)

He freezes his face and he washes his hair. His knuckles burn but it’s nice. He assumes this is what normal people do - the normal people who go for runs at four in the morning, athletes and the healthy populace. 

It’s truly pathetic, the way his teeth chatter as he towels off. He’s wide awake, ready to do a million things. Ready to speed-run two years worth of stability, ready to try and get his story straight. 

He never told his mum what she was coming to do. He said it was important and he said he needed help and she seemed convinced by that alone. When she knocks on that door, when it opens, her world’s going to change. But he couldn’t exactly say that over the phone. She would have called up one of thousands of physicians to visit and do a mental evaluation. 

Vision sneaks back into the room. Wanda hasn’t moved an inch. She stretches out across his empty space like he’s still there, a ghost boy to bruise. 

He gets dressed in his meeting-his-own-mother clothes. He dresses silently, breath bitten between his teeth, hopping awkwardly to pull up his own trousers without falling on his face. It’s long before sunrise and yet he wears his costume readily.

Meeting his own mother. Almost as if for the first time. Introducing the love of his life to his mother, introducing himself. Neither introduction will be completely true. Wanda is only a friend and he is doing well. Wanda needs help and he is doing well. Wanda is not tearing him apart and he is a normal color under his clothes. 

Vision closes the bedroom door behind him, turning the handle until the door thuds into place before releasing it. Wanda is a heavy sleeper on the nights where she comes up with her own good dreams. 

He combs his damp hair with his fingers as he paces around an already-straightened living room. He wishes the mess of it all were outside of his head. It is impossible, by himself, to take a dustpan and sweep the disaster of himself up into it. 

Wanda offered to fix him. He really wants to accept the offer though he isn’t sure how that would go. She likes him the way he is. If she were to wrap all of his love and panic about the love into a red ball and choke the breath out of it, he’d certainly be different. Knowing her, she’d just put it right back. Reinstall it. Give him a few hours worth of relief before stuffing him full again. 

The disaster and the mess is all he is. It’s wound around him, sewn into his DNA. If that were to be fixed, he’d simply dissolve. 

Vision cleans a kitchen that is hardly used. He hangs pots and pans in sight, takes small containers of spice down and poses them by the stove as if recently used. He stages a kitchen that is hardly used in order to make it seem lived in. 

He gives up. The flat looks great and he’s wearing the clothes he wore the last time he saw his mum. 

He sits on the couch and he thinks about Wanda. 

He thinks about how long he’s tried to define her. He thinks about how, when Dr. Helen Cho is introduced to her, a definition will be expected. 

Wanda, the friend. The savior. The special. Telepathy but not. Telekinesis but not. She blew a hole in the side of a building, somehow hasn’t done the same to him. She can do everything and there’s no way to prove it. There’s no way to prove it scientifically. There are no numbers to her. She can’t count. 

Vision doesn’t know what to expect. He doesn’t know what world he thinks he lives in anymore. He wants to save Wanda, wants to help, wants to bring them to justice or whatever impactful phrase that comes to a tired and afraid mind. But there is the glaring issue, that lack of reality. Wanda can hold a star and she can’t tie her shoes. She isn’t ready to leave this flat, the world overwhelms and it thinks too loudly for her. 

Justice lies within the realm of reality. It has rules. Requirements. It takes time. To give her that, to give her an answer, they’d need to see her. 

Is it helping her, really, to make her visible? Is she meant to be hiding? How does he know? How does he help someone whose existence values more than Vision could ever hope to understand? Someone strong?

He wishes he could start over. Call his mum before he knew anything about her. Before he fell in love. Do this correctly, give Wanda what she needed before she started digging her fingers into his thoughts. Before she changed his colors. 

His hair dries. Sitting on the couch grows unbearable and he has to do something or else he’ll hide under the table again. 

At the end of a long mental debate, he finds himself standing in the center of his perfectly-poised kitchen. It’s the only place he can possibly be, out of four options. He only knows how to make tea. So, he makes tea. Hours spent standing, drinking tea, burning his mouth, turning back to the kettle, starting over again. 

Repetition helps. Makes it seem like he has something under control. 

Wanda emerges on the… he stopped counting, but he’d say likely the fifteenth cup of tea. He’s full up on cinnamon, right to the eyes. 

She pads across the floor, footsteps first audible in the hall - creak of the wood - and then she’s framed in the doorway. 

Vision stills. He slowly slides his mug onto a stable surface. He has to take a breath. 

He wakes up next to her every morning. He knows her well, at this point. 

There is no reason for the sight of her - rubbing her eyes with her (his) sleeves, yawning, hair waved and curled down past her shoulders, stunning - to be at all new. But he suddenly can’t move. He can’t move because she is stunning. He can’t move because, if she’s awake, time has run out. Officially.

It’s tomorrow, now.

“You look odd,” Wanda says blearily.

Vision frowns at that. He feels the need to apologize for being in his own kitchen, for making her look at him. He glances down at himself, “Why do you say that?”

She wrinkles her nose. “You don’t look like you.”

“Oh,” he slumps against the counter, relieved, bringing his hands up to rest on his face, “Good.”

Wanda crosses the threshold. She takes his discarded mug into her hands and holds it up, waiting. “For me?”

“Uh…” Sharing things with Wanda has not helped his ailment in the slightest. He tries to avoid it at all costs. Something about mouths. Something about close contact. “I can make you a new one. It’s a bit cold.”

She drinks it anyway. He crosses his arms over his chest, watching, anticipating whatever odd request she’ll have when she’s finished. 

(Wanda holds mugs with two hands. She curls her fingers up around them, palms settled underneath. She closes her eyes every time she takes a sip. She used to be faster with it but now she really slows down, lets herself savor. Her tongue never gets burned by the fresh ones, she never complains about the cooled ones. Too sweet or too bitter, she cradles it.)

It’s placed back where she found it. 

She nods to him, “Thank you.”

“... You’re… welcome.” 

Wanda shuffles over (sleepily, Christ, he needs help) to stand in front of him. Practically stepping on his toes. She pokes his stomach, accusing, “You were gone.”

He brushes her hand away but she replaces it. And again. She commits, full palm over his shirt, and he squirms. “Not gone. Just awake.”

“Gone and awake,” she corrects him. “You aren’t supposed to wake up before me.”

Vision didn’t know that she had rules too. Someday he should ask.

“Well, friend, you see… I mean, technically I didn’t wake up, so,” he brushes his hands down his sweater, “You still woke up before me if you consider the fact that I never, in fact, went - wha - W-Wanda, what - I - that’s - ow - okay.”

Wanda has climbed up to cling to his torso with absolutely no warning. She squeezes him. She clings. She holds. Making up for lost time.

“Am I meant… to… be… carrying you somewhere?” he asks quietly, eyes wide, arms out to the sides. He never quite knows what she wants.

“I was cold without you,” she says.

Vision is having a rough day. 

“... Oh.” He’s made it all morning without so much as a tear shed. If this is what does him in, he’ll have to move to Antarctica. Cold showers abound. “Right. I apologize.”

He stands upright. Her nails bury into his shoulders, scratch around to rest over his shoulder blades. Wanda rests her chin on his shoulder. 

“When is your mother arriving?” she asks. 

She breaks him in half and stitches him back together so easily, so quickly. So sweetly. Blink and you miss it, she scatters him and sweeps him back to his feet.

Vision wants to laugh. He wants so badly to laugh at this but, if he starts, he’ll never be able to stop. He interlocks his fingers beneath her, “Er… Nine.”

Her cheek is cold against his ear. “It is nine.”

Can’t be. “No, it’s not.”

“It is nine.” An insistence.

He has to walk in a tiny circle to look at the clock over the stove, wobbling slightly. Wanda weighs nothing. His balance is just questionable. He can hardly manage his own limbs. He cranes his neck to see around Wanda’s wild hair, lifts a hand from her back to pet it down flat.

“Huh,” he murmurs, leaning back to catch her eye, wanting to be okay with this, his hand resting comfortably on the back of her head, definitely not in a loving way, “it is, isn’t it?”

There’s a knock on the door. 

Fuck.

They both whip their heads to stare in that direction. Their noses brush with the movement. Vision’s not going to think about it. (A memory of kunik kisses. A memory of dreams that Wanda never brought up again. Cold and warm nose. Scrunched. Obviously.)

“Alright. Okay. Yes, this is fine.” Vision lets her go. She remains firm. Doesn’t budge. “She’s here, Wanda. We talked about this.”

She only holds on tighter. She slices into him and he doesn’t care. “I’m cold.”

“Wanda - “

“And,” she cuts in as if offering a final argument in criminal court, “I missed you.”

What is the protocol, here? What did he do to deserve this?

He shifts on his feet, mum at the door and girl on his hip. In the grand scheme of things, he supposes there are worse scenarios with these moving parts. More mortifying ones. 

“You’re really not going to get down,” he says, looking at her expectantly. “The plan I put in place, the plan you agreed to, and you’re just going to… not… listen.”

She smiles. He doesn’t stand a chance.

His mother, based on his previous correspondence, likely expects him to be somewhat of a person. She expects him to have overcome his diagnoses and become spectacular at making eye contact and making friends. It stands to reason that, if any of his false stories of wild parties in his flat are to be believed, a woman clinging to him is… at least somewhat… er… reasonable.

(He is skilled at panicked rationalization.) (Usually.)

“... Fine. Fine. Fine. Just…” Vision hesitantly presses a hand to her side, “I need to be able to move. And articulate my arms. So, if you’d - “

Wanda uses his hip bones like climbing holds, grasping at his sweater, trampling him upright as she shifts to rest on his back. Her legs are interlocked around his waist, ankles crossed on his stomach, and there’s a sharp chin in his hair and arms around his neck and it feels kind of nice but this is how he’s meeting his mother for the first time. This is who he is, now. 

“Fuck. Okay. O-okay.” He swerves around the kitchen counter on his way to the door. He hooks his hands under her thighs to pull her up a bit higher, find the squishy parts of his body so she doesn’t constantly impale him all day. “Alright. You - y-you - you remember the rules, right?”

“Mhm.” She holds four fingers in front of his eyes. “And they don’t apply to you.”

“Right. Well done. Great job,” he murmurs, getting a neck-hug of gratitude that nearly chokes the life out of him, “Yep. God. God.”

He takes the doorknob in hand. Wanda shifts behind him, sharp and cool. 

“No one’s ever met your mum,” she whispers as if to remind him. “I am excited.”

“Yes, thank you,” he mutters. “Thank you for that.”

Vision takes a deep breath. He waits for the ground to open up and take him with it. When it doesn’t, he resigns himself to this reality, and he opens it. 

He feels a little better, just seeing her again. 

Helen remembers how tall he is, it seems, because she’s looking right at him, eyes having been locked to the precise spot on the door where he’d be. He melts a bit, relieved at the sight of her, he missed her so much, but there’s no time to say anything because her gaze is sweeping up to the second pair of eyes over his head. 

“Hello,” Wanda says, commandeering the first word of the first conversation of the first meeting.

Helen says nothing. She says nothing about Wanda’s eyes, says nothing about their position. She just stares, wearing a smile that Vision is hesitant to analyze. 

“Friend,” Vision explains. “Friend. Wanda. Her name - this is - m-my friend, Wanda.”

“Wanda,” Helen repeats. The first word she says to him in person in two years and it’s Wanda. “I have heard… absolutely nothing about you.”

“Ha! Right, yeah, well - ha! - that’s about to change,” Vision sounds hysterical to his own ears, stepping back a bit and sweeping a girl-free arm to the side, “Please. Yes. Please, come - god - please come in.”

Her heels click against the hard floor. She didn’t bring a purse, she didn’t bring a bag. She has friends in every city, friends who have empty flats for accomplished geneticists to live in. 

“The kettle’s on,” Vision says. He feels like a stranger. “If you’d like tea.”

Helen looks over at him. She can’t keep her eyes off of Wanda for more than a second. Her smile only grows, turns into something more deliberate. Vision doesn’t know how to explain. He doesn’t know how to explain Wanda, or his feelings pertaining to Wanda, or anything. God. Anything. 

He doesn’t know if he’ll be able to get Wanda off of him long enough to say anything, truly.

“Wanda is… um…” he shifts his hold on her legs, “... she’s… well, you see, Mum, she - s-she has - “

“There’s time to get to that later,” Helen interrupts him. Wanda buries her nose in his hair to keep from laughing. He’s frankly offended. “Business can wait.”

“... L-later?” Vision asks, confused and a bit lonely even as he’s enveloped by a body, “What do you mean, later? You came here to - “

“I came here to see my son, who sounded very distraught on the phone.” She has that gleam in her eye like she knows everything’s going to be okay. “Everything else can wait.”

Vision blinks. He very much hopes everything’s going to be okay. “B-but…”

“You know the rules,” Helen says. 

“I know the rules,” Wanda chimes in. 

“Not - not Wanda rules,” Vision clears his throat, embarrassed by his mother’s focus on the two of them. He pats the girl’s leg, ever the fond one of pats, “Mum rules.”

“Mum rules,” Wanda whispers, learning. 

He receives the look, the Mum look, the look that means we’re doing this, now. Vision is contractually obligated, as a son, to pretend as though it is a huge inconvenience. In truth, he had missed this. He missed the parts of himself that were already known by another person - inside jokes, knowing looks. Things he didn’t have to explain.

“Family first, science later,” the Chos recite in unison. Same inflection, same speed, remembered after all this time. 

Vision sighs. It feels better to speak to someone else. He loves Wanda more than anything but she doesn't love him - which is fine, but makes conversation quite difficult at times. Helen loves him. (She has to, an obligation, a promise.) She used to put post-it notes in his lunch pail. She used to write the words out - I love you with a big red-marker-ink heart beside it. 

Even if she doesn’t know him anymore. Even if he is not the son he tells her he is. It’s a good feeling.

“You know… Vision,” she says. He missed her voice. It sounds real when it isn’t coming through a speaker. She lifts her hands, flattened, and brushes her long hair over her shoulders. He can’t remember the last time it wasn’t pulled back. Quiet click as she shifts her stance, hands on her hips, “I do hope I can get a hug from you sometime today.”

Vision nods. He nods for a long time. He’s going to cry. The last hug he got from her was a goodbye. And then, after that, two years without her. 

He tilts his head to look at Wanda. She identifies the tears that are already forming. “Do you mind?”

She immediately drops down to the ground. Vision can breathe better without her nails reaching so deep that they puncture his lungs. He’s taking quick steps over to Helen, he’s dismissing the clear glee on her face when she too identifies the tears, and he’s bending to gather her up. 

He sighs, well on the way to a sob, feeling like he’s home again. 

“Hi,” his mother says quietly, laughing at him. 

“Hello,” he says, voice cracking. “Nice to s-see you.”

“Oh, aein, I missed you,” she says. Vision can hardly hear her over the sound of his pulse. It is the first hug he has in a long time that doesn’t ache. “You look the same as when you left.”

He hugs her tighter to chase away the sting of the words. “I missed you too.”

Vision doesn’t want to let go. He wants to hold on for another two years, try to summon the courage to tell her the truth along the way. 

There’s a quiet noise behind them. A Wanda attempt at clearing her throat. Two holes burned in the back of his neck. 

“Right,” he sighs, tight squeeze before stepping back. He grunts as Wanda launches herself at his back again. 

Helen clasps her hands together. Vision dreads the words that are about to come out of her mouth. Wanda threads her fingers in his hair and he winces. 

“So,” she begins. 

“Mum,” Vision warns. 

“How did you two meet?”

He extra winces, “No, Mum, really, we’re just - “

“He found me,” Wanda pipes up, arms slipping under his, hugging his chest, chin on his shoulder, this is a problem. “In an alley.”

Helen’s smile falls - not completely gone, no, but it’s a half-fall. Like a suspended scaffold malfunctioning, jolting down an inch or two, jostling the passengers atop it. 

“No - no, not - I mean - I mean - “ Vision tries to figure out how to reroute this. There’s no way to reroute this. She’s not wrong. “She - s-she, sheeee, she was - !”

“I fell asleep and he carried me home,” Wanda adds unhelpfully, sounding so pleased with herself. 

Vision laughs, final attempt at keeping his nerves in check. “Uhhhhhmmmmm! She… yeah. That’s - yeah.”

Helen scans them again. Vision wants to run away. 

“This sounds very romantic,” she says flatly. (He knows why she isn’t pleased. The Chos are romantics. Vision had always said he was apologetic for breaking the tradition. He doesn’t know how to walk back on those years full of statements. He doesn’t know how to explain that all he is… is Wanda, now. Thoughts and pains and smiles and bruises. He doesn’t know how to explain how good that makes him feel.)

“Romantic,” Wanda repeats in that way she does when her eyes sparkle and she wants to know more. 

“No. Not. Not romantic - it’s - she needed help. And now… um. I have a flatmate.” He feels her nails start to do real damage and adjusts her accordingly. “There’s more. Lots… lots more, but I - “

“Yes, science later,” his mother waves a hand. 

Vision is appalled. And a little impressed. But mostly appalled by the lack of a reaction. Sure, the Vision he portrays on the phone is… extroverted… and… perhaps promiscuous in a diluted form. But he’d hope that he hadn’t implied that this is at all normal for him. 

Helen hasn’t mentioned the red eye thing yet. Still. Still. 

She’s standing in his main room and she’s looking at this and she’s not wrestling him to the ground. 

“Tea, you said?” Helen asks sweetly. 

Vision stares at her for a long time. Maybe a bit offended. Unsure if he wanted more or less. 

“... Yes,” he says, taking a tentative step back. Wanda holds on tight. He hisses quietly. “Er. We have… we have - “

“Black and cinnamon tea,” Wanda parrots. 

Helen smiles - yes, it does seem that she’s all smiles today. Some words would be good. Some sort of inclination as to whether or not he should be unhooking the girl from his back and running for his life. 

“Cinnamon would be lovely, thank you.” Helen doesn’t move at all from her spot, just a few feet from the door. 

“She wants cinnamon,” Wanda whispers in his ear. 

“Yes. Yes, I heard,” Vision mumbles. He maneuvers around the kitchen counter, shaking his head, lowering his voice, “I didn’t know you’d become such a hostess in the company of other people.”

He gets a hug that displaces his organs for a second. “No one else has met your mother.” Then, closer, quieter, “I am kind.”

He hates how wide he smiles at that. “I know.”

Vision takes down one of the fancier mugs, as is the protocol. Wanda coos and tries to pick it up but he brushes her hands away. It’s quite difficult to do anything when you have two heads and four arms. 

He glances over to the statue of Helen that stands only a few feet away. “You… you can sit, you know. If you’d like.”

She hums, “I like standing.”

“... Well, you’re making me nervous,” he offers. Wanda immediately dives into his mind to find it. His hands shake for a second until she’s settled. “It feels like you’re examining me.”

“Not you,” she says. “Or, not entirely you.”

“Oh. Wonderful, thank you.” He reaches for the tea. Wanda takes an emotion into her hands, though he isn’t sure if she got the right one. She doesn’t do anything with it, of course, simply cradles it. “Well. Er - “

“I can’t help but notice that the vase is still intact.”

Vision scoffs. At the word intact, at her scientist voice. “What vase?”

“The vase Halmeoni gave you.”

He pauses. He turns. Helen has crossed the room, finger brushing along the small purple vase his grandmother had gifted him so long ago. When he was… hm… eight, he thinks. Too young to have understood the value behind things. He kept it safe anyway. 

“Well… yes. It’s important,” he says slowly. Wanda yawns and rests her cheek on his head. At this rate, he’ll forget she’s even up there. “Everyone got something, that was mine. She said keep it safe, you know, and I’m not one to - “

“You said it broke.”

He almost knocks the mug off the counter. “I said it what?”

“Broke. Party. Last year.” Helen looks over her shoulder at him, tapping the delicate material with her nail. It clinks. “You said your friends were terrors, said they’d offered to repay you but that, since it was irreplaceable, you declined.”

“Terror,” Wanda says quietly, recognizing the term. She is a cute terror, there’s a difference in tolerance there. Her grip is slipping on his emotion, her hands getting sleepy.

“F-friends,” Vision echoes, reaching blindly for the kettle handle. “Yes, I suppose I… I did say that.”

“Hm,” Helen nods, looking back at it. “It’s a very particular sort of porcelain. Not easily mended.”

“I… must have mistaken it for a different vase.” Nice save. He has to tilt oddly in order to pour the water, Wanda’s leg dangerously close to the burners. One hand on the kettle, the other on her, keeping her shielded. “My apologies.”

A long hum. Long, long hum. Then, shorter, disbelieving, “Mm.”

She swipes a finger along the top. Gathers the dust there. Vision hyper-focuses on the tea to avoid her gaze when she spins on a heel to present her findings. 

The spoon clinks terribly against the mug. His voice sounds terribly suspicious, “Would you like the bag in?”

Helen hums - okay, now it’s getting scary - and rolls the dust between her finger and thumb. “Yes, that would be lovely.”

Vision slides the mug across the counter. Wanda is breathing slowly above him, almost certainly asleep if not on the way. “Here you are, then, Mum.”

There’s a bit of a power imbalance here. His mother wanders over - click, click, click - to stand on the other side of the counter. She takes the tea into her hands with a nod of gratitude, slightly soured by whatever puzzle she’s assembling in her head. 

It’s Vision’s flat. He knows it well. It’s Vision’s flat around them, Vision’s flatmate dozing on top of him, and yet it feels like Helen understands everything perfectly. But she can’t. She doesn’t. 

She takes a sip. Pinky out. Mocking him a little bit, but it’s fine.

When she’s finished with the smallest, most polite drink, she sets it aside. 

“Where is your rice cooker?” she asks. 

Vision… is beginning to realize… the weight of his actions. 

This is somewhat of an informal interrogation.

“My rice cooker?” He watches as she brushes a hand across the completely barren countertop. “I… sold it.”

“Why?” she asks, tilting her head, long hair falling to the side. “I remember you were so proud of it. You went on and on and on about how many things you could make with rice. How well fed you were.”

Vision has never had a rice cooker. “Right, yes, well. Wanda is more of a pasta fan anyway.”

Wanda stirs a bit at the mention of pasta but not for very long. Her hold constricts and then relaxes. 

Helen’s eyes flit up to the girl. She rests her wrists on the edge of the counter. She thinks very intently for a moment. “Has she met your friends?”

Vision shakes his head. It isn’t a complete lie. 

“And,” she continues, “when can I meet them?”

He shifts. Wanda’s head slips from his and she makes a displeased noise. She’s exhausted. Being a host isn’t easy. 

“I… another time, maybe.” Vision steps back, steps to the side, “I… she’s tired. Should… um, probably let her lay down. In her room.”

“Our room,” Wanda murmurs. 

Helen raises her eyebrows at Vision.

“I’ll… I’ll ex - um, I’ll explain. When I… Christ.” Wanda is steadily turning to putty around him, slipping down his torso. “C’mon, Wanda. Off to bed.”

“Our bed,” the melting girl continues. 

“Ha!” Vision offers, beet red, “So funny. Very funny. Joke. Hm.” 

Vision is so dead. He’s dead. His mum’s going to kill him. She’s given up on her patient smile and all that’s left is something devoid of anything but mild mother discontent. 

He gathers Wanda back up to flop over him, arms limp and swinging, before offering a nervous smile, “Back in a mo.”

Wanda’s weakness, as it turns out, is conversation with new people. Or, perhaps, the excitement leading up to the conversation did it. No matter the cause, she is no longer ripping through his shirt. For the first time, Vision would describe her hold on him as soft. 

“Almost there,” he promises, adjusting her a bit. She crawls around to cling to his front almost on autopilot. Her forehead nestles right against his chin, her legs wrapping tight around his thighs and making it almost impossible to walk. He drags her back up to rest normally. (A forehead to the chin begs a kiss.) “Goodness. I learn new things about you every day.”

“Mm.” She rests her cheek on his shoulder. He loves her. He nudges the bedroom door open with his hip and she sighs, “Will you lay down too?”

God. He wants to. “I can’t. I’m sorry.”

Wanda is deposited. She burrows and curls up and reaches toward his side of the bed. Vision lets out a long breath, pulling the covers over shoulders and pushing a pillow between her arms. 

“You know where I’ll be,” he offers.

Wanda doesn’t reply. 

“And you’re in my head, so. You’re always basically on my shoulders.”

Wanda doesn’t reply.

He stares at her back. 

He’d fit behind her. He could hold her, they’d fit that way too. She’d be cold against his chest and his arms would lock around her and she’d be able to let her hands relax as she slept. She wouldn’t have to hold onto him because he’d be there, around her, keeping her warm. 

He has to force a step back. Two. Then, three. 

He has to stop thinking like this. It does no good. Closeness does not imply care. She clings because she has never had anything. He has legs to carry her places and a mind to kill time in. A vessel.

Helen is waiting down the hall to fix things. He needs to focus on what’s important. 

The door closes behind him. His sigh carries through the hall. And then he follows it. 

She hasn’t moved an inch. Hands folded on the countertop. Head turned and attention biting. 

Suddenly, Vision isn’t so confident. 

He swerves into the living room. 

“She has… some sort of power,” he says before he can think about it for too long. He finds himself at the couch, lifting an already folded blanket, holding it up to unravel, and working on it again. 

“Yes, I noticed the eyes,” Helen says simply. Nonchalant to an infuriating degree.

“Not just the eyes. More than the eyes, she… she does… I mean, she can do everything.” He bends to place the irrelevant task to the side. He wishes he could stop being constantly amazed by her. He sounds just as awed as he was the first time Wanda had spoken to him.

He opens his mouth to continue, to list all the pieces he’s identified thus far, but he can hear fast heel clicks in his direction. Vision cowers, hands splayed over his face, anticipating a slap in that general direction. 

Instead, there’s a pressure on his arm and he’s being turned around until he’s facing away from her. An inspection. 

“Vision…” she says. He feels fingers feather-light on the back of his neck. The touch stings. 

Oh, right. Shit.

“Um!” he whirls back around, covering Wanda’s claw marks from her bad dream. “I was… attacked.” Not good. “By. A squirrel.” Even worse.

Helen stares at him, her hand still pinned midair. “A squirrel.”

“Yes, indeed. Aggressive, this season.”

It’s just a bad lie. Awful craftsmanship. He’s used to half-explaining things to Wanda, half-lying about how he’s doing. But it doesn’t matter. It’s not about how he’s doing, it’s about Wanda. It’s about answers. 

“It’s later,” Helen says. She’s not staring at him coldly. It’s an important distinction that he’s grown almost unfamiliar with. She is preparing. 

Vision falls back into the nearest wall. He covers his face with his hands. They aren’t pulled away. He forgets that not everyone needs his attention so badly. He just leans and breathes and prepares himself for yet another step off another cliff, digging himself further in this grave that he isn’t ready to lie in.

He scrubs down his face to rest his palms around his neck. 

“I need your help with this,” he whispers, sounding pitiful, sounding tired, “I’m sorry, but no one’s going to listen to me. They’ll listen to you. And I don’t even know where to start. With this. With her.”

Helen studies him, professionalism engaged. She’s not heard but a few sentences from Wanda and she seems just as taken. (The Chos are fans of stars.) “You start at the beginning. I need you to tell me what’s going on.”

Vision has that ill feeling again. “The rumors. They’re true.”

A long pause. Not understanding. “... The rumors.”

There is a new obstacle to conversation that he hadn’t anticipated. When he mentions terms or concepts Wanda doesn’t understand, she simply looks inside. She finds the mental file or the mental suitcase or whatever she calls it now, she reads it, and she asks him if she still doesn’t get it. 

He is having to start over.

He is not doing a very good job at starting over. 

He is afraid. 

“The old, awful building down the way,” he stands up, sweeps an arm toward the door as if it’s right outside, “They were right, they’re doing… just horrid stuff, Mum, you can’t even imagine - “

“Who are they?”

“ - a-and I went to look, and I found - I f-found - I found - “

“Breathe.”

“ - a building - a - a room full up on - just - just awful things, a-a-and I found a website that was fake, but it was real, you know, with real pictures and false names - “

“When was the last time you slept?”

Vision does sound a bit manic. He is, though, to be fair. It’s only nonsense that comes out of his mouth because this is nonsense. 

“ - and they put in the time to write them, the profiles, and the punctuation - “

“Vision.”

“ - and I think Strucker is at the center of it. I do. I think he is.” He nods a bit, convincing someone of something he hopes out of the two of them, “He used an alias when purchasing the properties, he covered his tracks very well - not only covered them, he eliminated them.” 

Helen has given up on reeling him in. She just stands, staring, waiting for him to run himself down. Vision, frankly, is thankful for this outlet. Wanda always covers his mouth. Or, apparently, lifts him up by the wrists like he weighs nothing. She’s not fond of his panic. She tends, at all costs, to stop it. 

He is met with silence. So, he gulps for air, and he continues.

“B-but, er, h-he didn’t eliminate everything. I know he works in biotechnology. I - I know who funds his work, I know how much the work costs - at least, how much he claims it costs,” Vision says, panting. Helen just watches him blankly. It’s like talking to a wall, which is exactly what he needs right now. “I have a list of names, I can’t be certain how many are fake, I can’t be certain of anything, but I know - I just know… If there’s anything I know, it’s…” Wanda. “...this.”

There are hands on his shoulders and he closes his eyes, clamping his mouth shut.

“Deep breath for me?” she offers.

He presses his lips together and does as she asks. 

“Okay,” she says, hand brought up to his face, cool and kind. Her thumb traces his cheekbone. This must be comfort. “Are you back to me?”

“Y-yeah,” he replies, breathless, miserable. 

“Wonderful,” she sounds like she’s smiling. Vision opens his eyes. She isn’t. “Let’s go back to the start, okay?”

Vision waits for a sunspot that never comes. “Okay.”

“Okay.” She’s petting him like a crazed animal. He would be insulted if he hadn’t missed her so much. “I live across the world, my son, I don’t think rumors tend to travel that far.”

“Right.” That’s fair. He nods shallowly, gasping for a breath. “There… they’re…. People were saying that the facility in the city is being used for inhuman experimentation.”

Her steady movements halt. “In the city?”

“Nearly in the center. I’ve… I went there. I’ve been to them.” He is stuck between being glad that he had gone and wishing so badly that he hadn’t. He sees it when he blinks for too long. “They have… the… they say Hydra on them.”

Helen recognizes that name. She does not say this, though. “Okay.”

She keeps saying okay like he’s holding a weapon. Like she’s… well, walking him away from a precipice. 

“No one’s… no one even looks at them,” he leans into her palm, “They don’t know they’re there, tucked back away from the street.”

“People do tend to like creating rumors around things they don’t know are there,” Helen says. He can’t tell if she’s being facetious or not. For his own personal safety, he assumes she’s being genuine. 

“Yes. And no one looked into them, because… w-why would they? Why look for something you’ve never seen?” Vision shifts on his feet. He knows Wanda is safe and asleep and yet he wants to check on her again. “The rumors spread and then they just hung there. No names, no numbers. They didn’t know how or why, they had no evidence - ”

“And you have evidence.” She says this like she certainly doesn’t believe him. 

“Yes,” he tilts his chin upward a bit, “Yes, I do.”

“And what is your evidence?”

Vision just stares at her. There are a few answers he could give but none of them would be appropriate.

“... What is your evidence, Vision.” she says, slightly less patient. 

Vision doesn’t move. 

His mother has a doctorate. Several. Certainly she can put this together. He is begging her to put it together. She seems to have somehow forgotten about Wanda. Or, perhaps, too favorable of Wanda to apply her to this horrible topic. 

Yes, Vision understands how that feels. 

For as long as Vision has known her, his mother has been… on the whole, a somewhat reserved woman. She has her moments. Victory dances or particularly potent sass directed in his direction. She cries politely and stands straight, folds her hands without having to think about it. 

All this to say, the way her eyes go wide and her hands drop to her sides is something he’s never seen before. 

She glances down the hallway toward a closed bedroom door. “No… ”

“Yes,” Vision takes his mother’s hands, glad she’s finally getting it, “She knows their faces but not their names - “

“ She’s - !”

“ - but she showed me a memory.” He holds tight to her, “She didn’t show me everything, I don’t think I could handle it - but I saw it. I saw him, and I saw what they did.”

“Showed you a memory.” Helen can’t stop staring at the door.

“She does everything,” he repeats. “She’s - s-she’s, I mean, she’s amazing. ”

“And… the red.” 

And the red what? The everything she does lies within the red. He isn’t sure what she’s asking. All he can hear in his head is the noise that a large metal structure creates when it’s ripped apart in the blink of an eye. 

He hadn’t thought about anything else when she showed him this. He focused on the hurt she must have felt, the power she so casually employed. The power they had to have pushed into her head without warning. She was intended to combust - and she didn’t. And, so, they continued to see what she could do. Glass panes, thick grey walls, red mist that could fill the entire space and blow it all away. 

He hadn’t thought about what they were asking her to do. Or why. He only thought about what it had done to her.

“I think…” It is a real time realization. He hates that he’s about to say this. “I think she was meant to be used as some sort of… um.”

Helen does not need any sort of telepathic power to see all the blood drain from his face. 

“... A weapon.”

Vision really would like to check on Wanda, now. “Mhm.”

Helen nods for a moment. Trying to tie this together. Trying to tie the wonderful and somewhat confusing girl that had clung to him in a soft, too-large sweater to… a weapon. It doesn’t compute. (Vision has seen what she can do. He’s held it, to some degree. And even then, he doesn’t believe it.)

After a silence, Vision receives a sharp slap to the shoulder. 

“Ow?!” he covers it with his palm, pressing down. He’s gotten plenty of injuries since Wanda came to stay, much worse than this, but they were all somewhat anticipated. “Mum, what - ?!”

“Terrible decision,” she whispers harshly, going to do it again, “Terrible decision, Vision.”

“I - !”

“Housing a victim of medical malpractice and manipulation? Without telling me? Without telling anyone?!”

“Listen, it was - I didn’t know the extent until the night I called and I - hey,” he blocks her blows, “This is an awful reunion.”

“What, did you think you’d be equipped for that? Are you even able to take care of someone else?” she asks, and she doesn’t mean it to be as devastating as it is because she doesn’t know anything. It isn’t her fault. 

No, he isn’t equipped. And no, he can’t take care of someone else. 

But he can’t live without her, really. So he tries.

“She’s been here for two and a half months,” he says quietly. 

She glares up at him. He flinches, anticipating another slap, but she just sighs her head to her chest. 

They stand there in the main room for a long time, both thinking their individual and likely equally insane thoughts. Vision can’t feel Wanda in his head anymore. It’s just the two of them. 

For what it’s worth, it’s nice not to be the only one living in this world of lunacy anymore. 

Helen straightens her posture after a moment. She lifts her arms, pulling her hair back into a ponytail, clearly preparing for some sort of battle.

“Where are the others, then?” she asks, scanning his flat, “How many others are you keeping here?”

Vision rubs the back of his neck and then immediately regrets it. Ow. “Just the one. Just the Wanda.”

“We’ll need to find them, then,” she nods, her hair swaying behind her, “If there are more like her out there, then - “

“There aren’t.” His voice is mostly air. “They’re all… they’re not… she’s the last one.”

She goes to disagree. Rightly so. 

He stops her, “She said… whatever they did to her. She said it was meant to kill her. But it didn’t.” His attention is locked down the hall. It would take very little effort to walk over, to crawl beside her, to let her latch; he misses her. “She was alone when I found her. She was alone when she broke out of that place.”

Helen takes a long, long, long breath. “I leave you alone for two years… and you get yourself into the middle of something like this.”

Right.

Vision doesn’t mean to laugh at that. 

But, damn, if he doesn’t laugh his fucking head off. 

He laughs because he isn’t as insane as he thought he was. He laughs because some of the weight of this has finally been displaced, if only a kilogram or so, and it’s just a little easier to breathe with punctured lungs. He slides down the wall and braces his hands on his knees. 

“Yeah, I - ha, fuck - I did, didn’t I?” he wipes at his eyes, shoulders shaking, “That’s what you get, I suppose. Releasing me into the wild.”

She doesn’t respond, likely already trying to come up with some real action in her head. It’s out of his hands, he knows. He has no power, no real information - he gives her the research and she applies it. That’s just what she does, anyway. Surrounds herself with researchers, with numbers and names and data. Gives them purpose. 

Vision glances up to his mother. He had mental images of her in his head, memories he tried to apply. They’ve never quite been in this situation - this is new. New meeting. New son, new mother, new laugh, new planet.

There’s a creak. He sweeps his attention downward to the clear shadow of two feet underneath his bedroom door. 

So fascinating. Wanda has the capability of listening through his ears and yet she still has opted to eavesdrop through a thin crack down the hall.

“You can come out,” he calls, still smiling, disbelieving, laughing.

The door squeaks open. Her head peeks around the barrier, red eyes and wild hair, four tentative fingers grasping the wood.

“God, she’s cute,” Helen whispers. 

Vision immediately steps in front of her as if to block that statement from being heard. 

“Are you alright?” he asks, fast and neurotic. His mother snickers behind him. She has many more emotions than he remembers. “Did I wake you?”

“No…” she doesn’t step all the way out, lingering in the frame, “Did she fix it yet?”

Helen peers around him, “Not quite yet, sweetheart, but I’ll start tonight.”

Wanda gets a nickname and Vision doesn’t. He should have known. He can’t compete.

“Thank you,” says the little voice, scratchy from even the smallest portion of a nap, “Helen.”

An hour. It took less than an hour for Wanda to say his mother’s name. Half an hour, even. 

He’s not upset. He’s not. 

“You’re very welcome,” comes the warm, pleased, thrilled voice behind him. She’s over the moon that this is happening. Vision knows, if she knew the rest of the insanity, she’d be even more confident. 

Wanda doesn’t move past the door frame. But she isn’t hiding. She just stands and stares, two red torches at the end of a dim hallway, expecting something. Vision may or may not have encouraged this behavior, staring and waiting impatiently for something to be given. To be fair, she always expects up to five things. It’s simply a matter of rotating through the wheel. 

“... Wanda,” he says. 

She shifts. “I want to lay down.”

“Uh…? Okay?” 

Seconds pass. She doesn’t move. Everyone is frozen, everyone waits for someone else to start. Vision’s back starts to heat up just from the presence of his mother’s smile behind him. 

“I see,” Helen says, cordial, completely taken by the girl. “Well. I suppose I should be off.”

Vision’s eyebrows draw together. He looks over his shoulder, “What?”

He receives a pat to the hip. Gentle. It’s an unfamiliar feeling. “I have many calls to make, it seems. Best to start now. We’re two and a half months behind.”

“I - I - but, er, I thought… you’d… want to stay?” It’s a bit humiliating. His flat is full of lies that she’s only half-figured but still. He didn’t get to say anything. “I’m going to get Wanda’s breakfast in a moment, if you’d - if you’d want to…?”

Helen smiles up at him, back where she started, hair pulled back like he always remembered. She only gestures to the two of them with a lazy hand as if to say - I think you have a lot going on as it is. 

