InsaneJournal

Vision wouldn’t have traded a single day of the three years since his birth. Not a single one. It was a short life, but a good one. He thought he’d made the most of his use on Earth, and while he had some regrets – what had happened to Rhodey chief among them – he had more happy moments than otherwise. He’d made friends, had saved the world, had fallen madly and deeply in love. And while he would have liked more time, more time with Wanda, if sacrificing his life meant that he would save the universe, then so be it.

It wasn’t fair that Wanda was the one who had to do this. The only one who could do it. It wasn’t fair, and it wasn’t right, but Wanda was strong, and he thought she’d come through this all okay, in the end. She would fall in love again, he hoped, and live a fulfilling life.

The pain was excruciating, more painful than he would have thought possible, but he kept his eyes open, watching Wanda, repeating to her that it was alright, it was alright – even as she pushed Thanos away from them.

“I love you,” he told her, and then, suddenly, the pain stopped entirely.

She must have done it, he thought. This must have been death. At the same time that the pain had stopped, so had his connection to the internet, so had the feeling of Wanda holding him up.

And then he opened his eyes, because death had rather more birdsong in it than he had expected. He tried to move, and gasped – it turned out that the pain wasn’t completely gone after all, only diminished. He was still severely injured from where he’d been stabbed.

He wasn’t in Wakanda anymore, either – there were still trees, still a forest, but they were different, all his surroundings were different, and, most importantly, Wanda wasn’t there with him. Still there, he could feel her, the only familiar thing he could feel, given that he’d been suddenly and rudely cut off from his knowledge base, but he took some comfort in that. Once she could escape from Thanos, she would come from him. She would have to finish what she started, he was afraid, it was too dangerous otherwise, unless someone managed to kill Thanos and all his subjects, but… but she would come for him.

And so he crawled to a tree, sat leaning against it with a groan, and closed his eyes to wait.

Wanda had been at the tea shop when it happened.

It'd been so long, too long, but she knew it like the back of her hand. She first felt it like a spike in blood pressure, the fine hairs on the back of her neck rising - and it would fade into this soft, warm tingle that reminded her of a feeling she used to associate with coming home. Then there was this rhythmic, steady pulse that she didn’t feel with her hands; it was all in the mind, a feedback of brainwaves and power that worked together as if it were a beating heart.

“I have to go,” she had told Scorpia briskly, undoing the knot of her apron to fling onto a hook in the back. Times like these she wished she had the ability for long distance teleportation or a portal-opening ring but the Waypoints were a blessing. She could hop from one point to another, follow the feeling. It was like a red string of fate. Wanda was at one end, chasing the path to the other without a rational thought. Her blood screamed for her to find the person it had tethered her to and then, only then, could she think about the implications and what it meant.

She had to see it.

She had to know.

The feeling brought her to a clearing. Nothing out of the norm for it - it wasn’t far from the cottage, there was a field of dandelions with a few seeds floating in the air from a recent breeze. Wanda would have paused for a few seconds to even admire it if it wasn’t for the body propped up against a tree trunk, damaged but not beyond repair. Not destroyed. Not pulled apart like he was some science project that didn’t matter.

“Viz,” Wanda breathed out, taking a step forward but careful to not move too fast - what if this wasn’t real? “Viz, is that…” Really you?

“Wanda,” Vision breathed in the same tones as a man who’s been stumbling through the desert for weeks might have said water. He’d seen her only moments ago, but he’d thought it would have been his last, and to have this second chance, however short it might have been…

There was something different about her, different between her and the Wanda he’d seen only minutes ago, but he couldn’t say what it was just yet, and he didn’t want to waste what little time they had together contemplating it. “How long do we have?”

Her name from his lips - Wanda never thought she would never hear it again. It almost felt like a dream. But in her dreams with him, the good ones, he wasn’t hurt.

Steps speeding up into a jog, it was seconds before she closed the distance and knelt before him. She cradled his face into her hands, feeling the quiver of her own lips and the tears that threatened to overwhelm her eyes. The Mind Stone was intact but he was wounded, and Wanda felt an uncomfortable rush of deja vu hit her.

“There is no threat,” she smiled tremulously, a thumb stroking over his cheekbone. It was him. It was Vision. It was a Vision that came right before his final moments from over five years ago; when things felt so dire (like they couldn’t win), when she was a different Wanda. The hand that had her wedding band was pressed against his cheek. “Thanos is dead. He has been dead for years now. You are somewhere safe - and far from home.”

How long do we have was a question she didn’t know how to answer. All she could tell him was what she knew. “This is Vallo. We’re in a different world, Viz.”

