Archive of Our Own

“Why did you try to find me?” Wanda asks. Vision’s human face is slightly disconcerting - just a little off, but most people won’t notice unless they look too long at him, which she finds very hard not to do, these days. “I put you through six floors, Vizh.”

His hands are gentle around his teacup. He doesn’t need food or drink, not really, but he can pretend better than she can right now. Her mouth is too dry and her stomach too upset to eat or drink much at all. His frown is a small thing, the slightest of crinkles between his eyebrows. He sets his cup down. “But you didn’t want to hurt me,” he says. “And you didn’t.”

Wanda’s rings clink against the rim of her cup. “I could have.”

Vision’s nod is a slow acknowledgement. As though he believes she wouldn’t, even though she could.

“You could,” he says. “I don’t think I’d mind if you did. But I don’t think that you will.”

He does know her far better than most.

“Six floors, Vision.”

“Six floors, fifteen feet of rubble and almost half a mile into the earth,” he says. “But you didn’t hurt me.”

He drinks another sip of his tea. She can see the level falling; he’s actually drinking the tea, and she half wonders how his stomach copes. He’s never eaten much, unless to share something she made or that he attempted to make for her. She remembers what it was like to go from starving to seeming plenty.

“It was… interesting,” he says. His hand rises and touches his brow where, beneath seemingly human skin, she knows the mind stone lies hidden. “To suddenly lose control of this.”

“Interesting?” she says. Her shoulders shake despite herself. “Vision, I tapped into your mind and rerouted your connection to the stone to me. I could have- I shouldn’t have done that.” Her cup is set down, one hand pinches her nose to try to regulate her breathing. “Vizh,” she says. “I took you away from yourself. That’s not. I shouldn’t have done that.”

She startles when his hand touches hers. “And you know that,” he says. “I think… You regret doing so, am I right? And despite it, you didn’t hurt me.” His hand withdraws, cradles his teacup to his chest - a human gesture, one she’s done many times. She wonders if he picked it up from her, or if it's just something he’s come to enjoy doing for its own sake. “And it was interesting. I thought I was in control of all of myself, always. And suddenly I was made to realise that I’d made a decision based on emotions I wasn’t even sure I had to that extent, and that you had control of my body.”

The cup in Wanda’s hands is cool. She drinks the bitter-cold tea anyway. Anything to stabilise a racing heart and a lump of guilt in her throat.

“I think I’d like to experience that again,” he says thoughtfully. “If it was at your hands, at least.”

The next time they meet he warns her ahead of time. He’s got her number saved, now, the new phone Steve gave her after they’d dropped Barnes off in Wakanda and had a few days to recuperate.

“I was going to be in the area,” he says when she answers. “Tony wanted me to investigate something. When I’m done, would you like to catch up?”

She remembers his human face, his human expressions and mannerisms to match the achingly human emotions she knows he feels. That she sees flitting over the surface of his mind. “The same cafe as last time?” she says. “In… two hours time?”

She can almost hear Vision’s smile as he agrees.

“It is... strange,” he says. “Back at the base. Without everyone.”

“Empty,” she says. “I imagine.”

Vision’s drink is the same as hers this time - spiced tea, a blend almost the same as what Mama used to make back in Sokovia, before everything. She wonders how it tastes to him, given the issues he had making paprikash.

“More than that,” he says. “Empty is… It is empty. But it’s like… When it’s sunny outside and warm and suddenly there’s a cloud and a cold wind. The whole base is a cold breeze now.”

You should be a poet, she thinks, nodding. “Empty,” she says. “Emotionally as well. Because people you know and care about aren’t there any more.”

“I… yes.” He looks confused and grateful all at once. “Thank you, Wanda.”

She drinks her tea. Lets it make her think of home, of Mama and Father, and of Pietro when they were children. Its less painful now, but it still makes her heart ache sometimes.

“Emotions are hard,” she says and gently squeezes his hand. “And it must be harder for you.”

They next meet at a zoo. Vision loves the animals.

“I’ve seen pictures,” he says. “But in person-”

Wanda cannot help but smile at his face. The lemurs love him - they must be able to smell that he is different because they swarm him at the edge of the open enclosure, sit on the fence right by them and take small handfuls of feed from his hands. One especially bold one climbs onto his shoulder, its black-and-white tail a huge banner by his head.

“It must be strange,” she says. “To know things, as you do.”

“Sometimes,” he says, offering the lemur on his shoulder some of the feed the keeper gave them. “But I prefer to think of the wonder. I can know it all, if I want to, but… I don’t. I can experience it for the first time, but I have the awareness to understand it. Like being a child, as an adult.”

“It must make emotions harder, though,” she says, offering a handful to a lemur walking along the fence. It ignores her. “To experience them, but only have descriptions to go on.”

He frowns, his hand drops slightly from the lemurs until one grabs his hand and his attention. “Yes. A lot of descriptions, I think... people write what they think something feels like, and describe it to make it seem more than it is, and so when I feel I can never be sure that it is what I think. Wonder alone took me a month to understand.”

She slips the remains of her handful of feed into Vision’s pocket. The lemurs gladly reach in now it is no longer in her hands.

“I could help,” she says. “If you would like. I can-” She glances to the zoo keeper and continues. “You know what I can do. I could tell you when I recognise an emotion. Tell you what it is.”

Vision’s face, when he looks at her, is warm and full of some emotion she knows he has no name for yet. “Help me now?” he asks.