“... Ah,” he says. He isn’t sure why he’s surprised. Why he's upset. He had planned not to tell her anything anyway. It somehow became difficult once she actually arrived. Hard to lie to her, hard to keep everything inside. She inspires vulnerability, as mums often do. “Okay.”

Helen steps forward. He expects another hug but she’s stepping around him, clicking her way down the hall. 

“Um?” he hears himself say. 

His mother holds up a finger as she walks, effectively silencing him, stopping in front of Wanda, who opens the door wider. (Vision bites his tongue. If Wanda gets a goodbye hug and he doesn’t, he may have to have another sulk.)

Instead, his mother bends and whispers in Wanda’s ear. Vision leans on the wall, feeling excluded, waiting for an extended hand to be part of the conversation. 

Wanda nods. She hums. She listens intently. Yes and no. She closes her eyes to focus. Helen is very good at whispering tactfully, keeping the audience to just one. 

At one point, Helen must say something horrifying because Wanda jolts upright, hands over her stomach to guard it. She shakes her head vehemently. Helen nods, standing upright, uttering a quiet, “Are you sure?”

“That has never happened,” Wanda assures her, eyes flickering to Vision and away again. She wraps her arms around herself as if to keep something inside, “No.”

“Okay,” Helen says sweetly. She turns and points to Vision, “I will be back in the morning with some things for her.”

Vision blinks, “Wha - “

“Nothing,” she says, clinical, walking toward him, “Boys don’t understand.”

He looks to Wanda for an explanation. She has receded back behind the door, looking very deep in thought, looking down into her shirt. He squints at his mother, who simply pats his cheek. 

“Lead me out?” she asks. 

Vision’s arm is taken as if at a gala and his mother, in fact, is the one to drag him away. 

Wanda watches from her safe spot in the room. 

Helen is kind. She is tall and her smile is almost like Vision’s - similar in the way that they both wear it, not in the way it looks. They smile and it takes them over. Possesses them. 

They say goodbye at the door for a long time. She gets impatient, wants so badly to run and jump on Vision and cover his mouth with both of her hands. It has been a short day dragged long by a distinct lack of him. She woke up without him, was tucked back in without him. She could hear him talk and yell and laugh on the other side of the door and she felt… the feeling that Vision swims in so often. 

Alone. Lone… Lonely. Yes.

She is selfish with him. It only feels good to be selfish with him when she has him all to herself. All of his words and all of his laughs. All his funny shrieks. 

Wanda wants to wrap him up and carry him back to bed. She considers it. Helen would not scold her for it. Boys don’t understand, she says. Wanda wants to feel his weight, wants to see his eyes match hers, wants him back. 

But she listens to his words.

He mentions friends. He says that he has them, when Wanda knows that he decidedly does not. They are each other’s only friend. Normal-eyes girl from his school is not a friend, he promises her this. There is no one else. 

He mentions friends and he mentions money, but not money that she gave him. He says he is doing well. He thinks one thing, thinks one thing loudly, and he says the opposite. She remembers that he gave her a reason for it, last time he had done this, but he never gave her a good reason. A makes-sense reason. 

He mentions something positive. Helen is standing in the hallway, hidden by his body, and she cannot see the expression that accompanies the oh, really? that she replies with. 

Wanda registers relief in the voice.

Vision taps his hands on the door frame, “Well. Um. Thank you for coming. For helping. I’m sorry.”

They say goodbye. Wanda watches them hug. Helen’s hands are flat on his back. Like Vision hugs. Soft, flat-palmed. She wonders if she hugs incorrectly. She wonders if they hug incorrectly. 

Vision runs his fingers through his hair. Helen’s shoes are audible as she walks away. 

The boy closes the door with his body. Clunk. 

The something positive he spoke of is gone. Because, she assumes, it hadn’t truly been there in the first place.

“God,” he whispers to no one, bracing his hands on his knees, “Shit. ”

Wanda avoids the creak in the hall. She creeps forward, staring at him as she approaches. He catches his breath and presses at his eyes and returns to his normal form. The worries inside carry outside. He does not lie anymore. 

She stands only a few feet away. The urge to climb him is still present but she is hesitant. She might crush him. He seems to be made of paper now. 

He lifts his head. He spots her. “Oh.” He leans back, stretching out, tall again. “Hi. Sorry.”

“Why did you lie?” Wanda asks him immediately, no time to waste, her voice breaking against her will. She hadn’t liked the false Vision-face he wore when his mother arrived but at least he was happy. “I don’t understand.”

He shakes his head, “I already told you. It’s… er, easier.”

Wanda takes his thoughts in her hands. She holds them up for him to see. She holds up a tantrum and she holds up hidden and she holds up lies. 

“It is hard to lie,” she tells him. 

He scoffs, “It isn’t, actually. People say it’s easier than the truth sometimes.”

“No,” she holds them higher in his mind while her arms are useless at her sides. “These are heavy. You’ll feel better without them.” They’ll crush you. 

Half of Vision’s weight must be these things, unnecessary hurt. She wraps them around her fingers and tries to pull them apart. They don’t give easily. 

“Don’t,” he says, breath taken in through the nose, fingers pressed to his temple. She lets them go, frowning. “I’m sorry. I do actually need those.”

“Do you not want me to fix it?” she asks. She wants to assist but all of the things that ache in his head are apparently necessary. That doesn’t seem right. “You said you did.”

He seems as though he is frustrated by this conversation. It has barely even begun. 

“I was being dramatic.” Dramatic seems to be the same word as sad in his mind, but she knows that can’t be the case. “I’m fine. I’ll be much better after we can make sure you’re safe.”

“Helen can make you safe too,” she informs him. She knows it to be true. 

He shakes his head. It is dismissal. She doesn’t like to be dismissed. 

Wanda glares, “No, boy, mums help.”

“Yes, they do,” he nods. 

Then what are they arguing about? 

“Then what - “

“Mums help their son’s friends,” he says, bringing his shoulders to his ears. “When their son’s friends are special, when their sons have told them that they’re doing wonderfully for two years, when their sons are not special - you know. Mums help the friends.”

Vision does not have the ability to reach inside and steal her breath but he manages it all the same. 

“You are special,” she says. Her throat is closed.

Vision smiles. She waits for applause or gratitude. She waits for the smile to become real. He rests his head back against the door instead, “She said she’ll see what she can do. We just have to wait.”

Wanda stares at the boy. 

Something happens. Something breaks or something mends, something in her bones or in her veins. 

He begins, for only a moment, to make sense. But not in the way she wanted. A different way, a hidden way, a curtain swept back or a mirrored glass pane broken.

His hair is not brushed as it was this morning. That was what made it different, slicked back and made proper. Her presence on his back had twisted his shirt, stretched his collar, pulled his sleeves. He looks more like himself when he is unraveled. He looks more like himself when she is the one to unravel him. 

“Will you lay down with me?” she asks. 

Vision’s expression changes. He must have something broken/mended too. She can’t see it, when she looks. She can’t see his bones, his veins, can only trust that they are there. 

“... I dunno,” he shrugs, hands in his pockets. “There are still things to do. Boring things. You can go without me.”

“You are tired.”

“Yes, but… well.” He laughs. Oh, yes, something has broken. Wanda presses a hand to her chest. “If I go to sleep now, I’ll not wake up until tomorrow. And I have more things to do tomorrow, you know. Things that require me to be awake.”

Wanda shifts. She struggles to listen to the words he says. All she knows, all she can pick up on, is that he is saying no. 

She wonders how long this has been shattered inside. Perhaps her heart had fragmented many days ago, perhaps she walked too fast or moved too much and the pieces finally wedged themselves free. (The sound it makes as it fractures is loud enough to deafen. Pieces lodge into the colorful walls. Pieces lodge into the sweater she wears.)

She gets what she wants if she asks. When she asks, typically, she demands. She becomes a terror, she crosses her arms, she huffs and sighs. Vision’s frustration is something she knows how to access easily, she knows how to operate it like a machine. 

She does not want him frustrated now. And, even more, she does not have the strength to be a demon. 

He makes her weak. 

He makes her… feel... warm. 

Stars are cold when injected into the body. They take the heat and they keep it for themselves, keep it contained until required to smother. Conductors. Thieves. 

But this is not the star. Her chest is filled with something smashed but there is also the sun. The star is displaced, and the warmth she has now is all her own. 

She made this. 

“Please,” she says. 

Vision hums, dismissal, “I’ll tuck you in. C’mon.”

“No,” she says. It is meant to be a demand, it is supposed to be strong, but the warmth takes her voice and erases its crisp edges, blurs it, makes her whisper. 

He pushes himself upright. He is tall. He crosses the room, arm held out for her to smother and crush and tear. She is full of ink and he is painted on the outside. 

Wanda doesn’t take his arm. She wants to, but she can’t… she can’t find the words for this. She doesn’t know what it means. She doesn’t know if it’s bad, if it’s good, wrong, right, up, down, black, purple, red. 

All she knows is she made it. She made it for him. 

She is afraid that he will not like it. 

“Wanda?” he asks. His voice is close and his heart is close and she thinks she wants it, too. “Hey.”

His head and hands, she has. His clothes and his bed. His time. 

She wants… she wants… 

His hand, which she has, is around her wrist. His thumb presses to her pulse, fire-filled skin that still burns cold. She stares at the section where they meet, right in the center. 

“You’re frozen,” he says as if this is new. He tells her this every day. 

She can sense him begin to fret. She doesn’t know how to find the words to get him to stop, doesn’t know if she can reach into a mind that seems to have set her ablaze. She locked the doors and he found his way inside anyway. 

“Wanda,” he says, his funny scared voice. She wants to hold it. It would spill around her palms and gather in the crevices of her fingers. He begins to skip again, “I-if today was too much, I’m so sorry, I know it was a lot. I’ll… I can - we can - I’ll - “

“I don’t want to lay down without you,” she decides to say. She raises her eyes to his. It takes a lot of bravery. He is stuck between a smile and a frown. “I don’t want to sleep if you… if you’re not…”

Vision is still holding onto her, delicate. Wanda has never held him delicate. She does not know delicate, does not speak that language, cannot loosen a grip on something pretty. Her first pretty something. 

“Okay,” he nods slowly. He looks over his shoulder as if there might be someone there, bites a pretty pink lip. “Yes, alright, okay, a-alright. I can… I can read. I’ll lay with you.”

Perhaps it was his words that knocked her apart. To be called special, to be given the title readily, to wrap it snug around her waist. To, then, feel the floor drop out beneath her toes as he called himself the opposite. 

Hot and then cold. Mended then broken. Alone and then… not.

Their viewpoints, their eyes, their space, their time. They are similar.

And he is a good thing. 

So, then… what does that make her? 

Good things are held delicately. They are taken care of. Flaws seen and cracks filled with gold. 

“She likes you a lot,” Vision offers. Her hand is held, her arm swung, a trip taken down a hallway that suddenly feels far too long. She stumbles behind. He talks about something different. She wasn’t done, yet. “I anticipate many calls in the future, mostly for you. I mean, she gave you a nickname. I don’t even think she remembers mine. That should tell you something.”

Wanda nods. She wishes she could dip a hand inside her chest and pull out whatever feels this way. It feels sharp and shiny, like glass. She wants to look at it, make sure it’s real, show it to Vision, hope that he knows what it is. She fears that she’ll lay next to him, that he’ll come close, that it’ll all tumble out onto the blanket, that it’ll cut him somehow. 

Her hand is released. Vision walks away, toward a tall shelf of books. She knows she’s meant to crawl in, take her place, reach for him when he returns. Pierce his side, pretend that she doesn’t hear his sharp breath. 

Instead, she waits. She is useless at the edge of the bed, audience to his mindless browsing of books he’s already read. There are marks down the back of his neck, red streaks surrounded by a painful yellow-green hues. She watches his back and the curls that point down to the collar of his sweater.

Vision turns. He jumps when he sees her still standing. “Oh.”

“I don’t like the bed without you in it,” she says. She pulls at the sleeves that overlap her fingers. 

“I’ll…” Vision is bewildered. He is fascinated. He smiles the Wanda smile, “Well… rest assured, I am on my way.”

Wanda creaks. She hasn’t laughed all day. Vision’s shoulders slump and he grins wider and she breaks a little bit more. 

Vision slides his book onto the table on his side. He is still wearing his odd clothes, outside clothes, his comfortable ones tucked away in the closet. She is too weary to demand that he change. The buckle will dig into her leg when she drapes it over him. 

“Alright, then,” he murmurs. The bed groans as he assumes his position onto it. He is upright against the back. 

He expects her to jump on him. As does she. 

It is a leisurely crawl. Vision laughs at her. She sends a weak, glowy glare. He likes those.

She cannot physically get close enough to him. He keeps muttering okay, okay? - okay, oooookay as she climbs up him, ending up with her arms wrapped around his face and her nose in his hair. 

She closes her eyes. Vision’s eyes are covered by her arms. He cannot open them. 

“... This is… this is how you’re gonna sleep, then?” he asks. 

He should know the answer by now. The lights flicker off and she sighs. 

“So you can’t leave,” she explains. 

Vision sinks down into the pillows. She follows. He turns to liquid. She follows. 

“Oh, Wanda,” he murmurs. An arm is lifted, bent awkwardly around to pat her shoulder. His fingers curl around it, holding on, moving up and down slightly. Better than a pat. “You know I wouldn’t leave you.”

“Not anymore.” She hugs his head and he wheezes. Funny air laugh. “Goodnight, Vision.”

“Yes, I… hm. Yes, goodnight, Wanda.”

His fingers slip from her arm when he falls asleep. It takes him no time at all. Wanda inches her way into his dreams, searching for something broken, something he has made, something with her name on it. 

There are so many things inside, broken and created and full of her, that she gets lost.

Chapter Text

Waiting drives him mad. 

Wanda is much more patient than he could ever hope to be. 

That’s all he has been tasked with doing, by the way - waiting. Not exploration or investigation or anything remotely action-based. His mum has basically pointed at him, said drop it, and he… has. 

It should be simple on the face of it, doing nothing. He figures that it’s mostly the anticlimax that’s wearing at him. All that excitement of research, the feeling of purpose, the first domino pushed, a stuttered proposal to a mildly irritated geneticist, and now he is back to where he was at the start. Waiting and Wanda. 

At least she is back in his head, now. It had gotten dreadfully quiet in here. 

He isn’t sure how he’s meant to word the sentiment he feels. If Wanda is where she belongs, in his head, or if he’s back where he belongs, in the palm of her hands. It doesn’t matter either way - she’s in his head and he’s in her hands no matter what order it comes in.

Vision clicks his pen. The sound echoes in the half-empty lecture hall. The students are quiet today, all likely hungover and wishing for death. Vision doesn’t envy them. If sociality brings a nail in the back of the skull at ten-thirty at night on a Monday, he will take his crippling discomfort and his small flatmate and he will mind his own business.

His own business, currently, is quite charming. 

Wanda hums, moderate noise rolling like a marble behind his eyes, and he waits for the command. 

Do my name next.

He writes her name on the light blue line of the page, underlines it, and she makes an appreciative noise that rattles his bones. It joins the names of her television shows, the actors in them, the names of his action figures. It joins Seoul and London. 

She has been curious about the way words look. Names. Her own name is her favorite, as it turns out, and he’s surprised it took her so long to get to it. The list is three columns long, all the way down the page and back up again. 

Write… um… write Helen’s name. 

He grimaces. 

Instead, he scribbles: I’m not writing my mum’s name in my college notebook.

A long sigh. A pause. A longer sigh. She’s good at picking up on the things that make him bend to her will. Down to a science. He won’t fold for this, though. Not today. 

Nope, he writes. Double-underlined. Exclamation mark. Smiley face. 

She attempts to blow a raspberry. It doesn’t quite work. He presses his hand to his mouth to stop a laugh. 

He likes these games they play. Innocent games, passing the time together in a room full of normal people. It’s thrilling in a juvenile way. Everyone else has had such a ridiculous weekend that they need silence and an IV full of vitamins. Vision has had such a ridiculous weekend that he thinks he deserves a notebook page full of scribbles to appease the girl in his head. Perspective is key. 

(He is the only one, today, with a conversation partner. He will never be able to gloat about this to anyone.)

After all he’s learned, after the past several days of waiting and waiting for some sign that things will be okay, he is just thankful that Wanda’s in such good spirits. 

Creature, Wanda says. 

Creature, he writes. 

She squeaks. Absolutely delighted. Absolutely delightful. 

He checks his watch. It feels like hours have passed and yet there is still so much time left before his professor is expected to arrive. He isn’t complaining, of course. It’s just… well, sometimes he genuinely fears that Wanda slows things down. He worries that she has a finger pressed to the hands of a giant clock and she’s keeping them in place.

Then again, he’s never been good with time. He was always under the impression that time flies when one is having fun. This is a lot of fun and it’s been ages. He’s lame. 

Can you draw? she asks. 

Vision makes a face that she can’t see. He draws an X under the tally. Definitely not. 

Why not?

She really must stop asking open-ended questions. If this day’s game time overlaps into the rest of the notebook, he isn’t sure if he’ll be able to stop this. Stop the game, stop himself from focusing everything on her. He’s already so close to losing himself to insanity. Slippery slopes or what have you. One star housed, one class missed… surely academia will suffer sooner or later. 

One page per day. That is the budget. 

Just not good at it, he writes. He almost misspells good. He’s tired. 

Can you draw a flower?

Vision stares at the empty space on the page for a long time. He taps his pen twice. It’s a relatively easy concept. A circle and a line, if he’s feeling particularly abstract. 

He glances around the room before writing, I can just picture one, for you. 

But I want you to draw it, she says. He’s well familiar with her pout. This is unfair. 

He sighs. It won’t be good. If anything, it will be a good excuse to hear her laugh again. 

He draws a small circle, a line out the bottom. Gives it four petals, as is the uniform toddler drawing template. Two leaves at the bottom, lines down their centers. A few hastily scribbled stalks of grass. 

He gestures to it, not entirely proud of himself, as if to say how’s that?

Hmmmm… 

He can feel her crawl a bit further forward in his mind to get a better look. She isn’t here but he can feel her cutting chin on his shoulder. 

Give it a face.

Vision does. Two dots and a wide, wobbly smile. 

Write my name next to him. 

Vision does. Wanda. An extra smiley face for good measure. He narrowly avoids a heart. 

There’s a long silence as if she’s analyzing it. 

… Exquisite.

“Ha!”  Vision says, out loud, an involuntary response. 

It echoes.

The room is filled with the sound of groaning old chairs as everyone slowly turns to squint tiredly toward the abyss that he resides in. He stuffs his fist into his mouth and sinks down in his seat. Wanda is squeaking in the back of his mind, finding it very hilarious. 

It’s fine. His classmates are too blurry in the brain to see past their own noses anyway. Doesn’t mean he doesn’t flush bright red anyway. He covers his hot ears with his palms to cool them.

Draw another, she demands. 

“Draw your own,” he mutters. He scoots back up to sit, hands slid up to his hair, well hidden by the dark for only a bit longer before he inevitably has to open his laptop again. 

There is a lingering feeling of guilt. All because he… is having fun. At least, in the quiet moments of his day that are now filled with games like this. Impossible games, ghost girl in his head.

It is fun in the way school trips would be, huddled in an old auditorium with a primary school crush, whispering about how funny operas are when you can’t understand the words. It is fun in the way that Wanda feels like both a primary school crush and so much more. A primary school crush he’d take the hand of and hold on until they’re well into their forties.

(If it isn’t clear, Vision has been thinking about time a lot, lately. He thinks about age. He thinks about how he’s going to turn forty before Wanda will, however many months span between them. He has a stupid daydream about coming home from work and finding a cake and balloons and Wanda presenting it with arms outstretched and grinning red eyes. In his head, he always treats it like he won a race, brags and sticks his tongue out until Wanda lifts him up off the floor. That’s all it is, of course, a daydream.)

When does it start? Wanda asks. She sounds bored. Preemptively. 

It feels wrong for him to have fun with these games when there’s something so terrifying happening just out of his view. Days and days and days have passed and he knows all he can do is wait and he knows that feeling constant dread would do no good and yet he feels terrible for not feeling the dread anyway. He is having fun and Wanda is bored. It feels too normal to be acceptable. 

Of course, normality is… skewed. Likely, in the grand scheme of things, it means nothing. Things change too often to settle, the water moves too fast for the sand to deposit. Perhaps fun will mean dread next week. 

He checks his watch again. 

Fifteen minutes, he writes. 

That means nothing to me, she tells him. 

So why ask? He draws a box around the words. It feels like a common issue. Questions she asks when she doesn’t care about the answer. 

Hungry. 

Vision writes fridge. He distinctly remembers there being leftovers for her, pointing at them, telling her that they were hers when she gets peckish. She is branching out from her pasta focus. Salads are now interesting as well, at least interesting enough to eat. 

I already had those.

This is a surprise. He sits upright. He has several things knocking about in his brain in half a second, at least ten sentencefuls of concern and worry. There’s no space on the page and there’s no efficient abbreviation. Vision glances toward the open door. The seat clatters shut as he stands, wandering over, phone in hand. 

He holds it to his ear. A performance. Wanda makes a confused noise. 

“Is it the star again?” he asks, eyebrows drawn together, leaning on the wall by the door. He slips a hand in his pocket, already making himself breathless as he rambles, “Is there any left? I can order some more to the flat if you’re comfortable stepping out to retrieve it. Are you okay? Feeling okay? Wanda?”

I am fine, boy, she mutters.

“You act like I’m overreacting,” he scoffs, resting his head back. “Like you’ve never had a star… hunger… thing.” The phone is cold against his face. He doesn’t use it that often, only ever lighting up when Helen calls for a minute to report her lack of progress or when he’s up late curious about telepathy and emotion. He glances around the empty space, lowering his voice, “If you need something, you can tell me. I’m already using your odd crime money, I can buy you as much as you need - I just don’t want you starving, you know - “

I feel bad when you’re gone, she says.

Hm.

“... Bad,” he repeats. 

The silence that follows is a warning that goes unnoticed. Like the tide receding before a monstrous wave. 

Yes, she says, almost confused in tone. He can imagine her confused face, can imagine her leaning right next to him in this dim hallway. It feels a little like Hungry, so I eat. And now I’m done and you’re still gone.

Vision stares into the empty space across the floor, the old and faded bricks there. 

“Oh,” Vision says. He nods. “Oh. Okay.” He stands up a bit. “Okay.” He falls back into the wall again. “Okay. Oh. Okay.”

It is in the quiet moments like these that he remembers he is in love with someone. One specific someone. A specific someone who misses him. 

Have I done something bad? she asks. He can imagine her lip quivering. 

“No. Uh - u-uh - no, no, no, you’re fine, you’re great. Thank you for telling me, Wanda, well done,” he whispers, turning to face the wall, pressing his forehead against it, likely copying the pattern of the rough surface into his skin, “U-um… that’s - that’s… a very… understandable thing to do.”

It is…? 

“Yes. But I - I’ll be gone awhile longer, I don’t want you to make yourself sick. And I do this almost every night, I wouldn’t want you to feel... er, lonely to the point of illness.” He wrenches his eyes shut. Wanda stress eating. Wanda missing him so much she feels lonely. Wanda, who he sleeps next to and thinks about constantly, stress eating because she misses him. “Have you had water? Water helps.”

Water… she echoes, like it’s at all a new concept. 

He misses her too. So much. He hadn’t forgotten, of course, but now it’s damn near unmanageable. The tide has returned with its army. He loses his hearing for a moment as it hits him, salt water in the ears and eyes. 

He is so incredibly fucked.

“We… when I get home, I can help come up with some ways to keep yourself occupied.” His brain rattles around in his skull when he knocks his forehead against the brick. “I’m glad you’re eating and I’m happy to get you as much as you want and I will - I just - I… um. Yeah. Um. I-if it isn’t the star, it’ll be too much at some… p-point. There’s only so much Wanda. Uh.”

I will drink water, she promises. 

He sighs. Relieved. Suddenly wanting to dive onto his bed and sleep for years.

“Good. Okay.” How can he solve this? He was doing fine and he was having fun and he was content with friendship and now he’s sick with love again. He is exhausted by himself. “Just one more class and I’ll be home.”

Okay. Thank you. 

He laughs into the wall and it sounds more defeated than he’d like it to. “Don’t thank me for something I was going to do anyway.”

I’m going to lay down, she says. Please be fast.

Vision goes to hang up a phone that wasn’t even on in the first place. Wanda recedes to sleep and he’s left in the hall and he’s left with a heart that is very desperate to burrow its way out of his chest. He will gladly see it to the door.

She is getting closer and closer to him. Her trust reads fondly, he mistranslates it. He’s beginning to spill himself dry. 

If this is what her friendship feels like, if this is how she speaks about it, he won’t make it to next year. 

He stands in the hallway for a second. He waits for the buzz in his head and his chest to stop like it always does but it seems very confident that it’ll erode him away today. It doesn’t stop, it only amplifies. Positive feedback loop - more Wanda, more sound, more buzz. She has taken her hand off the clock and it’s all catching up. 

Tripped steps taken back through the dim doorway, back to where he was before. He feels nonexistent bass thrumming in his feet each time he lifts them. Some man-made doom music courtesy of his own veins.

She sleeps in your bed, his own inner voice says, filling in the gaps where she usually fits. She misses you when you’re gone. 

Yes, he knows. 

He falls into his chair. A notebook page full of Wanda greets him. He takes his pen in hand and clicks it about a million times. He opens his laptop and it blinds him and he forgets his own passcode again and it’s still his own birthday. 

There are steady footsteps in the hallway, a professor prepared to enter and launch into a monologue, and his thoughts spiral into just a second’s worth of a glimpse into the depth of everything, the monstrous fact that he’s somehow allowed himself to dilute: 

She sleeps in your bed and she lives in your mind. 

And then there’s a voice speaking. Class has started. 

He simply sits and hears the world muffled around him, pen frozen in hand, not understanding a goddamn word. Dragged by water no one else can see, left and right and forward and down into the sand. 

This is it, then. 

This is where people typically call it. Cut themselves loose before the anchor tied to their ankle drags them over the edge and into the ocean. The boundary or the barrier or the line not meant to be crossed. 

There was such a hope for strength, the hope that he could keep himself together and do what he’s always been so good at, forgetting and keeping things hidden and waiting for the hurt to go away. It just makes things easier for everyone involved, hiding a feeling until it dies. So silly, to try and hide from someone who reads through his thoughts every single second of the day. To try and hide from someone who requests his love every other night because she feels cold. 

And he always gives it. He lets her hold it every time she wants and he always gets surprised when she gives it back to him. 

He has several options now. 

One, of course, is to run away. Another is to do nothing, let himself fall into the ocean and hope he can breathe underwater. But he can’t and he can’t. 

The least-wrong, the least-fatal, the only option of all of these that won’t kill him: tell her.

Tell her… how he feels.

Explain the warmth she always sleeps in. Define it, deface it, ask her to kill it. Watch her confusion and, eventually, watch her step back. Apologize. 

God, he’ll have to apologize for days.

It won’t kill him, no. It’ll just be a fall, really. He’ll fall from a ledge and his legs’ll hit the ground first. A couple weeks spent in hospital at least. Metaphorical hospital, which is worse. He doesn’t know how to heal himself. 

He has to consciously keep himself from outlining the next few years on the blank sheet of paper in front of him. He wants to. He wants to map it out from now to his forties and he wants to make sure he ends up okay, make sure he hasn’t ruined this, make sure he doesn’t end up alone. He doesn’t care about the stupid birthday, he doesn’t care if he doesn’t get lifted off the ground, he doesn’t care if she even remembers - he just wants to come home to her. 

He wants to organize it, the way he’ll have to give her distance in the smallest London flat imaginable, the way he’ll have to sleep on the ground and give her the bed because she deserves it and she likes it and he can’t sleep on the couch because it hurts and he can’t leave her alone or she has the bad dreams. 

It will only take a few days to create distance, really. Relatively familiar of a concept, emotional distance. Emotional distance where physical distance just can’t be acceptable. She has to touch his face to get the dreams. She has to cling to him when she’s tired. She needs him to tie her shoes. He can write that into the plan. 

It’s so frustrating. So many years spent training himself for a moment like this, The Moment, the moment when you find the One and it’s only a one-sided One. So many years being perfectly prepared for something like this and it only took three months to unravel all of that progress. 

He never knows what she wants - but he knows what she doesn’t want. It’s easy to define a lack of something. A lack of feeling, a lack of value. An obligation. He knows them well, he can find them in a person with his eyes closed. 

Vision clicks his pen into his leg and he keeps his eyes forward. He knows Emily will want his notes that he isn’t taking and Wanda will want his dreams that he’s fucking dreading and he isn’t sure what to tell them. He isn’t sure what to give. 

Class ends. 

The rumble of voices breaks him out of his trance and he looks down to see that there’s somewhat of a puddle of fresh black ink sinking into his faded-black pants. He just stares at his lap for a long time. Tries to summon the courage to stand and walk home. 

Worst-case scenario, his mother probably knows people who could let Wanda stay with them. If he tells her and the friendship part is gone, if she wants to go, she’ll be fine. Somewhere with someone real and someone who doesn’t immediately fold to an emotion he’s been so good at keeping contained. 

Yes, in even the worst-case scenario, Wanda is fine. This is… what he believes to be a comfort. 

Enough time passes in the back of the theater that someone clunks the overhead lights off, rightly assuming everyone to have gone. He gathers his things into his arms and shuffles out, tripping over his own feet, likely needing to evacuate before he gets locked in or decides to simply curl up under his chair and wait for the next day to come.

Down the stairs. This is the part where Wanda would try to get him to hop down like she does. This is the part where he would tell her that not everyone can float like she does. His shoe clips the bottom step and he tumbles forward into the front doors. 

His mind swarms with maybes. Possible fixes and possible solutions, possible ways to delay this maybe-not-so-inevitable. Maybe-not-so-inevitable, sure, but in every outline he can come up with, it is devastating when it ends. Full stop. No alternate ending. 

He does not do himself the disservice of looking up the psychological protocol to purposefully falling out of love with someone. 

That would be absurd. 

Instead, he picks flowers. 

There’s a small bed of them by the curb that kills him every day. He wobbles a bit, refusing to fall right before doing something so humiliating as offering his heart to someone who will very likely not understand why he gives it, and crouches to take some. He cuts them with his fingernails, pinches them free as mercifully as he can, piles them together in his palm. Little white flowers. 

He hopes she likes them. God. If anything, tonight, he hopes she likes them.

The petals are soft on the pad of his thumb as he walks home, fidgeting, having to actively keep his hand relaxed so that he doesn’t accidentally mash them. He walks slow, then he overthinks, walks a bit faster, overthinks in the opposite direction, walks slow again. Half-confident left, tentative right, defeated left. 

This is mortifying. 

Vision has watched countless movies, maybe-sobbing and maybe-eating-his-sadness, where the guy picks flowers and he goes to the girl’s doorstep and he gives them and she asks what he’s doing and he says oh, being spontaneous. And she likes him too. And they hug or they kiss or she just smiles and invites him inside for hot cocoa. (Vision likes Christmas love story movies. He likes Christmas. He hopes that he won’t spend it alone again this year.)

But the guy always has something. He has status or something valuable, something that serves the plot, something that’s weird and capitalist (because Christmas) if you look at it for too long. The man in the movies has something to provide and something that is worth staying for. Something valuable and something appealing. Something worth going to the trouble of loving someone for. Something inherently non-Vision. 

Vision has always been too tall or too quiet or too male or not male enough. The wrong shape and size, the wrong stuff or simply too much stuff. Plain clothes, plain flat, same routine, same body, all somehow impossible to change. He’s never asked to be had but he’s been labeled unhaveable all the same. 

Of all the times he’s been defined for the purpose of dismissal, he’s afraid of Wanda’s response the most. 

She’s had everything, the inside of him since the very beginning. She knows him better than any of the others had. Her words are always calculated and they are always far more eloquent than she ever realizes. 

Is he ready to be eloquently declined by the only person in the world who knows him? The only person in the world who ever tried to know him?

He’s standing in front of his door before he can decide.

He unlocks it with embarrassingly unsteady hands. The keys are dropped into his pocket, his bag pulled around to rest on his back. He wishes he could prepare for battle like his mother does but he never has the capability. 

People who prepare for battle are often convinced that they will be victorious. 

Vision pushes the door open.

No time to prepare.

Wanda is already standing there. Just a few feet from the door, hands interlocked in front of her, looking soft and sweet and sleep-fuzzy.

“Hello,” she says. Her hair is newly brushed with the comb set that Helen had bought her. The waves remain. Her hair appears longer. It catches light differently. “I felt you were close.”

Vision blinks. He holds the flowers behind his back. 

“I…”

There is not an academic term for the nagging feeling that you must communicate something, something important, something you know very well, something you know so well that it begins to become you… and yet you cannot find the words to describe it. 

It isn’t lethologica. It isn’t lethonomia. Not as diagnosable as aphasia or as common as inarticulation.

He supposes that it makes sense. No one else has been in this exact situation before. Is this a new diagnosis? Specifically tailored for him?

Vision has written countless papers, millions of words worth of scholarly nonsense, pages and pages of definitions and certainties. He cannot for the life of him come up with a way to offer this. Offer himself.

But Wanda is staring at him with her bright eyes - she is calm, today, visible flecks of green showing through the glow of the red - and she is expecting something from him. 

There is the sudden urge to put his head between his knees. 

“What is the matter?” she asks and he loves her voice and he loves her face and he loves her hair. She lifts a hand and the door is closing behind him. She looks across his face, coming closer to inspect, he can see the green better now, “Something is wrong.”

Mm. Yes, something is wrong indeed. 

He wants to lay down. 

“... Y-yes,” he says. 

Wanda stands up straight, ready to listen. She is the perfect height for him to lean forward and rest his chin in her hair. This is going to be a very difficult twenty years.

He clears his throat, needing water and also a lot of alcohol, “Look, I know that this is quite literally the worst possible time to say this.” He considers that, “... Statistically the worst time on every level, but I’m afraid that I’ll… I’m… yeah, yes, I’m just afraid. Terrified.”

Wanda stares at him.

“... Um.” He shifts, wanting to die, wanting to be dead so bad, wanting to sink into the ground, “I… I… Wanda, I…” 

He closes his mouth, runs his tongue across his teeth, tries so badly to summon courage that he lost so long ago. 

He holds out his hand. The hand. The flower hand. The stems are short, they barely peek out underneath his fist, and the flowers are bright and white, four petals each with a yellow middle. 

“I’ll start with these,” he says. He sounds as fragile as he is.

Wanda’s eyes widen, they glow. She covers his fist with her cold hands as she would hold a mug, stepping close, peering down at them. He wants to cry. 

“For me?” she whispers. 

“Y-yeah.” His head hurts. “For you.” 

Wanda gently plucks them, one by one, as if picking them for a second time. She cradles the lot of them in her left palm, selects a single one with a cautious right hand. She rolls the stem slowly in her fingers, inspecting it, pressure hard enough to squeeze the moisture from it. Two drops on the hardwood floor. Audible drops in the silence. 

“They are small,” she says. 

He winces. Leave it to him to pick the wrong flowers.

His hand drops to his side. He digs his nails into his palm. “I’m… shit. I’m sorry.”

“No, no,” she shakes her head, attention locked to the yellow eye in the center of the flower. “I like the small ones. They look like they’d be able to float.”

Vision watches as she holds the small flower out between her fingertips. She lets it go. It flutters. It really does appear to hover for a second. She catches it before it hits the ground. 

She smiles up at him, presenting it.

Oh, fuck. Fuck. 

“Wanda, I like you,” he says. 

He ejects the words like he doesn’t want them anymore. He doesn’t want them anymore. He just wants to say them and he wants Wanda to tilt her head and he wants to go to sleep. 

Wanda doesn’t tilt her head. She just looks at him, smile slowly fading.

He wants to run away. 

“I - I - I mean,” he says, opening and closing his hands at his sides, wanting to crawl out of his own skin, “I… I promise I’m not insane. I just… I’m sorry. I’ve never been close to someone before and I’ve never… I’ve never known anyone as magnificent or - o-or - or as p - oh, god - pretty. As you. And. I’mmmm. I like you, I like you a lot, but I’ll not make it odd.”

Wanda doesn’t move. He feels cornered but he’s the one who did this to himself. 

“I’ll… I have a plan to fix this. I’ll fix it. I swear I’m going to order the stupid air mattress as soon as possible,” he continues, because that feels important, “And you can take the big bed, it’s yours, and I’ll sleep on the - because it’s weird to - it’s weird to lay with someone once you know they like you, and it’s so f-fucking weird to tangle up under the blankets with someone after they - after they tell you they like you, after they’re as much of a dunce as I’m… as I’m being… right now.”

Wanda doesn’t move. Oh, God. 

He attempts to correct. He overcorrects. Overshoots. 

“Ha, and - and! Once we’re not sleeping together - I mean, sleeping b-beside each other, I’ll likely not be so… so… me, you know, and I’ll - I’ll - I’llllll - I’ll be a good friend and I’ll not… I… My thoughts will be strange for a while, and they have been for a long time, but hopefully all the lo - er - care I have will go away eventually and we can hold hands without my - “

“Care,” she cuts him off. It’s an attempt. 

He’s an unstoppable force at this point. Very likely working himself to the point of hyperventilation. 

“ - my idiocy getting in the way of something good. Because this is good, you know? Good to have a friend. Good to spend time with someone. It’s good to have you here, I just - I’m prone to taking good things and messing up and losing them and I can’t - “

“Your care,” she tries again, eyebrows drawn together. 

No, he’s gone. He’s started. He’s spiralling. His heart is in his throat and it hurts. 

“ - I just can’t lose you, I can’t lose this. This is good. I-it stands to reason that, if I started liking you as a friend and I worked myself up to a somewhat worrying level of romantic… something, I can work my way back down. Right? Ha? You know? Does it - am I - I’m so sorry, I’m not - “

She covers his mouth. He would keep talking if he weren’t genuinely afraid that this was it, the final straw, the one thing she’d kill him over. 

He closes his eyes. It has been fun. 

Then, gently: “Do you want to feel mine?”

They immediately snap open again. 

Wanda studies him. She isn’t confused. This isn’t confusion, it’s curiosity. Looking for something that might be present, something she knows well. 

“My care? Do you want to see?” she whispers, likely already dipping a cupped hand into her own mind to show him. “Do you think they match?”

Vision can only watch her, wide-eyed. His mouth is covered and he has no idea how to reply without words. He has no idea how to reply with words. 

He is afraid that he is misunderstanding. He is afraid that she is misunderstanding.

“If not,” she says calmly, “You can share mine. You can have some. This is not something meant to be felt alone.”

She pushes the feeling to him. Her eyelashes flutter. 

There is not an academic term for the nagging feeling that you must communicate something impossible, something too grand and exciting to be deserved, something warm… 

… and finding out that it exists somewhere else too.

Vision’s legs give out. 