Thanos is dead. The words went through him like a shot, and he reached to cup Wanda’s face too. Vision had been prepared to have the Mind Stone – himself – destroyed to protect the universe, but if he didn’t have to, if he could just spend his life with Wanda.

That was what was different though. She was older. It was impossible to tell how much older, years apparently. She was older, and her grief had only grown heavier.

He didn’t know how he could have ended up in another world, but he didn’t question it when Wanda said as much. “Then that was remarkably good timing, for me to end up here when I did,” Vision said, shooting Wanda a smile, and then he grimaced, a pain shooting through his side. “I thought, for certain, that that was the end for me.”

It was the end for you, Wanda thought. Those were words she wouldn’t dare say. Perhaps later, but -

There were more pressing matters. “Let me help you,” she told him gingerly, a hand hovering over his wound. Magic rippled from her fingertips as she began to more or less stitch him close - something she had done plenty of times in the past. Wanda wasn’t a healer by any means but there was something about Vision having the Mind Stone (with her own power having been amplified by it) that allowed this.

Not that it was a total fix, or anything; she never quite understood how to repair his insides. That was probably more a Tony Stark question.

“I don’t live far from here,” Wanda said, smoothing her palm over to his side. It would probably still feel tender. “I’ll get you on your feet and take you there, you need to rest.”

Some of the pain did manage to abate with what healing Wanda was able to do; she’d managed, at least, to halt any further degradation of his systems. He thanked her, and managed to climb to his feet, with Wanda’s help, and then into the air.

“How long have you been here, Wanda?” he asked. And then, “How long has it been since you fought Thanos?”

Wanda looked at him tentatively and did not respond.

Not immediately, anyway. The fact that they had shot up into the air was a decent excuse for this. It was a very short flight to the cottage, and the magic vanished from her hands once their feet hit the path that led towards a deceptively small cabin. With one of Vision’s arms around her shoulders, she gripped his waist just in case as she brought him to the door.

“I have been in Vallo for over a year now - getting closer and closer to two years,” she answered him with a bittersweet smile. “I have lived a good life here. Many of our friends have come and gone. Some are the ones we know, others are from a different universe or timeline.”

The door opened to reveal a much bigger inside. Plenty of dark furniture and blankets, candles and incense and pillows - it was cozy here, and the electricity flickered to life in the black light fixtures. “It has been close to two years as well since fighting Thanos, but you should know that for five years - Thanos won.”

There was so much to tell him. So much to say; the good things and the bad. Wanda brought him to the couch in the living room (photos on the walls; of Tommy and Billy, Iryna and Erik, of Thor and Carol and Peter; Stephen, wedding ones). Wanda knew she had to take him to the DOA at some point but right now, she wanted this bubble where it was the two of them - Wanda and Vision, like it was its own alternate reality.

“He didn’t win in the end though, and that’s what’s important,” Vision said softly. The idea of Thanos winning even for five years was chilling, but sometimes battles had to be lost so that wars could be won. Vision understood that.

Vision took it all in, smiling a little, seeing Wanda’s touches here and there, but someone else’s, too, signs that he couldn’t quite place until he spotted the photographs. He was tired, and sore, and it would have been better if he could sit, but he couldn’t, even if he wanted to.

“You’re married,” he said, fingers brushing Wanda’s face under the glass. Something in what might’ve been his heart, if he was human, ached. At how beautiful she’d looked in her wedding dress. In that it wasn’t him standing next to her. In the understanding that, if she’d married someone else… Well, perhaps he hadn’t managed a lucky escape after all, and if Thanos had won anyway, it meant that Wanda hadn’t been the one who’d ended things in the end.

Perhaps that might have been for the best, if it had spared her from needing to take his life after all.

“I am,” Wanda answered him, pulling the sleeves of her cardigans over her hands and crossing her arms. “Or - was, I suppose.” It was an odd limbo to be in. Stephen was gone; she wasn’t going to fool herself into thinking Vallo would bring the one she knew back. “Vallo isn’t always permanent for some people. Stephen Strange isn’t here anymore.”

She stood next to Vision, looking at that photo too. Losing Stephen was a different kind of ache; they had known one of them could disappear and leave the other behind. They weren’t fooling themselves with the certainty that this could be permanent. They had taken the leap, hoping for the best.

That hope was gone now, and she had no choice but to accept it.

“There is…” Wanda sucked in a breath. “Much that I would like to tell you. But I think I can show you instead - if you let me.”

His fate. Thanos. The final fight. Losing Natasha. Tony. Steve. What happened in Westview, and most importantly - Billy and Tommy.

“Oh, Wanda,” Vision breathed, resisting the urge to run his hand over her red hair; it seemed, somehow, inappropriate while they were talking of her husband. “I’m sorry he’s not here anymore. I would have liked very much to meet him.”