Gratitude and warmth are two of Vision’s strongest emotions, after wonder. He loves to learn and to be helped to learn, and every time she helps him the warmth grows. The gratitude stays the same - a soft gentle thing, uncertain.

“You don’t owe me,” she says. “I put you through six floors. Consider this an apology.”

Vision frowns - confusion, Wanda thinks, is the fourth most frequent emotion - and says, “But you did apologise. You admitted your mistakes, which were because of my mistake, and I know that neither of us like to make the same mistake twice.”

She takes his hand, pulls him slightly out of the crowd. “Admitting mistakes isn’t an apology,” she says softly. “Trying to make it right isn’t even necessarily an apology, unless it is agreed to be. Sorry is an apology, Vizh. And I should say it more often.”

Vision’s hand squeezes hers. She wonders if this is one he picked up - from reading? Talking to other people? Or if he does it for its own sake, like how he holds his teacup.

“What am I feeling now?” he asks and in the quiet and privacy of an empty alley Wanda sings scarlet between her palm and his forehead, and feels his mind.

“So you wanted to see-”

“They have an exhibit,” Vision says. “On Prometheus in art. The Ancient Greeks believed that he made humankind from clay.”

Wanda can see the connection he’s made. Mankind made by Prometheus. Ultron made by mankind. Himself made by Ultron.

“Your great-many-times creator,” she says. She can feel his hand in hers, gentle and half-uncertain. She squeezes, smiles fondly at him. “Vizh.”

Vision's face is warm and happy as they weave through the crowds. “I like it when you call me that,” he says, “Vizh.”

She wants to ask, but she knows he'll say anyway, if he thinks it’s important enough. They reach the queue and Wanda leans against him slightly, head against his shoulder. It’s not until the crowd starts moving that he speaks again.

“It makes me feel human,” he says.

“You are human,” she says when they’re on the bus back to the flat. “You do know that, right?”

He shakes his head. “I’m not. I don’t need to sleep or eat. I don’t even need to breathe, but it feels right to, and it means I can talk so I do. I’m something else, Wanda, you know that.”

The bus is mostly empty, outside is dark, streets only bearing a scatter of people. The bus driver is far ahead at the front and does not see the scarlet in Wanda’s palm where she hides it behind the seat in front.

“I’m not human, then,” she says. “I’m an experiment. You’re an experiment at humanity. And you are human. You have cells, Helen started with a sample to bond the vibranium to, for the Cradle to build on.”

“I- What?”

Its Wanda’s turn to frown. “You never asked her?”

Vision’s expression is one that almost makes her laugh. “Doctor Cho is… she made me. Along with Tony and Dr Banner. To ask them how I was made would be as though… It would be like...”

Wanda stifles a laugh and squeezes his hand. “Like asking your parents for the birds and bees talk?”

“Yes,” Vision says emphatically. “I couldn’t ask them that Wanda, I couldn’t.”

Wanda rests her head against his shoulder and laughs. “All your curiosity,” she says. “Bested by embarrassment.”

“I wonder how old you are,” Wanda says one day. They’re back at the cafe - they’re recognised regulars now, and Vision’s human guise is no longer even slightly unsettling. Or maybe it’s that Wanda’s used to it now; with the same glowing mind behind it, his human face is as much him as his usual one. “Mentally, at least. Given… the mind stone, from the very beginning, and JARVIS who existed for decades, and then Ultron’s own few days, but he also had the mind stone contributing, and the Iron Legion code, which had a few years-”

“All in all,” Vision says. “Intellectually adult, emotionally teenage, physically mature although I’ve only been embodied for a year and a half.”

Wanda blinks at him and he shrugs.

“I was curious,” he says. “I asked the psychiatrist at the base for an estimation.” He keeps on watching her, inhumanly green eyes, not unkind or intense but… focussed. “It explains some things, I think,” he says. “It must be hard to accept something as human when everything about it doesn’t seem so.”

“You are human,” Wanda says, and reaches to take his hand. “You’re more human than most people at least. And you’re as human as me.”

Vision’s hand is warm in hers, and his thumb grazes a soft line over the back of her hand.

They cannot see each other as often as they’d like but it becomes increasingly regular. When Vision is uncertain of an emotion he asks Wanda to identify it; sometimes she asks him what the emotion she sends to him is. Some days they spend hours sat in the flat, sending emotions back and forth, identifying them.

A slashing knifeblade, something dark, a deep pit, gravel against the skin, a heavy weight.

Anger. Frustration. Guilt and self-blame.

Warmth. Fire flickering. A blanket against skin. Safety.

Warmth. Affection. Trust.

An upset sea. Stormclouds. The air tense against skin.

Worry. Concern. Upset.

When their time is up Vision always says the same thing.

“I wish I could stay longer.”

Vision arrives in a flurry, the coat he’s created from himself swirling around his legs in a weighty way that his cloak never usually does. “Wanda,” he says, and he’s beaming, bright and warm as he takes her hands in his and presses kisses to her knuckles. “Come with me. I’ve something to show you.”

He rushes outside, her hands still in his, flags them a taxi. The drive is only for a few minutes, and Vision taps the cardreader with a palm when they arrive.

“What?” says the cabbie, tearing off the receipt.

Vision shakes a sleeve back, to show what looks like a Stark watch.

When they’re away from the cab and in the crowds Wanda gently bumps her shoulder against Vision’s. “Not everyone is going to buy that, Vizh,” she says.

“Enough will,” he says. “And you’re not to pay for anything today. My treat.”