He collapses at Wanda’s feet, forehead and palms to the floor, letting gravity lead him. It is impossible to take the deep breaths he knows he needs because he’s too busy crying toward the center of the earth. 

“Vision…?” A soft voice over him. 

He can’t even speak. Too busy hyperventilating. 

Vision slams a palm on the ground as if to say I give. Once, then twice, then three times. He isn’t sure what fight he’s forfeiting. His nose is pressed to the floor, uncomfortable, and he can’t even figure out where to begin. 

He worried he was going to lose her. Worried she’d hate him, that he’d have to help her pack up her things, that he’d have to sleep alone again. He worried that his skin would heal and all of the proof that she’d ever been here would be gone in just a matter of weeks. 

Worry overbrims. And, sometimes, it suddenly disappears. 

His bag is pulled from over his head, an arm lifted to untangle the strap from around him. There’s a bony, beautiful girl laying herself on top of him and sliding her arms around his waist to rest on his stomach. He is shaking. She, as she melts over him, carries the vibrations. 

“It is okay,” she tells him. He’s on his knees, hunched over and breathless, and she is his not-so-weighted blanket. She rubs his belly, cheek pressed cool to the back of his neck, wrapped around him like ivy. “I have got you.”

Vision has never felt like this before. Relief, nearly fatal. Relief that stuns him into paralysis. He chokes, sliding his hands toward his face, crying into those. 

Every time he has expected to lose something, he has. Each time without fail. It had become a fact, a fun fact, as if he had his own superpower of prediction. Each time he had someone, they were gone. Each time he grew obsessed with something, it was gone. A pattern was set and it became truth and now… 

“You can’t breathe like this,” she says, voice muffled against his skin and his shirt and the wave he’s climbing out of. She makes no move to get off of him, though, and he’s unable to move in the first place. “Your head is hurting.”

“I - nngh - I k-know that,” he whines, sniffing. He tries to say something else but it just emerges as a pitiful, “Mmnnnfffh.”

“Oh, boy,” she sighs, patting his stomach, “It is much easier to understand your mind, now.”

He can love her. He’s allowed. All those changes he was prepared to make… sacrifices and losses and movements and pains... and none of them have to happen.

He makes a miserable noise into his hands. Wanda creaks, overjoyed, and squeezes him until his ribs crack in protest. 

“I care for you, Vision,” she says, “I am full of ink for you.”

Vision doesn’t understand what the last part means and he’s a little bit horrified by the implication but he wails anyway. 

He turns his head to the side. She has placed the flowers in a little pile by his face, needing both hands to hold him with. He slumps forward further. Wanda slides down his back a bit, the slope of his spine aiding the movement, and she hums. Content.

Wanda is too busy keeping him together on the outside to stay in his thoughts. His own inner voice isn’t as kind as she is. It mutters warnings of too easy, it drags forward the memories of week-long care that was gone just as he was ready to accept it as his own. It mutters warnings of later, of in a few days, of this isn’t a movie. He knows this already. He was rather trying to ignore that.

“Wait,” he paws at his eyes, wobbling himself up to sit on sore knees. Wanda crawls around to sit in front of him and oh, God, she’s so fucking pretty. “Wait, wait, you don’t - “

“A mess,” she says warily, poking the dried ink on his leg. 

He shakes his head, brushing her hand away, staring at it, then taking it into his own. “Are you… are you sure that - “

“We match. We are similar.” She shuffles closer until her knees are on the outside of his, “I feel your doubts. They are useless.”

Vision wrinkles his nose at that. His face hurts. “I just, I don’t… Wanda, I’m not - you’re so amazing,” he says, and he despises how pitiful he sounds, “And I’m…? I’m barely… ”

She does everything. He’s barely anything. 

He waits for a quiet hum as she thinks about it, waits for her to say maybe you are right, waits for her to stand and wander off to the bedroom. Frankly, that would be more believable. It would be more believable that he’d only have Wanda for a few seconds before losing her, it seems that the grace period varies based on value. He’s had many experiences with being lifted and set back down like a boring book. Wanda doesn’t have patience for boring things.

She only comes closer. 

“You can be weak,” Wanda says. Scary sentiment made comforting in her voice. She holds his face. “I still care for you. It is not your decision.”

He laughs weakly, “It’s n-not your decision either.”

Wanda’s in his lap at this point. She looks between his eyes for a long while before saying, kindly, “I have no one else to care for.”

He presses his lips together. Fuck. He hadn’t considered that. He should have.

She’s stuck with him, isn’t she. There isn’t much of a decision to be made with only one option. First flat, first bed, first boy. There is a sentimentality to firsts, he supposes, a novelty. 

“... Right,” he nods, sniffing. He can deal with this. He can get used to it. It’s an honor to be a novelty. As long as she stays. “I’m sorry.”

Wanda frowns. He can feel her in his thoughts, pulling cards out of boxes, before she’s gasping and smushing his cheeks together, “No! No! Not that. ”

He tries to lean away to no avail, “It’s fine, I don’t care - “

“Stop thinking that,” she demands, appalled, squishing him harder. His jaw pops. “I mean that there is no one else like you.” She swipes away tears with icy fingers. “I had only just begun to understand you and now your thoughts are nonsense again.”

“They’re not nonsense,” he argues, far too snuffly to be taken seriously. Wanda wipes tears all the way down his neck. Then, in turn, wipes her hands down his sleeves. “I think you’d find that I’m very logical, when it comes down to it.”

“Then stop.” She offers it like an easy solution, laid in the small gap between their bodies. “Stop being logical. It does no good.”

“I can’t help it,” he mutters. “I’ve taken a million fucking logic courses - “

“They are boring.” Wanda has made up her mind. There is no changing it because there is nothing more powerful. “Be something else.”

Vision can’t even help it. It is his first resignation to something good, something beautiful, something his. 

He resigns. 

He smiles. 

Wanda makes… just the most wonderful sound he’s ever heard, tackling him back into the floor, grasping onto him so tight he’s certain to be bleeding. 

“Wanda,” he wheezes, hugging her like he’s wanted to forever, nose in her neck and wide grin and concern that this is a dream and happiness even if it is. “Christ, please, be gentle.”

“No,” she says. Her cheek is against his temple and, when she leans away, he’s almost sure that she’s about to kiss him. He remembers quite quickly that she wouldn’t. It is hard to replicate something you’ve never seen. “I’m too excited.”

“Okay, that’s - okay, that’s fair.” His voice turns to a strained breath as she crushes the life out of him. “Yes, okay, Wanda, this is - this is fine.”

“You have felt this for a long time,” she says. Her lips brush his skin and his heart might combust. “You should have told me.”

“Well, I didn’t know it was recipro-ca-ted,” he wrenches his eyes closed as her legs assist in the slow compression of his organs, tightening further and further as if on a lever, “You hadn’t known what it meant. I thought you didn’t want it.”

“It was mine before I knew what it meant,” she says. She snuggles up to him so casually as if she isn’t holding him like a… glowing torture device. Cold and light and welcome. Her hair tickles his cheek. “Mine.”

Vision wants to say a million things but he’s slowly becoming enveloped by the haze of sleep. Or perhaps it’s lightheadedness from oxygen deprivation. It doesn’t matter. It feels warm. 

“W- Wanda,” he lifts a weak arm to tap her side, trying to get her to release him, limbs stuffed with Polyfill as his circulation starts to go, “Hey. Fuck, hey, you’re - mm, love this moment, you’re fantastic, but I - hhn - I can’t… breathe.”

Another squeeze, another mine, and cool-crisp (he is dramatic) air fills his lungs again as he’s released. He clutches at his shirt, coughs a bit, rolls onto his stomach to push himself back up to his knees. Wanda has a hand on his back, patting him so fast his bones vibrate. He has another coughing fit. There’s a pain in his chest but he doesn’t think his ribs are broken. They haven’t broken before. 

She hops up to her feet, grabbing his wrists, pulling him up as well. He yelps, folding forward, two sharp hands on his chest to keep him upright. She smiles up at him. He almost falls down again. 

Successful in an exciting life. 

(It feels wrong. This can’t be correct.)

(No… no, this certainly isn’t correct.)

(Two years alone. Two years dull. Two years the same. Eighteen years, before that, living within a pattern of loss. Something good becomes something absent.)

Wanda leads him by the arms to their room. Their room, their bed. 

(It is a Monday. They always choose him on a Monday.) 

(If Wanda drops him in a week, it will tear him apart.) (But, of course, it feels good now. He will be content with a week. A week cared for is better than none. Better to have loved and lost.)

She launches herself into the blankets. It feels like he should say more, should ask questions, should guarantee that he hasn’t misdefined this. He’s never been able to define her before. He isn’t sure why, of all times, the moment when his life is at stake is the precise moment at which he suddenly gets something right. 

But he’s weak and he’s tired and his head hurts and she looks at him with her arms outstretched and there is no feasible other move that he can make. 

He flops onto the mattress. He makes the noise one makes when they flop onto a mattress. Wanda laughs, an ancient door hinge in her throat, grabbing at him and lugging him into her side as if his second move wasn’t to get as close as he possibly could. 

Maybe it is wishful thinking in an aching body, but he thinks they fit better now. Perhaps because there is more to fit, the final misalignment mended. They shared a mind and they shared a bed and they knew that much. There was something else he had tucked away for safekeeping. It’s all hers, now, hers to share. 

Nice to share a heart. 

Care. 

He drew her a flower. He gave her flowers. He gave her care. 

Care. She repeats it over and over. She hears it in his voice and she hears it in her own. 

The warmth makes sense, even if the boy doesn’t. 

He sleeps soundly. Wanda watches him, too much energy knocking about in her body to close her eyes. She wants to touch his face and touch his stomach. She wants to hug him until he gets all funny-voiced again. He dreams about her, the pictures so much louder and more vibrant than they’ve ever been. He hangs them up for her to see where, it seems, he’d been tucking them in heavy wooden drawers for so long before. He allows his dreams to breathe. 

She wants to yell. She wants to run around. She is full of noise and yet she can’t thunder because he is such a light sleeper. Thunder can wait until tomorrow. 

Wanda takes it upon herself to label his emotion by herself as it still sits vacant in his mind. Such an odd attempt to hide himself, leaving it nameless. A name isn’t where the person is. Wanda was still Wanda when she was 0211. Care is still care when it wears a blank page like a mask.

She doesn’t know what her handwriting looks like so she writes in Vision’s, leaking black ink pen in his head, scrawled along the side - Care. 

Her flowers sit in a pile on the floor in the living room. It takes courage to remove a hand from the boy’s waist, but she does, raising it in the air until a small white flower appears in her palm. 

She brings it to her eyes. She is her own light source, painting the white petals red with only her gaze. 

There are things she understands tonight that she wishes she had before. She wishes she understood his thoughts about himself. All of his thoughts about himself are connected to her in some form. They all sneer. It is nonsense. 

He thinks he is not special because he has lived inside himself for as long as he can remember. He has grown bored with himself, that’s all. To Wanda, he is new. He is spectacular. She learns more from him than she could learn from any school. She finds him prettier than any flower. No matter its size. He will always be better. 

Her first time touching a flower. They are soft and oddly saturated, not quite dry and not quite wet. It dances between her fingers as she rolls it side to side. She rolls the stem until it wilts. 

He likes her. 

Wanda smiles so much she worries her face may get stuck like this. His care and his exhaustion are beautiful and he doesn’t even know. He sleeps through it. 

She likes him. 

It had never seemed possible for someone to see her power as he does. To see it and to want to hold it, to promise to return it, to smile and pet it. He is interested but he lets her come close. Wanda has never been kept from him, no panes of glass or metal barriers to burn her way through. 

He has been hers from the very beginning. 

Wanda has always been someone else’s. She was caught and kept and hidden and bled and built and made into something dangerous. She has been put on shelves and on tall platforms since before she lost her language, before she lost her brother, before she lost her favorite colors. 

She has always been owned like a vase, one meant to be broken. Something to be swept up when they were finished. 

She is Vision’s person. A person with hands to hold and a body to carry. He takes care of her and her star. 

His weakness is pretty. His lips part as he sleeps and his limbs are all lax. (When Wanda sleeps, she wakes up with sore knuckles. She is incapable of letting go of something as she rests. She is incapable of letting go of her first real something.) He is different tonight because he is more. He is hers. 

Wanda releases him, flower lax between her fingers. She turns over on her other side to place it on the table there. She shuffles back into his chest, buckles his arms around her, stretches her hands out to rid them of the ache. 

He is heavy. His nose is in her hair, his breath tickles, his inhales and his exhales are so slow that push her forward and let her fall backward. Wanda takes his hands. She flips them back and forth. She interlocks their fingers. 

Vision stirs behind her just for a second. He tries to say her name but can’t manage it, funny noise in the back of his throat. He squeezes her hands before wrapping his arms around her waist like a harness. 

She is not sure what to do with empty palms. There is nothing to hold onto. She doesn’t mean to chirp when he pulls her up, when he hooks his chin over her shoulder and his cheek is pressed to her ear. She chirps anyway. 

He does not bruise her. He does not pierce or latch or cling. She is encased in him, each part of her is accompanied by a part of Vision. The front of his leg to the back of hers and every piece above. 

Maybe Vision does not hug incorrectly. Maybe a hug does not need to be evident for days afterward. 

She could learn how to hold gently, if she wanted to. But it seems quite difficult.

Hm. She leans her head back until her cheek is to his. He uses her as a pillow. She likes it. 

When it is her turn, Wanda will hold him in the only way she knows. That is to say, she will hold him with everything she has.

It is his turn tonight, though. She will leave gentle to Vision. He is good at it. 

Vision wakes up without five daggers in his hip. He wakes up with hair in his mouth. He wakes up with something sharp against his chest. It is the opposite of every morning he’s shared with Wanda since she started sleeping here. 

It is somewhat concerning. 

He opens an eye. 

The bed beside him is empty. He reaches out a sleep-heavy arm to brush his palm across the sheets. 

A timer is set in his mind. If, in approximately fifteen minutes when he is fully awake, he finds out that it was all a dream, he’ll probably cry himself inside-out. 

His head is turned into the pillow and he sighs into it. There is a vague awareness that he’s sprawled out across the entire mattress. There, too, is the understanding that he’s only occupied about a third of this space since Wanda came to stay with him. 

Maybe it was all a dream. Alternatively, it could have been a hallucination. Yeah, that’s likely it. He’ll schedule an appointment at the clinic soon, get that third diagnosis down on his paperwork, reenter society slightly more defined. 

“Mmh,” he says. Then, a bit more distressed, “Fuck.”

The timer was useless, he’ll just cry now. Get it over with. A cry in fifteen minutes versus a cry now, the only change is time, you know. Displacement. Silly. 

Just as he’s taking in a stuttered puff of air, he feels something shifting underneath him. A… a pointy nose against his collarbone and warm breath sinking into his shirt. 

“...” He lifts his head from the pillow, looking back over to the empty stretch of space beside him. “... Wanda?”

A quiet hum, right against his sternum.

“Good morning, boy,” Wanda says, voice muffled as if she’s speaking into the comforter. Ha. As if she’s part of the bed itself. 

Ha.

Hm.

Vision opens both of his eyes.

Oh, shit. 

He rolls off of her so fast he makes himself dizzy, rolls onto his back, looking over at the girl who has sunk almost cartoonishly into the mattress after a night spent pinned under his body. She turns her head to look at him, eyes bright and smile wide as if she hadn’t been crushed for a few hours. 

“Christ,” he rubs his eyes, then scrubs down to wipe at his mouth, this is a first, “Wanda, wake me up next time or - I mean, I guess just push me off the bed, I’m so sorry - “

Vision’s hands are taken and he’s pulled right back again. He has the structural integrity of a daisy chain.

Ah. It seems this was on purpose.

“Warm,” her voice murmurs, arms around him, not yet constricting. He pushes himself up onto his arms, looking down at her strangely, and she’s visibly upset. “Lay down.”

“Wanda, what - “

She tangles her fingers in his shirt, “You are heavy. Come back.”

He stares at her, genuinely bewildered the more and more he wakes up. This is real, then. “Oh, my God.”

“Stop thinking,” she says, narrowing her eyes at him, “Lay down. Sleep.”

Every part of him wants to laugh but he’s too busy making sure he didn’t hurt her. He hopes none of her bones are broken. God, wouldn’t that be fascinating? If he was the one to - 

“Boy,” she warns, pawing at her eyes tiredly.

“Sorry.” He falls beside her anyway, even as she tugs at his shirt again. “This is… okay. Okay. Alright, I - okay, wow.”

He was entirely convinced this was a dream. Why wouldn’t it have been? He’d dreamt about her a million times before, dreamt about being with her - sure, he hadn’t cried like a fucking infant in the dreams, but… 

This is really happening? Really? Did he get hit by a rogue vehicle while he was picking Wanda’s flowers and now he’s just living in a weird middle space, sort of like purgatory but not? 

Wanda is trying to use him like a blanket, right now. This is real. 

This is insane. 

“I liked your dreams,” she tells him, an arm and leg thrown over his stomach. 

Vision has forgotten how to be normal in the mornings. What do they often talk about? When he’s going to leave for class? Which clothes Wanda can wear today? He’s forgotten how to hold her, forgotten everything, just a useless blob on the blankets as Wanda gets so close he worries she might disappear into him. 

“... Thank you,” he manages through a closed throat. 

Wanda pats his chest. “You think too much.”

He doesn’t know why he relaxes at that. His arm is half-asleep as he slips it under her back, her ribs slicing into his skin with the motion. Even through that thick sweater she loves so much, it’s impossible not to be filleted. 

“You said you liked it in my head,” he says. His voice is wrecked from crying. Wanda places a cold hand over his throat as if to fix it. 

“That doesn’t mean you don’t think too much,” she says. 

He lifts his head to look at her. Her hair is frizzy. When he smooths it down, it slowly rises back up again. 

“Fair,” he concedes. 

She beams. She pulls him close, familiar stab to the side, smiles even wider. Vision jumps as a few books fall off the shelf in the corner of the room, knocked out of their places by an invisible hand. 

He glances over at them, then back to Wanda. 

“I will pick them up,” she promises. A pat to the stomach. (He doesn’t get this new fascination but he welcomes it.)

Her hair is soft. He drags his fingers through it. With each pass, more of it sticks straight up toward the ceiling. Almost as if she’s underwater.

His heart hammers in his chest. 

This is learning. New things every day, he gets from her, and now he gets more. This is a new kind of contentment to Wanda. It’s escaping her head, pulling things off shelves and funnelling electricity. He loves learning about her. He’ll never have the full picture but he’ll have things like this. He’ll watch her defy gravity without batting an eye. 

“Happy?” he murmurs. 

She nods. Her hair flows along with the motion. 

Perhaps it doesn’t matter what they usually talk about. Frankly, they don’t even need to speak. Wanda tells him everything she needs him to know in all the most ridiculous ways. And she can hear everything he has to say already. 

Even more: the phone rings before he can say anything else.

Vision drops his head back into the pillows with a groan. He gets a serrated girl to the chest, collapsing onto him and sliding off to rest beside him. 

“Has she fixed it?” Wanda asks. 

He shakes his head, “These things take time, unfortunately. I assume this is a courtesy call. To check on you.”

She seems pleased about that, dropping her query and closing her eyes for a moment. He has no idea where she goes in her head but he has somewhat of a pressing matter on his hands. 

His phone is an ice block, the nightstand right over the air vent, and he hisses as it connects with his cheek. 

“Hey,” he yawns, arm thrown over his face. His fingers are taken in less than a second, held firmly. “Good morning.”

Wanda shuffles closer. She whispers, “Hi.”

“Ah, yes,” Vision smiles, eyes slipping shut, still so tired, “Wanda says hello too.”

“Hello, Wanda,” comes the reply. “And hello, Vision.”

Order of operations. It’s fine. Can’t win everything. 

“Sorry to call you so early, I hope I didn’t wake you.” 

Vision hums. (Wanda copies the hum.) “You didn’t. And even if you did… you know. Greater good.”

There’s a long, judgmental pause. “You sound different.”

He makes a face, “I’m sorry?”

“... Hm.” 

For all of his life, he’s heard those stories of a Mum Sense. Like a superpower. She isn’t here and yet he knows the way she studies him when he’s done something wrong. When he’s packed a bag to run away or he’s just stolen a bag of crisps from the store. 

He hasn’t even gotten the chance to deny anything and it feels like she’s on the case. 

“... In any case, I do happen to be calling for a reason.”

Vision snickers. “Your serious science voice. It’s been so long since I’ve heard it.”

“I don’t have a serious science voice - “

“Er, you do? You’re wearing it right now?” He has to hook a finger into his cheek, grimacing. You’d think Wanda crawled in his mouth as he slept. Domesticity, he supposes, is a balance. Equal parts big smiles and cuddles and… apparently, hair in his mouth. Forever. “Sorry. Yes. The case. Continue.”

“It seems everyone else in the field was under the same impression that I was,” Helen says, serious-science-voice in full effect. He shouldn’t smile. It isn’t appropriate. “Everyone knows Strucker as an ornament around a conference table or a lab desk. They know he does work in a field - but what work and what field is always missing. ”

“I don’t get it,” he mumbles. Wanda’s prodding at his Adam’s apple. “You’re saying no one knows him, and yet he finds his way into all these official places? No questions asked?”

Helen exhales, just as frustrated. “My darling, you know I love you more than anything - but white men with odd accents can get just about anywhere they please. Especially when it comes to applied sciences.”

“Great. Wonderful.”

“As I ask around, I encourage them to do the same. If a rumor led you to him, then certainly a rumor will lead them a bit further.”

It’s not the most scientific approach. “Not the most scientific approach, Mum.”

“I know what I’m doing.” It’s a weak sort of venom. “These are engineers and doctors and scientists. They do tend to like doing their own research. We get closer to him, closer to an answer, as they gather their own findings. And they’re moving forward but slowly. It’s… it’s somewhat of a waiting game at the moment.”

Vision nods. The sheets rustle. “As long as they’re moving forward.”

“Vision…” she says. 

Mm. Doesn’t bode well.

“Yes?” he croaks.  

“A… a lot of this inquiry is hinging on his visibility, on the ability to trace him. And he’s taken a lot of care to keep himself hidden.” He knows this tone, motherly worry. It is something of a consolation, even if she is attempting to give him bad news. “If they explore, if they identify a cause to move further, if they wrestle an inquisition and they can’t find anything... if they can’t confirm or deny an alibi, then they’ll have to default to innocence.”

“I know.” There are cool fingertips on his temple. Wanda takes the stress that tugs at his chest and seems to mute it. “But we have to try.”

“You’re doing a lot for this girl.” 

Technically, he’s done nothing. He’s only waiting. Waiting and Wanda, the only things in his head. 

Of course, he’d do a lot more for her. Anything, likely, is the term. 

“Well, er… yes?” he says instead. An awkward addition. He’s very good at this speaking thing.

“I’m so proud of you.”

He groans, “Mum.”

“You have so much potential, my beautiful son - “

“Mum.”

“ - and to see you use your time and kindness and knowledge on something like this… it just…” 

“Please don’t cry,” he pleads, voice like gravel. “Mum, it’s early, you always do this - “

“Don’t dismiss my feelings,” she sniffs, always an elegant crier. Vision always curses the fact that he hadn’t inherited that ability. “I’m allowed to cry.”

“Make yourself some tea and watch your show, it always makes you feel better. More…” He tries to find a kind way to word it, “... stable.” 

He feels a hand on his face.

He returns his attention to the only thing that matters. 

Wanda’s chin is propped on his chest as she looks at him, fingers dragging down the side of his face. Then, over his cheek, up to the bridge of his nose. Simply exploring. 

“... I may.”

“You should. Thank you for helping, make sure you don’t drive yourself mad,” he smiles gently as Wanda pushes the tip of his nose up with her index finger. He scrunches his face. She squeaks. “I’ve got to go.”

“Yes, I suppose you do. I love you. I’ll call tomorrow as I hear more.”

“Thank you. Love you too.”

Wanda grabs the phone as the call ends. She carries it in a bubble back to its place, far away, then she reclaims his focus. He worries that he’s accidentally encouraged both of their monsters of envy. He worries that it’s the only way he’d ever want them to be. 

Wanda’s finger drifts down to his lips. She presses hard, then lets up, then presses again as if she expects something to happen. There’s no button, there. 

“Hey,” he murmurs, blocked by her touch, worryingly fond. “What in the world are you doing?”

“I like your face,” she says. She attempts to press a non-existent button on his chin, next. “Very soft.”

He is hesitant to accept this. He wishes he was able to laugh like he wants, to close his eyes, to tell her he loves her, to feel like this is concrete. He wants to lose himself to this morning because there will be many more to be had. 

But how many more, is the question.

In his experience, when the week ends and the Sunday happens, when the talk occurs and he has to hold his hands out and take his heart back, there is a considerable amount of embarrassment. He stuffs everything back into his chest and he sews it up and he has to live with all of those silly things he had done. Every kiss he initiated grows sour and every kiss he received becomes a joke he hadn’t gotten. Hindsight burns him, he plays audience to a second part of a story where everyone has been laughing and he’d been too deaf and too distracted to hear them. 

Wanda certainly doesn’t plan to give it back. She seems happy. She says she likes his face, she says she likes him. She has no one to report back to, to point and laugh with, but it makes it even scarier somehow. If she tries him out, tries him on, and decides he isn’t quite right. 

In a week, if she were to let him go, he will think about this moment a lot. This first morning shared. He’ll run it over and over in his head until the tape snaps. He already has enough ammunition to cringe at himself for about a year. Picking flowers and crying into his hands. Playing with her hair. Feeling happy. How dare he.

Even worse - what if he accepts it, what if he thinks he deserves her for even a second, and that’s when she gives it all back? What if she gives it back before he’s ready, before he’s gotten enough? 

Wanda is too busy mapping out the topography of his neck to hear his worry. 

“Was she checking on me?” she asks. 

“Mm… um… yep. Yes. She was.” Vision’s voice cracks as she presses down on his larynx. He makes an argumentative noise but he doesn’t move to stop her. 

“Hm.” Her fingers dip into the collar of his shirt. Breathing is difficult. “You are still so tired.”

He chokes on a laugh. “I am almost always tired, you know.”

She dips her finger into the bowl at the hollow of his throat. “The sun has not come up. You should sleep.”

“But…?” Vision frowns, tilting his head to the side, rolling his eyes when she mirrors him. “I can be awake now. We can… er, talk. Or something. Like I said, I’m always like this, so - “

“Sleep.” Hands over his eyes. “I will be here when you wake up again.”

He pulls her away, squinting, half-false suspicion. “Promise?”

Wanda is a heap on top of him. “I promise.”

There’s something about being granted permission to sleep that really does him in. 

He sleeps the entire day away. It’s that kind of restfulness that renders the brain useless, no dreams and nothing of importance, no input or output. As close to death as a living body can get. Whatever Wanda wants, she gets. She wants him to sleep, he quite literally dies for ten hours. 

He goes to sleep before the sun rises and he wakes up right as it begins to set. 

It’s sort of funny, the few seconds of consciousness before the eyes open.

It’s sort of funny, too, when he opens his eyes to find that he’s actively being kissed. 

He must sit here for about thirty full seconds, staring at two closed eyelids, Wanda’s red light shining through them, before he has to come to terms with the fact that this is real. It’s still real. 

Their first kiss and he missed half of it. He wakes up in it.

“Mm? Mm.” he attempts, mouth occupied by a chaste but very long-lasting lip-press. “W’nda.”

She leans back with a small click as their lips part. She smiles, “Good morning, boy.”

“Yes, good morning. Again. Or… night…?” This is insane. He is wide awake. Maybe it’s just adrenaline. He looks toward the window, back to her, down to where she’s kneeling beside him, “Um… Do you… what… I…?”

“You dreamt of doing that.”

Vision’s face has never gone so red so fast. He can feel it. 

He was almost certain he wasn’t dreaming. Just a black screen and white noise up top.

Did she… did she steal his dreams?

“I…” he glances down to her mouth, “I d-did?”

“Yes,” she says, curt, before clambering on top of him. She is not modest, sharp and settled right above his lungs, and it takes a second to adjust to the new strain. “Vision.”

“... Mmhm?” He hesitantly rests his hands on her legs, honestly feeling like he’s missed a couple of vital steps, feeling like things are moving very fast, “Are you alright?”

She’s glowing quite bright. He has no idea what’s going on in her head. Happiness and something else. “The television is not working.”

“... Ooookay.” He looks up at her, pinned and safe and a little bit overwhelmed. “How… how long have you been awake?”

She shrugs, “Since before the sun.”

Vision frowns at the slowly growing darkness outside, “Why didn’t you wake me? I would have - “

“You were dreaming of eating my mouth, I did not want to interrupt.”

He groans. Already he is beginning to notice the ups and downs of being openly in love with a glowstick. “Well, for future reference, feel free to interrupt. In fact, I insist. I wouldn’t be mad. Did you have the bad dream again?”

“No. I do not have them when I am close to you.” She pats his head. So fond of pats. “Please do get up now. The television is broken.”

Vision runs his hands through his tangled hair. Wanda somersaults off of him and onto the floor. 

“Why are all the lights off?” he asks tiredly, scooting toward the edge of the bed. A whole day has passed with Wanda left to her own devices. It appears that she’s been content to leave everything off. He’s certain something had to have happened as he slept but it seems like nothing has been touched. “It’ll be dark soon. You know where the switches are, don’t you?”

“Ummmmmm…” 

“Wanda, you know where the switches are.” He narrows his eyes, “... right?”

“Yes, I know.” Wanda’s bouncing on the balls of her feet, “They... are not working either.”

He scoffs. He wobbles to his feet, arms stretched over his head, and Wanda wastes no time in prodding the section of his hip that comes into view. (Vision has never seen anyone else’s love language before. It’s always been his own. They match.) “Is that so?”

“Mhm.” Wanda takes his hand, holds it, crushes it, it’s fine. “I don’t think you should go to school.”

He walks over to the door, girl in tow, toggling the light switch a few times, “... I see.”

“Too dark to see,” she explains, reaching out to test the lights herself. They do nothing. “Too dark for school.”

“Mm. The power must have gone out,” he swings their arms a bit as he thinks. Wanda glows. “I’ve got candles somewhere. I’ll light them before it gets too dark, make sure we’re not lost in an abyss.”

Wanda coos, “Candles.”

She’s his backpack as he wanders around, digging through various drawers to locate all of the old wax wicks he’d forgotten about. Four arms come in handy when holding things, when strategically placing candles in all important rooms in the least flammable places. 

If he doesn’t actively think about how wonderful she is, how good it is not to be alone and fumbling his way through his flat, he doesn’t focus on the embarrassment that’ll come in a week. It’s just him and Wanda on an adventure. Just him and Wanda and about ten candles. The glass knocks together as he pinches the brims of them to hold them in each hand. 

Vision has no idea where a lighter is. Wanda has fire in her hands. Things come together. Things overlap.

Wanda’s right. He shouldn’t go tonight - leaving her alone in a place full of small fires is not likely the best option. One class missed, what’s one more?

“I suppose I should email in, then,” Vision says, lugging his backpack girl down the hall as he goes to retrieve his phone, “I believe I have some data left. The internet’ll be kaput.”

“I don’t know what that means,” she murmurs, cheek against the back of his head. She tries the words out, “Kaput. Da - day - dah - data. ”

“You don’t need to. It’s alright.” He lifts his phone up to his eyes, blinding himself with bright-white light in a dim, yellow-flickering flat. 

It’s a strain to read the notification that greets him. He regains understanding of the language. His phone is cold and Wanda is cold and the entire flat is dark. He reads the message four times.

“... Huh.”

“What is it?” Wanda asks. He has to widen his stance to accommodate so much movement. She climbs, grasps, wiggles around. “What is the matter?”

“All classes have been canceled,” he says slowly, “Apparently… the entirety of Zone 1 is completely in the dark. One-sixth of London.”

“Oh.” Her palms are flat against his chest. She moves them in tiny circles as she thinks. “How much is one-sixth?”

“A lot,” he turns his head a bit to see her. He scans her face, the phone light catching her face, catching very visible remorse. “Wanda…?”

“It is a real shame,” she offers, falling down to stand on the floor. “You will have to stay tonight.”

“Yes, it… it seems I will.” 

There’s a hand on his back, shoving him toward the door. He allows her to lead him down a path of her own design but he isn’t entirely sure what her plan is. He’s pushed forward, stumbling and barely avoiding a coffee table to the knee, spinning to fall back onto the couch. 

“Sorry,” Wanda says. His eyes are still swimming from the floodlights of his phone. She’s mostly a silhouette as she clambers onto his legs, facing him. “Hello.”

“... Hi.”

Right, he’s awake now. Perfect time for a new wave of panic. 

Nose-to-nose. Candlelit space. Her hands slide up and into his hair. Pretty girl in his lap. 

If he isn’t dreaming - and he can’t be, because his dreams don’t often set everything up quite this nicely - then reality applies. He knows how reality works. Reality doesn’t like him very much.

“Hello,” she says again. 

Vision blinks. She smells like the new toothpaste Helen brought. Sweet and mint. 

What does someone do in this situation? A damn near perfect situation that he’s so incredibly certain has been misassigned to him? Succumb now and cry later? Pass out? Then cry later?

He thinks he says her name. It’s all he really can. It sounds a bit like a plea. 

The main worry is that he shouldn’t have said anything. Wanda is leaning close and staring at his mouth like she wants it but what if she doesn’t? He feels like a crazy man. They both lack experience here in varying avenues. Vision has never been wanted and Wanda has never kissed someone.  It feels… it feels like perhaps he shouldn’t let her. 

If she tries him on and decides she didn’t like him, he’ll hate himself for this. He’ll hate himself for letting her waste a first kiss on an idiot, for wasting a hundred kisses. 

He shouldn’t have said anything. The anchor is pulling him over the edge anyway, it always does. Overthink when he doesn’t have her, overthink when he does. The last thing he wants is to make her feel that she has to like him because she’s staying here and oh, fuck, that’s it, isn’t it? He’s made a mess of things. He shouldn’t have - 

“You are lucky that I can hear you,” she says, almost disappointed. “Your brain is grey with worry, today.”

Vision’s kissed back into the cushions. He makes a humiliating noise, wide eyes that flutter shut, grasping at her sweater. Perhaps there is a button, here. His mind shuts off. 

She releases him, glowing red eyes, to scold him, “I do what I want to do, boy. It is out of your control.”

“I - I - I - uh, I - I - “

Candle-lit space. Girl in his lap. Nowhere else to be. His hands are on her waist and he’s terrified that he isn’t allowed, that he should lean away. Of course, there’s no place to lean away because he’s steadily disappearing into the couch. 

He might just die. Truly. This is a logical end point for a long life spent without this. 

“Wanda,” he manages, causing a very irritated Wanda to huff and lean back. “Hey. Hey - “

“Hey,” she repeats, clearly inconvenienced. 

“... Do you… what… what are you doing? ” he whispers, unable to breathe for approximately five reasons. “Do you know… I mean, do you know what this is? What…? What we’re…? Are you - “

“Yes, I know what we are doing,” she informs him. She’s too busy being cross with him to smile. 

“Okay. And do you know what it is called. ”

Wanda crosses her arms. “That’s not very nice.”

He waits somewhat impatiently. He doesn’t move a muscle. Moving, shifting in any way right now, is definitely not wise. There is a girl on his lap. Etiquette is expected. 

“... Wanda.”

“It’s… it’s called…” she says, so adorable when she’s frustrated but not the time, Vision, Christ. “It’s… I know what it’s called.”

Vision tilts his head back, challenging, likely welcoming death, “So, what’s it called, then?”

Wanda wrinkles her nose. It’s as if she can’t remember, for a moment, that he can feel every time she looks through his mind. He’s well-acquainted with the feeling. She runs around in his mind searching for the term. 

“... Kiss. It’s called kiss,” she sticks the landing. 

Vision covers his face with his hands. He wants to cry. He might. He’s going to have to. 

Wanda kisses him over his hands. 

No, yeah, he needs to cry. 

“Fuck,” he whimpers.

“You’re supposed to kiss back,” she attempts to educate, prying his hands away one finger at a time. 

He shakes his head, thankful for the darkness of the living room that masks a good portion of his shame. Not all of it. Shame transcends. “Wanda,” he sighs, tearful and very close to being categorized as a blubber, “You don’t have to do this. I’m sorry.”

Wanda’s wiping his face with her sleeves so fast he worries he’ll get a fabric burn. “Do what?”

“Anything. With me. You don’t…” He dodges her further attempts to soak up tears that are no longer falling, “You can stay here forever no matter what. I know I’m pitiful and I probably… certainly… definitely made a fool of myself, but that doesn’t mean you have to… t-t-to kiss me. Or be close to me.”

She frames his face with soft, damp sleeve-covered hands. She studies him for a long time before asking, faintly, “I don’t have to be close?”

He fucking knew it. He knew it. 

Vision nods so fast that the room spins. He pulls Wanda’s hands from his face, tries to scoot back, give her space where he’s the one boxed in, “God, God, of course not. Of course not - you - I mean, you - y-you don’t even have to let me like you, Wanda, you can take it out if you want to.”

She doesn’t move from on top of him. “I know I can take it out. It would be easy.”

“I’m - shit, I’m sorry. I’m happy to be friends. I just, I’m…” He needs to curl up in a ball, now. Start playing the tape back. “I don’t want you to think that you have to do this. That you have to like me or you have to be close, I - fuck. Wanda, I’m… I’ve made a real mess of things. I’m sorry.”

She still doesn’t move. He really wishes she would. He doesn’t want to reach for her, nudge her away, doesn’t want to create contact where he’s already done more than enough. He just sits underneath her and watches her think and hopes that whatever she’s planning will happen soon. 

“You…” she begins slowly, “... You don’t want me to be close?”

His shirt is too tight on him, suddenly. He keeps his arms to his chest, hooks his fingers in his collar, tugs at it, hopes this ends soon, “It doesn’t matter, Wanda, I promise. It’s about what you want, whatever you need, and I’m - fuck - I’m so sorry if I ever made it seem like you had to - ugh, I’m so fucking awful, I - “

“Don’t say that,” she says, “You are special.”

He flinches, “I’m - oh, fuck, I’m so sorry.”

She walks forward on her knees until they’re indistinguishable. He wrenches his eyes closed. This is so much worse than he thought. It’s his fault for not bringing this up earlier, for not giving her space, for being so stupid in love from the very start. 

“Vision,” she says. 

“I - “

“You are my person,” she says, capital-S serious. “Mine.”

He sniffs, “That doesn’t mean you have to be mine, if you don’t want to be.”

Wanda purses her lips, not amused. “You are supposed to be smart.”

Vision chokes on a laugh, “S-sorry, I - ow. ”

She has taken quite a liking to nearly crushing his head between her hands. She smushes his face, “I have always been close to you.”

Vision hadn’t thought about that. 

It… it does seem that way, doesn’t it. 

A week in, they were sleeping together. A week in, she had already found the way she’d hold onto him, nails in his sides, sharp and stable. 