He meant it genuinely. If Wanda had married him, then Vision thought he must have been a good man. Perhaps they might have even gotten along.

He nodded. “I would like to see it all, Wanda, please.”

They would have gotten along, Wanda was sure of it. There would be no ill feelings there. Stephen knew how deeply she loved Vision, how she would always love Vision - he had helped her mourn him in a way that wasn’t destructive, had talked her through her feelings when she wasn’t even sure how to do that anymore. She had loved again because of Stephen. It was very bittersweet.

And she still had no regrets.

“I’m alright,” she whispered in assurance, delicately tracing her fingers over his elbow as she turned to face him directly. “What I’m about to show you is…” Wanda winced. “I’m not proud of it, Viz. I’ve made mistakes, and I can’t take any of them back. The best I can do is live differently here.”

Her other hand came up, fingers engaging in that rhythmic movement over stone so they could connect, from her mind to his. Wanda would show him everything.

Everything.

Him dying at her hands. Thanos using the Time Stone to undo it, all to kill him again. Fast forward to five years, waking up in Wakanda with Vision’s death a fresh, gaping wound. You took everything from me. Tony and the Gauntlet, snapping his fingers. Funerals. I can’t feel you. Westview, the Hex, the new Vision she had created out of grief. The boys. Agatha, the white Vision she fought. The Scarlet Witch. We’ll say hello again.

The Darkhold. Dreamwalking. Death. Scarlet Witch versus Stephen Strange. The Other Wanda. Billy and Tommy, alive in another universe. Every shame and regret, until she reached what could be construed as her death with the castle collapsing all around her.

But there was some hope, too. Wanda showed him glimpses of life here as well - nothing in detail, but enough to let him know that she was okay here. She loved again. She had a shop. Friends. Billy and Tommy, older and perfect and she loved them with every atom of her soul. They were here.

Her words would never be enough to really explain all that happened. But these memories she shared with Vision would.

“Despite everything,” she began once the magic faded and the connection between them was lost, “know that there was not a single day that passed where I didn’t miss you.”

It was a lot to process all at once, and if Vision had been human, he wasn’t sure if he could have handled it. He certainly would have had a headache at the end of it. But his processing speeds were top-notch, a combination of magic and technology that was unlikely to be replicated again, and so it only took a couple of seconds to understand the information.

Understanding his feelings around it, on the other hand… That would take some time.

He could understand his initial feelings though, the ache in his chest. “Oh Wanda,” he said, raising his hands to cup her cheek. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry that you had to go through all of that on your own.” That her grief had driven her that far. If he’d known that her death would have driven her to such extremes, what would he have changed?

Everything, if he’d had a choice in the matter.

“And I’m so happy that you found your way here, and found love again. That you found Billy and Tommy.” Hers, but his as well, maybe? That, he thought, would give him the most trouble. The idea of children. Would they think of him as their father, or was he a stranger to them?

One single tear rolled down her cheek. It was hot against her skin, but no others came after that and she was thankful for it. Wanda had cried to last several lifetimes. That tear, however - it wasn’t one of sadness.

It was love.

There was no need to define what kind it was; it just was. She was thankful for this moment. “Those two are a menace,” she laughed, choked but happy. Her hand went over his to squeeze. “They are chaos, and are perfect, and I wouldn’t have them any other way. I know it is… a lot to spring up on you. All of this. Everything. Them. But I can start with getting you settled more here in Vallo, if you’d let me?”

The DOA could explain more and equip him with what he needed. Wanda wanted him to stay here, of course - but he also had the option for Morningside, and she wouldn’t rob him of making that decision if he needed the space.

Wanda selfishly hoped he didn’t.

“I would be happy to let you help me settle into Vallo,” Vision assured her. “You’re right, it is a lot.” He thought he got the jist of it. He wasn’t the type to try to complicate matters, or to deny the realities that were before him, but even still, it was an adjustment. Less than an hour ago, he’d been certain he was about to die – a certainty that he’d evidently been correct in, in some version of history. He’d seen Thanos come, and had known fear.

And now… now he was here, where things were less fraught, where Wanda had lived an entire life without him. Where there were children – young adults, really, and heroes in their own right – and a previous marriage and he was completely disconnected from everything back home. Not Wanda. Wanda, he would be connected to no matter what the world, no matter how much time had passed since they’d last seen one another. But losing his connection to the internet had been as though he’d suddenly been bereft of an entire sense, and he hoped that settling in also involved gaining a connection to this world's internet.