Then they round a corner and Wanda’s nose is full of the scents of food. Foods from home.

There’s a stall with paprikash - proper paprikash, as Mama made it - and another with dumplings, and another with lamb stew. There’s a stall with all kinds of teas, one which is exactly the one that Mama used to make, not just similar like at the cafe, and there’s another like the tea that Katarina years ago in Novi Grad used to give to her at the end of her weekend shift. There’s sweets as well, baklavas, pastries and pies, scents she recognises even if she no longer knows the names, and stalls beyond that too, from all around the world, not just Sokovia and Transia.

“Whatever you want,” Vision says. “We can get spices if you want, or just tea or-”

“Vision,” she says, and she’s smiling, smiling so hard her cheeks ache. “Vizh. What am I feeling right now?”

The scarlet sings from her palm to his but she knows he feels it too, the emotion she sends from her mind to his.

“Happiness,” he whispers. “Joy.”

Wanda nods, and she cannot rein in her smile, will not. She squeezes his hand in hers and steps close enough so she can wrap her other arm around him.

“ Thank you,” she says.

They have scattered bundles of days together. Never more than a week, sometimes as little as two hours. Sometimes they just chat, other times they spend whole days around each other. Affection is easy - for Wanda affection has always been easy with those she trusts, it is just that for almost twenty years the only person she truly trusted was her brother. But she trusts Vision, knows she is safe around him, so he gets affection too, and he seems to return it in equal measure, no more or less than what she offers him.

Usually when time comes to sleep she takes the bed. Sometimes she takes the sofa, if she falls asleep there, but nine times out of ten she wakes in the bed, or at least with the duvet from the bed over her. Vision simply goes into his odd hovering hibernation in the corner of the main room, ready in case anything should happen.

Evenings are spent talking, or watching news. Sometimes there’s a street fair or a play or a film and they head back into the warm blowing breaths onto their fingers. She’s not sure if Vision needs to, strictly speaking, but with his human guise, with so many habits he’s picked up - from her, some of them, but some are from others, and plenty are variants of ones he’s seen, are habits he’s made entirely his own, like how he cradles his teacup to his chest as she does, but leans back in a chair with a casual kind of confidence that is midway between Natasha and Pietro - she doesn’t find it odd. Its endearing if anything, how he embraces humanity.

The flat is theirs. The only utterly private place is the bathroom, because Vision only needs use it rarely and otherwise it is wholly Wanda’s domain. The bedroom is a shared thing - Vision uses the mirror when testing out whatever clothes he’s created for the day, but Wanda uses it to sleep. Some evenings they spend talking and drinking tea or hot cocoa until Wanda falls asleep. When she wakes Vision is hovering in the main room, standby mode, until she gently rouses him.

The only exception is nightmares, ever rarer, and then she wakes to Vision’s worried face, his hand gentle on her shoulder.

“Ultron,” he says one day. “You tore his core out.”

Wanda blinks. “That. You saw that?”

“The aftermath,” Vision says. “The only person who could have done it was you.”

It's surprising, she thinks, how there’s just about no topic which is off limits for them. In some ways its like Pietro; someone with whom she can share anything, except that Vision does not depend on her assurance or approval as Pietro did, she does not rely on him for protectiveness or confidence as she did Pietro, and that there are things she can share with Vision that it would never have occurred to her to share with Pietro.

“He killed Pietro,” she hears herself saying distantly. “I felt it. It was.”

Vision’s hand is gentle on hers. She looks to his face, blurred by unshed tears, but can read his expression all the same.

You don’t have to say anything.

“You don’t like those who betray you,” he says instead. “Or who hurt you.”

“I don’t think anyone does,” she manages.

Vision’s smile is gentle, his thumb is warm over the back of her hand. “That is true. But I do not think there are many who deal with them as decisively as you do.”

“Don’t they wonder?” Wanda asks one day. There’s a new exhibition, human anatomy and a history of early dissections, and Vision is examining each gory surgical trophy with a kind of keen precision. “Tony and Rhodey?”

“Where I go?” He still hasn’t looked away from the toothless jaw of an 80 year old woman. He shrugs. “No more than they wonder where they each go on their time off. There isn’t much we’re needed for, and provided we don’t cause trouble the UN doesn’t mind too much where we go. Just that we help when called for and remain within the limits they set.”

He steps back from the jaw - there are three others like it, to one side and below, all from the 1800s. “I wonder if I can lose my teeth,” he says. “It would be in-”

“If you say interesting,” Wanda says, but she’s smiling all the same, “I will show you my memories of losing my milk teeth. Be glad you don’t know what that is like.”

Her hair is carrot-red when next he sees her. He seems surprised, but no less happy. Instead, his fingers catch in the curling ends of her hair, tangling in a gentle way that doesn’t bother her at all.

“You like it?” she asks.

“It’s new,” he says. “Different.”

Wanda chews her cheek slightly, watching Vision examine her hair. “I wanted something different,” she says. “And. Father’s hair was red, before he died.”

Vision holds a curl of her hair between his fingers, lets his guise slip for just a moment so the carrot-red of her hair flashes bright against the dark magenta of his true skin.

“I like it,” he says, looking her in the eye. “It suits you.” He lets the hair drift from his fingers, lets his guise slip back over and hide the bright magenta behind plain beige. His smile is decidedly teasing. “And you will look much scarier with eyes that glow darker than your hair.”

She elbows him lightly, but stays half-tucked into his side as they walk.