“Oh,” he says. 

“Are you finished?” she asks, still holding his head still, “Are you done?”

He tries to nod but it’s impossible. “Yes. I’m done.”

Wanda releases him. She pecks his cheek. He flushes bright red. 

“Good,” she turns around and drops back into him, razor shoulder blades to his chest, “Now what?”

Vision has to come down from the high of an almost-panic. Wanda takes his arms and loops them around her stomach, holding them there. Her head falls to rest under his chin and she sighs happily. 

“... Now… now what? ” He glances around the room, “The power will be out for a while. There aren’t many things to do in the dark, I’m afraid. Nothing works without electricity.”

“Hm.” She lifts her legs pin-straight in front of her before letting them fall again. “What about books?”

“Those work, yes, but it’s too dark to read them.” He interlocks his fingers on her stomach, tries to convince himself that he can breathe, tries to convince himself that he deserves this. “Surely they’ll get it straightened out sooner or later.” Then, he cranes his neck to look at her, “Wanda, are you able to read?”

Her eyes glow. She doesn’t need to push offense to him, he can read it on her face. “Yes. ”

“Okay, okay,” he chuckles, “I just - I’m just asking. ”

“I can read very well,” she continues, lifting her legs again. 

“You’ll have to show me when the light returns,” he offers. He does want to know how she reads. How many words she knows. What kind of books she likes. 

She hums. She lifts a hand. 

The lights buzz back on. 

“I will show you,” she says, moving to stand. 

“Uh - uh - um - ? Hold on,” he hugs her tight before she can stand. She looks over her shoulder at him, confused as to what the hold up is. “Wanda.”

“Yes.”

“Did you…” he feels his face pull into a grin, “... Did you… did you…?”

There’s a nervousness in her expression that curls into a shaky smile. “Too dark to go to school.”

Vision laughs. He can’t help it. Too much emotion in his body to contain it. Wanda screams, overjoyed, the first time he’s ever heard such a sound come out of her mouth. The happiest scream known to man. She tackles him further into the sofa.

He loves her so incredibly much. She kisses him before he can form the thought to.

Chapter Text

Vision has dated before. Okay? Many times. 

(When... he was in... secondary school.) 

(But late secondary school. Practically an adult. Able to drive. Had sex. So.)

Yes, perhaps all of his relationships were all under false pretenses. Sure. And yes, maybe they all lasted for less than a month. And… he supposes, too, that he has always been the only one actively participating in them. 

That isn’t the point. 

The point is that he has a considerable advantage in this relationship due to his experience thus far.

So… why is Wanda better at this than he is?

It isn’t hard to miss. 

Vision lugs himself out of bed on a Wednesday for a shower. He loses the motivation to do so about halfway down the hall. He compromises as so many energy-deficient individuals are ought to do, plans to brush his teeth and wash his face.

There’s someone slipping behind him within ten seconds. 

“Hello,” he says, muffled around his toothbrush, looking over his shoulder, falling in love a thousandth time. Her cheeks carry faint pink sheet imprints as she holds onto him. “I was going to come back.”

“I know,” she replies. And that is all the explanation she offers, closing her eyes and sighing sweetly. 

She’s slightly less bone-fragmenting when she’s tired, clinging without breaking the skin, swaying behind him so very patiently. He squints at his reflection for a moment, channeling all of his effort into hiding the stupid smile on his face. 

It feels like, each time he braves the mirror, there is a new contusion to familiarize himself with. Today, for example, here are little red traces across his skin, pathways that Wanda had pressed and dragged and explored. Not quite bruises but definite presences. He brings a free hand up to tug his collar down, trying to find where they end. They end, it seems, as far down as Wanda could fit her hand. 

(Vision has never seen a raccoon with his own eyes, much less been attacked by one. The scratches on his collarbone, though… A bit of a raccoon, Wanda is. In the best way.)

He may or may not be purposefully inefficient in his method today. He takes a solid minute to rinse. He isn’t ready for this to end yet. 

Before he can turn around, say hello again, do anything - she’s wedging her way between him and the sink, grabbing for her own toothbrush, very much implying that it is now his turn. 

“... Ah.” There is no making this up. It has to be reality, there’s no… there’s too much impossibility at once, it cancels out. “Yes, Your Highness.”

It’s an odd stance he has to employ. He slides his feet out to the sides, half of a split, until his chin is on her shoulder. Wanda smiles at him through the reflection. (She chose the baby-blue brush in the pack. She’s very fond of the color. Anything but red, it seems, she’s partial to. Vision’s one rule is that he always gets the yellow one.)

When she’s finished, she spins around and kisses his nose. 

“Easier to reach,” she explains. He is incredibly weak for her. Based on the way she’s laughing at him, she knows it. 

Wanda is good at one thing he’s never been able to do. She leads.

They are friends one moment and more than friends the next, blink and you’d miss the turning point but the change is more than obvious. He drowns in the change.

She takes his hand and guides it into her hair when she wants it. She holds her fork up to his mouth and waits for him to open. She crawls into his lap, back to his chest, settles in for a nap as he reads. She kisses first, she pulls him around, and informs him when bedtime is, closes his laptop and sets it aside. 

Her mental monologues during his lectures are no longer contained to the empty spaces between classes. She speaks for hours. She speaks about care, about missing him, she takes his feelings in her hands and she holds them for a while. Runs in circles. Jumps on the sofa. Describes her night in detail. Vision can’t help but focus entirely on her, pen capped and arms crossed, losing time and grinning like an absolutely insane person as his professor drones on about Adam of Balsham. 

Wanda is so fucking good at this. Good at taking his hands and taking his heart easily, knowing she deserves them, flipping the switch in her mind. He doesn’t even know what to do with himself. He envies her. It’s ridiculous to envy something you technically currently possess. 

It is admittedly quite hard to continue the mindset of unhaveable-ness when Wanda is so keen to parade him around the flat like this. He gives her space to initiate first in the event that she changes her mind but there’s not a single moment they spend together where she isn’t actively initiating. (She’s incredible. She’s insane.)

The Sunday comes and she kisses him awake. Vision doesn’t think that Wanda’s feet touch the ground even once, clinging to his shoulders between the couch and the bed. She proves that she can read, her only obstacle being a few pronunciations that he will absolutely not correct her on, and stops every few sentences to make sure that he’s keeping up. Then, the Sunday ends and she kisses him asleep again. 

A full week of observing Wanda’s innate ability to just exist. To exist as one body attached to another, no fear or worry or concern. To care for someone without bracing for what it’ll feel like when you don’t have them anymore. 

He’s left with this limbo feeling, stuck between following Wanda’s lead, diving in and letting himself have this, and remaining here. He put a lot of effort into this suit of armor he’s wearing, he’s certain he’ll sink to the bottom of whatever pool he tries to jump into. 

Vision is trying to summon the courage to… ask her out. 

Out as in outside.

The last time they had gone out into the world, it was fine and perfect until it wasn’t. Until the world got too loud, too many voices in Wanda’s head at once, until she panicked and shut down and wandered back to the place that… well, likely made a habit of filling her head with voices she didn’t want. If he isn’t hung up on the possibility that they’ll step out into the world and some sort of spell will be broken and it’ll all go back to normal, he’s hung up on the fact that the world hasn’t been particularly kind. 

The fact of the matter is that a week has passed and Wanda still likes him. And, no matter how hard he tries to push them down, Vision’s stupid first-year goals keep coming back to him. 

Of course it’s the admittedly immature ones, ones that would appear in a direct-to-video Christmas love story film. Late nights spent outside as the weather gets cooler. Held hands and moonlight. That half-worry that kissing someone in public is indecent, the half-glee that he’d have someone in the first place. All the goals he had forfeited a while ago. All the goals that he should keep forfeited. 

Perhaps he can fit some of these things in before they get to a month. That’s the next drop off point, if memory serves. He has time to absorb all of this nearly definable self-confidence before it leaves again. One moonlit walk. 

If not, of course, he always has this type of moonlit walk. Ducking through alleys while she talks to him on the journey home. If he closes his eyes - which he won’t, obviously, as he will definitely fall and die - he can imagine she’s beside him. 

I don’t think I like this show anymore, Wanda says. 

Vision steps cautiously around what seems to be a plethora of various shattered glass bottles. He doesn’t hear anything near sadness in her voice but he’s frowning anyway, “Oh? Why’s that?”

No one’s the same as they were at the beginning.

“I see,” he nods, slipping his hands into his pockets, “Well… I mean… People change, sometimes. A lot of them got married in the last series, so. I hear that… um, that changes… people.”

Hmmmm. It isn’t that.

“Okay.” He isn’t sure why he thought Wanda was focusing on the marriage aspect. Maybe he always focuses on the marriage aspect. “So, educate me.”

They… they… they are... I don’t know how to say it. 

Vision misses her so much and he’s about two minutes from being home. As long as he doesn’t categorize it as an obsession in his head, it isn’t one. “I’m nearly there. You can just show me what you mean, how’s that?”

She’s silent after that. He assumes she’s finding the precise moment that she wants to show him. He walks a bit faster. Two steps at a time up the staircase, key in hand, thrilled for a welcome-home kiss and a night of telly. A week of this - he’s been positively spoiled. 

“Alright, then,” he says as he enters, tossing all non-Wanda things to the side, “Give me your concerns.”

Wanda pats the couch beside her with both hands. Vision toes his shoes off and takes his place an inch away so that she can turn and hook her legs over his lap. They have a system. It works. 

Wanda stares intently at the side of his face, not saying a word. Expecting, as she always does. 

He drops his head for her to reach, three kisses given in quick succession. 

“You take too long,” she tells him, hugging his arm. “You are supposed to kiss first sometimes.”

“Noted,” he says. He can’t. Too nervous. 

(Wanda hid the remote somewhere, he thinks. She’s content to be the remote, blinking in the general vicinity of the screen and controlling it that way. He doesn’t think she lost it, she could probably find it if she wanted to. It’s incredible, though, so he doesn’t call her out.)

“The man with the brown hair,” she says, pointing at the frozen image. He squints, studying every detail just in case there will be a test later, and nods. “Do you remember him at the beginning?”

Vision nods. Back when he was actually paying attention. Back when he cared about their names and their subplots, back before Wanda’s commentary swept him off his feet. 

“Listen,” she says. There’s a tap to his ear and the episode plays again. 

He can’t hear anything particularly different. The man walks from one end of the room to the other, talking about normal… man-with-brown-hair things. Work. Family. Inconsequential drama. 

Wanda raises her eyebrows at him, pausing it without moving a single finger.

Vision opens his mouth to bullshit some sort of observation but he’s genuinely got nothing. “... Um?”

“He’s not the same,” she explains. 

He returns heavy focus back to the screen. The actor is still working, still wearing the same genre of clothes. Vision isn’t quite sure what Wanda prioritizes in people that aren’t him - the clothes or the words? Can she read the minds of people preserved in film? Does he want to ask? Would that be disrespectful, should he wait?

He’ll wait. Wanda’s about to burst a blood vessel looking at him like this. 

“Okay. And how is he not the same?” Vision’s hand is starting to fall asleep, the girl on his arm acting as somewhat of a tourniquet. “You’ll have to forgive me, Wanda, I’m somewhat of an idiot.”

She glares at him, “No.”

He laughs, loud enough to warrant his own hand over his mouth. She doesn’t find it funny. He wipes the smile away, feigning seriousness as his arm falls to his lap, “Sorry.”

“His words,” Wanda is irritated that she has to lead him by the hand through this and it’s the best thing to happen to Vision all day. He likes this brand of irritation. Fond irritation. “He would never say that.”

“Ohhhhhhhhhhh,” Vision sighs out, nodding broadly. 

When he introduced her to the concept of episodic media, he thought it’d just be a good way for her to have something of her own, something to pass the time, something to make it feel more home-like. He could never have expected her to throw herself into the dilemma of canonical screenwriting. But alas. Here they are. 

“He has never cared about the silly things before,” her eyebrows are practically touching, “But this entire… this…”

“Episode,” Vision murmurs. 

“... episode, it is all he can talk about.”

“Well… um…” he rubs the back of his neck, sinking further down into the cushions. It’s that sort of posture you do when you need to explain something complicated and you need to do it well the first time or it’ll turn into an ordeal. Prime concentration posture. It assists Wanda’s goal to meld into his side. Win-win. “I suppose I should ask this. And you’ll likely be somewhat upset with me… but, er. You know they’re not…? They’re just characters.”

Her head whips around, eyes glowing, quite close to fury. Fond fury. “I know that.”

He holds up his hands, surrenders, collapses into very manly giggles, “Y-yes, of course you do.”

“Their names are at the beginning,” she huffs, “The people behind the characters.”

“I’m not trying to be rude - “

“You are being rude.”

He gasps, dramatic, “Wanda - “

“I am a person,” she sits up straighter, nails digging into his bicep, “I read and I know when things aren’t real.”

Vision tilts his head, “You think I don’t think you’re a person?”

She scrunches her face at him, snuggling close anyway. Half of a disagreement. She blows out a heavy breath, hair floating for a moment before settling back in her eyes. “I don’t understand why this is important. Why does it matter if he is a character? He should still not care about things that don’t matter.”

“It’s less about him, actually. More about the people who write him.”

Now, that seems to confuse her the most. She’s sitting on him in seconds, nose-to-nose, so grave in her expression that Vision would think there are lives at stake. Perhaps his own. Who knows?

“The people who write him,” she demands more. 

He shouldn’t laugh, she really does seem aghast, but he likes her a lot. “Characters are written down first. Like in a book. The words and the reasons why they use them. It’s all… um… people behind the people behind the characters.”

Wanda covers his ears with her palms. No reason behind it. He imagines she just wants to. She expects more words from him. (If he weren’t a coward, he’d kiss her now.) 

“The people keep changing things,” she prompts him, unhappy. 

Vision clears his throat to hide a laugh. “U-um. Right. When shows get long, they have to change the characters. New problems, new people to love, new houses to live in. That’s how they go for so long.”

She looks over her shoulder at the blurry still on the television. “I don’t like them. The changes.”

Odd to try to speak on the value of change. Vision never liked it either. Currently, however, the most significant and beautiful change to his life is sitting on his legs and he’s finding it quite difficult to be unbiased.

“Change is good,” he tells her, hypocritical in at least two ways, “But television is… weird, I suppose. Sometimes they move too fast. Sometimes they don’t have any new stories to tell, but they have to tell them anyway.”

“They worry about the silly things,” Wanda finishes. 

He hums. “Precisely.”

She thinks for a long while. She pulls his earlobes and he tries his best not to react. “Then, who is behind you?”

Absolutely horrifying question. “P - uh - pardon?”

“Do you write your silly things?” Cold knuckles down the sides of his throat. “Or does someone else?”

“Oh.” He rests shaking hands on her legs. They always end up like this. “Well, I’m… I’m a real person. If you didn’t know.”

Wanda laughs at that, falling forward into him. He hugs her, the one impulse he’ll allow himself to initiate. She gasps against his neck, laughing far too hard at a joke he didn’t even make in the first place. He can hear her fight her way through the words I know, which is helpful. 

“But - “ she interrupts herself, new fit of creaks, and he compromises with a kiss to her hair, he can’t help it, “ - why do you worry so much?”

“You’re just full of existential questions today, aren’t you?” He’s absolutely ill for her. “I don’t know why I worry. Real people don’t get to pick what they are, they just… are.”

She breathes slow, calming down, glued to his chest. “I know you are real. I’m sorry.”

“No, no, it’s alright. Sometimes I forget.”

Attention recaptured. Wanda’s up again, searching for clues in his face, “What do you mean?”

“I…?” She’s right, he makes no sense. Even to himself. “I don’t plan thoughts, you know. Things happen to me or around me, I don’t think about being a person. Just happens.”

Wanda pats his chest. “It is hard to be a person.” Then his head. “I understand.” Then his stomach. “I forget too.”

“Maybe we can help remind each other,” Vision says. He doesn’t know what he means. 

Pat to the cheek. A bit faster than she intended, enthusiastic, more a slap than a pat. She immediately kisses the burning space, looking fretted. 

“It’s okay ,” Vision pets her hair down. It sticks up when she’s happy and when she’s upset. “I know what you meant.”

What’s another pink spot on an already flushed face?

“I don’t want to watch this show,” she says after a moment, sitting further back on his legs. “Do you have any more?”

“Somewhere,” he gestures blindly, not entirely wanting to move any time soon. “Uh. Yes, somewhere.”

Wanda stands up. Vision frowns. He can’t remember where he keeps the DVD boxsets. He can’t remember his birthday. Wanda slapped him and then kissed him. He can’t remember a lot of things at the moment. 

It’s the moments like these where he wishes he could hear what she was thinking. She sways as she looks down at him. She has so many ways to study him. He knows, at this point, the look of a Wanda who is favorable of him, a Wanda who is angry, a Wanda who is afraid. A sleepy Wanda. A Wanda lost to laughter. Serious Wanda. 

There are certainly… other Wandas. 

“Wanda,” he begins to ask a question, no earthly idea what the question will be, but luckily for the both of them, she’s finally made up her mind. 

“I want to go outside with you,” she says, nodding, decision made. “Again.”

Vision closes his mouth. 

He just kind of… sits there, for a moment. 

Dwells in what this feels like. 

Deep breath. Memorize all the senses he’s feeling, the details. 

He thinks his heart just broke but… in… a good way?

“... I would like that,” he says. Wanda bends to wipe tears from his face. His lips wobble but he will overcome. “I would like that very much.”

Vision has never been asked to go anywhere. On a date. Not for real. It’s been more than a week and her feelings are real and she wants to go outside with him. Real people, real feelings. 

He was going to ask her. Was it going to take a few weeks? Was it likely going to be in the form of a handwritten note slid under her pillow or something? Yeah. He knows Wanda is strong and it’s well understood that he’s quite the opposite but damn. 

He’s the damsel, isn’t he.

Of course.

He carries Wanda to bed which dulls the sting of that realization. She tugs him on top of her like a blanket which reverses all progress. 

“We should go tomorrow,” Wanda says into his chest. He’s given up on asking if she’s okay underneath him. Apparently this is her ideal bed situation, completely eclipsed. “Outside. ”

“What… er…” he lifts up to see her, fully aware that this was on purpose but still endlessly guilty, “What are we going to do?”

Wanda beams up at him. “I get to choose?”

He grins right back, palms braced on either side of her head, “Wanda, you get to choose everything. ”

She sits up, arms around his neck, hanging on like a koala. 

(Vision doesn’t know what to do. Her eyes are like headlights pinning him to a road.) 

“It’s your turn,” she informs him. 

“My turn to what?” he asks, his heart weak and his pulse so strong. 

Wanda simply closes her eyes. 

Vision sometimes feels like he’s speaking into a void. “Wanda?”

She makes no sound. Sways a bit, hair waterfalling down to pool on the pillow. She’s… she’s still breathing. 

“Hey,” he wobbles a bit, certainly not strong enough to balance the both of them on one hand, having to shift a bit to inspire movement in her. She sways like a chain. “Getting a bit scary now.”

She sighs heavily. Disappointment. 

Vision, comes the Disappointed Wanda voice in his head. It is your turn.

“... Oh,” he says, glancing down to her mouth, then immediately stuttering, “O-oh, I - it’s - it’s my turn.”

There’s no room for a head full of screaming doubts when Wanda is quite literally hanging onto him by a thread. Both verbally and mentally requesting one very simple action from him. 

She opens an eye to make sure he’s still there before quickly closing it again as if he hadn’t seen her.

It’s just one action. He can rationalize later. Of all the things to tear himself apart about later, this isn’t one of them.

He can hear himself laughing. He did not permit that.

He only manages a second’s worth of a peck before she’s falling back down, pleased. Vision’s face is burning, already anticipating the embarrassment to come. He remains a tabletop over her, stewing in the future, until she pulls him back down. 

“You think too much,” she murmurs under him, cold hands on his back.

“I know,” he mutters. He heats the pillow up with his cheek. It’ll do no good to flip it, he’ll burn a hole in the other side as well. “Goodnight, Wanda.”

“Mmnight. ”

Vision gets about five hours of sleep. 

He’s red-stared into consciousness and then kissed awake again. If this is their new morning routine, immediate heart rate spikes upon opening his eyes, his lifespan is going to be spectacularly short. 

Wanda leads. She leads him right into the kitchen for tea, then leads him right back to the room. He’s barely conscious for much of this time, stumbly feet and half-closed eyelids. He does not know what words he receives or what words he speaks but he knows that he’s smiling. (Stupid. He’s stupid. For many reasons - but for this girl, he is the Most Stupid.)

“Wanda,” he says as he’s walked to his own closet, much like a dog would be led to its bed or to a small water bowl, “What are you doing?”

The hands on his hips are gone and he’s left staring into his shirts with absolutely no other explanation. His blurry brain allows him approximately thirty seconds of that, facing forward with clouds where thoughts should be, before he has the idea to ask for clarification.

When he pivots, he sees Wanda standing with her back to him, arms crossed, waiting patiently.

“...” He’s smiling again. He taps her shoulder and she yelps, not having anticipated anything yet, whirling around. “Hey.”

“Hi,” she replies, cordial and pretty. “You haven’t changed.”

“Because I don’t know what’s going on,” he says - which is clearly ridiculous, if her expression has anything to say about it.

“We’re going outside,” she says. It’s the inflection of someone stamping their foot. 

Oh. 

Vision nods slowly. (Anxiety has returned. Yes, he knew something was missing.) “We’re… mm. Date. You - we’re - right now? Date? We’re going? On a date?”

Wanda mirrors his nod, “If that’s what it’s called.”

She’s turning around to give him privacy and he’s tapping her shoulder for a second time. It’s fascinating how quickly she can be irritated by him now. Honestly, it’s quite impressive. She acts like he’s meant to know everything the first time. She doesn’t even know what his dating history is like and she makes this assumption. 

The irritation melts as soon as she spins again. 

“Why are you worrying?” she asks, stepping close, hands on his face. He doesn’t think he’s crying. It makes sense that she’d assume that he is, though. He cries sometimes.

“Um…?” He has a couple worries knocking around in his head at the moment. He isn’t sure which one Wanda is taking between her fingers right now. “I… I haven’t… done this… in a while.”

“You go outside a lot.” 

“Not with you. Dates are… they’re… mmmm.” He presses his lips together. He will overcome. Such a silly thing to get worked up over. Wanda knows everything about him, there are no false images to uphold. Most of the first date traditions are toppled over and he isn’t sure what’s left to do. “There’s typically a great deal of preparation involved. Planning. And… er, things… like… um…”

“We just need to put our shoes on.” Firm pat to the chest with two hands. “It’s okay.”

Vision laughs. The nervous kind of exhale laugh. “I don’t know what to wear.”

A pointed glance behind him toward the closet. 

“Yeah, but - people - p-people - they wear… they wear something nice, you know, they… dress up… for things.” He drags his fingers through his hair. “But I don’t… um. I don’t have anything and I don’t know the city well because I don’t really go anywhere and I - I want it to be a good time for you because it’s your first and if I’m just - if I’m just me then it’ll not be special but I don’t know if I have anything else to - I don’t - I don’t really know how to be anyone else, I’m out of practice - “

Wanda presses a single finger to his lips. She presses the shut up, now button. 

“If you’re someone else then you won’t be what I want,” she explains. Another push, unmuted, before she drops her hand. “It doesn’t matter what you wear. You think too much.”

“Of all the times to think too much, I think this is a good one,” he tries to argue. He isn’t sure who, out of the two of them, frames the words if you’re someone else then you won’t be what I want in his head. Hung up like a picture frame under the brightest light. 

“Dress up,” she repeats thoughtfully, ignoring him. She taps her chin before glancing down. “You can have some of my socks if you need.”

Vision makes a noise. An I love you noise. 

Wanda’s off to grab him a pair while he slowly descends to the ground, head in his hands. (She scatters him and sweeps him back to his feet. Like it’s nothing.) It takes him about ten minutes to stand up again. Wanda takes him by the wrists and lugs him up when she gets tired of watching him dissociate. 

His outfit is chosen solely through the lens of the girl he will be with. The best sweater for her to cling to, the best pants to inevitably fall to his knees in. Star socks courtesy of the love of his life. She presents her shoes to him like a present before launching herself onto the couch, no verbal request needed. 

Every time he starts to freak out, each additional step taken in their routine out the door, Wanda nudges his side. It’s weird. It feels like she’s training him. It feels like she’s doing a good job at it, at least in the short term. (They both know she could just… burn it out of him, the worries. She’s held them, she’s tugged them as if planning to get rid of them. It’s scary sometimes but he wonders what it would feel like to just… lack it. His mum always says he’s mostly made of anxiety, wrapped up with a bow, pushed out into the world. The culmination of two rather level-headed parents. It would hurt, likely, to lose his panic. He wonders what it’d be like to be able to breathe. )

He missed this. Watching Wanda push ahead, practiced enough in her shoes to walk confidently, hopping her way down the stairwell. She waits for him at the bottom as he walks like a normal person. She is mildly inconvenienced by his hesitance as always and yet too excited to stay that way for long.

It’s about… eight o’clock in the morning when they step outside.

His eyes are still puffy and he hasn’t been in the world this early in a long time. Wanda takes his hand, interlocks their fingers, pulls him through the alley system as if she’s been down them more than four times. He supposes she knows what he knows. She knows every step he’s taken for three months. She’s been there for them. 

“What… where are you taking me?” Vision asks, rubbing his eyes with a free hand. “And may I request that we stop somewhere that has coffee?”

“I don’t know where we’re going,” she says. She is confident in her strides all the same. 

He snorts, doesn’t mean to, “I see. Well, allow me to create a detour so that I can be functional, please.”

She’s back by his side in half of a second, making him stumble a bit to adjust his pace, to adjust to having four legs again. 

The city is full of people like Vision, barely fighting their way through the air as if it weighs a hundred tons. Wanda is the only one who seems delighted to be awake right now. It’s foggy and grey and Wanda’s eyes are calm and dim enough not to reflect off of the mist. 

There’s a bleary memory of a coffee shop a few streets away. He had wanted to go with Helen when she came to help him move, just one day spent in London before a long trip back. (That first official day in London was the worst of them, all of his belongings set out, the picture of a home. His mum was so proud, she never sat on the couch, just gestured around and showed him his new life. She was so confident in him. Vision knew almost immediately that he’d not be able to do it. Be a person. He was so busy keeping himself together, smiling and thanking her for her help, that he forgot all the things he wanted to do. By the time he remembered, she had already gone.)

He course-corrects. Wanda is leaning her entire weight into him, trusting him to keep her upright as she propels herself forward. It’s an honor to be trusted like this. Though, admittedly, of all times to lean on him, eight o’clock Vision is not the most stable support. He does his best. 

“I hope you’re thinking about things you’d want to do,” he says quietly, maneuvering two bodies to weave between very busy people walking in the opposite direction, “Because I’ve no idea.”

“We’re exploring,” she says, “like we always do.”

Always is a stretch. They’ve been outside of the house together three times before today. Only one of which was on purpose. 

“Right.” Vision isn’t very good without a plan. No plan makes him nervous. Wanda pushes at his side again. It doesn’t work so well this time. “You’re the boss.”

“I’m the boss,” her cheek is pressed to his arm. “I know.”

Holding hands and getting coffee. Dating. This is what dating is supposed to be. He’s never had anything like this, nothing public. Nothing announced. Always kept just out of sight. Dating is supposed to be a normal thing, second-nature, automatic. Awkward, sure, but visible. 

It’s inherently difficult to feel invisible, holding hands with a telepath in public. That’s as perceptible as one can be. 

There’s a line out the door for the small shop when they arrive. Vision is prepared to give up on the venture, prepared to simply slap himself awake, but Wanda is dragging him to the back of the line and his fate is decided. 

She takes her spot in front of him, unyielding embrace, ear to his heart. He hesitantly winds his arms around her, interlaced hands on her back. It’s the kind of position that Vision always found sort of sickening to view as an outsider. A very ohhhh, get a room type of reaction often required.

As an insider, though? This is the best day of his life. This is as good as it gets. 

“Comfy?” he asks. 

She nods. Her hair begins to stand up and he has to brush it back down. 

It’s an awkward shuffle forward as the line grows sparse, as the sidewalk beneath their feet turns to vinyl tile when they step inside. Wanda migrates to hug him from behind, sighing. It does seem to be her favorite place to stand. At the sink, at the microwave, at the kettle. 

He orders at a cafe for the first time in over a year. He orders something boring but strong. He has to lift his arm and look beneath it to find Wanda, to ask what she’d like. She’s half asleep at this point. It’s her favorite place to stand and her favorite place to sleep. He receives a shrug and a constriction in response. 

A triple espresso and a hot chocolate it is. 

Wanda chooses a table for two in the dead center of the place. Nearly everyone else files out to their jobs or their non-star families, leaving only the smallest rumble of voices. 

“Tell me if things get too loud,” Vision says, hands wrapped around his paper cup, “We can go home any time. Or… or somewhere else, you know.”

Wanda is understandably distracted by the discovery that her beloved chocolate bits can be liquefied. She drinks about half of a large mug before receding, froth mustache above her top lip. Her eyes glow so bright that Vision has to blink a few times when she stares at him. Frankly, he’s surprised they haven’t been spoken to about this. No one questions the glowing girl. The world never ceases to astound. 

“I will tell you,” she says. She glances down into her mug before offering it to him, “Want some?”

Vision shakes his head, “All yours.”

Her eyes fall to his cup. She flutters her eyelashes at him. Expecting a similar courtesy. 

“I don’t think it’d be wise,” he snickers, pulling it close to his chest as if to protect it, “You wouldn’t like it.”

“I’d like it,” she counters easily, “I want it.”

“You’re plenty energetic without this, Wanda,” he taps it with a finger, “Who knows - what if it messes with the star, you know? What if it goes crazy?”

She huffs. She swings her legs up and into his lap. Luckily there are no casualties this time. “Crazy, he says.”

Vision leans back to make sure her laces are still tied. They are. They haven’t walked but for ten minutes, he isn’t sure what all he had thought happened. “Can you blame me? I don’t mean it in a rude way - “

“Rude,” she says. 

Dangerous to be rude to someone who’s about an inch from kicking you where it hurts. 

“I apologize,” he bows his head, “I’d share if I thought you could handle it.”

Wanda sits upright. Vision catches her ankle before she does any damage. 

Her eyes are wide, offended, “Boy.”

“Wanda,” he says back, happy to a stupid degree, “I mean it. This is practically a drug, something you’ve never had in your system. I don’t think this,” he gestures to their surroundings, “is a great time or place to experiment.”

Wanda gives him a look. “I know what an experiment is.” She points to his dinky paper cup, “That is not it.”

He frowns. (She knows what an experiment is because she was one.) He sighs down at his lap. 

“Maybe this weekend,” he concedes, unable to deny her anything, “When I can be home with you all night.”

She shines. “Thank you.”

“Mmh.” If she blows his flat into pieces, he’ll figure something out. 

Wanda adjusts her legs. She folds her hands on the table. The mustache is still there. He’s trying not to stare at it. “My shoes are undone.”

Vision makes a face, “No, they’re not. I just checked.”

She tilts her chin up, “Check again.”

He does. Sure enough, both of her double-knotted laces have been untied in a matter of seconds. Vision squints down at his lap, scoots his chair back to reach them better. He actually quite enjoys tying her shoes. It’s fun in an idiotic sort of way. 

“Blegh,” he hears Wanda sputter. 

He glances up. She’s sliding his cup back across the table, coughing a bit, likely having expected sweet chocolate and not bitter coffee. 

“I told you,” he says, biting the inside of his cheek to keep whatever disproportionate laugh is building in his chest. He finishes her left sneaker, tied tighter than before, “But nooo, no one listens to Vision.”

“Awful,” she croaks, washing the taste away with the rest of her own drink. It clatters as she sets it back down, eyes wrenched shut, shaking out her hands. She’s the cutest person on the planet. “Why do you want that?”

The barista’s laughing behind Vision, he can hear it. He wishes they knew just how funny this was. The most powerful and cute person has snuck a single sip of espresso and is now throwing a fit. 

“My dad liked it,” he smiles down at her shoes, cords wrapped around his fingers and pulled through themselves. “I’m used to it. Always wanted to be like him.”

Wanda is shuddering as if frozen. 

“I guess we’ll see how this goes,” he continues, letting her legs fall once he’s finished, reclaiming his caffeine for himself, “Let’s hope you don’t combust.”

“I want to leave now,” she says grimly, glaring at his cup. “I want to leave. ”

“Well, hold on,” he rolls his eyes, reaching out, swiping a thumb across her cupid’s bow to try and avoid a permanent mustache situation, “Be patient. I’m not finished. Unlike you, I need this.”

Wanda sighs, melting in her chair, head thrown back. Vision has to avert his attention. He’s… he’s weak. He’s fucked. 

At the end of maybe a minute’s worth of stalling, he’s prompted to finish by a glowing girl who has begun to vibrate. Vision cleans up after them, takes her hand, pulls her back toward the street before things begin to float around the cafe. 

This must be what it feels like to be Vision. 

How long has it been since the coffee place? A minute or an hour? A day?

So many thoughts at once. So many impulses and wants and needs that overlap, desperate for her attention. She can do everything, yes, but on her own time. Multi-tasking is not impossible, she is strong and real and able - but it is significantly harder when she isn’t sure where to begin. 

She clutches to the sleeve of his sweater as they walk. Vision had much more than her and he is just barely normal. How is that possible? The star steals her warmth and occupies all of her mind, yet it seems to have left all of this buzzy stuff for her to deal with alone. 

This is a different type of excitement. She wants to run and scream - not to expel energy or to communicate but rather because she feels she may die if she doesn’t. 

Wanda didn’t know that it was possible to drink lightning. 

“You alright?” he asks, knowing that she is not. 

“Yes,” she replies. Her voice shakes. So much movement inside. “I am good.”

“You sure?”

She holds tighter. “Yes.”

He laughs. She likes his laugh very much but she’s distracted right now.

Vision had been right. It is difficult to do much in this state. But she doesn’t want to tell him that he’d been right. She wants this to be a fun date. 

It’s all he could think about. He thinks about going places with her and kissing her and holding her hand, he thinks about so many happy things and never says them. Wanda wants to do them too. She’s confused when he tries to cover them. He confuses things happy with things hidden. 

He’s supposed to be smart. 

Wanda is the boss, she supposes, she’s meant to guide him through the happy things. It’s enjoyable to guide him through the happy things. That’s what today is meant to be, happy. She wants to see Vision laugh and kiss her without thinking so much. His hesitation is silly. The past doesn’t matter, whatever holds him back shouldn’t, she is here in the current moment. He likes her and she likes him. It shouldn’t be so hard for him, he complicates needlessly. 

Of course, it has become quite impossible to explain this to the boy. 

“Maybe we could get something to eat,” Vision offers, looking down at her. She realizes that she’s digging into him again and tries her best to stop. “Caffeine on an empty stomach isn’t a… isn’t a great idea.”

Wanda huddles closer. Apparently they’ve stopped walking. It feels like she’s moving a million miles an hour. “You have an empty stomach.”

“Well, I’ve almost exclusively had caffeine on an empty stomach. Even before I knew you,” he says. The thought occurs to him to kiss her hair and she lifts her head to encourage that. He hesitates. She slumps into him, devastated. There’s a warm hand on her back, “Christ, Wanda, you’re shaking.”

“I need to run around,” she says into his chest. 

Vision laughs. He finds this humorous for an unknown reason. She feels each and every vibration through any bone she has. “I see. Okay. Um. We can return home, then. Jump on the bed to your heart’s content.”

“No,” she exhales. She’s bouncing up and down on her toes, clinging to his shirt. This is supposed to be his day to kiss her. It’s supposed to be her day to be kissed. “I will be fine.”

“Wanda - “

“No,” she wobbles on her feet, standing tall, “Keep going.”

Vision eyes her warily. She takes both of his hands and swings them like in all of his happy thoughts. He listens this time. “Okay. If you’re sure - “

Wanda rocks up onto her tiptoes and kisses him. It’s the lightning’s doing, she’s certain of it, but it’s nice.

She kisses him... long. She can taste the bitter of his drink without even opening her mouth. His hands are frozen, hovering above her shoulder blades. She’s so afraid that she’s killed him that she has to lean back, checking that he’s still even there.

He is. 

She presses a hand to his chest. 

He’s breathing too.

“Uh… um. Mm. Hm,” he can’t seem to blink, “Okay. Okay. Okay. Alright. Mmmm...? Okay.” 

He might be breathing too much now. 

Wanda kisses him again to help. To help him calm down, to help her calm down. 

It doesn’t seem to do that for either of them. 

She gives up once she can feel Vision’s heartbeat accelerate far past what should be possible, far past her own. Vision’s pupils are large enough to be mirrors by the time he opens his eyes again. Kissing is just as exciting as caffeine, she’s twice as trembly as she was at the start. 

Wanda takes both of his hands and drags him somewhere else. Through the steadily forming crowds and between benches and around strangely planted trees. Vision doesn’t say a word. Not a comprehensible one anyway, he speaks a lot of nonsense. 

She chooses an alley she’s certain doesn’t lead to any memories. A good place to hide in. 

“Wanda?” he finally manages to use his brain, falling back against a wall and looking toward the direction they came from. “Wanda? Wh-what’s - ? Are you alright? Too loud again?”

“Too exciting,” she says, squeezing her eyes shut, “Shh.”

“We can go home, you know,” he says softly. 

“We’re not going home yet,” she covers her ears with her hands, “Shh, I said.”

Vision makes a funny boy noise but heeds her request. She’s the boss. 

She tries to find one specific thing to focus on in the clutter of emotion. They overlap and interlock and blur and bleed into each other. Most of them hold Vision inside. Dreams he has and thoughts he hides and things she wants. She can’t get rid of any of these, she likes them too much. 

Most of the memories she has are stationary. Stand still, sit still, lay still - don’t move too fast or you are uncooperative. She has not felt the need to run in a long time. She doesn’t know what it would feel like. There’s not enough space here to run like she needs, run so fast that she lifts up and into space. She wants to run barefoot and she wants to run forever. 

She will have to improvise. 

(Wanda has never had to improvise. There has always been a voice to tell her how to use the power, a person to read or an order to hurt. Who do you obey, they’d say. The answer was always easy.)

Wanda doesn’t know what she asks it to do, or if she asks it to do anything at all. Vision makes her weak, he’s so confusing and warm and soft and pretty. 

Gravity goes light. Her heels raise up from the street and her toes follow. She brings them up to cross, to fold, sitting, resting. It’s much easier to cool down when she’s up here. The further she floats, the better she feels. Deep breaths feel nice. Her hands fall from her ears to press at her cheeks. She knows her face is likely pink but it still feels so cold. She wonders if she’ll ever feel warm again, warm to the touch. 

Her heart returns to normal. She stretches her arms over her head with a sigh. The buzzy feeling is still there but it is contained inside a little box that she assigns it to. Awake and electric but still Wanda. 

Wanda drops her head down, peering over the basket of her legs to find Vision standing there. He has his hands in his hair, eyes wide, and he looks very small. 

“Hello,” she says. “Better now.”

Vision doesn’t move. 

“Boy?” she asks, letting her legs hang over the edge of an invisible wall that she props herself up on. She kicks her legs idly. 

He tugs at his hair a bit before letting his fingers slip back to rest on the back of his neck, “W-Wanda?”

“Yes?” She’s never been allowed to float this high before. Just a few inches. Just until the little cord she was tied to went taut. 

“Wanda. ”

She hums. He’s funny looking when he’s small. Her name makes sense in his voice. 

“Yes?” she says again. 

Wordlessly, he raises a hand. Reaching for her. She drops down enough so that he can take her hand. The squeak she makes is not on purpose as he tugs her down to the ground. It echoes around the space. 

This is like a dream he had once. A dream where he takes her close and tucks her hair behind her ear and lifts her up against a wall to rest on his hips. She watches it often to try and understand it. The Vision in that dream is different, he acts easily and doesn’t hesitate. 

Now, though, a very real Vision stands in front of her. Real Vision with real arms that fit around her quite nicely, tightly, looks over her face with very real, very impressed, very fascinated eyes. 

She feels very pretty. Magnificent. Warm. 

“I…? Wanda, you… you…” he shakes his head, mouth permanently open, “You…? I mean? You? You. Youuuu? I don’t… I…”

“I can fly,” she says. She lets her head fall back, lets him see her better. Showcase.

“You… you can fly,” he whispers. Both of his hands are in her hair. He holds her head in his hands as if she might break. She has only ever broken things and he treats her like he doesn’t know that. “Wanda. Wanda. Oh, my God.”

Wanda grins. She comes closer. He holds her still. “Thank you.”

“You can fucking … fly.”

“Yeah.”

Vision looks over his shoulder. He looks over Wanda’s shoulder. His thumb is caressing the divot at the very back of her head. She leans into the touch and he takes a long breath. 

“I… oh, God, Wanda, I…” he sounds like he hasn’t spoken in a long time, which is a noise Wanda is well familiar with. It’s odd that, when he speaks like this, it is something decidedly good. “I think… oh, fuck, I think I have to kiss you, now.”

Wanda sparkles. She doesn’t know how much she does. “Really?”

“I… something just… something just happened and I…” He’s staring at her lips now. Wanda feels pretty. “I think something just broke? In my head?”

Nothing is broken. Wanda checks twice. 

“Okay,” she says instead. She hooks her fingers around his arms, holding on. This is her day. “You can.”

Vision leads. He teaches her something new, a new kiss that feels More. He apologizes several times. He kisses her until she can’t remember what chocolate tastes like. 

So, Wanda can fly. 

It’s been a week and Wanda still likes him and Wanda can fly and Vision needs to lay down. 

He’s vaguely aware that his hair is insane, tugged and pulled beyond recognition by cold hands. He’s aware, too, that his general aura is… hm, man who just kissed someone in an alley? It’s not even noon. Not even noon and this is what he looks like. This is who he is now. 

He’ll scold himself later. He’ll be embarrassed later. Is there a single person on the planet who, upon learning such a fucking spectacular fact about the person they sleep next to every night, wouldn’t react like that? He’s entitled to a little delayed humiliation.

Maybe he’s cracked. Maybe he’s lost his mind for real this time. 

Wanda seems perfectly fine. Just skipping alongside him, holding his hand, sunny and beautiful as always. Almost everything she wears is his. He has no idea what to do. 

His own consciousness is hellbent on souring this. It doesn’t take much happiness to inspire immediate spite. This is the happiest he’s ever been. The most important and the most… cared for. Dangerous.

This isn’t secondary school. Wanda can fly and he loves her. He loves her so much he’d… do all of the permanent stuff. The adult things. Get a mortgage. Or sell everything he owns. (He almost did.) He loves her more than he thought physically possible. 

So, of course, the mind wanders to the inevitable end. That’s all it’s done before, predict the future and get it concerningly accurate. Even when the predictions were templated, exactly the same, they’d always be right. Get obsessed, feel happy, lose it all, start again. Try again.

Wanda is more. More to feel, more to have, more to lose. 

It’s such a trial, being like this. Getting that top-of-the-rollercoaster feeling before he’s even fastened the seatbelt. Ready for the fall. Holding the hand and already knowing how it’ll feel when it won’t be there anymore. Smiling and then idling mid-smile, feeling stupid, overthinking it. Wanting to seem disinterested now so that, when they have the big talk, he can say oh, yeah, no, it didn’t really matter to me either and feeling good about the performance. 

Wanda is more. She isn’t disinterested and this isn’t a play and there isn’t anything more to get from him. She doesn’t have an unkind label for him so, if she does put him down soon, there will be no one to blame but himself. 

Vision is stopped by a firm hand on his chest. 

“Hm?” he blinks his conscience away, focuses on the girl who holds one hand against him and the other behind her back, “Sorry, did you say something?”

“No,” she says, looking absolutely beside herself with glee. “Are you ready?”

“... Ready?” With Wanda, he can never prepare for anything. “For what?”

Wanda steps back, posture straight as an arrow, and Vision isn’t sure if he should brace to be jumped on. 

Instead, she produces a tall daisy from its hiding place. 

“For you,” she says proudly. 

It’s pinched between her thumb and forefinger, presented as delicately as Wanda can manage. Bright white and bright yellow and cool green. 

“Oh,” he breathes. He takes it into his hands, laid over his palm, “Oh, Wanda, thank you.”

“It’s a big one,” she tells him, nodding in its direction, “It’s like the ones you gave me but better.”

He laughs, then sniffs, “Yeah, I suppose it is, isn’t it?”

Vision slowly staggers backward until he hits the bench with his legs, lowering himself to sit. He just looks at it for a bit. Controls his breaths even as Wanda sits beside him, cheek to his shoulder, legs folded as they had been when she was in the sky. 

“I’ve never gotten a flower,” he says, breaking his eyes from his gift to look at her. He will not cry. “I’ve given a lot, but never… um. Never…”

No one’s ever liked him. 

Wanda’s knee is sharp as it presses to the outside of his thigh. “Good.”

Vision makes a noise in the back of his throat, “Good, is it?”

“I like being the first,” she sighs, reaching out to prod one of the thin petals, “I like when we’re the same.”

“Yeah,” he looks between his flower, his flower, and the girl who gave it to him. “It feels better when you’re not alone, doesn’t it?”

Wanda hums, long and low. She’s staring at the flower like she wants it back. He raises his hands to give it, happy to have at least held it for a little while, but she shakes her head and pushes it away. 

“I have mine at home,” she reminds him. 

He chuckles. Yes, a little pile of dried plants on the kitchen counter. He’ll have to pick more for her, she likes the little ones, put them in the special purple vase that he hadn’t shattered. 

Nice to sit in this moment. First date, first flower, first love. First kiss that meant something. It’s overcast but it may as well be sunny. He doesn’t want to go to class tonight, he wants to lay in bed with Wanda and waste time. Talk about all the ways they’ve been alone and all the ways they mend each other. Kiss her first sometimes. Hold her until one of them falls asleep. 

Vision hasn’t seen a real daisy in a while. 

He remembers the daisies outside his mum’s laboratory. They were well fed by the sun, they grew so tall that they’d overrun the grass. He’d pick them for his mum and the girls when he walked there from school. They were all likely sick of the things by the end of the first month. He’d pick a bushel of them and they’d regenerate by the next afternoon. 

He remembers daisies. He remembers what you can do with them. 

He glances over to Wanda, holding it up, “Where’d you get this?”

She shrugs, “I just asked for it. And it was here.”

Money and daisies, so far. That’s the tally for spontaneously created things. 

Vision is reluctantly exhilarated. He twirls the flower between his fingers, “Can you get more?”

Wanda sits up on her knees. She places both hands on his head, positively gleaming, “How many do you want?”

He raises his eyebrows, “You… cannot count.”

She doesn’t say anything about that. “How many do you want?”

He tucks his gifted daisy behind his ear. It tickles. “Er… a lot, I suppose.”

There’s a pile of daisies up to his knees in only a few moments, surrounding his shoes, tall and crisp and clean. He laughs so hard he gets dizzy, bringing his legs up to rest on the bench before sweeping a few handfuls of them into his lap. 

“What are you doing?” Wanda asks, overlapping, taking some of the flowers to play with as she waits. “Why do you need so many?”

“When I was a kid,” he says, taking three daisies and crossing their stems, feeling half-confident that he remembers how to do this, “I grew up around a lot of girls. Really smart ones who knew how to do everything.”

“Mm,” she hovers, nose nearly brushing his knuckles as he braids them together. He’s a bit out of practice but it comes easily after a while. “Were they nice?”

“Oh, they were the nicest. Nicest people I knew, ‘til I met you.” He pinches the end of the braid between his fingers, grabbing another three, “They always made these crowns out of daisies. I can’t do it like they did, they’d stay together forever if you kept them safe. They’d had years and years of practice, but…” He sticks his tongue into his cheek, holding one braid while completing another, interlocking them, connecting them, starting again, “... they’re smart. Good teachers. Very patient.”

Wanda is absolutely enthralled. He has to hold it up around her head after a while to make sure he’s getting the right size. He thinks her head is much smaller than it actually is, as it turns out. She creaks every time he gets it wrong. Her eyes crinkle at the edges when she laughs. He caves in, kisses the little wrinkles the next time she does it. 

He has no interest in the world that passes around them. He’s cognizant of the fact that people are staring at them, a worrying pile of flowers at their feet, lovestruck fools on a city bench. Some people take a few. Vision smiles down at his lap. Wanda kisses the corners of his eyes. 

Perfectly impossible, this life is. 

He can’t remember a single worry, at the moment. Flowers are soft in his fingers as he tucks them into themselves, finishing a crown for a duchess, and there is no plausible universe where he won’t be able to hold her hand. Tomorrow it’ll come back. Today, he’s sixteen again. 

“Here you are,” Vision says, turning, holding up his creation, “Would you like to wear it?”

“Yes,” she whispers, closing her eyes and letting her head fall forward, “Please.”

It doesn’t fit perfectly. Just a bit too big. Wanda sits up again, lip tucked between her teeth, positively unable to sit still. 

Oh, she’s so beautiful. 

“Thank you,” she murmurs. Her cheeks are pink and he presses a finger to them. Still so cold. He likes the chill of her. All the fire is kept inside. Her mouth is warm. “I really like it.”

“I’m glad.” 

The daisies at their feet have disappeared. Only a few petals are left in their place. He reaches up to make sure the one behind his ear is there - thank God, it is. He wants to press it somewhere, keep it in a book, keep it forever. 

The crown slips down on her forehead just the slightest amount. She lifts a hand to push it gently back up to its perch. Her hair is dark underneath it, peeking out between the loosely braided stems, little tufts sticking outward and upward and in all directions. 

Wanda is wearing… just the goofiest, wobbliest grin.

Vision knows he’s mimicking it, “What? What’s - what’s that for?”

“Darling,” she says. (He loves her accent. Darlink, she says.)

His heart stops, this time, he’s sure of it. “... What.”

“You called me darling,” she whispers, poking his leg. A bruise must have been there. He’s too frozen to react. 

“Ummmm…?” He is suddenly hyper aware of his body. “I… I did not.”

A cool finger pressed between his eyebrows. “In your head.”

Well. 

He can’t argue with that, can he?

Wanda’s covering her mouth with her hand, yawning, dissolving between the cracks of the bench. Her crown slips down over her eyes. She makes no move to change this. 

“Alright, woman,” he stands, removing her blindfold to rest further back, taking her hands to pull her up. Thankful for this distraction. “I think a nap is in order.”

Wanda melds into his chest, “I don’t want to walk anymore.”

He lifts the crown to see her eyes again, “I assume you don’t mean flying.”

There’s a girl sitting on his shoulders within seconds. Her chin rests in his hair, arms dangling like a necklace around him, the heels of her shoes knocking uncomfortably into his hips as he walks. It doesn’t hurt or anything. He focuses on walking forward, keeping her balanced, keeping his flower behind his ear. Hard to focus on any kind of hurt when everything else feels so wonderful. 

“Still with me?” he asks every now and then. They’re quite a ways out from the flat. And he doesn’t think that the doorways will compensate for a nine-foot-tall creature. 

“Mhm.” Weak pat to his chest. 

“You’ll need to climb the stairs yourself when we get to them,” he has his hands on her thighs to keep her steady, “I’ll help, of course. Just… stay awake until then.”

“Mm.” She adjusts, cheek against his hair. “I like you.”

Vision slows at the intersection. He wishes he could see her right now. He can imagine. Today he lets himself imagine a lifetime of future chances to see her like this. 

“I like you too.” He can’t lean back to see her or she’ll crumble. Her center of gravity is right in the middle of him. He sways and watches the cars pass. Tries to outline in his head when he can define love, when he can give it to her, when she can know.

No one’s ever loved him. He wonders what it sounds like in her voice. He wonders if they’ll ever get there. 

He shifts from foot to foot as the cars continue to go, a busy lunch hour where Vision feels so tired it may as well be midnight. Wanda’s hair is soft against the back of his neck. He could probably braid it, if she’d let him. It’d be poor workmanship but he could try. If she likes the flowers, she’d… maybe she’d like that.

There’s no telling what inspires him to look to his right, to the street across from them. 

Scopaesthesia, an old friend. Perhaps that’s it. He knows what it feels like to be watched. At this point, it is a third language. 

So odd, seeing Emily-something out in the wild. She’s just as prepared to take notes here without paper as she is in class with it. Paper, no pen. Dark brown hair swept back, fully visible here in the world where he’s only ever seen her in those dim hall lights. 

She’s staring at him like she’s surprised. Surprised that he exists outside of a classroom, that he has a purpose other than to offer hardly legible summaries of a class she already attends. His purpose sits on his shoulders. She’ll be asleep soon. He should be heading back now.

He lifts a hand to wave. He doesn’t know why. It goes unreciprocated. 

“She likes your jumper,” Wanda mumbles almost incoherently. 

“Huh,” he says, facing forward. He wraps his hands around her ankles that rest on his stomach. “I… I don’t think I care.”

Wanda smiles. 

She refuses to take the crown off when they get home. She sleeps in it. Wears it until it unravels. Vision will certainly be finding dried petals in random places for weeks.

Chapter Text

Past Vision warned current Vision that this would happen. 

Quite clearly, in fact. He pinned it to a board in his mind and he circled it fifty times. The issue is, of course, that he seldom listens to himself. 

He climbed up to the top of the slope and he held onto the railing, peered over the edge, looked down and squinted at the end that was too far and too foggy to identify. It’s a steep slope. He’s no stranger to physics, the laws of motion, what happens to a body placed at the top of a slide. He’s gone down something similar before. 

It’s dangerous, his history with obsession. One star housed, two feet on a slick ramp. The beginning. Then, the conscious understanding that one class missed is a forward motion. 

Little known fact about Vision: he succumbs very easily to the feeling of being cared for. Every time without fail. Doesn’t matter if it’s real, if he knows it isn’t. He’s bent to the will of people far less magnificent, far less kind. People not made of star stuff and galactic nonsense. 

No one has ever given him a flower before. 

(He tells himself that that’s what did it, a gift, but he knows better. He’s been hurtling toward a target ever since he first heard her voice. He has not recently shattered, he has been slowly picking his own petals for months and has the audacity to act surprised when so few are left.)

One class missed becomes two. 

He loses time in Wanda’s hands. (He isn’t sure if she slows it down or speeds it up. She refuses to tell him.) They are incomprehensible, joined in five places at all times, muddled and blurry and happy. Vision likes happiness. Likes the way it feels when he resigns himself to it, when he politely requests that Wanda nudge everything else to the side for a few hours. It’s still there, of course. Only… it's not his job to ignore it anymore. Hidden, for the first time, where he couldn’t possibly hope to find it. 

They explore the world more. Wanda gets about halfway to tying her own shoes with all the practice she’s getting. Vision can now name three restaurants, can identify two libraries, five cafes. Cloud filtered sunlight turns to near-invisible moonlight and they return home. Telly and tea. 

Two classes missed becomes five. 

Wanda drags his hand to her face one night as he reads - pretends to read, rather. Dull lives are of no interest anymore. He simply stares at pages, flips them, knocks his glasses further up his nose, tries to irritate Wanda into making the wonderful little expression he loves so much. It never takes long. There’s a hand in his or the book is floating away, bright red eyes taking its place, crinkled at the edges. 

“Yes, Wanda?” he asks, slightly facetious, framing her jaw, something he’s only seen in movies before her. “How can I help you?”

She huffs, fingers around his wrist, “I’m bored.”

She’s not. “You’re not.”

“I want you to stop reading,” she reroutes. 

Vision scoffs, “Was that so hard?”

Wanda turns her face into his palm. He tilts his head, not entirely sure what he’s meant to do, here. It seems like she’s hiding but she’s doing a pretty poor job at it. 

“Not… entirely… familiar with this ritual,” he mumbles, pressing his thumb into her cheek, “Are you tired? Is this charades?” Then, hesitantly, “Do you know charades?”

Wanda makes a miserable noise, pushing forward until her head pins Vision’s hand to the bed. This truly is bizarre. He can’t stop smiling. He lifts up with all his might and drops her down again. She nearly rolls onto the floor. 

This girl blew up a building. And she says he has tantrums like this. 

“Bored,” she says into his hand. 

Vision retrieves his hand and she loses all of her structural capacity. “I can’t read your mind, you realize.”

“No one can,” she adds, burying her nose into the comforter. “No one can. ”

Vision shuffles under the covers, head on the pillow, poking her side. “I’m prompting you. Please. This is painful.”

She turns her head to look at him, to make sure he isn’t in any real pain, before returning right back where she was. Vision rolls his eyes. He can’t believe he was afraid of her at the start. He can’t believe he’ll still be afraid of her sometimes. He does house a lot of fear. 

“I was never embarrassed before I met you,” a muffled voice says. 

He props himself up on his elbows, “... Okay?”

“You make me weak. ”

“That…” he stares at the Wanda lump on the bed, “... makes two of us.”

“No one looked at me that much before and now I…” Another noise. “I don’t understand.”

Vision ruffles her hair a bit. She immediately pops up to look at him. 

“You’re talking into the bed,” he says, grinning, patting the space beside him, “I’m over here.”

For just a moment, the night feels beautifully normal. She crawls to rest in the empty space to his right, leg across his stomach and nails digging into his side. She sighs. 

“I am embarrassed,” she says, voice sweet and soft, nose poking his chest, “I don’t like it when you think about other things. When you look at other things. I forget the word for how it feels but it doesn’t feel good.”

Vision is the same. Certainly she knows that. He wonders what her slope looks like, what landmarks she’s whizzing past, what other parts of the earth she knows about that she’s blatantly disregarding. He’s envious by nature, he knows this, something about an empty place in his ribs where authentication was meant to fit. Authentication of self is intoxicating when you get it so late in the game. Jealousy fills in the spaces where love was supposed to go. 

Wanda has no reason to envy in his case, though. His mind is always hers. Even when he reads, even when he leaves a room. 

He kisses her hair. She’s so worked up that he gets a static shock. 

“Well,” he begins slowly, arm around her back, small circles that he imagines comfort to feel like, “You have my full attention now.”

“I always have your full attention,” she says, “I want more of it, though.”

“I’ve only a limited supply,” he cranes his neck to see her face, a pretty and pouting and glowing girl, “Hey.”

Bright eyes flicker up to his. Vision has never known something mutual. He’s never known anything like this. 

“What can I do?” he asks, genuine in his own ears, feeling more like a person now than he ever has. “Hm? I can’t do much but I assume you have a solution in mind.”

“Just…”

Cold hand on his, dragging it right back to her face. He laughs as she holds it there like a mask. It’s the kind of overwhelming happiness that doesn’t, for once, end in a cry. 

“Oh,” he parts his fingers so Wanda can see through them, “Lonely?”

“Mhm.” She sighs, melting, “Silly.”

“No, not at all,” he moves to sit up, accompanied by an airy squeak from the puddle beside him, “It’s not silly, Wanda, you don’t - “

“I feel silly,” she flops on top of him. Vision has to stifle a groan. Knee between the legs, full speed. It’s fine. “I have you. But I still feel hungry.”

He blows out a long, shaky breath. He focuses on the words not the burn, laughs - a little bit because pain, a little bit because he loves her - and welcomes the cold kiss to his nose. 

“You don’t have to be alone to feel lonely. This... is new. I’m new. New things can be lonely.” He threads his fingers through dark locks, Wanda’s face settles barely a centimeter away. She kisses his nose, is visibly discontent, and does it again. Vision smiles at her, “Okay?”

She leans back into his hands. “I don’t know.”

He hums. A guide to Wanda would be helpful now. She pushes care and half-contentment to him but that’s all he has. There’s the desire to be like her, to act spontaneously because he loves her, take her close and do what she needs him to. Wanda could benefit from someone like that, someone assured. Someone who doesn’t have that empty place where confidence would be. 

“Hm…” He tilts her head from side to side manually and she smiles completely involuntarily, “I… have an idea.”

She opens an eye. He can see the green. He kisses her immediately. 

It takes some arranging. Vision sits, back to the headboard, legs out to the sides. Wanda fits between, basket-crossed legs, humming with anticipation. 

Hair is different than daisies. No stems to cross or bends to facilitate. It’s a bit tangled but he isn’t preparing her for a gala or anything. He doesn’t even own any hair elastics. It isn’t about what it looks like, it’s about being close. It’s about loving her. Being close. Bridging any other gaps that can’t be seen with the eyes. 

He braids her hair for hours. He gets to the bottom, admires his handiwork. Takes a picture to show her. Combs through it with his fingers and starts again. He braids her hair until she relaxes back into his chest, until she’s pushing so much happiness into his head that he gets a migraine, until she’s fast asleep. 

Five classes missed becomes fourteen. 

Two weeks worth of reality, gone. 

He knew it would happen, that he’d throw himself into this and lose sight of everything else. It wasn’t an accident. He knows the symptoms. They’ve never felt this good before. Jump into the pool, sink to the bottom, stay under, wait for someone to retrieve him. Eventually he has to come up for air on his own, climb out, grasp at the brim with waterlogged fingers, try to find a ladder where there is none. 

It feels ridiculous to dwell on the things that hurt him when Wanda is so close. She doesn’t talk about it anymore, doesn’t speak about what happened, about the building or the memory or the metal or the burns. But he knows enough. 

(He knows that the memories are coming back. He knows that every time his mother calls with news, Wanda has a bad dream. He knows that she won’t tell him because he asks. He holds her and he promises that he won’t run, that she’s safe, that he’s there. All that hurt that the star was hiding, the hurt that he pulled into view, it emerges more every night. He’ll take it. If she pushes it to him, if she needs to, he’ll take it.)

His dread and his panic and his hurt are all extremely inconsequential. His mind is as vain as it is its own bully. 

Wanda reaches into his head and sorts him, displays the good stuff and shoves everything else under the bed. His worries are light, easy to manage, insignificant in the grand scheme of things. He wonders if she does the same for herself. If there’s any possible train of thought that is locked. Can she create a thought too heavy for even her to lift?

Her hands begin to relax when she sleeps. 

Her power does too. 

When she slips away, he feels a bit heavier. Her hand on the scale disappears, all responsibilities lost to a tide, and he shoulders himself again. They often go together. It just makes things easier. 

It’s the end of a third week of spiked heart rates and self-soured happiness that Vision gets the bright idea to check his calendar. He isn’t sure if it’s Wanda’s doing, that he… forgot what a calendar was. He has trouble with dates, yes, but he’s never lost all of them.

Wanda is fast asleep at eleven. Vision can’t sleep. Perhaps it’s the weight slipping from the scale, perhaps it’s some invisible and previously quite useless higher power offering some intervention where it hasn’t been invited. 

He untangles himself from Wanda. She hums and shuffles into the warm spot on the sheets where he had been. 

It’s a perilous journey in the dark, stumbling down a hallway and into a living room, not wanting to turn on any lights. He doesn’t plan to be out here for long. Just a quick check to the calendar, the briefest prod at an outside world, before crawling back into bed and tucking himself under a star woman. 

The laptop is cold on the desk. He hasn’t touched it in weeks. He doesn’t bother sitting, blinds himself with the thing as he opens its creaky screen, shifting from foot to foot as it chugs through its protocols. 

He’s not a complete idiot. He knows he’s only ever logged academic deadlines on this old thing, he remembers typing them out and color-coding them, offering details. Somewhere in that empty head of his, he knows what he’ll find. 

The non-happiness seeps through the cracks of Wanda’s loosening hands. 

Vision staggers back from his laptop as if he’s been burned, staring wide-eyed at the screen. 

Okay. 

Yes, right. 

He scratches at the insides of his arms in a dim living room. It takes a moment to reclaim all of his less glamorous pieces, the pieces that stress and bite and claw. He doesn’t move for a while, just stares at the colors and the words and the dates. 

Exams begin on the thirteenth. 

Approximately five days from now. 

Okay. 

Four exams, four different disciplines... five days to reacquaint himself with them all. 

He shakes his hands out at his sides, trying to take deep breaths. 

Four exams, five days. He needs to study. He needs to unhook himself from Wanda for a day, if that’s even possible anymore, let dread overtake him because dread equates to work done. He needs to complete his assignment for his logic course and he needs to study.

But it isn’t only that, is it?

Four exams, five days. And then, the other things - he has to take care of Wanda, he has to take care of himself, make sure they’re both eating, that they’re both sleeping. He has to plan out what to order for the next few nights, what dinners she’ll have and what portions she’ll share. He has to call his mother tomorrow, has to see where they’re at with the inquiry so that he can brace himself accordingly. 

Yes, and the inquiry. 

It is difficult to find any one thing to be the most important, difficult to prioritize anything. He hates having to change his priorities, it never goes well or easy, but clearly he has to do something. It doesn’t even seem possible to change them - there’s no time to restructure this. 

Nothing ever happened before.

He closed his eyes for two weeks and he opens them right as it all happens at once. 

Wanda wakes up when the sheets go cold. Her eyes must be more normal again, she can’t see her glow when she opens them. Vision calls her a torch sometimes. She lights the way in dark rooms.

He’s close, still. He hasn’t been far away in a long time, the cold of the bed is unfamiliar. The cold of herself is unfamiliar. The star tosses and turns. She thinks it likes Vision - at least, the part of it that is her likes Vision. Can’t sleep without him, can’t lay comfortably inside. Of all things to toss and turn, a star is one of the most dangerous. 

She groans as she sits. The way she sleeps is specifically tailored to fit a boy between her arms, it only makes her sore when he is missing. Like a tree that grows toward the sun. If the sun goes away, the tree begins to shift and reach toward the ground. It inverts, it searches still. It is physically uncomfortable to curl yourself around a body that is not there. 

“Boy,” she says, scratchy from sleep. 

Part of her expects to hear his sleepy boy noise from the floor, that he’d rolled over and fallen, that he sunk so heavy into the blankets that he disappeared under the bed. She flops over, hair brushing against the floor, scanning the abyss below. 

“Boy,” she whispers. She slides down until she’s touching the ground, hips locked on the edge of the mattress, a headstand. An arm is swept out in front of her to check. Nothing. 

He’s likely making tea. Or taking another strange, cold shower. Or… some other thing he does. There isn’t much that he does by himself anymore. His mind is full of her and so are his hands. Nothing else seems to be very important. 

The clock beside the bed reads 4:13 AM. Gruesome glowing red shapes. Wanda reaches out and pokes its face, it flickers off. (Vision doesn’t like it when she does that. He will only be cross for a few seconds though, she knows how to distract him now.) 

She rolls onto her back, lays on the ground for a moment, misses him. 

Rolls onto her stomach. Kicks her legs. Waits for him to return. Misses him. 

The lamp turns on when she asks it to. It is enjoyable to use her power for such small things. It’s fun to amaze Vision by being simple. Her simple is astounding to him, her complicated makes him blush. For as long as she’s known him, it’s felt useless to do anything without him watching. 

Palms on the ground, she pushes up to her knees. He inspires impatience. His absence inspires further impatience. 

The door isn’t entirely closed, she pushes it open with her fingers, peering out into the hall. She must be glowing again. She walks, creeeeeak under her feet, shuffles right up to the end and peers around into the living room. 

The smile on her face, the kind of smile one wears when anticipating a warm welcome, slides off her face. 

“Boy?” she steps out into the open. None of the lights are on. It can’t be good for his eyes, sitting so close to the computer like this. 

He doesn’t seem to hear her. He’s hunched over the keyboard, striking keys faster than Wanda thought he could. His leg bounces and, when she checks, his heart rate is high. Not high like it is when he looks at her. It’s the kind of high that occurs when you’ve done something bad and you’re preparing for the door to open, for the collar to be clicked into place. 

Wanda creeps forward. She stops when she can see the screen, when she can see what he’s doing. 

The screen is covered with color, squares and squares and squares that interlock and overlap. She finds herself hovering right behind him, head cocked to the side, trying to make sense of it. Yellows and pinks and greens and blues. It hurts to look at. 

She has trouble keeping up with the days but she knows their names well. Vision uses them often. He uses them here, too, along with the numbers that divide them. Times and dates, split and fractured and labeled. Her interest is piqued when she recognizes her own name among the others, several-hour blocks with Wanda typed over them. 

Vision likes to plan. He plans things, dates with Wanda or calls with Dr. Helen. 

He’s never planned like this though. If she squints, if she really tries, it seems like he has colored in the entirety of days. From… Wednesday to Monday. Every single second. Wanda and study and sleep and eat. He has planned a five-day life.

Wanda places her hand on his shoulder. 

He jumps, nearly knocking the chair over with himself in it. She presses a single finger to the back rest, keeping him up. While he is always a skittish boy, has been since they first met, while he says he is something somewhat new - this is what is new. She feels as though her entire life circulates around the boy that sits in front of her, he is the only familiarity she will ever welcome. This moment, though, this fear he has and this night he is spending. New and scary. New and lonely.

Her index finger presses forward until all four wooden legs are settled back on the ground. 

“Vision,” she says quietly. 

“Sorry,” he exhales, patting her hand, resting his head back to look at her upside down. “Are you alright?”

Wanda looks back to the computer. Then to her boy. “Me?”

He blinks. Oh, his eyes. Wanda frowns, hands on his cheeks, studying him. Small circles traced on his skin, stubbly and warm. She bends to kiss his nose. He hums. 

“I’ll be back to bed soon,” he promises. “I’m sorry. Just, uh… um. I. It’s just.”

She slides her hands up, palms on his temples. She dives into his mind again, she can’t believe she spent so long outside of it. When she leaves, everything goes back to the way it was. And worse, it seems. 

Wanda feels like she’s standing in the center of a busy street, right on the line, and the cars and buses are whizzing past. Yellows and pinks and greens and blues. Wanda and study and sleep and eat. 

He moves too fast for himself to handle. This brain he has seems so intent on setting itself on fire. Wanda knows what it’s like to be set on fire. Vision can’t handle it. 

“Oh, boy,” she murmurs. She feels him. His back is aching and his eyes sting. Sometimes he forgets to blink. Sometimes he forgets to move. “Boy, boy, boy.”

She presses her lips to his forehead. It takes no effort, slowing him down again, sticking her hand in the gears, listens to the quiet. She likes his quiet. He closes his eyes, sighs, falls further down into his chair. 

“Sorry,” he says. There is no telling what he is apologizing for but she knows that it is the wrong thing. 

Wanda gently drags his hands from the machine. “You need to go to bed with me.”

He shakes his head, opening his mouth to disagree, but she is resolute. She tugs him back, hands on his wrists that migrate up to his palms, and something cracks inside. She drops him as if letting him go will undo it. Vision sits up straighter, takes her fingers, brings them to his mouth, turns and winces and kisses her hands. 

He hasn’t split like that under her touch in many days. She has been getting better at delicate. It feels so good to be delicate. Delicate like a good thing. 

“Wanda, I’m sorry but I have to do this tonight,” he murmurs. His breath is hot. (It is an odd feeling. Much of her life was spent with her hands covered, bound and immobile and shocked and red-raw, and yet he brings them so close to himself. He treats her like this for absolutely no reason.) “You can lay down on the couch, if you need to be close. I’ll carry you back to bed when I’m done.”

He doesn’t seem to understand. She isn’t asking. 

“No.”

He blinks up at her. His eyes are pink where they should be white around the edges, she can see them in the glow of his laptop. Bloodshot, she thinks, is the word. He is tired and he has already cried tonight. “Pardon?”

“You need to go to bed with me,” she says, again, not asking. “You’re hurting.”

Vision shakes his head, refusing a question not offered, “I’m not. It’s okay. You don’t need to worry.”

He’s meant to be smart and he’s meant to know that she isn’t stupid. “I can feel it.”

She wrings her hands away to cover his eyes. She can’t stand them open anymore. He’s meant to sleep and dream about her, keep her warm. For so many days, they have been the center of each other’s universes. When she takes her hand away from his gears, he loses himself to the sound of the cars. He steps into traffic. 

“It’s… it’s just how people feel, sometimes,” Vision says. She knows he doesn’t mean that she isn’t a person. He knows she’s a person. He simply means normal people. He simply means, incorrectly, unspecial people. “When a lot of things are happening.”

Wanda checks his list. There are only three things. One of them is her name, right at the very top in his handwriting, the most important and the most pretty. She is not a thing that is happening, she is simply a person that… is. 

“What is happening?” she asks, knowing the answer, playing with his eyelashes, “What things?”

“Wanda,” he says. He means darling. 

“I can see them,” she reminds him. “I can hear you.”

Vision sits up and away from her hands. He tries to go back to his work, his planning for the work. She steps to the side, raises a hand, and the chair scrapes loud against the floor as he’s pulled halfway across the room by invisible hands. He grasps at the wood he sits on, brings his feet up, looks at her with such an odd expression that she hasn’t the patience to analyze. 

“You are going to bed with me,” she holds out her hands as if to pull him up. They are miles apart. “Come on.”

He tries to disagree again. Wanda takes his arguments in her palms and smothers them. 

“I’m not asking.” 

Vision sighs. He rubs his eyes. He stands. He is several inches too short. He is several inches too thin. 

“Wanda,” he says. 

She gives him a look before walking toward the hallway. There’s only so many times she can repeat herself, wasting so much time he could be spending asleep. He follows because that’s what he does. She’s the boss. 

The room is light as she had left it. She takes her cold spot on the bed, her back to the headboard (Vision’s spot, typically, to hold her), legs out to the sides, blankets between them. 

“Sit here,” she says.

Vision stays in the doorway, half-light and half-dark. The space under his eyes is purple. Shadows that have lingered so long that they have settled. He looks weary as he shifts, single blade of grass swaying in the breeze, “It’s alright.”

She makes her eyes glow. He always seems to listen to her when she does that - not out of fear anymore, simply because it means she is serious. No more words to tell him what to do, he can do it himself. Only words to get him back to sleep. 

His shoulders slump. He clambers onto the mattress and looks at her as if he might not listen. She frowns deeply, pointing to the space she needs him in, and he reluctantly turns to face the door. 

“Lean,” she instructs, tugging at the back of his shirt. 

“Wanda - “

“Stop thinking so much.” She’s slowed him down as much as she feels comfortable. If she goes further, his heart may stop. 

He laughs quietly, “I don’t think I can.”

She shuffles forward. She hooks her legs around him, ankles interlocked, falling back into the pillows with him in tow, crushed beneath him as they’re meant to be. He sighs warmly. It is nice to give someone comfort. It is nice to feel secure enough to do so. 

“You never do what you want to do,” she whispers into his hair. She kisses the back of his head, the back of his neck, the pink streaks that are left from her scratches. “Even when it’s good, you think it’s bad.”

“I’m very good at running away,” he says. 

“You run too fast,” she lets her legs fall to the sides, her hands are on his ribs, she can feel each breath he takes, “You need to slow down.”

Wanda brushes her fingers through his hair, soft and light and pretty. He slides down a bit, his head resting on her chest, and she can feel his eyes close. Her second viewpoint disappears. She sees the inside of his eyelids and she sees the picture of her that he has painted there. She holds a flower, this time, not a star. The yellow of the center of the daisy is what catches the skin on her chin, not the red that she knows so well. 

“I’m sorry,” he says. If Wanda weren’t always listening for him, she wouldn’t have heard him. If Wanda weren’t between his ears already.

“Sorry?” she repeats, confused. “I told you to come with me, and you did.”

“No, no, I’m…” he opens his eyes again, moving to sit up, but she holds his head still, palms on his temples, keeping him stationary. He relaxes again, heavy and kind pressure. “I… I don’t know if I’m…”

“You’re a real person,” she tries to help. Remind him. It is impossible to hold a person that isn’t real. She rocks him a bit, tries to, as if to say see? Two real people. I hold you and you hold me, two real people.

He chokes on a breath, someplace between a laugh and a cry, “Not that. I… mm.” 

Her hands are on his head and his hands eclipse hers. Shaky breath. Wanda wiggles her fingers. A hello. A reminder. 

“Fuck,” he whispers. 

“Hello,” she replies. 

“God, I… Christ, I don’t…” He makes that noise he makes when he needs to cry but can’t seem to find the energy to get there. Long hum. Hopeless hum. Between a word and a sob, wedged right in the ribs. It echoes off of grey walls well, it echoes for hours. “I don’t... know... how to be what you need me to be, Wanda, I don’t know if I can. ”

“If you’re something else then you won’t be - “

“What you want,” he says toward the open doorway, toward the empty living room, toward the colors he’s planning, “What you want and what you need, they are different. ”

She combs his wild hair with her fingers, raking gentle nails over his scalp. “They are both you.”

He disagrees. His mind does. His mouth says nothing because he covers it with his palm. 

She steps further into his mind. 

Most of these words don’t mean much to her. So many phrases and jumbled sentences whirl around in his head, overlapping dates and numbers and definitions that she can’t understand. Cars and buses and people without faces and streets without names.

Among them, she can see herself. She can see her value, feel the warmth, but behind the warmth is the worry. He seems to attempt to picture another person that could assist her - a shadowed figure in a large house, a larger stature and a more authoritative voice. He pictures large dining rooms with many chairs, tables full of food and drink and candles and flowers. He pictures the opposite of himself. 

Wanda doesn’t want the opposite of him. She likes him. 

“What else would I need?” she asks, receding, allowing him to hold his own thoughts. 

“Someone who knows what he’s doing,” Vision says easily. “I… I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“You are sitting with me,” she tells him. Not because she thinks it is silly, not because she thinks his worry is false, but because it is important to know where one is, sometimes. “You are letting me hold you.”

He seems to not find that comforting. 

“No,” he says, sitting up, running his own hands through his hair, pulling gently. “No, Wanda, I’m - I’m supposed to hold you. That’s what you need. You need someone who - “

“Don’t tell me what I need,” she says. She takes the back of his shirt in her hands and pulls him back, wrapping her legs around his waist again to keep him buckled in. “You think I cannot hold you because I’m a lady?”