“Why do you eat?” she asks. They’re at a Sokovian restaurant and the food is excellent. She has no idea how he found one, but he did and its well within walking distance from the flat which almost makes Wanda think that he might have on-purpose made alterations to the Sokovian refugee rehoming lists to make sure there were people from home nearby for her. But that is not Vision’s way, not really. He will not meddle with other’s lives as Tony might so Wanda leans back in her chair, lifts her tiny glass of palate-cleansing raki and waits for Vision to reply.

“Because I can,” he says. “Or… Not entirely. I do not need to eat and I should not waste food. But it is… pleasant, to share this with you, or with the team, when we were all at the base. It… it's like when you call me Vizh.”

“It makes you feel human.”

Vision’s smile is slow and soft, and Wanda’s heart clenches in warmth and affection. She stretches out her hand, clinks her glass to Vision’s and downs the raki. The bite is sharp and familiar - she remembers counting out shots of raki and of vodka with Pietro and always being beaten, but she can still handle more than most. “Dessert?”

Vision glances at the menu - half of which is in Sokovian, but Wanda knows he can read that well enough. “I wouldn’t know where to start,” he says. “Pick for me?”

They’re at the train station. Technically Vision doesn’t have to take normal transport, but it helps to cover tracks if he’s nowhere near her when he reappears to head back to base. No one but they know about his human guise after all, or at least, know the extent of it, now. His hands are gentle in hers.

“Come back soon?” she asks.

His thumb rubs a gentle line across the back of her hands. His smile is soft and sad and he leans close to leave a soft kiss on her cheek. “Of course,” he says. “I’ll let you know.”

Their hands peel slowly apart - unwilling at both ends to truly leave and let go.

“I wish I could stay longer,” he says, and steps on the train. Wanda stays on the platform, watching until its out of sight before she heads home.

“Stay with me?” she asks one evening. She can feel herself nearing sleep, the clouds at the edge of her mind thicker and stronger, and with her thoughts tending towards worry and concern right now, on the anniversary of her parents deaths she would rather not sleep without nearby company.

Vision’s face is gentle. “Are you sure?”

“You … remember back at base. My first few days? And some nights here-”

Realisation dawns. “The nightmares,” he says. “Is it easier,” he asks. “If someone is there?”

“Someone to wake to,” she says. “It is. It reminds me I’m not alone.”

Vision takes her hand in his, lifts it to his forehead. “What am I feeling?” he asks.

The scarlet sings. Wanda chokes a small little laugh. “Empathy,” she says. “You feel bad because I do.”

Vision smiles very slightly at that. “Yes,” he says. “Yes, I’ll stay.”

He’s already turned back the covers for her - Wanda’s never entirely sure how he finds the time or why he does it, but it’s a nice gesture, and as he slips into bed on the other side, his day-clothes changing over to some semblance of pyjamas, he carefully folds back the covers there.

She feels his hand under the covers, reaching tentatively towards her, and reaches back, takes his in hers. “Thank you,” she whispers.

When she wakes her head is tucked against his collarbone, his arm around her shoulders, and he’s breathing slow soft breaths as though he too was sleeping, rather than the hibernation state he usually falls to.

Wanda stays put, content and warm where she is. Vision’s body is still - barely moved in the night, but to wrap an arm around her and to breathe - but he’s warm all the same. She remembers how he was at first - skin still cool to the touch, the metal as well as the cells making him more decidedly inhuman. Now, though, human guise or no, he’s warm, as though spending more time around humans, being more human, is making him so in truth.

When she presses a kiss to his cheek his eyes crack open.

“No nightmares?”

“None,” Wanda says. “Thank you.”

Vision returns to the base still elated. Wanda can see his mind, bright and glowing when he leaves. Can see the train far beyond the usual distance because the gold-glow of his mind is so much brighter, the net of burgundy and green neurons so dark against it, a pattern like honeycomb, rich and beautiful.

She’s not sure what the elation is about - sharing a bed, being so close, so calm, so content. That he is so human. That sharing a bed and sleep has saved her a night of nightmares. She doesn’t know. She doesn’t care because it doesn’t matter. She’s just as elated, just as bright-warm, and she texts Vision three times before she’s even back at the flat, reading his replies and laughing.

“Headache,” Vision says. “It’s just a headache.”

Wanda frowns at him, sings scarlet between her palms. “Vizh,” she says. “When have you ever had a headache? Any kind of ache or pain at all?”

He’s quiet for a long moment, watching her. “I miss you,” he says. “When I leave. But I do not think that is the pain you mean.” Wanda sighs, soft and warm. Her hand strokes along his cheek, and he kisses the heel of her palm.

“Headaches aren’t as fleeting as this either,” she says. “Is it the stone?”

“Check?” he asks, bowing his head slightly. He half-laughs. “What am I feeling?”

The scarlet sings, her palm balances a distance from his brow and the stone glows even through the guise Vision is wearing. Wanda’s hand drops. She shakes her head. “I just feel you,” she says. “Confusion and uncertainty, and hope and-”

Vision’s head tilts forwards again, his brow light against hers. “Maybe it's nothing.”

Wanda’s smile is weak. “Maybe,” she says. “Hopefully.”

Now when they sit in the cafe they don’t take two separate seats. Instead they take a sofa and curl into one another’s sides. Wanda likes to rest her head on Vision’s collarbone, Vision likes to rest his head against Wanda’s. Their cups get mixed up, but they don’t care. They order the same as each other - either Wanda’s favourite tea or whatever Vision wants to try - so stealing one another’s cups becomes as common as simply forgetting who’s is whose.