Vision shakes his head fast, trying to turn and see her, she does not allow it, “Of course not. That’s not what I mean. It’s - “

“You are hurting yourself,” she says, petting his hair back, soothing the burn he gave himself, “My hurt is in the past. I remember it, and it returns, but it isn’t here now.”

“I’m not - “

“Your eyes,” she shields them with her fingers, his eyelashes soft against the pads of her fingertips. “Your eyes and your head and your heart. I feel how you feel, when I look. Rest would help them, and you do not give yourself rest - you’re hurting yourself.”

“I have so many things to do. Sometimes there’s no time to sleep.”

“So, make time.”

“Wanda - “

She slides her hands down over his mouth. She rests her chin in his hair, “Make time, boy.”

Vision rests his head on her shoulder to look at her. He turns in her arms, then, to face her, and her chest goes cold without his hot back against it. Wanda can hear the sheets move, can hear his thoughts, can feel the kiss he wants to give her before he even knows he wants to give it. 

She obliges him. She obliges herself. He makes himself easier to reach, sitting on his knees but bowing his head. She enjoys this attention. She enjoys this odd boy’s thoughts as they pertain to her. They are all spectacularly warm. Warm like cinnamon tea.

She tries to give him the kind of kiss she sees in his dreams, the kind of kiss people share in an alley, but he hums before she can push herself any closer, hand on her chest, pushing himself away instead. 

(Helen bought her this thing that goes over her arms, that clips against her back, that covers her chest. Protects it. It’s scratchy and tight, it cuts into her back when she wears it for too long. Vision’s fingers press it into her skin through the soft material of her sweater. For a second, the pressure feels nice. Tight but welcome.)

“It really is late,” he whispers. His lips are pink and puffy. 

Wanda squints at him, plays with his lips, his mind goes blank, “Will you rest with me?”

Vision beams, then, tiredly. Just short of content. Wanda wants to wince. She presses the pad of her thumb to his eyelid, wanting him to close them so badly, give his pretty eyes a moment away from the air. They seem to hurt terribly. 

“Yes, girl, I’ll rest with you.” He kisses her cheek, moving to lay next to her. She stops him, hand on his arm, and he looks at her expectantly, “What’s wrong?”

“Stay here,” she says, trying to hold him again. “Head to my heart. I’ll give you good dreams.”

Vision doesn’t argue as much this time. She likes the pressure of him. He’s bony but he’s soft. She hugs his chest and his hands are warm as he rests them over her arms.

He will be embarrassed about this tomorrow. She knows his mind well. He’ll rub the back of his neck and he’ll blush beet red. 

Wanda likes when he is embarrassed. Such a tall boy to hold so much nervousness. 

She keeps his dreams safe long enough to solidify them, pins them in all the right places. Cheese and bread and held hands kept safe and stationary. Kisses and the sun and a cloudless Thursday. They share the same pictures as she drifts off with him. 

Vision wakes up alone. Opened eyes, arm stretched across empty bed, a familiar moment but with no body beneath him this time. It’s so fascinating to be so used to waking up with someone. Who would have known?

It’s the first time in a long time that he isn’t roused by a small witch who has gotten bored of a lonely consciousness. It’s the first time in a long time that he wakes up warmer than he was when he laid down. She is his temperature control. 

He feels feverish. 

He brushes his palm up and down the sheets as he considers that. 

Why... feverish?

It’s hard to be logical when he first starts his day. It is one of few certain facts about himself that he knows, something that doesn’t need a diagnosis. Morning idiot Vision, every day without fail. Sleep stupid. Drowsy and useless. 

Luckily (or unluckily), the wave is big enough to crash into him sooner than later. 

He groans, shifts onto his back, arm over his eyes. Wanda’s not here to kiss him awake like she always does. When he rolls, there’s no koala attached to roll with him. His head is empty which only reverberates the noise from the night before, make time, a sound stage for forgotten responsibility to become very, very remembered.

Yes, yes, the rest of the world he has to deal with. 

Mm.

Oh, fuck. 

The rest of the world he has to deal with. 

Vision throws his legs over the side of the bed, tries to untangle himself from the covers, falls on his face in the process, braces his hands on the floor and stumbles his way back to his feet. 

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,” he whispers, straightening his pants around his waist and his shirt around his body, “Oh, my God, what - what have I done. ”

He forgets how to open a door, for a second, a closed door he was certain he fell asleep staring at and he was certain it was open when he stared at it. 

His fingers clutch at the doorframe to keep himself up, arms outstretched, bracing himself on the walls as he pushes forward. He has to finish the scheduling, he has to start doing what he’s scheduled, he has to grab all his textbooks and climb under the covers and stay there until Monday. 

Panic and panic and panic. It’s all of the things he’s neglected to do and all of the things he now has to do because when you hide under the covers, the stuff outside still exists. He’ll make tea and he’ll order something for Wanda and he’ll ask if she wants to sit with him and he’ll ask if she can play with his hair while he - 

He stops. 

He hears their voices first and then he smells the sesame oil. Hears the sizzle of a pan he has used only four times, the noise of something cooked but not burned. 

His brain shuts off, his feet try to follow the floorplan of a memory, the floorplan of a house he hasn’t been in for so long, but he can only stop at the edge of the hallway. There would be a stairwell, here, fuzzy blue carpet that he always wanted to sleep on. There is no stairwell, though, it is just his living room. 

It is just his kitchen. Wanda perched on the counter, legs folded and hands sweetly resting under her chin. Helen swaying by the stove, bright yellow blouse worn and navy blue flats set by the front door. 

He rubs his sore eyes. No, it doesn’t appear to be a mirage. 

Beside Wanda, the countertops are full. Full of ingredients that Vision never bought, full of ingredients that Vision only saw on the counters back home. Off-white ramekins of spice and sauce, greens and leaves and bright-white rice in perfect half-globes waiting to be combined. 

He stares at the ingredients of a home that he thought he had lost. Something about salt and fresh water meeting in the center, the home he grew up in and the home he made himself and the pieces of both and… and...

It takes a moment to realize that his mom is still speaking. 

“... and, you know, when he was a baby, he’d aaaalways want breakfast,” Helen says, wearing a wide grin, “Breakfast for dinner, for lunch, for snack. It was all he’d want, he was absolutely infatuated with it.”

“When he was a baby,” Wanda repeats, wearing a small smile. 

“I always thought it was because he liked the mornings so much, he liked the sun,” she recalls, waving a spatula in the air. “Eomma, he’d beg me, I want to go outside. Never you mind if we’d just been. Always in the sun, always by the window.”

“The sun was warm in Seoul,” Wanda recites.

Helen hums, unsurprised by Vision’s words in a different voice, “It was. He’s told you?”

“He showed me.” Wanda presses her fingers to her temple, “In a dream.”

Vision is frozen in the doorway. He watches this happen and tries, he tries so hard, to understand exactly what he’s looking at. They’re talking so easily. They’re talking about him. The two people who know him - one who knows him completely, the other who only knows the picture he’s painted. 

He thought he knew which was which. Somehow he had forgotten that he was a child, once. He forgot that his mother is his mother, that she knows what he was before he was… whatever this is. 

Helen chuckles. She chuckles. A woman of science for as long as he can remember and she doesn’t seem to have even considered a definition. Vision screamed when Wanda showed him her power for the first time. His mum makes breakfast. 

“I always did try to apply some greater meaning to that boy,” his mother says this like a promise, like it was a waste of time. His feelings are hurt. “It didn’t work - he was simply fond of breakfast food.”

“And now he cannot make toast,” Wanda agrees.

He doesn’t mean to speak, but it happens.

“I can make toast,” he mutters. 

Two pairs of eyes sweep toward him. Wanda’s bright smile grows, he can feel her happiness from all the way over here, while his mother’s face shifts into a deep frown. 

He takes a step back on instinct. He knows these eyes. At the tributary between his homes, when mum looks at him like that… 

Helen sets the spatula aside with a clunk, brushing her hands down her shirt before charging at him with fast mum-steps, “Vision Edwin Cho.”

Vision tries to run back down the hallway but he can’t move fast enough with his wobbly legs and fuzzy head, unable to escape the tight, rib-punctured-lung hug that his mother offers.

“Mum,” he whispers. He can hear bones crack as she squeezes him tighter. Maybe it wasn’t Wanda all this time - it’s just him. Maybe he’s made of cheap biscuits on the inside, easily broken. “You’re… crushing… me…”

“You wear all these thick clothes,” she says, sounding incredibly angry with him, still holding him tight, “I could barely tell you were a skeleton.”

“I’m not a - and why are you - ! What - ?” Vision grasps at her shoulders, trying to pull her off, “What are you doing here?”

She’s too busy mapping out his back with stern, clinical hands like she’s conducting a physical, “How did I miss this?”

“I don’t understand what’s happening,” he says, resigning to her exam, looking over toward the glowing audience, “Wanda. Please. What is happening.”

“I called your mother,” Wanda says from the countertop. “She can make toast.”

Vision glares at her weakly, “You called my mother?”

Helen pats his back, clearly having forgotten that she was angry in the first place. (This is the longest hug they’ve shared since his first day of high school.) “Imagine my surprise when I heard your girlfriend’s voice in my head at six this morning.”

“My... girlfriend.”

“Me,” Wanda supplies, just in case he hadn’t gotten the message. She waves a small, glowing hand. 

Vision feels like he needs to lay down again.

“When is the last time you ate?” Helen finally lets him go and he slumps back against the wall, reacquainting himself with what it feels like to breathe. She returns to her place at the stove like nothing ever happened. Righting a wrong, as it were. 

A lot has happened. Apparently, everything happened while he was asleep. His head is starting to ache again.

“Don’t know. Last night,” Vision slides down the wall to sit on the floor. He stood up too fast, he’s dizzy. Or maybe the world is spinning a bit faster than usual. 

Helen looks to Wanda for confirmation. The girl on the counter presses her lips together and shakes her head. 

“You should know better than to lie with a telepath in the room,” Helen shakes her head, full focus ahead. “Don’t be daft.”

“I…?” He feels incredibly tired. He wasn’t ready to get out of bed yet. “Have we all forgotten the real thing we need to focus on? A-a-am I going insane? Did I hallucinate a giant, real-life government conspiracy that we’re all dealing with?”

“Not forgotten,” Wanda says, eyes locked on the pan that Helen cooks in. “Don’t be daft.”

This is insane.

“Okay. So.” He presses at his eyes, organizing his words. “I am… forgive me if I’m somehow out of line, here, but I believe that I’m the last thing we all need to worry about, right now.”

Wanda turns to him, squinting. “Have you learned nothing, boy?”

Vision drops his hands, offended, “Hey. ”

“He’s stubborn,” Helen pipes up, ignoring him entirely, “He doesn’t learn anything on the first try.”

It’s frustrating because he can’t disagree. 

“How is the inquiry?” he attempts to steer everything away from this. 

Helen shuts him down immediately. “Up, off the floor. Food’s almost ready.”

Speaking to the void once again. “I’m not hungry.”

Helen looks to Wanda. Vision wishes there was a way to cover his ears or hold his breath to keep her out, but there isn’t. She peeks inside and smiles again knowingly. She’s so pretty it’s infuriating. 

“He would like extras,” Wanda says sweetly. 

He sticks out his tongue. He immediately recoils from himself. This is so confusing - he feels his current age and five years old simultaneously. (Something about sitting on the ground, something about rice and eggs and early mornings.) Wanda covers her mouth to hide her laugh. He’s in love with her and it’s incredibly inconvenient right now. 

It’s humiliating to have to fetch silverware when he knows what comes afterward. Clearly this is a team effort regarding an intervention of some sort - but for what reason? He takes the nice plates down, prompting Wanda to immediately note that she’s never seen them, prompting his mother to give him a glare. 

He finds himself wedged on the couch, the center cushion that he’s never occupied, Wanda to his right and Helen to his left. They all sit differently, hold their meals differently, take up space differently. Vision balances his breakfast on his legs, stares down at it like it may bite him first, while Helen holds hers in the palm of her hand. Wanda has already finished, pushing the empty dish onto the coffee table and turning to face Vision. Monitoring. Observing. 

They eat in silence. Clink and clank and sigh. (God, it’s so fucking good. Vision hasn’t had a breakfast for two years. He hasn’t had his mum’s breakfast for two years.)

He’s genuinely overwhelmed by the morning’s events. This hinders enjoyment. Not overwhelmed in the hyperventilation way. More in the… everything-else way. This is the first time that three people have sat on this old thing. Even that is freaking him out. He hasn’t been boxed in like this in his own home before. 

“I can’t believe you called my mum,” Vision whispers toward his lap, holding his chopsticks so tight and running so hot that they squeak together.

“Mums help,” Wanda says. She nudges at Vision’s plate after a second goes by that he isn’t actively eating. “You are almost finished.”

Full. He feels full. It’s weird. “I haven’t eaten this much in a long time, I won't be able to finish, really.”

Helen looks over at him. “Vision.”

He grimaces and tilts his body away from her. “Don’t.”

“Vision Edwin - “

“I’m in college,” he attempts to explain. “College people don’t eat as much as normal people.”

Helen places her utensils diagonally, finished, placing it silently on the surface in front of them before folding her arms, “How much have you been eating, then?”

He rolls his eyes, moving to stand - Wanda knocks him right back down with a small burst of red. He almost spills half a helping on himself. He glances over, scandalized.

“Mums help,” she repeats. 

Vision gives her a pained look. He leans forward to slide his leftovers onto the coffee table, yellow plate between two blue ones, falling back into the cushions. 

“I’m just saying,” he grumbles, “there are definitely more pressing, supernatural issues at hand - “

“Three meals a day?” his mother presses.

Vision sighs toward the ceiling.

Helen stares at him. Hard. “... Two?”

He sighs. Again. “Listen...”

Wanda stands up and straightens out her shirt. It comes down to the mid-thigh. Vision watches her, hoping for some sort of escape plan or maybe even a hug now that his lap is free, but she’s wandering off down the hall without another word. 

Wanda, he tries to think. He tries to think really hard: Wanda, come back.

The floor groans and the door clicks closed.

There’s a torturous period of time that passes in grating silence. Vision stares ahead at the black television screen, barely blinking, trying to see how long he can prolong this moment before the conversation happens. 

His mum is a geneticist. A woman of science. Kind. Loving. (Obligation.)

She raised him well, raised him healthy and studious. Use his manners. He knew his food pyramid, he knew how to be kind, he knew how much water to drink in a day and how many meals to eat. She raised him to always sleep well, to always have a full stomach. 

Sure, maybe he’s slipped on that a bit. 

It’s much easier to not be healthy, in all fairness. 

College is a lawless land. No one checks in, no one holds him accountable for the non-number things. No one cared when he was only having one quesadilla per day, four hours of sleep, one glass of water for two years. No one cares as he eats the one-and-a-half-bite that Wanda offers of her meals, as he frets and stays up trying to give her good dreams, the few sips of tea he sneaks in before and after class. 

No, college people don’t eat as much as normal people. 

But most college people's mums are not geneticists. 

“Vision,” she says. 

He exhales his head to his chest. 

“You said you were eating,” she says, quiet but sharp. 

“Yes, because if I told you I wasn’t, you’d get cross with me,” he hears himself say, five-years-old.

“Yes! Obviously I would!” Her eyes are wide and almost blurry and Vision feels the guilt settle. “You’re not a child anymore, you don’t lie to keep me from being upset - “

“It’s fine, it doesn’t matter, I’m used to it! It only took sixty three days - “

“I refuse to let you act like this is okay, it isn’t okay, Vision - “

“It’s fine, Mum,” he says. Of all the things he’ll resign for, this isn’t it. Wanda’s happy with the way things are. He’s happy. It’s not about the food, it’s such a trivial thing, it isn’t about him. This is the best he’s felt in forever and he really needs Wanda to hold his hand right now. 

“When… when you decided to move out here and pursue this path,” her voice is soft, impatience masquerading as its opposite, a cross mother who doesn’t want to scare her son away with consequences, “you promised me you’d be able to handle it.”

Vision raises his eyebrows at her. He meets her eyes for the first time in the conversation, it takes energy to do so, “I would say that circumstances have c-changed a bit since I moved here.”

Helen stares at him. Her eyes are warm and brown. Dark like her hair and quite the opposite of him. 

(Vision remembers his fifteenth birthday. He remembers the picture that Raisa took of them, Helen’s hands on his shoulders and a wide smile on her face as he blew out his candles. It was just him and mum and the research team, surrogate older sisters. He remembers that his mum printed out the photograph, framed it, hung it in the hallway. He remembers standing and staring at it one night when she was out late, wondering if she was ever disappointed. Only child, one son, little sunspot, looking more borrowed than kin. Spilled blond-and-blue ink in the family tree.)

She stares and she waits for something he can’t give. He’s already the way he is. Helen listens for the words he’ll say and Wanda is down the hall, ear pressed to the door, not quite in his head but present enough to be noticed. 

Expectant waiting. That’s what this is. Sitting in silence and staring and lost in their own heads, standing by and hoping that some sort of spirit will move them. Move them to speak, to explain. Offer a solution or an answer. 

Or, apparently, a question. 

“Do you think I can do this?” he asks his mum as if it’s a secret. He knows that Wanda is listening. In a way, he supposes, it’s a question for the both of them. For the three of them.

Four exams, four disciplines, four days. Take care of himself and take care of Wanda. Dangerous inquiry. Dangerous everything. Everything changes. 

“Do what?” Helen asks. A fair request for clarification. Clarification that he doesn’t have.

“I… I don’t know,” he breathes, panic wearing the mask of calm for someone’s sake, “I… I mean…” 

There isn’t exactly an alternative. It’s a yes or no question that he’s asked and he knows the answer that he’s likely to get but it doesn’t feel right. Mums typically offer confidence. They say yes, you can do it because that is what they do. They help and they inspire and they promise. 

“You can do…” she says, she’s sitting right next to him but they’re not even touching and it feels like they’re strangers, “... anything you put your mind to.”

He’s put more than his mind into this. Mind and heart and body and, if he has one, soul. This, of course, is Wanda. She has his entirety, he gives it willingly and he gives it every single day. He’s incapable of rationing himself, budgeting fragments and shards in different zones, because there is absolutely nothing more important. 

He wants to close the conversation, ask Wanda to put it in a box, wants to do his Phone Vision performance of laugh and smile and dismiss and move on. But it’s too late, Phone Vision has died and now it’s merely him and Helen. Connected by blood and yet no visible reflection between them. Blond and black and blue and brown. She is yellow and he is grey. She is sunny and he is overcast. 

The spirit moves him again. He wishes it wouldn’t. 

It punches him in the stomach and he chokes on his own voice: “Why don’t you call me sunspot anymore?”

He smiles, embarrassed as he asks it because he feels like a child. It feels juvenile to miss a mother’s nickname. It feels juvenile to have missed being taken care of. It’s his fault for getting into this position, for hiding the vulnerability he wanted to be cradled, for never calling her first. 

She has a hand on his arm, now. “I didn’t think you liked it.”

Oh. Oh. He’s going to lose it. 

All that comes out is: “Mmmmnnnnh…” 

Any words he tries to form are lost, more of a hum, a desperate attempt to not do this right now. 

He has the urge to shake out his hands. This is that kind of weeping where you sit and you sink into yourself and you just let it happen. Hopeless and helpless and lost to the tide. He hasn’t cried in front of his mum like this since he was eleven. His model airplane was stolen by some school kids while his back was turned. He found one of the wings broken off in the bus yard. He cried for days. 

“Vision,” she says softly. 

Yeah, no, he’s fucked. 

“I don’t even see the sun anymore,” he whispers. “It’s cloudy or it’s nighttime. That’s all there is.”

His mother’s hands are warm. She wipes the tears away and he closes his eyes. It is embarrassing. He is embarrassed. She’s smiling the sad-mum smile, “I always wondered why you wanted to go to London. It’s all you ever spoke about. I said to the girls, I said, he’ll miss the sun.”

“And I do,” he mutters. “It’s silly. As if that’s my only issue, as if the clouds are what’s making everything go wrong.”

“The sun is important, it warms you up for your days,” Helen says. He makes a pitiful noise. She laughs softly and jostles him a bit, arm round his shoulders, “Oh, my boy.”

“It isn’t funny,” he says miserably. 

“I’m laughing because you take after your father,” she says, still smiling brightly even as they both share the sting of the statement, “Always so convinced he could be a pretty crier.”

“Ow,” Vision scoffs. He does seem to be in quite a state.

He feels awful. He feels awful that he needed this, feels even worse that he’s getting it. Wanda is in the room, waiting her turn, her own vast matters unsolved while Vision gets comfort for something he did to himself. The crazier his life gets, the less consequences he is dealt. It’s unfair to her. He doesn’t know how to lean out of Helen’s reach, how to gather Wanda up, place her in his spot. 

Helen hums. “I do like this Wanda.”

Vision coughs a bit. It turns to a laugh. “Y-yeah, I… ha, yes, I - I like - I like her too.”

“She was worried sick about you. I assume. In her own way.” Gentle pat on his shoulder. Helen’s wearing her ring today. He can imagine a quiet clink as gold taps against the bone of his shoulder. He is not a skeleton. “Was going on about… colors and cars. Said you were… hurting and crying and falling apart - “

“Great,” he winces. “Wonderful.”

“ - and she found me. I was asleep, then awake, then I heard her asking for Dr. Helen,” she smiles, tracing the seam of his sweater down his shoulder, picking a near-invisible ball of lint in the process, “Clear and bright, a voice right in the back of my mind.”

“I, er…” he raises a weak arm to gesture to his laptop on the desk, “I was only planning. Exams. Soon. Very soon, I… not much time.”

“I see,” she looks over in that direction, nodding. “She’s powerful. She finds me so easily, no matter how far I am. I may as well be within arms reach.”

“There’s no limit to her,” he brings his collar up to his eyes, pressing tight, “She does tend to get what she wants, one way or another.”

Money and daisies and mothers, found with ease. 

“In any case,” Helen says and he smiles into his shirt at the phrase, “It isn’t a matter of what you can do, I hope you realize. You can do anything - it’s a matter of how much you do at once.”

He nods, scrubbing down his face, the air outside the fabric far cooler than inside as he reappears. “I never intend for it to get this bad. And then I wake up one day and I’m… I-I’m drowning.”

“Chos multi-task,” she pats his back, he sounds like a drum, “often to a chronic extent.”

“Mmh.” His mum does a million things at once and she does so elegantly. Vision has never felt elegant.

“You leave the scary stuff to me,” she concludes.

“Mum,” he says, and the stress is back, “I can’t just - “

“I can handle it, I am handling it.” She pulls him into her side, hand on his head that she tucks close to her neck. (Like she did with the model planes, like she would have done each and every time he was dropped on a Sunday if she ever knew.) “You focus on the things you can control. I’ll focus on everything else.”

It sounds so easy when she says it like that.

“You make it sound like you can control everything else,” he murmurs. 

“Oh, my sunspot, I can.” She pats his back. He cries, lurches further into her, hiding. “I’m in charge of everything. Always have been.”

“Sorry. Must have forgotten.” He sniffs. “The girls call you Your Eminence for a reason.”

“They’ve taken to calling me Queen Cho, recently,” she says, sounding proud. (God. Save. The. Queen.)

“Yuck.” He laughs as she pinches his back. “As long as they don’t start calling you Mum.”

“Oh, no, no,” she pets his sheet-wild hair down, “I am only mum to one. You know that.”

“... Mmmmmm.” Crying.

Helen laughs, holds him close, and he tangles his fingers in the back of her blouse. “We speak so often and yet we’ve barely said anything of importance.”

“Everything we call about now is important,” he tries to say, unsure if it’s at all comprehensible.

“But we’ve missed something, I’m afraid,” he can feel her cheek press to the top of his head, “I could have told you this a long time ago. I could have told you this every day.” She leans back to look at him, holds his face in pan-warm hands, and he feels seen by her for the first time in a while, “No one on this earth... is as special to me as you are.”

Something cracks in him. Special. 

Vision sits and dehydrates himself and his mother laughs the entire time, two shows of joy from two opposite people. Eventually he runs out of tears but he can’t let the hug go yet. He isn’t ready. 

The door opens down the hallway again around the time that Vision’s back starts to ache from the way he’s slumped into himself. Wanda reappears within seconds and he, having missed her terribly, lifts his head to watch her. His lips curl upward into a confused sort of smile when she steps into the kitchen, roots around in the cupboards, says absolutely nothing in the way of an explanation. Typically, when she’s hungry, she does tend to let him know. 

There’s a quiet rustling before she’s padding over to him, returning to his side, overlapping him, and presenting the almost-depleted bag of chocolate chips to him. 

Helen makes a God, she’s cute sound. Vision knows. 

“Ah,” he says, gummy from a cry. He accepts the gift, not hungry but not wanting to reject such a kind gesture from such a beautiful girl. “Thank you, Wanda.”

When Vision regains control of himself, Helen is back on her feet. Back in the kitchen. He tries to help, sweeps up the old dishes, cleans them, asks to hold or fetch or assist. He’s waved off and pointed to sit at the counter. 

Wanda takes her place by Helen. She’s allowed to hold and fetch and assist. She sends little looks at Vision for applause when she passes ramekins and she receives it each time. His palms start to blotch pink from all the clapping. It’s worth it for the look on her face. 

“Can we talk about something else, please?” he faux-complains, resting his elbows on the counter. He waits for his mum to turn back to the stove so that he can grab one of the glass noodles from the bowl to the side. He dangles it over his mouth and drops it. Wanda laughs inside his head. “Don’t you want to talk about your research, Mum? Or the girls? Literally anything other than me?”

“I don’t think so,” Helen says. She makes eye contact with a glowing girl and smiles, “What else do you want to know?”

“Oh, my God,” he hides in his hands, “Silenced in my own home.”

“I want to know everything,” Wanda says, kicking her legs. Then, quieter, “Please.”

“She already does, trust me,” Vision promises. He reaches for the noodles again and he’s slapped away, “Hey.”

“Not for now,” he’s scolded, wagged finger, the bowl scooted away from him. “This is for dinner.”

“You’re staying for dinner?” he asks, surprised. 

“I can’t, no,” she says, tucking a stray black spike of hair back behind her ear, “The girls are sending some samples to the temporary office, I’ll have to be back soon to intercept them.”

“Right,” he rests his chin in his hand. “Yeah, ‘course.”

“You always ate your noodles cold anyway,” she holds out a hand to Wanda, who hands a container of sesame seeds over as if it’s a surgical instrument. “And Wanda, I assume, likes what you like.”

“... Fair.” He looks over to his girlfriend, he’s never had a girlfriend, he’s never gotten to say girlfriend, and she’s immediately leaning over to kiss his head. Today has been worryingly devoid of kisses. He’s sure she’s close to combusting. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” they both say at once. 

Vision gets a hug before Helen leaves. Wanda simply watches from the countertop, offers a wave and a thank you. 

The door opens and shuts and his mother’s presence is filled with responsibility again. He sweeps an ice-cold laptop up in one arm, his books in the other. Vision sets up a semi-circle on the bed, rubs at his eyes, tries to figure out where to begin. 

He snickers when Wanda sits in front of him, posted right behind his laptop, peering over the barrier curiously. 

“Hi,” he says.

“Do you need me to slow it down again?” Wanda’s already reaching for him. 

“Uh?” He takes her hand before she can start rearranging, “In… this specific case, moving too fast is ideal.”

She makes no move, even after he’s let her hand go. She sits on the other side, watches him study, watches him annotate and panic and read. It feels like he’s being observed in a glass tank. It worries him that he likes the feeling. 

He’s nearly finished with his logic proofs, so close to being finished with the mechanical nonsense and pushing forward to the meta nonsense, when Wanda’s taking his hands and pulling him away for dinner. 

Two clear plastic containers with fogged lids. Cold japchae, his favorite when he was a kid. His mum always hated when he’d eat the individual noodles with his fingers. He couldn’t help it. It was always worth it, even if he’d be sent to his room right after. 

Wanda is overjoyed when Vision puts the noodles on vibrant plates. It’s the most she’s seen of the fancy dishware since she first came to stay. He can’t bring himself to keep Helen’s food in the container, it always needed to be displayed. Even cold, it was presented like art. Even when she spent a late night at the office and it was just Vision in an empty house with leftovers and telly, it was an occasion. 

Vision gets his chopsticks and a fork for Wanda. She’s halfway finished by the time he sits down. This is their tradition at this point. One day, he wants to try and have a race. He isn’t sure if he’ll ever have the heart to tell her to wait. 

“I like Helen,” Wanda says quietly.

Vision glances up at her, mouth full. He chews for a moment, thinking about that, before reaching for his glass, “Yeah?”

Wanda nods. She seems to get bored, fidgeting with her fork for a moment before letting it float in the air. “I like the way she thinks. Her thoughts, they make sense.”

He clears his throat, “... More than mine?”

She looks at him with bright red eyes. She smiles at him knowingly. 

“Don’t look at me like that,” he says, taking a sip of water. He feels a bit ill, pushing his plate away. Too much food for one day. Wanda glares at him and it’s pushed right back by an invisible hand. “I’m full.”

“I know,” she says, and of course she does, but she doesn’t let up. “Helen is worried about you.”

It seems like everyone is, at this point.

“She’s a mum. Mums worry.” He leans back in his chair, folding his hands in his lap, “She’s worried about you too. If you want to get technical, here.”

Wanda squints at him for a long time. The food is nudged again, almost into his lap. Vision scrambles to catch it before it does so, giving her a wounded look.

“You are as stubborn as she says,” Wanda says. She almost sounds disappointed. That breaks him out of his ill mood, at least partially. He knows that he’s being ungrateful and he has no idea how to fix it. 

He stands, taking his dishes with him. Wanda floats her own empty dish into his palm when he reaches for it. Her face is screwed into a determined frown. 

“I… think... that her worry is wasted on me, right now,” he explains, stepping over the pillows Wanda has tossed on the floor and making his way to the kitchen. “Once exams are over, it won’t be important anymore.” He gestures to her with a plate, “You, Wanda, are far more valuable. And you’ve had a hell of a few years. Whatever insignificant pains I’m going through are... I mean, just completely non-comparable to - “

“Stop talking.”

Vision raises his eyebrows at her. “Sorry?”

“I am not valuable more,” Wanda says sternly, “I am valuable different.”

He sighs and sets everything in the sink with a clatter. He doesn’t have to say anything, he knows. Wanda is already in his head, filtering through the million thoughts he has, trying to understand exactly what he means. 

It’s ridiculous that he has to specify this. Wanda has endless power and endless pain, she has experienced more than Vision will ever know, more than he ever would have thought possible. And she is in his flat and she has his heart and she’s telling him this? That she isn’t as valuable as he knows, absolutely knows, she is?

She is valuable more and valuable different. She is bigger and stronger than anything on this entire planet. And, since no one around him seems to mention it, the fact is that he is embarrassed on her behalf that she’s stuck with him. That he’s so easily worn by the smallest things, shaken to the core, fallen like leaves. That somehow he has managed to earn her care. That she holds a star in the heart that she’s given him and he can barely manage to balance a calendar.

Wanda is behind him, hugging his waist, cheek to his back, her favorite place. She’s gone from his mind, likely having had enough of it. 

Vision laughs quietly, patting her hand, “Wanda, it’s alright.”

“Your thoughts make no sense, boy,” she says, muffled by his shirt. “I like the way Helen thinks. I like the thoughts she has about you, they make much more sense. Kinder thoughts.”

“I’m very proud of my pity parties, you know,” he says, “Not quite used to people hearing them.”

She squeezes him. His knees buckle a bit. It’s been a moment since she’s cracked him in half. She holds him up all the same, “That isn’t funny.”

“I’m not trying to be - ffffuck.” Something got dislodged, he felt it. A bone or an organ or something very important. He wheezes, grasping at her arms, “I’m not try-t-trying to be f-fuh-funny. ”

“You’re making jokes,” she says, displeased, “You like my laugh so much but you make jokes about things that aren’t funny.”

It feels like whatever just came loose is knocking against his ribs like a pinball. “Hnnnnh, Wanda, please let me go.”

“Say sorry,” she demands. 

“Ssssorrrry. Sorry. I’m so sorry. ”

Vision can breathe again, falling forward into the lip of the sink, palms braced on either side of it. Wanda’s hands are on his hips, turning him around, taking the hem of his shirt and lifting it to make sure she hasn’t crumpled him like an aluminum can. She hasn’t. 

She frowns, cool fingers brushing over his stomach that he doesn’t bend to look at, “Oh. I’m sorry too.”

“S’fine - hhn, fuck, it’s so fine, don’t worry about it.” He rests his head back and takes a few breaths. He laughs, more air than voice, as Wanda leans up on her toes to kiss the underside of his chin, “I missed - ha - I missed this.”

She pulls his head down to look at her again. He’s out of breath and she’s frowning and she’s very close and very much planning to scold him. 

“Vision,” she says. 

“I know,” he tilts into her. 

“You don’t.” Firm thumbs pressing into his jaw, “If you knew, you wouldn’t think these things.”

He huffs out a laugh. His voice is coming back, now, and his body is settling back where it needs to be. “Fine. Okay, educate me, please.”

“So much poison in here,” she looks above his eyes, pinning thoughts, presenting them, “You’ve run out of room. It’s me and it’s the bad things. There has to be space for more. Make space. Make time. ”

Vision has had a very, very long day. “I’m sorry.”

She hums, not quite an acceptance. She pets his face and takes her tour and thinks about something so intently that it overwhelms even him. He thinks the conversation is over and he thinks he’s come back to a safe neutral spot, he thinks he’ll kiss her and go back to studying for a few hours before bed. 

Wanda kisses him first. The counter digs into his back. He always wanted care but he worries that now he is given too much, too much to repay, a surplus that he wants to share. Wanda’s doors are locked, he can’t push what he feels to her, he can only hope she understands it. 

“You don’t have to burn,” Wanda says, parting just enough to speak, lips still shared, “to be important.”

Vision blinks. His sight is clear and then it’s not. He’s in a safe and neutral spot and then he’s tipping over again.

Wanda holds his face with cold hands. Warm tears catch in the web between her thumbs and index fingers, little reservoirs. She doesn’t even bother to wipe them away this time. The webs fill and then overbrim. “You cry so much.”

“I know,” he mumbles, his full weight rested in her hands, “I can’t help it.”

“It is impressive,” she says gently, shifting her grip on him, warm streaks down his neck as the dam empties, “You are a fountain.”

Wanda sits behind him as he studies, two heads and four arms. She falls asleep upright, sandwiched between his back and the headboard, her interlocked hands falling limp in his lap as he reads. She holds him together at the edges, even as she drifts off and out of his head. 

Only a few days left, he promises the both of them. Unspoken and unthought, simply a comfort. Only a few days left before he can lose himself to her again. 

She deserves all of his time, his attention. He will give her that in just a few days.

She deserves answers. 

He will give her that. 

He will have to.

Chapter Text

It’s been a good while since he’s begun his day with a cry migraine. Feels like visiting an old schoolyard or getting lost in a half-filled lot that you’ve lost yourself in dozens of times. Same place, same old concrete slab, different maze of cars. 

Yesterday was particularly taxing, it isn’t surprising that he’s gotten himself here. Dehydrated himself, rehydrated himself, cried it all out again.

He stirs, feels the pain, tries to remember all the steps to solving it. Same lot, forgotten method. He knows there’s something cold involved. Cold and caffeine, probably.

He can hear a soft good morning and the rest of the world returns. He cannot believe he went so long without a good morning. How had he possibly started his days without her?

Wanda’s hands are on his face, palms keeping his eyes shut, and he can feel her rooting around inside an aching head in order to try and save him. It’s a sweet sentiment. Kinda hurts today, though.

“Wanda,” he says. He sounds almost like Harrison Ford. A real peak of his life. “Morning. What are you doing.”

She only presses his head down into the pillows, doubling her effort. There’s a momentary concern that she’s going to manually deepen his eye sockets. She makes a frustrated noise. 

“It’s not listening,” she says. He tugs her hands away before she can do any permanent damage, “What is it?”

“Migraine,” he replies as if the word means anything to her. “It goes away. I’ll take a cold shower in the dark and it’ll... go away.”

It’s a miracle that she hasn’t already put a dent in his head. She alters her strategy, palms on his temples, trying to squeeze the pain out like Colgate. Vision braves the light, ow, bright, ow, ow, ow, and Wanda gets overwhelmed by something - his eyes, maybe, or the redness of them now that she can see again. Her grip goes loose. He is thankful.

“Sleep,” she decides, sitting high on his chest, trying to cover him again. 

“I have work to do,” he pushes himself up on his elbows, just pathetic enough to fear a blackout from the pain, and she balances perfectly. One of the first things he noticed about her when they met, her balance. “You sleep. That’ll make me feel loads better. If you rest.” 

“You can do it tomorrow,” she says. 

“I’ve already burned through too many tomorrows,” a pat to her leg, “Lemme up.”

Wanda must hit the lever that controls the headlamps because her eyes click to full beams. He’d make a big deal of this if each blink didn’t kill and consequently revive him. 

“No.” Legs locked tighter around his ribs, he’s not going to think about it for too long. 

“Yes,” he counters, really taking a stand, really putting his foot down. (Vision wonders what most couples do. He wonders if this ever happens. Not the fiery-star-and-red-eyes thing, but the other stuff. Does anyone else refuse this sort of thing? Girlfriend sits on the chest, tells you to sleep - how many people say no?)

“No,” Wanda repeats.

“Mm. Yeah, actually.”

“Mm,” she presses her lips into a line, “No, actually.”

New word in her accent, very fun, not the time. 

“I can just sit up, you realize. You weigh nothing.” He shifts his legs under the heavy blanket, the blanket that is heavier than Wanda, “I could sit all the way up and you’d float away like a balloon.”

She cocks her head at him, lips parting. He raises his eyebrows, fights the wince, challenges death. She’s very beautiful. He’ll be able to look at her better when his head isn’t exploding. 

Within seconds, his arms are knocked out from under him and he’s collapsing back into the pillows. Wanda shuffles back to sit on his stomach, star-socked feet stepping on his shoulders, keeping him pinned down. He’s not thinking about it. He’s not thinking about it. He’s focusing on his headache and he’s not thinking about anything else. 

“Wanda.”

“Go to sleep, or I’ll…” she shifts and Vision’s not thinking about it, “... I’ll… break you in half.”

Vision lifts his head to look at her. She’s staring right back, suspicious, trying to figure out if she’s allowed to say that or not. It’s not a matter of whether or not she meant it. It’s all about the reaction. 

“You’re violent, today,” he notes. He needs to rethink some things. He needs to reflect. He’s learning things today. 

“And you’re rude,” she says. 

He wants to laugh but he thinks he may die if he does. All there is left to do is attempt to out-stare a person with headlight eyes. It’s hard not to smile. It’s hard to stay awake. He wants to, though. He needs to. Work to be done, responsibilities to fulfill so that he can get to the part that matters. Three days. Three disciplines to go. 

He feels like a real idiot in these moments when three words are on the tip of his tongue and he isn’t sure what to do with them. He looks at her and he loves her and it’s just three words but they’re not something to be spoken. 

There’s no chance to grapple with that, however, as his phone begins to shriek from the nightstand. 

“Ffffffffuuuck,” he groans, the sound actively attempting to push his brains out through his ears. 

He blindly reaches with a half-trapped arm but Wanda is clambering up to take it and answer it first. Because, and this is very important, Wanda is absolutely obsessed with a certain Dr. Helen Cho. 

“Helen,” Wanda says warmly, holding the phone with two hands to the side of her head, “Good morning.”

“Wanda,” he says, eyes locked shut, grasping blindly for the device, “Hey.”

“Yes, I am well,” she sighs, looking over at him piteously, “Your son is in a bad mood today.”

Vision sighs, rolling over on top of her to incapacitate her, bringing the phone to his ear and kissing her cheek in one fell swoop. He falls back onto his side with a grimace, Wanda’s with him in seconds, “Hey, Mum.”

“Bad mood?”

“No. Migraine. Very different,” he covers his eyes with a hand. “What’s up? What’s going on with Stru - uh - the - with the thing?”

“Not calling about that. How are you? Migraine, you said?”

“It’s nothing,” he says. Wanda’s fingers are cold in his hair. Feels nice. Ice-pack. “So, there aren’t any updates.”

“None that I plan to give you.”

He thinks about that for a moment. Shifts the object in his hand and really has to consider that. Dwell in that. 

His lips are chapped and they ache when he moves them. “... I’m sorry?” 

“Surely you’ve not deprived your brain of so many necessities that you’ve forgotten our conversation?” There’s a loud clatter on the other end. A heavy lab door shutting or some useless item being swept into the bin. “I’m handling it. How are your studies?”

“No,” he says, shaking his head, pinching the bridge of his nose, trying to be a person, “Mum, that’s - no, you can’t. You can’t just - “

“Did you or did you not request my help?” Serious Mum voice. Shuts him up immediately. Something must have happened today, her patience is thin. “Call me over to London to set things in motion because you didn’t know where to start? Because I have authority? Because it was overwhelming? Because you, my son, are still very much a child?”

He is so offended and yet he can’t disagree and it’s really, sincerely messing him up. 

“Not a child,” he says. It’s the only thing he can really say. 

“... Mm.”

He’s already on the defensive, he can’t help it. Impatient mum and stubborn son, clashing at the center, both knowing who’s going to win.  “Oh - ohhhh, I’m sorry? I’m sorry - a good morning would have been nice. I’ve barely woken up, what have I done today to deserve this sort of - “

“When there’s something valuable to you, something that I think you can do or something that I think will benefit Wanda in a timely manner, I will tell you.” She’s probably smoothing down the buttons of her shirt as if they’re at all misaligned. Regaining her patience, one thread at a time. “Until then, you focus on the normal things. ”

The normal things. He scoffs. Wanda is playing with his hair. She threatened to break him not five minutes ago and he wasn’t deterred. Abnormality is inescapable.

“I don’t think that will be possible,” he admits. 

“Vision. Family first. Wanda is family.”

“Yes, and she’s afraid.” He whispers it as if she’s not wrapped around him. “If there’s even an inkling of success in the future, I’d love to hear it. Or if everything’s crashing and burning, that too. But personally, I can’t just sit and focus on anything with that… that… that… ”

Captor, says Wanda in his head. 

He turns his head to look at her. She twirls a lock of his hair around a finger. She kisses his nose. He huffs out a breath. 

“While he’s still out there,” he continues gently, “I’m not focusing on anything else. It’s impossible.”

“Alright,” Helen says, and for a moment he thinks he’s won, “Then you will simply focus on the empty places where information would be. ”

He practically gasps. Wanda laughs at him, ruffling his hair. His head hurts so fucking bad. “That’s unfair.”

“Yes, yes, welcome to adulthood,” she says, soft and grim, “A migraine, you said. ”

“Um? No, we’re not going to just move past this - “

“We are. What happened?”

“Mum.”

“Have you been wearing your glasses?”

“Yes. But that’s - this isn’t - “

“Do you need me to bring you your medication? I know your migraines are always awful, you’ve unfortunately inherited my stress responses - “

“No, it’s not - it’s - Christ.” He shakes his head, having to give up the fight, “It isn’t stress, this time.” He leans into Wanda’s touch and she can feel her smile in his mind. “Don’t worry about it. Thank you, though.”

“Not stress-related?” He can already picture her flipping open one of her notebooks or putting on her reading glasses, “So, what caused it?”

“Nothing,” he exhales, needing a shower and a cup of tea and a few minutes alone, “Nothing, Mum, I’m alright. It’s nothing - “

“You know, caffeine intake can - “

“No, it’s not that, Mum, please.” 

“Not stress or caffeine,” she says thoughtfully, “I was under the impression that those were your two moods.”

He can’t argue. So many unfortunate truths, today. “Okay, well. I assure you that I - “

Wanda’s face is suddenly very close to his, lips brushing his chin as she tries to speak into the phone speaker, “He was crying again, Helen.”

Vision glares weakly at the girl. She kisses his chin before receding again, patting his head sweetly, not knowing what she’s just done.

“... Oh.”

“Listen…” 

“Vision.”

“I swear, I - it’s not - I - “ he hisses out a breath as he pushes himself up to sit, aching, miserable, “I don’t wanna talk about it. I want to hear about your findings, I want to hear if any action is being done regarding the… thing.”

“Honey…”

Oh, God, not the honey. 

“It’s okay. Sometimes I cry, okay? You say it’s healthy to do that.” 

“How long have you been crying?” He can practically hear her clicking her pen. 

“I’m - I’m - I’m not crying anymore,” he says, voice sounding now like the precise opposite of Harrison Ford, some sort of shrill creature. 

“I need confirmation.”

Vision sighs. He looks to the girl next to him who is already half-listening in. He offers the phone.

“Oh,” she says, coming close, speaking into it like a microphone at a panel, “He isn’t crying anymore.”

“Ah, wonderful.”

He reaches for Wanda’s hand and brings it to his head again, his beautiful cold, “Like I said. More pressing issues. You said there were updates.”

“We’ve been over this.”

“And I appreciate the sentiment!” Too much enthusiasm. He is in pain. Trying to wrap this up. “I really do, but a little additional stress is warranted if it means that we’re all on the same page, here.” Vision rests his head into the cup of Wanda’s palm, “Please.”

“Nothing of use to you. It’s simply set dressing. Complicated, classified set dressing.”

Vision’s eyebrows draw together, “Classified?”

“A plan is being made, a plan will be enacted, and that is all you can know.”

Wanda leans close again, looking at him expectantly, wanting her turn.

Vision sighs and presses the speaker button.

“Thank you for helping me, Helen,” she says into the phone. So sweet and polite. I’ll break you in half, she says. 

“You’re very welcome, sweetheart.”

Wanda beams and settles against Vision’s chest. He can feel her happiness in his own head. At least one of them is happy with this arrangement. (He’s happy. There’s only so many lies he can tell. He is stubborn.)

When the phone call ends, grumbled farewells and promises of later check-ins, Vision… Hm. The word is probably pout. He pouts. He rolls to bury his face into the pillows. Wanda is left sitting though she loses her bones and flops over to rest on top of him within seconds. 

He’ll get up in a few minutes. He has to think about some things first. 

“Boy,” Wanda murmurs against the back of his neck. “Are you sleeping?”

“No,” he mutters. 

“Helen thinks you should sleep,” she pets him.

“You don’t know that. She didn’t say that. ”

She kisses his hair. “She is thinking it.”

He lifts his head, feeling like somewhat of a newborn, “Wanda. We talked about this.”

Wanda frowns. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s… it’s fine.” He collapses back into his place, knowing he’ll need to psych himself up to start moving again. “She’s… It’s just manners. You ask if it’s okay before diving in. It isn’t… er, courteous. To just assume.”

She frowns deeper, “It’s… rude?”

Vision reaches for her fingers, it’s a real slog to move at all, “It’s fine. I haven’t set a great example.”

Wanda watches their hands. She grips and then lets go and then grips again. Feels him and thinks very intently about her next move. He wants to close his eyes as he waits, wants to rest his head, but he’s afraid he’ll wake up and this will be gone. 

“I never asked if I could come inside,” she murmurs, clearly distressed by this, the quiet sort of distress that does tend to result in distance, “I never asked you.”

“You didn’t have to,” he says. He means it. He can’t remember a time before this blanket-in-the-brain sensation. Every headache he has reminds him of those first few days. Everything that happens to him, in every possible way, leads back to her.

“Why not?” is the reply. He isn’t sure why he hadn’t expected that. 

“... Why not?” he echoes, squinting like she’s the sun, “What do you mean?”

“I can’t overstep with you, you said, but I can overstep with Helen?” It’s so odd to hear her say his words back to him. They share the same language and each phrase feels new. “There are rules with everyone else and there are no rules with you. Why not.”

He knows the answer but he can’t say it. Something about never having someone close, boundaries never being needed. Something about how good it feels to be wanted, how good it feels not to be alone. All of the concepts that Wanda knows well because they are the same. His answer is not unfamiliar to her because she’s had it for years, seen it through to the end, seen it burn and shock and tie. 

She has had enough limitations for fifteen lifetimes. She can do what she likes and she can do it to him. Vision wants to be close and he wants to be hers, whatever that includes. 

“I’m different,” he says instead.

She wrinkles her nose. He smiles and his head hurts. “You’re mine.”

“Yes, that’s what makes me different.” 

Wanda makes her happy noise. She tackles him as is her first and only impulse when she gets so excited that she needs to explode, immediately apologizing when he grunts and wrenches his eyes closed. He’s dragged out of bed, an attempt at righting what hadn’t been wrong in the first place, and manually marched down the hall toward the shower. 

Vision falls back against the sink, taking the hem of his shirt in his hands, before glancing over to the open doorway that frames a glowing Wanda, still elated enough for her hair to flow toward the ceiling. 

He waits for her to close the door. She doesn’t. 

“... Wanda,” he says and he smiles and he huuuurts. 

“Mm?” she beams at him, so bright that she blinds. 

More waiting. No such luck. 

“One rule,” he reminds her, gesturing around to the space, “I’ve only one rule.”

Wanda’s distracted, completely focused on the feelings she’s pushing toward him. He waves a hand in front of her face. She blinks herself back to him. 

“Privacy,” he offers. 

“... Oh.” 

Wanda turns her back, arms folded, and he rolls his eyes as he nudges the door closed with his foot. 

She isn’t used to having anything less than his full attention. 

Five days doesn’t seem to be much in the grand scheme of things. 

(That’s one of Vision’s things, things he says that make no sense but seem important. In the grand scheme of things. He says it all the time. Thinks it all the time. When she asked what a grand scheme was, he said it was like, a bigger picture. Which also made no sense.)

Five days is a long time. A lifetime. And it isn’t even finished yet. 

Wanda greatly dislikes this. He’s here and he’s close and she sits on his lap and clings to his back as he reads and types and does whatever else - but it’s almost as if he weren’t here at all. She may as well be jumping on an empty bed. Or throwing herself onto an empty couch. Or staring at a blank wall. 

“How much longer?” she asks. She doesn’t know how many times she’s asked but it feels like a lot. She never gets the response she wants. 

“Dunno,” he says, blank, typing fast and intentional before shifting to flip through pages, “Long time, yet.”

Boring. It’s boring. Even worse - boring and frustrating. And embarrassing. She hadn’t thought all of these things were possible at once. Emotions take up time, they are interesting to feel and paint on top of and yet she’s still. So. Bored. 

It shouldn’t take this long to read. He knows the language and he knows the words. He isn’t even reading correctly, flipping forward and backward and never finishing a full page. Wanda could read to him. 

She sits next to him on the couch. He doesn’t look at her like he usually does, doesn’t duck his head for a greeting kiss. She sneaks a hand out, pinching the edge of the book, sloooowly pulling it toward her lap. 

“Wanda,” he says, finger pressed to the page, pinning it in place, still reading out of it, “What are you doing?”

“I can read to you. It’ll go faster. And you won’t need those things.” She flicks his glasses. They go crooked. He’s very pretty. “Okay?”

Vision shakes his head. No fun. “I’ll take a break in an hour. You can read to me then.”

Wanda falls back into the cushions as if she’s been struck. Vision returns to his silly book and his nonsense methods. She nudges his leg with a foot, “Say it.”

“Say what?” he asks. She doesn’t like his school voice. It sounds like he’s just appeasing her, like he isn’t… the word he uses is obsessed. Like he isn’t obsessed with her. 

She doesn’t mean to kick him. He sits up straight, turning to her, his full attention, so wonderful to receive. He scans her. She moves a bit, spreading out to be viewed more fully. When she lays like this, his thoughts usually go quiet. He usually listens the first time and gets all squirmy. 

She wants her nickname. She shuffles down until her legs are in his lap, his pen and notebook pinned under her calves. Folds her hands on her stomach. Looks at him expectantly. He’s smiling, confused. She wants him to say what he’s thinking. He almost never says what he’s thinking. 

Vision makes her weak and he makes her impatient. 

He still hasn’t given a voice to what she knows will be her favorite name. 

“You…” he narrows his eyes, “... want… my… You want me to…? Say thank you?”

She sighs. 

“Okay, that’s not it,” he rests a hand on her ankle, “Er… you want… you wantttt… to talk about care again.”

She sighs so hard it makes her dizzy. 

“Hmmm…” He taps an odd rhythm against her leg. “You can tell me in an hour, how’s that?”

Wanda sits up, wounded, and he laughs so hard that he has to remove his glasses to wipe his eyes. 

“You know it,” she tells him, so frustrated/bored/embarrassed that she needs to lay down - another Vision phrase that always makes her laugh. “Please.”

“... Ah.” Finally. 

Wanda tilts her chin up, closes her eyes, waits. 

“I’ll take a break in an hour,” he says again, then: “... darling.”

She melts. She can wait. Vision mirrors her syrupy smile and his face slowly goes pink.

It’s polarizing to be so strong and yet to act this way for this boy. She acts like a child because he allows her to. She was never allowed to cling or whine or demand before. She was never allowed to act like a child. A small thing on a shelf became a larger thing on a shelf. It was labeled with numbers, not a name but a code to log, and it was never told what it was meant to do. 

Something in her head turns on every time it happens - when she sees his lap free and shuffles forward until she’s in it, when she takes his hand and touches his hair. When she asks for something and receives it, when she receives something without asking. When things happen that don’t hurt, that don’t require the star, when Vision wants to talk to her and they speak about quite literally anything else. 

Vision does his work around her as she migrates to rest on top of him. He doesn’t tell her to move, not even once. He pretends, in fact, that nothing is different. 

It’s unclear if she’s trained herself in his way, trained herself to act and behave in the way she’s certain will get his attention. If he’s trained her on accident, following her demands when she’s particularly excessive. That’s the worry, that she’ll always be something of an experiment. Even free, even with Vision, she finds ways. She wonders if there is such a thing as happy science. If training herself to accept the good things is a good thing, if she is a good thing, if this is good because it feels good. 

She doesn’t know. She looks at Vision and she thinks about it. 

She likes Vision. He is the child of a scientist. And yet, the thoughts he holds for science are unfavorable. He likes language and he likes the brain, that is what he does at school. That’s what he reads, tonight, reads about pretty women with large hair who save the world, reads about their brains, their thoughts, their creations. He reads about languages and the way they’re used. (None of them are described as hopping. ) He reads and underlines in red ink. He thinks about her even as he fills himself with other things. 

He is the child of a scientist and… well, she supposes, so is she. 

Wanda worries that she replaces parts of herself with Vision. He doesn’t have the fire inside and yet he finds his way inside. She thought she had locked herself but sometimes it becomes clear that perhaps she hadn’t. Perhaps she had just never met someone who could find it. 

They have so many similarities that she fears she’ll lose her differences. 

Vision is an only child. Wanda is not - she was not. She can’t claim that she still is, even as it feels that way. She is the only person who has her blood, the only one remaining - the only child. The only child left, she supposes, is what she is. 

Vision has never cared for someone as he does for her. Neither has Wanda. But she cannot say that this is the same - she finds memories easily, memories of people who had gotten this close to him, memories that Vision hides. Something hidden isn’t something that never existed. But then, on top of it all... has Wanda hidden it too? 

A brother, yes, she had a brother and his name was Pietro. Surely there was care. Surely there was something left in the cracks of the grey walls. So much time spent inside, something good must have come out of it. Nothing can be all bad. 

She wants so badly to be the same as Vision. She likes him so much - if she can’t consume him, she wants at the least to mimic him. It’s hard to balance it. She would actively smother all of her differences if not for the worrying feeling that the differences mean something. Important. Bad important, at times, but a part of her nonetheless. 

If she is a tower of blocks, how is she meant to know which portions can go without the entirety crumbling? Why does it matter? Why does she think so much about these things now, now that it’s all over? 

When Vision does his work, she is left inside herself. She wishes it was boring inside, wishes it was normal. She is content with the way she is until she’s the only one looking at it. 

“Has it been an hour yet?” she asks the ceiling. 

Vision hums, “It has been… approximately five minutes.”

Wanda frowns. “How many minutes… are in an hour.”

“Sixty.”

She is tired of this. 

She waits another five. She counts it on her fingers, counts the seconds with blurry number-like shapes that hold no meaning. One and then two, she knows. She knows what numbers look like and she knows their names but their order is what mystifies her. Why they matter mystifies her. 

One and then two and then nine and then seven and then five. 

She wiggles her toes, silent plea for freedom. Vision lifts his laptop from her shins, waits for her to recede, and places it right back. His hand comes up to knock his glasses further up his nose, some of his hair sticking straight out to the sides where it’s parted by the temples. She wants to touch it and she wants to kiss every single individual hair and she wants to count them but she can’t. He has more than five. 

She takes her spot beside him, standing up on her knees, so incredibly tall. She kisses the crown of his head, soft blond hair she could live in if she tried. He doesn’t drop back to look at her, completely unfazed - or, his mind is buzzing and pleased yet his voice is silent. 

“Just fifty minutes to go,” he assures her. 

Fifty is bigger than five but she isn’t sure by how much. Seven and then five and then… ten? Then fifty? No.

Wanda waits for his focus and never receives it. Locked to his screen, shielded behind cute little black frames. The lenses make his eyes look a little bigger, shows all the pretty flecks of darker blue. She leans as close as she can before Vision’s covering her face with his hand, pushing her away with the most lovely, rumbly laugh. 

“You can watch some telly, if you’re so bored. It won’t distract me.” He nudges his glasses up again with his knuckles. “You’re making me nervous. You’re particularly wriggly.”

“I am not wriggly,” she says. “I’m Wanda.”

“Ha!” Vision erupts, nearly dropping his computer, wracked by a single-syllable laugh, “That’s - that’s - ! A joke! Well done!”

He always jests that he worries she may explode when she gets too thrilled for words but, truly, it feels like a possibility. 

“I’m funny,” she shines. 

He smiles at her, his happiness is so beautiful, before returning his eyes forward. He has little dimple lines. She has kissed them many times. “Too funny for your own good, darling.”

The star wraps itself around the explosion that occurs and keeps it contained. Every now and then, it remembers what it was meant to do. It smothers - but sparingly, now. It spares. It was never meant to spare.

She isn’t allowed to jump on him when he’s got everything set up like this but she wants to. Her hands are useless by themselves. They have minds of their own, or perhaps it is just the star that resides within them, but she plucks the glasses from Vision’s face and settles them on her own. 

“Oh,” she says, still holding tight to the arms of the frames, “Oh.”

“I’m farsighted,” he explains, “Um. Which… I… you don’t… know what that is.”

“When I see through your eyes, it’s much clearer than this,” she sweeps her attention around the room, upper body stiff and not at all fluid, awed by the blurriness. The dim sun that comes through the window is fuzzy as it streaks across the nearby couch cushions. She reaches out and lets the blurred light spill over her fingers, “This is… neat.”

Vision laughs. He reaches for them and she falls out of reach, bringing her legs above her head. It’s so blurry that her eyes begin to ache. A cool ache. 

“I’m not that blind,” he says, reaching for her again, “I see clearly. Just not good to strain for hours at a - Wanda, seriously, I’m not - hey. ”

She kicks his arms away with her feet, pushing back until she’s pressed against the other arm of the couch. She looks at him, cloudy and glowy, and she can see his white teeth flash at her when she kicks him again for good measure. (A delicate kick.) (She thinks.)

“I look cool in them.” She doesn’t even need to see her reflection to guarantee it. She knows it for certain. 

“Yes. Very stunning.” He grasps both of her ankles and holds them to the side, avoiding another attack, avoiding a blow to the face, “I mean it. Please give them back. Your lasers might burn through the lenses.”

“It’s my turn to wear them,” Wanda worms her way out of his grip. “Selfish.”

Vision gives her a look, “You’ll hurt your eyes, Wanda.”

“These little things can’t hurt me,” she says, her eyes very much hurting. She slides down against the cushions to knock her foot into his ribs again. He catches her leg before she can do so. “Fear me.”

“I’m very much capable of fear,” he replies, which she knows very well, “but I can’t quite fear you now. ”

The offense she feels is soft. The kind of offense that makes your lips turn up in a traitor smile when you need to seem angry. Inconvenient smile, inconvenient joy she’s too pleased with to give up.

“If I get a headache, it’s on your conscience,” he faces forward again, fingers straying to push up a pair of glasses he no longer wears, “For the record.”

“That’s okay,” she says. 

She has to focus very hard to stay outside of herself. He’s too blurry to appreciate and she pushes the frames up to rest in her hair. 

He has new bruises on his face. She has already kissed them better. His feet seem so determined to have him on the ground at all times. All those days they spent adventuring around the city, hand in hand and lip on lip, he was on the precipice of a tumble at all times. 

The bruises are pink and blue. She so badly wants to touch them, press them because she knows they don’t hurt. Vision would let her. He did before. He lets her do anything. 

She draws invisible lines of ink between the two little galaxies on his temple, the ones that curve over his cheek. It is a good way to pass the time. When she’s finished, she moves onto his speckles. His spots, gentle brown on pale cheeks. Even her invisible ink, the ink that does not exist, runs dry before she’s gotten to them all. 

He is pretty. He is hers. 

Wanda squints. 

He… is not breathing. 

She makes a funny noise as she wrestles herself into an upright position. “Vision.”

He isn’t blinking. Isn’t moving. Wanda reaches into his chest to feel his heart. Thankfully, it is still beating. Quite quickly. 

Wanda glances up to try and see past her own forehead. Thinking she’s diagnosed the issue, she carefully transfers the glasses back onto his face as if it may solve things. She sits back on her heels and waits for him to return. His eyelids flutter but not much else happens. 

She leans close and blows air right into his face. He blinks a million times, breaks out of his trance, looking up at her with glazed eyes. 

“Hello,” she pats his cheek, “What’s wrong?”

“... Mmmmm,” he says. 

Uh oh, Wanda thinks, that’s the sad boy noise. 

No time is wasted. The laptop is moved, the books pushed aside, and she clambers over to rest on his legs and get as close as she possibly can. She’s getting good at this, she thinks, protecting without burning. Palms on his jaw, tilting him back, getting so close that she can see the red from her eyes spill over his cheeks. 

“Tell me,” she smushes him, “Speak.”

“Nothing,” he lies. She holds him still before he can try to look back at the screen. His lenses are crooked again. She corrects it with a thumb.

“Speak,” she says again. “Don’t make me look.”

He presses his lips together. “School thing.”

Wanda nods, slow bob of the head, trying to encourage him, “More.”

The star reflects in the blue. “Just… er. My professor wants to see me after class. Tonight.”

“Okay,” she says, a wider nod, wanting more. 

“... That’s… typically a bad thing,” he breathes. Wanda presses her hand to his chest. She could push through it if she wanted and slow him down that way. A slow heart is not the same as a slow mind, though. “So. I’m. I. I - I tend to - tend to panic. ”

“I know.” Her fingers rub circles over his cheekbones. He closes his eyes. She saw this in a show. It works wonders, they said. “Why is it a bad thing?”

“Because it means it’s something I’ve messed up that’s so important that it requires face-to-face discussion. It’s more important than an email could explain.” Vision sinks down until she’s sitting on his ribs. Her hands fall away and he replaces them with his own, pressing his fingers into his eyes beneath his glasses. “I know what I did wrong, which makes it worse.”

“Why worse?” she looks down at him, her hair in his face that he doesn’t bother to brush away. “You are fixing it. You’ve been reading for hours.”

“I know what I’m going to be reprimanded for. Doesn’t matter if I’m trying to fix it. I’m not good at being reprimanded. I - I - I’m not good at being reprimanded, oh, God - “

“Vision,” she knocks on the top of his head, “Tell them that you’re fixing it.”

“ - I’m going to cry in front of my professor. Holy shit. This is where it happens. I’m going to have to move schools. I’m going to have to - “

“Tell them that you’re reading for hours,” she says. 

“ - fuck, oh, fuck, oh, fuck, I’m going to have to drop out, I’m going to - “

Wanda takes his words, places a stopper in his voice box for half of a second. He chokes, coughs a bit, finally meets her eyes with a wide and confused gaze. Wanda pats his chest to try and help him get his air back. 

“Don’t do that,” he splutters, grabbing at his throat, “Jesus, Wanda, what - “

“You go,” she smooths his wild hair back from his forehead, “and you say that you know what you did and that you’re fixing it.”

Vision shakes his head, “I - “

“You have been reading for hours,” she is firm this time which always does the trick. “If they rep - rem - remp-ri-man you, then they’re not very kind. And it shouldn’t matter if they aren’t kind.”

Vision sighs. She kisses it better, has to shuffle back far enough to reach him, bend in an uncomfortable way. His hands are on her back in seconds, resting just below the sharp elastic of the garment that squeezes her together, and he gets so tangled in her that he forgets he was ever crying. 

“Thanks,” he says. She lays flush against him. His feet are planted on the floor, legs bent at a perfect right angle, making a wonderful tabletop for her to rest on. “Thanks for… I’m sorry. I… yeah. I’m a mess.”

“I like it,” she promises, cheek on his chest, hearing his heart. 

“I like you.” He says it oddly. A lilt to the like, a reroute, a dodge. “Will you stay with me?”

Wanda nods, “I’m on you.”

“I meant…” he interrupts himself with a wheeze, she shakes as he laughs, “No, I meant, later. After my class, when I have this meeting. Will you stay?”

She feels that flutter in her body. Lightning but calm. 

She caresses his colorful temple. She has something colorful and something to caress. Exciting. “In here?”

“Mhm.”

Yes. She never asked to go inside. He asks her now. He asks fondly. He asks delicately. 

“Yes, boy,” she crawls up until her chin rests on his, “I’ll stay.”

“It might be boring,” he warns weakly. She makes sure to place herself in the perfect spot, so close he can’t refuse, and he rocks up to kiss her again. “I - I swear, I’ll not be so pathetic all the time. After exams, I’ll try to get myself together and you won’t have to talk me down from whatever - “

“Shh,” she smiles. 

“But I - “

“Shhhhhhhhhhhhh.”

Vision raises his eyebrows at her, “... I - “

“Shhhhhhhhhmmmmm.” (She shushes him until her mouth is on his. It’s a strange feeling.)

He laughs - so strange, cry then laugh and back again and back back again - hugging her tight. His nose is warm in her neck as is the breath he exhales. She registers contentment. And beyond. 

“I don’t know what I’d do,” he says into her skin, she cranes her neck for more purchase, “without you.”

“Cry,” she replies, petting his hair. “You would cry.”

“Accurate.” He sits up, then, or tries to underneath her. He tries to seem stern. He isn’t good at it. “Don’t… uh, d-don’t do that again. By the way.”

Wanda touches his eyelashes. He tries not to blink but he does. “Do what?”

“Uh... don’t... steal my breath?” A hand is brought up to his throat again, “That was so fucking weird. Like everything in my body went absolutely silent. Thought it was going to collapse.”

“Sorry,” she says. It worked, though. She can only be sorry to a certain degree. “Is it break time?”

Vision shrugs, “I tend to lose motivation after a panic attack. So.”

Wanda doesn’t really know what any of that means but she takes it as an acceptance. She kisses his bruises and kisses the lenses of his glasses. He smiles and allows her to do what she wants until he sweeps her up for tea. 

Vision isn’t sure if he’s paying attention in class or if he’s just really, really trying to seem like he is. The line is blurred. He doesn’t know if he started employing the posture of someone who was very intently paying attention on purpose or if it happened naturally. 

That’s the conundrum of overthinking. He thinks he is paying attention and he thinks he is doing it well. He also thinks that he is only thinking that he is paying attention. It’s a prison, in here. He’s known that for quite some time - but he’s never been so actively cognizant that someone else had noticed.

He doesn’t click his pen. 

Good job, Wanda says in his head. 

Thanks, he writes. His handwriting is more illegible than usual. That’s a feat in itself. 

Very good job, she says. There’s a phantom hand in his hair. You are okay. You are fixing it. 

Quite nice, this. When he leans back into her touch, it disappears. It wasn’t really there in the first place. 

He takes at least a page of actual notes, most of which are either reminders of the exam dates he’d somehow forgotten about (two days left) or very loose connections to Wanda. He has a two-track mind, two distinct opposites, the bad things and Wanda.

He sits and tries his best to learn through the fog of priority. Nearly jumps out of his skin when everyone stands almost in tandem, their seats clattering closed, the rustle and rumble of people gathering their things to leave. 

I’ll stay, Wanda says as he hesitantly moves to stand and drag his own belongings into his bag. 

He hums. More than anything, he wishes he could reply. If only there were a pen and pad in his head, at the least one he knew how to control. It would be so much easier to thank her, to love her, to tell her. 

Vision takes his time, lets the room empty just a bit before he begins his walk of shame down the long runway and toward the front of the hall. Weaving through tired and blank bodies, non-star nonsense, apologizing each time someone else bumps into him. The voice in his head mutters about how rude they are. 

He’s too distracted, reaching the front of the room, the lectern there, the woman who stands with folded hands atop it. 

Professor Kohli. There’s hardly any light in here and yet she casts a shadow. Metaphorical walls full of awards - Vision saw them, saw the list. When he registers for classes, he always investigates the people teaching them. They often have thin biographies. (Thin like fake biographies, thin like false coworker descriptions on a red and black site, repeated images and falsehoods.) 

Most pages list family members, hometowns, other institutions. They list their accomplishments. Of all the people he’s looked through, Kohli had the most extensive repertoire. 

He is terrified. 

“... Hello,” he says. His voice echoes. Not once has he ever been up at the front like this. It’s a plenum for sound. 

“Hi,” she smiles, posture straight and eyes kind. He’s never seen them up close, they are complete strangers. She takes a deep breath, the kind you take to say long night, the kind you take to say it’s going to be a bit longer, now. “Vision, is it?”

“Yes,” he interlocks his hands behind his back. He forgot his bag was back there. He nearly jams his fingers on it. “Y - uh - yes, that is… me.”

Kohli chuckles at him. Not in the necessarily unkind way. More of an oh, you poor thing way. She must be a mother. (She is a mother. Of two. Five and seven, both girls. Although, who knows when that page has been updated.)

“Nice to finally meet you,” she offers, which he’s certain is a formality, and she does not extend her hand. Thank goodness. “I enjoyed your paper on Montagu.”

 It feels like a moment of appeasement before he’s shoved into a snake pit. An attempt is made to grin and bear it. 

“Thank… er, thank you. Ma’am.” He wants to die.

Tell her you are working on it, Wanda prompts, ever so helpful, tell her you know. 

The professor looks at him expectantly. Likely anticipating that he’ll collapse. Which is a fair assessment. 

“I… I think I know what I’ve done,” he begins, fidgeting behind his back, “and I’ve been… fixing… it.”

Very good, Wanda says.

“What you’ve… done,” she repeats. A hand is raised, a collection of gold bangles sliding down around her forearm, clanking together, “Okay. I realize I should clarify.”

He wants to lay down on the ground, curl up, take a nap. Unfortunately, he has things to do when he gets home. No time to slow down now, no time to slow down later. It is quite literally… all downhill from here. 

Vision simply nods. Waits for the wave. 

“Your marks are excellent,” Kohli says, which isn’t at all what he had anticipated, “and you’re doing well in that regard. If you’re attempting to fix something regarding academics, particularly in this field… well, there’s simply nothing to fix.”

He doesn’t understand. “I don’t understand.”

Her many rings clank against the lectern as she places her palms onto it, “Our exam is held on Monday. I assume you have others.”

Curt nod, trying to swallow his anxiety. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Preparation is not exclusively found within the reading,” she continues. It seems like she’s trying to lead him to some realization. He doesn’t get it. She seems to notice. “Rest, for example.”

“I don’t… I don’t? Understand?” The consequences he was expecting are absent and it makes it more ominous somehow.

She taps her hand once, studying him. “Are you... aware that you’re standing at a forty-five degree angle?”

Vision was not. He straightens his posture. It does appear that he’s sinking into himself, exhausted and a bit shaky. It’s no doubt that he looks like somewhat of a zombie. 

He receives another smile. It’s a familiar one. He doesn’t mean to stare. 

“Two days, roughly,” she steps back, hands clasped in front of her, clearly the end of their brief meeting, “More than enough time to prepare.”

Vision knows he should turn to leave. He nods again, takes that step back, timid smile on his lips. He should pivot but he’s stuck staring at a stranger’s face that wears such a familiarity behind the eyes. A stranger that seems like she knows him. 

“Do you…” He tilts his head, really wondering if he should say the words. “Do you know my… mother, perchance?”

The smile does not widen, necessarily. Perhaps it’s just a trick of the lights. She doesn’t respond. It’s a response in and of itself. 

“Thank you,” he says quietly. 

(He is grinning to some degree. He can feel it. Grinning at the nonsense, at the image of two old and accomplished friends calling each other one night, swapping tales of a half-dead boy in the back of a crowded room. Probably laughing. Objectively funny, two scientific mothers on the phone. Funny that this conversation resulted.) 

Vision backs up a few steps before finally, after offering another weak and suspicious glance, pivoting and rushing his way back up the runway between the aisles. 

You did it! Wanda cheers. He can imagine her falling back into the couch cushions with her arms over her head, victorious. 

“I did,” he says to an empty hallway, swinging his bag around to rest on his hip. He grasps onto the buckle of the strap where Wanda’s hand is absent. A glance over his shoulder to make sure he isn’t being monitored by another one of his mum’s apparent spies. “Thanks for staying.”

You didn’t need me as much as you thought, she offers, somewhat of a congratulation. 

“To be fair,” he mutters, another suspicious look around before shouldering his way into the stairwell, “I hadn’t anticipated… that. It was…” he shudders, “... like my mum was throwing her voice. Strange.”

Throwing her voice, Wanda echoes. She sounds equal parts fascinated and horrified. 

“Nevermind.” 

He’s still wearing this stupid smile. 

(A memory. Year seven, twelve years old. One week after he woke up to find that his parents’ room was half-emptied, one week after Helen woke up to find that her room was half-emptied. The armchair was vacant and cold and the cars had been halved. Vision’s teachers began to ask about his drawings, began to ask about his model planes, began to greet him in the halls. About three weeks, it lasted. The most Vision ever talked during those years. He stopped once he heard his mum on the phone one night, talking to his Maths teacher, checking on his progress. It made sense then.)

Care is somewhat juvenile by nature. It’s humiliating to receive the same treatment with nearly a decade spanned between ages. But he wanted this. It’s only embarrassing when there are eyes on him. 

Unfortunately, when he’s about halfway home, the initial message he was given has been twisted and torn into somewhat ragged pieces in the palm of his hands. 

The rest part is overshadowed by the preparation. And preparation, as he walks and overthinks and overconsiders, becomes work. And work… will require much more time. 

Wanda greets him at the door, jumping up onto him, ankles digging into his back. She pulls his bag away, drops it to the ground, something clattering inside, and he huffs out a laugh. 

“Hello,” he says, nose in her neck, tight hug and kiss that greet him every day and every night. So good to be home. She creaks and kisses his ear. He holds her higher, closer, full of residual anxiety and the spurred motivation to do more, work more, prepare. 

“Good job, Vision,” she says, patting him in every place she can reach. Smiling so wide. Pride with two reservoirs. “Very good. Well done. Fantastic. Mmmagnificent.”

“Okay, that’s excessive,” he scoffs and he soaks it up anyway. “I was being dramatic. Nothing to be praised for.”

She ignores him, climbing down, taking his hands, pulling him, parading him, “We can start the new show, now. The new box set.”

He stops in his tracks. She stumbles a bit. 

“Can’t,” he says, and he’s sorry, and she’s visibly confused. “I, er… have a long day tomorrow. Should probably lay down, get as much rest as I can before the morning.”

Wanda is giving him the look that the women in his life often give him when he’s being ridiculous. When he’s being foolish to a baffling degree. 

“... Boy,” she swings his arms.

“I’ll leave for the library around seven,” he says, then checks his watch, lifting Wanda’s arm as well, “Which gives me… around… mm, eight hours of sleep, if we lay down now.”

“Seven?” her eyebrows draw together, squeezing gently and yet still shifting bones, getting so much better at this and yet unable to keep herself from latching and keeping and holding, “Eight hours?”

“I’ll bring my notebook with me,” he begins to plan, leads the way down the hall, Wanda pushing bucketloads of confusion right behind his eye sockets as she follows close behind. “So you can talk to me, y’know, and I can reply. It’ll probably take a while. There’s only so much preparation I can get from the source material given, you know, if I’m trying to catch up then I’ll have to go above and beyond.”

Wanda crashes into his back when he stops by the bed, stepping on the backs of his shoes to get them off. 

“You’re not making any sense,” she says, tugging at his hand to reclaim his attention. “She said you are fine.”

“Preparation wasn’t in the reading, the assigned reading, there’s a lot left to be done,” he crawls onto the bed, phone digging into his leg within his pocket. He holds his arms out to her, “More than enough time to prepare, she said.”

Wanda frowns at him, “Boy, I don’t… think that is… what she meant.”

He opens and closes his hands, a silent request that he’s often only on the receiving end of. She jumps on him. The bones that they bare click into place.

“It’ll be fine,” he kisses her temple and the lights flicker off. “I think I’ve… almost got things under control.”

Vision is shaken awake by a fully dressed Wanda approximately eight hours later. 

She wears her outside clothes, socks in place and shoes untied, as well as the scarf she had been fascinated by. It’s not scarf season anymore but he’s not going to mention it. He can’t really voice anything, hands on his chest pressing him up and down and performing somewhat of a reverse-CPR. 

“Good morning,” she says which he appreciates, taking her hands away which he appreciates, “Time to go.”

“Time… to… go… where?” he slides his fingers over his chest, making sure there aren’t any unfamiliar concaves where the pressure had been. It feels fine. He’s far too blurry in the brain to analyze why he reaches up and wraps his hand in the part of her scarf that hangs down, holds it as if it were a hand. “Wanda?”