Less and less does Vision ask what an emotion is out of a desire to know, instead he tilts his head to her hands and asks with a smile, to prove a point or offer reassurance. Wanda does likewise, offering her hand and her emotions as readily as words of explanation or advice.

“Sometimes,” Wanda says softly one evening. “You seem more human than most humans.”

Vision moves his queen’s castle before looking up at her. “You know that is completely ridiculous.”

“I said seem,” Wanda says. “And it’s in the eye of the beholder anyway.”

“Like beauty?”

“Perception is personal, isn’t it? We can make sure people see us one way, but they’ll still interpret us based on whatever they believe.”

Vision smiles, gestures to Wanda to take her move. “You’re the telepath,” he says. “I trust your judgement.”

Wanda moves a bishop - she’s really not sure if its the queen’s or king’s, she knows Vision will win the game anyway, if he wants to - and takes his castle. “You do seem more human. You’re as human as I am, but mentally, I mean. You care more than most. You think more than most. But… you’re still human.”

Vision slides his other castle over to take Wanda’s bishop. “Are you sure you’re not just seeing what you believe is there?”

“Vizh,” she says softly. “You’re the one who told me that you eat because it makes you feel human. Like when I call you Vizh - you said you liked that. What’s the matter?”

Vision scrubs a hand through his hair except his human skin shimmers away, magenta underneath, no hair, no ears even. Bands of metallic green around his face. As inhuman as anything could be. “I’m not human Wanda. I can pretend but-”

Wanda reaches out and takes his hand in hers. “I wish you didn’t have to pretend,” she says. His fingers are not quite shaking, but they’re not cold. They’re as warm as he was when she woke up beside him that morning. She lifts his hand, presses his fingers to her mouth and gently kisses. “Vizh. What’s the matter?”

He’s not even wearing clothes on the sofa, with how quickly he shed his human guise. He’s sat there, still and neatly folded, one leg over another, an elbow balanced on his leg. Human, even as he looks as inhuman as a statue.

“What do you want from me?” he asks. “From this?”

“What do you want?” she asks. “You were the one to find me.” He watches her silently. His hand is still held in hers, her fingers twined with his, her thumb stroking soothingly over the back of his hand as he’s done for her so many times before. She lifts his hand once more and presses a kiss to his knuckles. “You found me, Vizh, not the other way around. In Novi Grad, when everything fell, when everyone left the base to fight, when I came here. You found me. What do you want?”

Vision’s sigh is long and tired and when he has let the breath out he pulls her hand towards him, and presses a kiss to the heel of her palm, smooths her fingers along his cheek, eyes half closing as she traces her thumb along his cheekbone. “To be human,” he says. “But I’m not. I can be made from as many human cells as I like but I’m not human, Wanda.”

“You’re as human as I am,” she says. “ Look at you. The only thing you’re missing is ears, and you can still hear all the same, still have the shapes there even if you never got actual ones.”

“Wanda-”

She pulls her hand from his cheek, gestures with scarlet trailing from her fingertips. “How human am I, Vizh? Do you know any other humans who can read minds and throw a television across a room with half a thought? Any other humans who had a brother who could run faster than sound? Who tore through vibranium with nothing but her will?”

“You’re different.”

Wanda sighs. “So are you.” She knocks over her king with a fingertip.

Vision catches the king with his own finger, sets it back upright before it can fall. “You’re different,” he repeats. “You and your brother, you started human. I may have started with human cells but I never had a human life, a human form. I’ve always been,” he gestures, “this.”

“My brother and I were orphaned,” Wanda says. “We lived on the streets; trust me, no one thinks you’re human when you sleep on street corners. We protested and believe me, no police treat you like you’re human when you’re little more than a shouting street rat to them. We signed up for experiments. Now we are literal lab rats. Then we came out of it and I could do this.” She flicks her fingers, the king falls.

Vision shakes his head, runs his hands over his scalp. There’s no hair to grip now, so instead they slide over smooth skin. Wanda had almost forgotten the particular way light hits the magenta-and-metal-green of his scalp, shimmering on one and shining on the other.

“You’re beautiful, Vizh,” she says softly. “And you’re as human as I am.”

“I hate this,” he says. “I. Wanda. What am I feeling?”

Scarlet sings between her palms.

She chokes back something that isn’t a laugh as she sees into his head. “Doubt,” she says. “Self-doubt and anxiety.” The scarlet fades and her hand slides down Vision’s cheek. “Vizh. You don’t have to be human for me. If you want to be human, I’ll help you because it's what you want.”

His lips are soft against her palm.

Vision seems to love her hands, she notices. When they walk through town they’re holding hands more often than not, when they sit and talk he takes her hands in his and presses kisses to her knuckles, her fingertips, the heel of her hand, the inside of her wrist, the joints of her fingers. All the places her scarlet rises. In some ways its like Pietro; he’d catch her fists when she wanted to fight to soothe her to calm, after the experiments he’d kissed her fingertips to prove he was unafraid. But Vision has never been afraid of what she can do, it never even occurs to him. He doesn’t do this to prove anything, she thinks, but because he loves her powers as he loves everything else in the world, from now-dead-Ultron to the lemurs at the zoo.

One day when they’re sitting in the cafe - it’s raining out and the room is almost empty and they’re curled in a corner on their favourite sofa - Vision smooths her fingers over his cheek and presses a kiss to the palm of her hand.

“It’s never going to frighten you, is it?” she asks. “What I can do.”

His eyes are bright and piercing. She feels his lips move against her palm. “Without what you can do,” he says. “I wouldn’t exist. I love what you can do. How can I not?”

Its reassuring, in a different way to Pietro’s fierce fearlessness. Pietro’s fearlessness was to keep her human; now she’s come to accept that she may no longer be human, not entirely. Vision’s fearlessness in the face of what she can do - his love of it even when he has been at the receiving end - is something else entirely.

“I don’t think we can hurt each other,” Vision says. “Or, if we can, I don’t think we ever will. Harm, maybe but hurt… We are of the same, in a way. Your powers from this-” his fingers tap his forehead “-and I exist as I am because of what you did before you joined the team.” He smiles. “Our fates are intertwined, perhaps. Whatever happens, maybe it is simply meant to be.”

“You should be a poet,” Wanda says fondly, and strokes her thumb over his cheek. “All of your ideas and ways of saying them.”

Vision smiles and leans into her touch. “Maybe I will try.”

When Vision stumbles in the street Wanda pulls him to the side in a moment. Finds a empty doorway to stand in and cups his face in her hands. Beneath his human guise the mind stone glows and Wanda casts out a burst of scarlet to turn attention away.

“Vizh,” she says. “Vizh. What’s the matter? What are you feeling?”

His brow is furrowed, his jaw clenched. If it were anyone but him she’d say it was pain, but she knows of nothing in the world but her that can hurt Vision. Then, as suddenly as it happened, it's gone.

“Vizh?”

His fingers rise to his forehead, gently touch where the stone hides beneath his human face.

“It was like before,” he says. “You remember?”

Her mouth twists, her thumb strokes his cheek. Vision leans into the touch, his eyes half-closing. “See,” he says. “Check. What was I feeling?”

The scarlet sings between her palms, sinks through his guise and touches the stone. She shakes her head. “I don’t know,” she says. “I just feel you.”

Museums. Cafes. Street fairs and cinemas. The bedroom in the flat isn’t ‘the bedroom’ anymore, but their room; they sleep in it together more often than not, when Vision isn’t there Wanda usually spends the night on the sofa, or calls Vision before she sleeps, if only to hear his voice. Sometimes he calls her instead, and she wonders what it's like for him back at the base - if he’s furnished his room yet, if he has a bed there. Does he still hover in the corner every night, standby hibernation, or does he sleep now, sleep as he does with her, all stillness and slow breathing like any human?

Sometimes when he calls her and they talk, quietly, into the small hours, she can hear him rolling over, the rustle of fabric. It could just be a sofa, but with how he, like her, tends to linger in their bed, she is more certain he has his own now. She wonders if, perhaps, when this is all over, she might get to join him in his. Maybe, if her room is intact despite everything, he can join her in hers.

“I miss you,” she whispers down the phone and hears the rustle of cloth, the softest sigh.

“I miss you too,” he says.

Their fingers tangle readily. Vision lifts her hands so he can kiss her fingertips, Wanda tugs him close to press a kiss to his cheek or to the corner of his mouth. The rare times their lips do touch, it’s always gentle, always careful, but warm all the same, an equal thing from each of them.

She’s not sure when affection went from simple ease due to trust and safety to whatever this is. It's not like Pietro, where every piece of affection was a reaffirmation of their bond, a reminder through everything, it simply … is, and gives the same gold-glowing feeling all the same. The sense of warmth and safety, of acceptance and affection.

She’s not sure where they’re going; the last two times Wanda picked where they went - a Sokovian restaurant and a museum of technology one visit, the cinema and the cafe the next - so its Vision’s turn now, by far.

“Vizh,” she says, tugging on his wrist slightly. “Not even a hint?”

“You’ll like it,” he says and leans to press a kiss to the corner of her mouth. “I promise.”

The exhibit is great. A history of magic, witches and alchemy, an unrolled scroll showing base elements to the philosopher’s glowing red stone, homunculi curled in alembics and poppets pinned to the walls. A mezuzah on the archway to a section on Jewish mysticism and Wanda’s fingers touch to it without thinking, even if it isn’t a living space and doesn’t really count.

“Alchemy helped to birth modern science,” Vision says. “Did you know? It comes from the Arabic, al-kīmiyā’, and then the French. The word Chemistry has the same roots.”

There’s a display on Golems in this section, and it leads to a display of mandrake roots, and an explanation of the interlinking of stories from around the world - the creation of life from nothing.

“Homunculi,” Wanda says.

“I was thinking,” Vision says. “About witches and their familiars. A spirit come from nothing to signify a bond between their chosen path. And then Homunculi - a life come from nothing as the culmination of someone’s work.”

“They are similar,” Wanda thinks. “In a way.” She looks at him, but he’s reading the display with every evidence of focus. As though Wanda does not know he can focus on three things at once - more, even - if he wishes.

They make their way through it all. Folkloric magic, mythology, mysticism, witches and alchemists and the birth of science. They drift an arms length apart and back again in a gentle push and pull, reading displays and returning to one another’s side. Wanda spends half an hour reading fragmented Hebrew, old prayers and chants echoing through childhood memory. Vision spends even more time at a virtual display of the Voynich Manuscript, running possibilities through the golden databanks of his mind.