“Library.” Spoken as if he’s a fool for even asking. Fair. She bends at the knee, reaching below the bed, before presenting his shoes, “Let’s go.”

He stares. She really does look cute in that scarf but that isn’t the point. “You’re… you want to come with me?”

“Yes.” Extended shoes, straight arms, threatening to drop them on his stomach. 

“...” Vision rubs his eyes. “It won’t be fun.”

Wanda huffs at him. The rounded front of his shoes are missiles right into his abdomen. He scrambles to gather them up with sleepy arms. 

“You asked me to stay,” she says, taking his ankle and dragging him toward the end of the bed, “You don’t make it easy. ”

Last time he checked, he weighed more than a pound. Wanda makes him feel like he could float away. In at least two ways.

Libraries aren’t very fun. 

They could be fun. If she’d be allowed to fix them. 

Each and every time she tries to make things float or rearrange or slide the pen out of his hand, she receives a glare. He snatches the pen from the air and continues as if nothing has changed, as if he isn’t endlessly impressed by her. 

In this particular room more than ever, it is clear just how much Wanda could do. So many small pieces, easily shatterable and flammable, placed in clean and neat rows for the taking. The more she focuses on Vision’s pretty concentration face, the more her periphery beckons. They sit at a small round table in a dim corner of the library, a small city of book stacks on the tabletop and resting by Vision’s feet. The overhead light catches his hair, makes him glow gold, and he leans into her touch each time without fail when she reaches for him. 

Libraries are pretty but they aren’t meant to house her. She is very much a risk, she thinks. 

Vision surprises her in this way. He stresses and worries and frets about the things that don’t matter - terms like priori and inoculation, strings of sentences that flow jagged yet dull, diagrams that bleed through thin pages. 

He has brought a fire inside a building filled to the brim with paper. 

He trusts her to contain it. He doesn’t know the extent to the fire and he trusts her to contain it. 

So she does. She picks up the books that he finishes, brushes her fingers over his as she claims them, slides them to rest in front of her, flips through them mindlessly. Vision snickers when she leans forward and presses her face to the pages, the no-longer new smell of paper and ink and plastic covering. The words are underlined with her nails as she traces them, feels them, pretends to read as intently as he is. 

It’s a frustrating day. 

The boy flicks his way through tens of books, takes scratchy and beautiful notes, takes hours and hours and hours to read books on the exact same topics. The star wants to burn and she has to tell it no. She wants to talk and drag his attention back to her, regain the warmth that he wastes on non-living things, make him laugh. 

Laughing isn’t quiet enough for libraries, it seems. When Vision speaks, he whispers. She likes the sound. It buzzes in her ears, especially when he leans close to answer a question she has about a word in a book she isn’t reading. When Wanda says why are you talking like that? in her normal volume, Vision kindly presses a finger to her lips in a half-panic. 

Can’t talk. Can’t make things float. Can’t blow things up. Can’t eat around the books. 

No fun at all. 

After a few more hours, Wanda begins to wilt. Not tired, necessarily, but rather the product of a broken spirit. (Vision’s dramaticism is contagious.) She slides down in her chair until her knees press to the side of Vision’s thigh. She fiddles with the sleeves of his jacket that she pulled on before they left, she really likes it, the jacket that she drowns in as she puddles and waits for him to be finished. 

He doesn’t pay her any mind, even when she steps inside it. His stress has risen steadily as if placed on a knob that neither of them control. The boy bites his nails and stares intently at words, copies them down, moves on. His legs begin to bounce and he clicks his pen dozens of times. It isn’t fun for him either. 

Necessary is the word in his head. It isn’t fun but it is necessary. 

Wanda bites the inside of her cheek, observing. 

She knows how to distract him, now. His soul and mind, they contain some sort of wall with little lightbulbs on it. Wanda doesn’t know the name for it. It’s the place where happiness is felt, where sadness is felt, of course they shine differently. The brighter the lights shine, flickering on and off with every action, the less focused he is. Not every person has an easily accessible switch like this, not one with her name on it. Not every person trusts her so implicitly. 

Wanda sits up. She wraps her fingers around the seat of her wooden chair and scoots forward in it. Once, twice, little hops. It skids against the hard floor. 

Vision hums, not looking up, thumbnail between his teeth. 

She shuffles close until the wooden legs of two different chairs are pressed together. Wanda lifts her legs up and into his lap, just like at home, a couch away from home. 

“Vision,” she whispers. 

“Mm.”

“Vision.”

“Mm?”

“Boy.”

“Yes.” He sends her a brief glance, blink and you miss it, before looking forward again, “Hungry? I can step out with you for a few minutes for a snack.”

She has that funny hungry feeling, yes, but it is the one that occurs when he’s far away. She moves forward until she’s on his lap. He cranes his neck to see around her. She’s trying to distract him but it seems he’s too distracted to be distracted. 

Wanda kisses his cheek. 

“Thank you,” he murmurs. 

She does it again. Vision squints, leans back at her, seems to know her motive. 

“Wanda,” he says. She thrills at the sound of her name after so many hours of not hearing it. “You’re being suspicious.” Then, glances around, hands gripping his book and not her, “Have you done something?”

She glares at him. Returns to her own seat. Scoots all the way to the other end of the table. Crosses her arms. Looks away. 

Vision is smiling and she can feel it and it only makes her more frustrated. “Alright, then.”

His legs shake so much that they begin to shake the table. His shoes squeak, he stops for a moment, then starts again. Wanda watches him fill up five pages of notes, front-to-back, before he’s closing it. This makes her excited. She wants to be able to make noise again. 

“I’ll be back,” he says, scooping up a tall stack of books and standing. “Have to put these back before I can get new ones.”

“... New… ones?” Her tightly folded arms relax a bit as he begins to walk toward the tall maze of shelves. 

“Won’t be but a tick,” he tells her right before he disappears. 

Wanda looks across the table. There are many more books left to put back. She’s impatient and she wants to go home. She could walk back now but she wants Vision to come with her. Ideally, she’d be carried. 

She blinks at the book city around her feet. They disappear. She thinks they’re placed back on their shelves, she hopes they have been, and she’s wandering around to clean up his mess. Notebook and pen tucked into his bag that she pulls over her head. It’s too tall for her, resting almost down to her knee, but it doesn’t matter. He always acts like it’s too heavy to bear but it may as well be filled with feathers. 

She follows. She weaves through alley-like bookshelves, narrow and dark, to find him inspecting the spines of a few books with his eyebrows drawn together. 

His bag knocks against her legs as she walks toward him. 

Vision looks up, smiles at her, looks back at the books, makes a face, and meets her eyes again.

“Um?” he turns a bit to face her, “What - why do you have my - w-why - why are you looking at me like that?”

Wanda means to stop walking but she can’t stop, instead reaching out for him and pressing him back into the shelves. His eyes go wide, then flutter closed as she kisses him. 

It’s the kind of kiss people share in an alley. 

Vision squeaks. He grasps at the unzipped sides of the jacket she wears, grasps at the ends of the scarf, breathes heavy through his nose. She successfully distracts him. She successfully rids his mind of the pesky things that don’t matter, the things that are not her. 

“Wanda,” he whispers, standing up, putting space between them. This is a confusing action. She can feel his Want. “W-w- wuh- we can’t do this here.”

“Why not?” she whispers back. He’s still holding onto the jacket. 

“B-because? Because. Because it’s - this is - we’re - you - “

Wanda does not smile but she feels the warmth. She likes making him skip like this. It’s the only way that his language can hop. 

Vision is fidgeting with the fabric in his hands, stuttered breath and stuttered words, stress dissolved and replaced with something else. He scans the space around them as if afraid of something. 

“You have done enough,” she says. 

“Actually, there’s - hm, okay, this - I don’t know… what to do.” He twists his hands, thinking, looking at her, caring about her, “You can’t - of all places for this, I don’t think the public library is - “

He is too logical. He wants to go home and she wants to go home and it feels as though this should be a simple plan. “But we’ve been here all day.”

Vision presses his lips together. She tries to touch them but he takes her wrist and gives her a weak look. 

“Listen…” he says, “I… if you’ll give me another hour, we can go home.”

She shakes her head, “We’re leaving now.”

“Wanda - “

“Helen said you needed to be safe,” she wrings out of his loose grip and pats his stomach, “You should do what Helen says.”

He squints at her, “... I’m… I’m begging you not to mention her right now.”

She looks down between them. Her shoes are together as she stands between his legs. She glances up at him, “Why?”

Vision sighs. Slumps. She hugs his waist to keep him up - and, mostly, because she misses him. 

“If you like her so much,” he mutters, his lights flickering green, “why don’t you move in with her?”

“Vision,” Wanda says. She comes close, hands on his jaw, squishing his cheeks together, “I do not want to kiss your mother.”

“Wow,” he tries to nod but she holds him too strongly, his eyes somewhat blank, “Thank you, Wanda. Really, that’s… really comforting.”

She beams. She transfers his bag back to him, all loose ends tied, and climbs up onto his back. Vision wobbles a bit, her legs like handles as he hoists her up to a comfortable position. She presses her cheek to the back of his neck and sighs. 

It feels so good to save someone. 

It feels good to get what she wants. 

Chapter Text

The dream doesn’t make any sense. 

Some of them do, most of them do. No names, just the faces, just the grey and the red that they pressed into her eyes. Sometimes the sound of electricity and sometimes the sound of a child’s voice, she thinks it’s hers and she thinks she was afraid but it isn’t her anymore so it shouldn’t matter. She shouldn’t dream about the things in the past, especially when she can’t even truly remember it enough to picture it. 

Dialogue muddled by time and the chalk in the back of her throat, chalk that took her ability to move like she wanted - it didn’t let her sleep, no, simply allowed the star to take her strings and walk her forward. 

It’s a sour dream and she wakes up shouting - Vision calls it screaming but Wanda doesn’t scream, she doesn’t yell - and she wakes up in his lap, his arms heavy and warm and his chest bare and he’s soft and bruised and bleeding. 

“Hey,” he says. His lips press to the back of her head as he hugs her, kisses her, keeps her safe from something he can’t possibly reach inside and remove. “Awake? With me, Wanda?”

She makes a sad boy noise. She can feel something tacky on her hands, underneath her nails, and she retrieves them from inside Vision’s arms. He hisses quietly, kisses her hair again to dull the noise. 

“Sorry,” she says, whispered. It has more syllables than she expects, skipped noise. “I’m sorry.” 

“S’okay,” he murmurs and he means it and she feels the way he means it. Her chest moves up and down as she pants, the elastic band is digging into her ribs on each breath. “I don’t mind. Truly. It’s… it’s alright, you’re - I’m here and you’re with me. And I like to be here. Alright?”

He holds her and she holds him. Two real people. She leans into his chest, head back against his bare shoulder. Her eyes are so red that they illuminate the room, no other colors present, and it feels as though she’s surrounded herself. Trapped herself. 

“Vision,” she says, one of three words she thinks she remembers. I and sorry and Vision. 

He pets her hair down, breathing into the back of her neck, swaying her. The bed shifts underneath them, groans almost inaudibly, low to the left and high to the right. She feels heavier than she ever has, her blood and her body, but it can’t be her. It’s the stuff around her, pushing her down in all the places that Vision’s arms aren’t. 

“What I wouldn’t give,” he says into her hair, speaking half to her and half to himself, “to take all of this from you.”

It makes her feel better in a sour way. Glad he wants to, glad he can’t. Glad he holds her, glad he knows why he shouldn’t and glad he does anyway. 

His shirt is gone and she doesn’t know when it happened. The room is hot. She tries to get closer and she finds as she always has that Vision is so real that she can’t fade into him, can’t step into him in this way. 

“It’s okay,” he says. 

Wanda wraps herself in his thoughts and she clings to them and she worries they’ll bleed too. 

“It’s okay,” he says. She worries she messed with time again. She worries she looped this moment forever. He kisses her then, dissuades the thought that he can’t even know is there, and says it again, softer, different, “It’s okay.”

The dream didn’t make sense and it frustrates her because she knows it isn’t really a dream. It happened before. Real. Part of her wants it to make sense so that she might understand herself. So that she might help Vision understand.

Vision holds her and wishes he can take it away, wishes he could do what she does - but if he were to do what she does, he would have these memories too.

“Alright,” Vision says. He gathers her up in his arms as if she’s a pile of clothes, scoots to the edge of the bed, low to the left. She doesn’t cling because she fears she won’t be able to let go. “What do you say to some television? Eh?”

Wanda is confused. She’s carried out of the hot room into the less-hot hall, the almost-cool living room. He settles in the center cushion, ankles propped up on the table, and she’s settled on his lap where she belongs. 

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. I and sorry and Vision. 

“Oh, no, no,” he smiles in the dark, blindly fumbling for the remote with one hand on her stomach as she rests against his chest. (He found the remote. She’d hidden it behind the books on the shelves, the ones he usually doesn’t read.) “No need to apologize, darling, you know that.”

All I can say, she sends him.

“Ah.” He pulls her hair back from her shoulders with a hand, cool air rushing against the sweating skin there, his panic dulling and just leaving the fondness. “Well. As long as you know.”

She does. She knows what she needs and she knows what’s no need. 

The television flickers on. It’s odd to have someone else turn it on. He flips to the menu of an old disc, hits play on an episode they’ve already seen, tosses the remote aside and holds her with both hands again. 

“Always cheers me up when I’ve had a bad dream,” he says, chin on her shoulder, tired smile clear in his voice. Wanda brings her hands up hesitantly to touch Vision’s arms, up and down, from the elbow to his shoulder and back down to the bone of his wrist. She really doesn’t know when his shirt left but she likes him a lot, likes him when she can feel him like this. “You watch until your eyes get heavy and then you dream about whatever you saw last. Easy trick, I think. Deceptively accessible, temporary safety.”

She is on her five-hundredth ink-covered canvas in her mind. She doesn’t know what five hundred looks like but she knows it’s vast. She drags another page up, clips it to a wire, looks around for the bucket that always refills. 

Vision doesn’t have canvases. He doesn’t know how to do them. He doesn’t know how to respond through a vine he doesn’t have, he doesn’t know how to paint his feelings out. They sit in his chest and his head and his heart and Wanda drinks them up because she knows that they, too, always refill.

He is warm and he doesn’t know how to be anything else. She takes the bucket in her hands and splashes it up, covers the entire white space. It’s full again when it clunks on the ground, when she runs to grab another blank page, when the ink drips down her arms and stains the edges of the paper in fingerprint-sized spots. 

Wanda sits in the circle of his arms and she paints and paints and paints until her arms ache and her feet hurt from running around on the rough concrete of her own mind. Always rough concrete, never any shoes. She can’t escape that. She can’t drag her shoes inside. 

Vision laughs at something on the screen. Small wheezed laugh punctuated by a kiss on the cheek. It’s somewhat of a cue, she thinks. Wanda wants to laugh too but she’s so tired. Just a pile of clothes. 

There was fire in the dream. There’s always fire in the dream. Tonight it was… all of them. Overlaid, tangled, so bright they burned the eyes from miles and miles away, burned without the heat. Like a torch at its highest setting, like the sun itself. Wanda has only ever seen the sun in a memory that she was never given permission to steal from Vision. Of course, she tells herself that she stole it and, therefore, it is hers now. 

So, yes, she has seen the sun. And it is warm, warm like a boy without a shirt. She has seen the sun and she’s looked it in the eye and it is just one fire on top of another on top of another. Clipped to a cloud. Wanda knows clouds too. She sleeps in them. 

“There we go,” Vision praises, sounds overlapping as his fingers interlock on her stomach. 

Wanda must have done something. She doesn’t know. Her head has moved, though, back against him, neck useless. He kisses the space behind her ear. Maybe it’s her calm breath or it’s the way she’s gone slack, cemented herself against him, the tension of a real-but-not-here dream fading.

“That’s the way,” he says and she covers his hands with hers, “All better.”

Not better, but thank you, she doesn’t say. 

She must fall asleep then. She opens her eyes to a morning, maybe a late afternoon, with her head on Vision’s thigh as he flips through pages and writes down notes and continues his stressful nonsense despite her many efforts over the day previous to get him to stop. 

“Mmh,” she says, shifting her temple on the soft fabric of his pants. 

“Ah, afternoon, Wanda,” Vision says. She likes his fondness. Yellow like the eye of a flower. Yellow like his happiness and a hundred other things. “You slept well, I think. Slept long.”

“Mm.”

He snickers, hand on her head, threaded through her hair for far too short a time before grabbing for his pen again. “Feel free to sleep longer. I know you find this part boring.”

It is. It is boring. When she sits in a room with her boy, when she shares his space, she expects to feel as exquisite as she did the first day they met. She expects his eyes and his hands. She wants to be clicked like his pen. 

She sighs. His thoughts beckon even as the connection had been broken when she slept. 

Anxiety and fascination. Worry and exhaustion. Care, too, somewhere among the traffic. Tall and pink.

Her hands are folded under her cheek and she moves them to inspect them. Vision must have cleaned them while she slept somehow. She knew she felt something there, sticky on her fingers and drying in the creases, but it's all gone now. Once, then twice, she checks them. He pretends not to notice when she looks up to him for an answer.

His shirt is back. She has half a mind to shuffle up and pop her head underneath. If not for an explanation, then to be warm. She wants his thoughts again and she wants them disorganized in the pretty way, the way that wears her name. 

“Today’s the last day of this, I promise.” He licks his thumb and flicks a page, heavy sigh, “Exams tonight. Tonight and tomorrow and then you’ll be free of it.”

She rolls on her back, then again to face Vision. She leans forward until her forehead presses to his shirt, taking a deep breath. Vision laughs again. He smells like cinnamon again and she feels better. Burned cinnamon, though, the wearing of the gears in his head smoking the sensation. 

“Free of what?” she asks into his shirt. He squirms a bit and his head sounds like static. 

“... Er. School. My? School?” He clicks his pen. “I’ll have a month or so of a break before next term starts.”

She can feel her face scrunch up. Confusion and then, upon repeating his words in her head, betrayal.

It isn’t over? He’ll be doing this forever?

She has waited this long, has tolerated his infuriating mental disorganization, but she’s meant to bear it forever?

Wanda pushes herself to sit. Vision clears his throat, crosses his ankles, pulls his laptop further up on his legs now that they aren’t half-obstructed by her head.

She looks at him, pretty and ruffled and sleepy, crooked glasses and speckled face. She pokes his cheek when he doesn’t immediately give her what she needs. His focus lingers forward as he turns, still reading, before slowly sliding to her. 

“Yes?” he asks. 

His stress is visible in three (she thinks) ways. He knows he can’t hide it and yet he tries to. The worry is as visible as his attempts to cover it. He’s no good at smothering things. His only practice has been with his feelings. They leak through his fingers just as they leak through Wanda’s.

“Tonight and tomorrow,” she says, “and then I’ll be free of it.”

Vision smiles. He nods. He goes to face forward again. Her hand shoots out to grab his chin and he makes a funny sound in the back of his throat, blue eyes wide and pink around the edges. 

“You’ll be free of it too,” she says. 

He leans out of her hand, her fingers slipping away despite the invisible stubble, only to press a kiss to the pad of her thumb. 

“I suppose.” He hums as Wanda pushes his glasses up on his nose. “It’ll be good, I think, after the next few days. I’ll get to fret about the things that actually matter.”

“Fret,” she echoes.

Vision is preoccupied again, preoccupied by his fret. Wilted flowers in dried soil. White petals yellowed. Crisped leaves that will fall as soon as a breeze picks up. 

She itches to pick them - if it will make his eyes return to normal, return to her. She’s done it before, hide them. But she could… she could take them, save him, rip them. If she wanted. He always says that, if you want. She can leave and she can take his emotions out if she wants, he says, and they are both very fortunate that she doesn't.

Wanda stands up on the couch cushions. Vision tilts toward her a bit, the couch barely bowing under a weight that she barely has. 

“What are you doing?” he asks, the corners of his lips turning upward. He flips his filled notebook page, sticking his pen between his teeth as he types and finds something supposedly interesting to write down. “I’ll break in half an hour.” A short pause, brief glance, “That’s thirty minutes.” Then, again, “About the length of an episode of your show. Give or take.”

Give or take. 

“I want to sit behind you,” she tells him, shoving her leg between his back and the cushions to move him forward. He scoots, offers a perfect Wanda-spaced cubby that she quickly occupies. 

Legs out to the sides, boy between, arms around his chest like a belt, like an elastic band that cuts. He leans back into her just as she’s taught him to. They fit splendidly, no space for air to fit between. She won’t let it in. 

“I know I always ask,” Vision begins his speech again, she’s heard it so many times, but she’s never felt the vibration of the words. She hugs him tighter to chase it. He makes his you’re crushing me noise but continues anyway, “But you can talk about it, if you’d like. The dream. The one last night or any of them from before.”

“No,” she pats his chest with two hands and she feels as though she’s part of a two-person drum, “thank you.”

“I just…” he shakes his head and she kisses the back of it, “I just. I think… It might be good, you know. Talk about it. You haven’t in a while, talked about it, and I know you’re bored out of your mind and we’ll be here for a bit a-and I - I know you’re still thinking about it because I - “

“You’re meant to be doing school,” she says. 

He looks over his shoulder at her. “Chos multi-task.”

Wanda tugs him back. Something breaks inside, she hears it. It’s difficult to let go. He takes his little breath between his teeth and says nothing. “I don’t know how to talk about it.”

He tilts back to look at her again because he always looks at her. Even with his eyes closed, there’s a picture in there somewhere. 

“That’s… well, that’s alright, darling, you don’t have to know,” he kisses her face, low and close to the jaw, “You just do it, really. Say a few words and the rest follow.” 

She slides her hands up to his shoulders, then up to his temples, and it’s odd to do so when he’s sitting like this. Awkward, she thinks the word is, an awkward position. 

“I don’t have the few words,” she whispers, “There’s nothing to follow.”

“Maybe I could help?” Vision looks hopeful as if he could. There is nothing to help because there is nothing to follow. “Wanda?”

“No,” she presses his temples, “thank you.”

He has to do school and he’s terrified of it and he doesn’t want to be and he’s frustrated by it. She pushes until she finds the fear and, when he winces again, she stops with the flowers at her feet. Wilted flowers dying for water but who will not accept it. 

The floors of Vision’s mind are blue carpet. Dead flowers peeking up out of freshly steamed carpet. Bright and blue like an ocean she’s never seen. Bright and blue like a pair of eyes she knows all too well. 

She wiggles her toes and she bends to pick them up. 

“Wanda,” Vision says, outside. 

No, she sits beside them. Legs folded around them, folded with just enough space for Vision to sit between. Good enough space for all possible flowers he could have, any he could grow and any he’s already killed. 

They’ll all fit. 

“Wanda,” he says again. There’s a hand on the leg of a body she does not currently stand inside. “Hey.”

She can’t pick something that’s already dying. It doesn’t seem kind. She finds a blanket on the carpet and she drags it over them. Hides them. Then, standing, she finds the thoughts connected to the flowers, the light that shines on them, and wraps her fingers in them and drags them away as well. Right out of his view. 

He sighs outside and she joins him again. She touches her way down his face, down his neck, down to his shoulders and back to his stomach. 

He is relieved. She gives him peace and a moment out of the light and he is relieved. She registers it and it feels so good. 

But Vision pauses. 

And he looks at her. 

And he sees the star even after it’s receded. 

And the relief is soured, just a tad. 

“Wanda,” he takes her hands, turns in her arms, looks as though he is solving her, “What are you doing?”

“Helping you,” she says.

Wanda stays for his exams. Practically perched on his shoulders. He can imagine her heels digging into his stomach as he hunches forward, nose practically touching the paper as he scrawls over rough paper. She observes the boring things wordlessly. Dozes, likely. 

Professors curate their own exams. They design them. Build them. Their babies, really, the exam at the end of the term. 

In a logic course of all things, he’d expect the professor to curate something… hm… logical? Something that made sense?

There are only so many essay responses he can give on the concept of validity. He flips the page, honestly scandalized by how thrilled he is to see a sheet’s worth of multiple-choice questions.

It’s a breeze.

Wanda yawns. 

He doesn’t laugh. He strikes through with confidence. Easy to know what answer is expected of him when he’s given a concise list of options. Easy to know an answer that’s already given. 

There’s a hum, an illusion, as if right by his ear. 

You got them correct, she says thoughtfully.

Vision stares hard at the page. He doesn’t know if that means what she thinks it means. 

The smart ones said them too.

Vision grimaces. He slides a blank sheet of paper across the desk and writes as best he can, full sentences, important to clarify: Don’t tell me that. That’s unfair. 

I want you to win. 

He scoffs quietly. He can’t help it. The professor looks up, searching for the source of the noise, and he ducks his head and pretends to focus. 

It’s not a matter of winning, darling. (He hesitates to write it, the name. It feels silly. But she likes it so much.) I mean it. Don’t tell me. 

… Alright.

She goes silent for a while. He answers ten questions. 

Then, when will you return?

Vision gnaws at his lip. One more exam after this. I have two tomorrow. 

She makes a long, annoyed whine. He has to cross his legs under his desk. 

Tonight and then tomorrow and then I’ll be free of it. 

Wanda does that sometimes, repeats the things he says like that. Repeats ideas. The strangest things to remember, the strangest things to say. He often wonders if he says things wrong, if he should stop speaking altogether. 

He writes a checkmark on the free page.

She sighs, settles back on his shoulders, plays with his hair. He doesn’t move too much or else the feeling will disappear.

One exam finished. He walks down to the front to turn it in, just the packet without the blank paper it came with, and the professor doesn’t seem to notice. He rushes to the next one, brings his Wanda tally, settles in the back, waits for the second collection of hours staring at pages and desperately trying to summarize the past few months of his life but only the boring parts. 

Whatever Wanda did, it seems to have worked. Studying and that, the combination, it helps him remember the boring parts. 

Well done, Wanda says as he finishes the first page. She seems confused as there’s more beyond it. 

He draws a heart on the half-filled page to his right, something he’s been wanting to do forever, and writes Two hours at most. 

That means nothing, she says miserably. 

Four episodes, he corrects himself, scribbles out the time measurement. 

She goes quiet, tries to braid his hair from a mile away, waits ever so patiently as he drags his feet through more essays and even vaguer question prompts. 

It feels too easy. Two exams done in one night, both turned in, both with a relative level of ease. Of course, perhaps it’s meant to be. Not everything is as catastrophic as Vision’s mind makes him seem. Not everything requires inquiry. Not everything bites. 

Of all the pieces of his life, he had forgotten that this was normal. Normal, non-star occasion. 

It calms him down. 

Some. 

Perhaps a bit too much. 

He almost falls down the stairs on the way home. The stairs inside his class building, the stairs outside the class building. He smiles somewhat manically as he avoids the curb, then immediately stumbles and faceplants into a parked car. 

Wanda laughs herself dizzy. He barely makes it to the alley system, his body content to shut down before he’s even reached his bed. Cold hands take the reigns in his head, lug him upright, help him balance. 

So stumbly, she creaks, pushing him forward. 

He’s sort of a ragdoll, when it comes down to it. Or a marionette. It feels like he’s just been dragging his strings around, waiting for her. That can’t be good. He hopes that isn’t right. 

(Maybe that’s why he keeps falling over. Keeps tripping over them, the strings.)

(He loves her so much.)

Wanda is on him as soon as he opens the door, heavy thud, and his strings are cut as soon as she’s close enough like this. He carries her to the room immediately, Wanda calls him stumbly and frowny, and he dives onto the mattress on his back with the girl in tow. 

She curls up on him, sharp and cool and kind, assures him she’s eaten, and falls asleep. 

And the next day repeats. 

He studies, Wanda sits behind him, presses his temples and does something he doesn’t understand. He leaves, he sits in those rooms and he does what normal people do and it’s easier when he widens his scope to see the normal people doing it. He comes home. 

And… that’s it. 

He’s done. 

Wanda waits to uncover all of the stress he should have felt until they’re in bed the next night. It makes him nauseous, all those buzzing worries he’d lived with for years and he hadn’t noticed they were even gone.

He doesn't dwell on it. She tells him to rest and he listens. 

They sleep for the day, the first school-free day, the first official Wanda-only day. He has no plans to go anywhere and she’s thrilled by it and there’s the mutual understanding that more will happen soon, that answers will come soon and they seem averse to coming easily, but the simultaneous knowledge that it doesn’t matter. 

Wanda maps his face again as he sleeps, doesn’t stop when he stirs. He knows his face is likely pink from her pressing and dragging insistent fingers across it but he has no one else to see anyway. When he does wake, she pulls at his shirt and commands that he remove it so that she can apologize. He does, and she does, and he doesn’t look down as she presses her cold palms to them, trying to fix them. He just doesn’t look. 

His worries are back. Odd that he hadn’t noticed they’d gone. Wanda’s talented at that, saving him, but they were bound to return someday. His worries know that he’s done what he could do and he doesn’t have to set foot into that old building for months. His worries know, too, that grades will come soon.

So, he’d better start looking. 

Wanda’s on the couch, practically necking hot cocoa mugs one after the other, while Vision essentially flicks back and forth between two tabs on his laptop. He’s not super present in the brain. His anxiety gives him a headache. It’s like he’s suffering withdrawal from having peace of mind. 

“This show is better,” Wanda says thoughtfully. Vision glances over from his place at the desk, smiles at the chocolate mustache she’s sporting. She seems to notice the source of his glee and wipes at her mouth with the back of her hand. 

“Yeah?” he taps his hand on the table in front of him, “More consistent?”

“Funnier,” she says with a curt nod. She takes another sip before holding the mug over her head, “More, please.”

She likes five heaped teaspoons of the powder rather than the recommended three. He’ll be out of the stuff by the end of the night. He’s just fascinated by the things she clings to. When she likes something, she really likes something. Drowns herself in the stuff, smiling all the while. 

“You don’t want to get sick,” he says, an attempt at rigidity despite the fact that he’s made her nearly ten of these. He’s an enabler. They are enablers. “After this, I’d suggest you slow down, alright?”

“Tired anyway,” she yawns for good measure, “Last one.”

Vision hums. 

In truth, it’s rare that exams get graded on the next day. Some would say unlikely.

He sticks it out for another episode, at least. Wanda yawns louder and louder as the time drags, only half of which are faked, and she scoots to the cushion that’s closest to him in order to try and capture his attention. 

(Vision fucking loves when she does that. She could quite literally command his attention, ask for it, demand it, and it’d be given. And yet she chooses the cute route, shuffling into his periphery and stretching her arms and kicking her legs. He remembers what she was like when they first met. This is not that.)

Finally, she gets impatient. Or particularly sleepy. Both, likely. 

“I want to lay down,” she says. There it is. 

Vision folds his glasses and sets them aside, “I’ll be there in a moment.”

Somehow, he’s convinced himself in this weary head that, by eleven, they’ll be put in. Wishful thinking, really. He doesn’t feel like he’s done yet until the numbers are there. 

“A moment-moment?” she asks, suddenly very close. Her arms are around his neck. A cool kiss is pressed to his hair. He feels like he’s in a television show. This doesn’t feel real. “Or a Vision-moment?”

He laughs, looks at her upside down, “Hm. A... moment-moment.”

She smiles and pats his face, “Thank you. Rest your head. Your thoughts are making less sense than usual.”

“I’m free, now,” he promises, reaching back for her at a truly awkward angle, “I don’t need to make sense anymore.”

She clicks her tongue, disagreeing, though she recedes anyway. He sits up straighter, hands poised over the keypad, ready to commence the back-and-forth for another five minutes. Just five minutes and he’ll go to bed. 

Click, click, click. 

“This is going to be a Vision-moment, isn’t it,” comes the distant, quiet, blurry voice. 

He snorts, carding his fingers through his hair, body aching for anything other than the rickety chair. “Five minutes, that’s all.”

She lets out a long, disappointed breath. He can hear her start to walk, the creak of the floor mid-hallway. 

“Be there soon, I promise!” he calls over his shoulder, pressing his fingers into his eyes and shifting a bit to chase away the sting, “Love you!”

Wanda’s footsteps stall and slowly return. Soft then loud. It takes him a moment to catch up to his own words. 

Suddenly, she’s inside, sifting through his mind to try and make sense of that word, the statement she’s heard before, the words she’s never applied. He cannot feel her hot-cocoa-happiness anymore, it’s all drowned by confusion. 

Fuck.

He slowly pivots in his chair to face her, several apologies on deck, prepared to dismiss and make a fool of himself and start from square one. 

He’s been tired around Wanda... almost every single day that he’s known her. Why today of all days does he slip up? Was it the TV-like feeling? Was it because it didn’t feel real? 

It is real. Christ. 

She’s lingering by the door, by the exit, staring at him suspiciously. If this chair had wheels, he’d roll away. Or, he’d try to. 

“The care that you feel…” Wanda begins, hands at her sides, “... its name is Love?”

He grimaces at several pieces of this conversation. “Y-yeah. Um. I… I’m sorry, so sorry, I don’t - I didn’t mean - “

“An apology?” she presses her lips into a firm line, stern, “You’ve told me you care for me. Why is this so different?”

Vision feels like he should stand up but he’s sure he’d immediately collapse. 

“It’s… people don’t typically say it this soon. Or… or…” His heart is beating out of his chest as she inches toward him, one step followed by a pause followed by another step. She’s regarding him with visible reservation. “U-u-um, I…”

“You are afraid again.”

“N-nuh-not afraid.”

“Yes, afraid. I feel it. I feel you.” She climbs into his lap, two people stacked in a desk chair that is barely capable of withstanding one. She frames his face and he closes his eyes. “Vision.”

“Mm.” He’s an idiot.

“Don't be ashamed,” she says, and he laughs despite himself. “Let me feel it for a while.”

She sits for a long time. He stops counting after the fifteen-second mark. Vision’s back hurts from this chair and his head hurts from panicking but he sits all the same. Sits and loves her, sits and allows her to draw her fingers through it like a small pond. 

Wanda makes a noise. The movement inside stops and the ripples dissolve. He opens his eyes. 

Her eyes are glowing brighter than he’s ever seen them. 

“Oh,” she breathes. Thumbs down his cheeks. “Oh.”

“Yeah,” he says. It sounds as apologetic as it’s meant to. 

“Vision,” she says again. Somehow, he isn’t used to hearing her say his name. 

“Yes?”

“I’ve…” she shakes her head, reverent, “I’ve never felt something like this before.”

He blinks. (Immediate concern, it's unrequited. Secondary concern, if she’s never felt it, then the people around her have gravely misunderstood who they were in the presence of.) “No?”

“This is how you feel for me?” she pats his cheek gently. “It’s more than I thought. Than I’ve felt before.”

He shrugs weakly, “I’m almost exclusively made up of feelings.”

Wanda doesn’t laugh at that. Her hands are cold as they brush up and down his face. She doesn’t pull his dread away when it settles in his ribcage and so he has to let it take him over. He doesn’t know what the protocol is, what he should do now. She doesn’t respond, just silently observes all of his vulnerable parts, touches them. 

“You… y-you…” The lack of her response makes him feel a bit ill. He wants to rescind the statement if it might make tonight even one percent less awkward. He’ll have to lay in that bed with her, no matter what she thinks of him. “You can… you can take it… out, if you want. I’m sorry.”

The room is dim but the shadows that exist are sharp, somehow. She glows and she stares at him and her expression is almost entirely blank. 

“Like… like, the… the worries,” he continues, heart in his throat, heart that did all this in the first place, “But this time, y’know, y-you don’t have to give them back, I - you can - it’s - I know it’s - mm, I’m - I was going to wait, I should have waited, but I do tend to talk when I - I talk a lot, and I - I should… probably… er… stop.”

She’s holding his head like a mug. “Say it again.”

He feels like he’s burning up. “What?”

“Say it again,” she says, “You didn’t say the whole thing and you didn’t mean to, so say it again.”

This feels like a test. But all that’s on the line, really, is just tonight. Worst-case scenario, he’ll say it and she’ll say okay and they’ll go to bed and he’ll struggle to sleep but after that? He’ll do what he always has and put it somewhere else, get over it, never say it again. (He knows what the actual worst-case scenario is. But he doesn’t dare consider it. Not with Wanda already looking through them.) 

It has been months and Wanda has stayed and if they have reached the extent to which she’s comfortable with, he is more than happy to spend his forever like this. With her close. With her happy. 

It’s only a word, anyway. Three. Whatever. 

“Boy,” she says. 

“I love you,” he croaks, placing his hands over hers, shaky breath and heart battering his ribs, “That’s what I said, and I did mean it, but I - I don't have to - “

“Again.”

Vision laughs because he’s mortified. His face is bright red and he’s worked himself up to a fever and Wanda is in his lap and it feels very much like he’s being interrogated. He never knows what Wanda wants and he isn’t sure how he’s meant to approach the shadows of expectations he can’t see. It feels like he's pleading for his life but he's pleaded for his life before and it didn't sound like this. Maybe he did it wrong before.

“I love you,” he whispers. “I… fuck, I… I love you so much it’s… frankly quite terrifying. I. I love you, Wanda, I’m sorry.”

She nods.

Vision exhales heavy, dropping his hands, feeling like he’s run a marathon. He did it, at least. Got it off his chest. He hadn’t anticipated how long it’d hang in the air, though. God, he hopes she takes it down soon. Tucks it in her pocket or sets it on fire, either will do. 

Wanda has all of his firsts. He’s never told anyone he loved them, not like that, it always had been too fantastical. Too many worst-case scenarios to grapple with. And, of course, never enough time to get the words out of his mouth in the first place. Picked up and set down and moved on.

So, he sits and he’s pinned and he waits for Wanda to pull him up and parade him back to their room. He sits and frets and burns himself up from the inside and - 

“How do I say it back?” Wanda asks. 

His hands grip the arms of the chair. “What?”

“Is it different when I say it back, the words, or is it the same?” 

Vision huffs, knowing he’s already cracked down the middle, knowing it’s just a matter of time before his left separates from his right and he becomes a pile on the floor. 

“The - mm. Mmmm, it’s the same.” More a whimper than a voice. He’s not strong enough for this. “But you don’t need to worry about it, really. I’ll… we can… I’m done, so, um, we can go… go to… bed.”

Wanda pushes her hands up and into his hair. She squints at him for a long time before nodding again, a true business gesture, and smiling a bit, “I love you.”

Vision cries. 

Wanda covers his eyes, “Oh. Oh, don’t.”

He ducks under her hands and hugs her. It’s a pathetic display but he feels he’s never quite been anything different. Wanda creaks, so fond of his weak parts, and tangles herself up in him as best she can manage. 

“God,” he says into her neck, “Christ. Oh, my God. You - you - we? ”

“It’s okay,” she grins and pushes her love to him and it nearly makes him pass out, “I love you back. Of course I do.”

He grasps onto the back of her sweater and just loses it. He gets a headache on top of the other ones. It doesn’t matter. 

“Your head,” Wanda warns. 

“I know,” he sniffs, kiss pressed to her neck and then, after a small cry, another.