Wanda leans her head on his shoulder and watches his thoughts. He doesn’t stop until her stomach rumbles, and his grin to her is sheepish.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “It’s such a fantastic puzzle.”

“It is,” she agrees. “I liked seeing your ideas.”

Wanda’s stomach rumbles again and Vision’s hand squeezes hers. “Lunch?” he asks. “Your stomach sounds starved.”

They drift through the rest of the exhibit - occasionally pausing at this display or that, but mostly heading out. Away from the dark rooms the open sky and damp air is refreshing and Wanda tilts her head to the sky to feel the rain mizzling down. Vision’s hand leads her down streets and she trusts him to guide her towards food. When they come to a halt its at a Greek place and Wanda glances to Vision.

“I was curious,” he says. “I don’t think we’ve had Greek before.”

Its true enough and Wanda laughs and leads them through the door. Vision, it turns out, already has a reservation and they’re taken to a tiny booth at the back, the table so small between them that their legs tangle underneath.

“I could-” Vision says, his legs going almost intangible.

“Don’t,” she says. “I like feeling you here.”

The drinks arrive, and the food. Wanda picks at what she doesn’t know while wolfing down what she does. It’s all good - she doesn’t think any of the places she’s gone with Vision have been anything less than fantastic - but after seeing the mezuzah, the stretched out roll of the Torah, the carved woodprints of a Dybbuk and a Golem, she seeks the familiar once more.

“It’s been a long time,” Wanda says, picking at a lamb meatball, “Since I’ve believed in anything.”

Vision pauses over his food, swallows his mouthful.

“Like what?” he asks. “In a cause? Or do you mean religion?”

The meatball is pushed around the plate, the oil and spices it was cooked in are left behind, a little orange-brown trail on the ceramic. “Both, maybe. I haven’t believed in a cause since Ultron, I think, and in religion since I was ten.”

Vision’s hand finds hers on the tabletop. His fingers are warm as they wrap around hers, his hand is gentle as he presses her knuckles to his lips. She knows the expression he wears, remembers seeing it through tears. She knows what it means.

You don’t have to say anything.

“If you would like,” he says. “We could go to a synagogue.” His thumb draws a gentle line over the back of her hand. “I’ve never been,” he says. “To any house of worship. If you would like to go I’d be happy to join you, if you wanted company.”

Her smile is terribly fond. “Vizh,” she says. She sets her fork down, lets the metal clink against ceramic. “Maybe,” she says. “It would be nice to hear it all again.”

They linger in the restaurant, finish their drinks if not their food and when Wanda asks if they have baklavas they end up with a box to go as well as a variety of small pieces on a plate between them. Vision brushes crumbs of flaky pastry away from his lips with his thumb, missing two pieces of pistachio completely.

His legs are warm against hers and Wanda doesn’t particularly want to leave.

“I was thinking,” Vision says. The pistachio pieces on his cheek move with the motion of his mouth and Wanda almost wants to reach a hand out to brush them away. “Homunculi and familiars. All stories come from origins, and sometimes those origins are other stories.”

“Like witches,” Wanda says. “Vizh, you have a little-”

He finds the pieces of pistachio and he licks them from his fingers, and the honey-stickyness they leave behind. “Thank you.”

“You were thinking?”

Vision smiles, his hand reaches for hers. She meets his hand halfway, twines their fingers together. “Let’s get the bill,” he says, smiling wider. “I’ll tell you on the way home.”

She smiles at that, as he raises his hand to get the waiter’s attention. Home.

“You were thinking?” she asks again as they step outside. They’re several streets from the nearest bus stop and the day has continued while they were eating; clouds have built up and it’s darker, though not yet evening.

“Witches,” he says, and he smiles at her. “Like you.”

She bumps her shoulder against his. “I’m not a witch, Vizh.”

Vision’s smile is more a grin now and he pushes back against her as she leans against him fondly. “Maybe so,” he says. “But witches and familiars, alchemists and homunculi, alchemy as the birth of science…” he trails off, waves a hand. “You know. Created things to prove a profession.”

“So which are you?” Wanda asks. “If I am the witch in this.”

Vision shrugs. “I’m a homunculus of science,” he says. “But all of my makers barring Helen tie back to you.”

“A homunculus made by a witch,” Wanda says, smiling.

“Or…,” Vision trails off, but he’s smiling, watching Wanda in a way that is almost teasing. “There’s a simpler answer.”

Wanda raises an eyebrow. “Oh?”

Vision’s smile is something brilliant. “Maybe I’m your familiar.”

Wanda doesn’t laugh, but the warmth is bursting out of her chest, bright and warm, somehow both all-encompassing and yet only aimed at Vision. Some huge wave of fondness and affection, the warmth that she misses when he’s away, the affection that is strung so easily between them and she tugs Vision to a halt, smiling so hard her cheeks ache. He’s smiling still, bright and warm, something tentative at the edges, just as her own is, but bright-warm, affection and fondness, trust and love-warmth in such a huge wave as to be undeniable. His eyes are bright and inhumanly green watching down at her.

“Vizh,” she says softly, and the scarlet spins out of her palm, spins from her hand to his. “What emotion is this?”

“I don’t know,” Vision says and his eyes are bright, his face is warm, and he is focused and intent in that particular gentle way of his. “But it's what I’m feeling too.”

Home is too far away and too near all at once. Their knees bounce against each other on the bus and Wanda tucks her smiling face into Vision’s shoulder at least three times. She feels like a teenager again, on the good days when she and Pietro had enough to eat and had found a place to stay. She feels like laughing in joy and dancing and sending scarlet out in a bounding wave like warmth and happiness.

They stumble up the steps, unlock the door and push it shut and there is a moment of a pause, a silent question.

Vision’s eyes are bright and green. “I’m still feeling it,” he says softly.

Their lips meet. Wanda’s hands are on his neck, his jaw, trail up around his ears to find the hair he’s invented for this guise but it feels no less real, no less real than the clothes he creates, no less real than he is.

“Wanda,” he breathes, soft and warm against her skin and she kisses him again, and he kisses back, fierce somehow, but not like battle. Like warmth. Like protection and safety, security and affection. A fierce kind of love and Wanda feels alive.

His hands are gentle on her hips, her hands are gentle on his shoulders. Her hands find the collar of his coat and pull.

“Coat,” she whispers and he laughs softly against her collarbone. In a moment the coat is no longer there.

His hands are trailing over her hips, his thumbs on the skin of her abdomen just underneath her shirt. Their lips are still trailing along one another’s skin. Wanda steps backwards, trusts her memory of the room, her scarlet-senses to guide her and she backs into their bedroom, Vision following her all the way.

“Wanda,” he whispers again, and his eyes are bright and green his hands are tentative and warm and she cannot think much more than yes.

“Vizh,” she whispers. Her lips find his, her hands tug at his shirt and he laughs and vanishes that too.

“If only mine were as easily got rid of,” she murmurs and Vision pauses, pulls back.

“Do you trust me?”

Wanda looks at Vision. The question is mind-boggling, on some level, and also so very Vision. She pulls him close and kisses him. “Would I do this if I did not?” she asks.

He laughs again, nuzzles a kiss into her collarbone, and one of his hands find her shirt and jeans, the other trails on her skin and in a single gasping moment her shirt and jeans are gone, pulled away like air. Vision’s hand drops them to the floor and Wanda kisses him again as she trips back onto the bed, kicking off her shoes as she goes. Some part of her thinks that maybe they should slow down, but isn’t what everything has been since they first met in the cafe? Taking it slowly, learning one another as completely as they can? They know each other as well as they know themselves, and they want this, have waited for this, on some level, have felt the flush of emotion and known it might lead them here.

She lands on the bed with a thump, and Vision follows her, balanced above her by hands and phasing. He, in a way so very much himself, has left both of them their underwear and she feels so desperately fond of him for a moment that her heart hurts.

Her hands tangle in his hair, pull him close so she can kiss him again. He hums against her skin, settles his body between her legs and looks down at her, eyes so bright and green and so very non-human that it is striking against his human guise.

“Protection,” Wanda says, and given Vision can vanish his clothes in a moment it takes him about the same to create a condom out of nothing.

“We don’t know if that is necessary for us,” he says. “Given everything, but-”

Wanda smiles and kisses him before finishing his sentence. “Better safe than sorry.”

Their lips meet again, and Wanda catches his lip with her teeth. Vision groans and presses closer to her, his hands caught under the strap of her bra and the band of her knickers. “Wanda,” he says. “May I?”

She nods against his neck and after another gasping moment - light as air and her clothes whisked away - there’s nothing between them but their own hesitancy and a created-out-of-nothing condom.

“Vizh,” she says, and her hand curls around his ear, the back of his head and pulls him close as he sinks inside her. She feels his groan as much as his shiver, feels the shimmer as his human guise almost falls from him. “Vizh.”

“Wanda.”

There is a moment of stillness, of their bodies interlinked, of their breathing, and the sensations and nothing more. Vision nuzzles her neck, his guise back under his control as their bodies adjust. Then Wanda wraps her legs around Vision’s hips, and turns her face to cover his face with kisses.

His body is warm against hers.

The covers are beneath them, at first, somehow, during it all, they end up over them. Wanda remembers pulling him closer, lifting her hips to his, remembers the feeling of him murmuring her name against her skin. She remembers his hair between her fingers, and then his guise fading for a moment and her hands against a smooth scalp, she remembers arching her back and whispering his name and shuddering in pleasure and happiness and sheer unbridled joy.

They rise, they fall, their bodies meet in a gasping midplace and when they are done Vision’s face is tucked against her neck and their legs are tangled under the covers. They are both of them still shaking, and both of them content.

When they look up, it is dark outside; not stormcloud dark, but early evening. Vision’s fingers are gentle as they trace the edges of Wanda’s face.

“We have some time,” he says. “I don’t have to leave until the morning. Do you want to-”

Wanda shakes her head, because she doesn’t want to do anything, really, but stay here in this blissful place with the person she loves. She doesn’t want to go for a nighttime walk yet, does not want to walk him to get the earliest bus so he can return to base and leave her. She doesn’t want to go for food. She just wants to- “Stay,” she says. “Sleep.”

Vision’s smile is as warm as his laugh and his lips as they press against hers. “Pyjamas then,” he says.

Wanda pulls on the nearest clothes that might constitute pyjamas, and slips back into bed beside him. He has already conjured clothes for himself, and his arms open to make space for her as she curls close to him, her cheek to his collarbone and her lips to his jaw.

“Sleep,” she murmurs, and her fingers twine with his. “We have time. We have next time.”

Vision’s lips press to her cheek, and they sleep.

Wanda wakes to tea. It’s still dark out, but there is a teacup with her favourite blend and she cradles it in her hand, as Vision pulls a curtain wider and looks out to an empty street.

Then Vision hisses in what can only be pain.