“But I think, Wanda, with you, it won’t be too much.” If he had saliva glands, he might have swallowed, if he had a heart it might have trembled, but he had neither of those things, so all he felt was a sense of nervousness. He’d never let nervousness stop him before. “I understand, Wanda, if you’d say no – I know this was a place for you and Stephen Strange, a place where you two could be together, and I’ll not intrude if you don’t want me to, but I hope I’d like to remain close to you, if you’d let me.”

“You are always welcome here,” Wanda insisted firmly, nevermind that stubborn quiver to her lips that hadn’t quite stopped throughout this. She would always take the chance to have him close. The way his life ended back home - it wasn’t fair. She had killed him, for nothing, all to watch him die a second time with barely a moment to process. She would always feel raw about it.

(There were times where she mused over the possibility of Thanos showing up here, and how not disappointed she would be at the chance to tear him apart with her bare hands. She would do it slowly. Piece by piece, bone by bone. She’d save his heart for last.)

“Our time here is even less promised but if you’re here, then I want you right here,” she continued. “You will also meet Peter, he lives with me and you might remember him from that airport battle…” Wanda let out a wet chuckle. “But he is good company, and you’ll like his mind. Once we come back from the DOA and you’re comfortable, I can let the kids know you’re here?” Vision did remember the boy from the airport battle: Spider-Man, he’d been called. They hadn’t spoken much, but they’d both been fighting for Tony and he seemed like a bright young man. Vision was going to have to ask exactly how Peter had ended up living with Wanda as well, but that was a discussion that could wait for another time.

“I would like that very much, Wanda.” Presumably, the DOA would be able to repair what damage had been that Wanda hadn’t been able to heal as well. He would want to be at his best if he was going to meet his boys. He ran his thumb across Wanda’s cheekbone. “But first, I would like very much to kiss you.”

Wanda didn’t hesitate. Vision, the real Vision, was before her. This was a chance she never thought she’d have again - she would take it. “You’re allowed,” she told him, right before rising to her toes to meet his lips for a kiss that wasn’t a goodbye. It was a welcome back and it was an I missed you.

It was also an I love you, despite everything.

Peter sometimes wondered if he'd made the right choice, deciding not to go to university. He was working for Stark Industries, and spent a lot of time swinging around the city looking for Spider-man things to do, but he'd just spent the last couple of hours hanging around outside the fourth story window of one of the chemistry lecture halls, evesdropping on one of the professors, and was debating the merits of maybe actually going to class instead of being a literal fly on the wall (literal in that he'd been on the wall, not that he was a fly. He still only has two eyes and four limbs and zero wings).

He wasn't expecting anyone to be home when he waltzed into the living room. He was pretty sure Wanda was still supposed to be at the tea shop. The last thing he'd expected to see when he came home was Wanda making out with a robot.

"Uh…" Peter said, freezing mid motion as he came across them. "Should I… should I come back… later?"

The kiss came to an end, but not abruptly. Wanda was not some teenager caught by a parent, though she’d admit that there was some… awkwardness to the situation, Peter suddenly popping up (and with his history of living with her and her, ah, husband that no longer was here). She tried not to overthink it much.

“This is Peter,” she introduced, squeezing Vision’s hand. “Peter, this is… Vision. I’m not sure if you remember him.” Wanda cleared her throat. She did need to talk with him about Vision staying with him, too - this was his home, and she didn’t want to outright ask him at the moment and put him on the spot. “He just arrived. I’m about to take him to the DOA to get him proper orientation.”

“Oh, yeah, I remember. Mr. Stark introduced us. Back in Germany?” Peter shuffled into the living room, extending a hand out to Vision, which was more than a little awkward, given the fact that Vision still had his arms wrapped around Wanda. There was a very brief moment when Peter considered whether it would be more awkward to withdraw his hand and pretend he’d never offered it or leave it hanging out there, but it was only a brief moment. Vision moved nearly immediately to grasp it.

“Yes, of course. You seem taller,” Vision said.

“Yep. You know. Puberty.” He visually winced at himself. Was this too long to be shaking someone’s hand? It was probably too long to be shaking someone’s hand. Peter let go. “I didn’t realize you guys… knew each other. But I guess… you know, the Avengers… it makes sense.” He gave them the thumbs up, and then tilted his hands so the thumbs were pointing in the general direction of his room. “I’m gonna go to my room now. Sorry for uh, interrupting.”

If Vision had eyebrows, they would have been raised in confused amusement as he watched Peter leave the room. He turned back to Wanda. “So, that’s Peter? He seems like a nice boy.”

Well - alright, yes, this could be awkward to Peter, who had known her to be only with Stephen Strange? Did he not know about her past with Vision? Wanda hadn’t thought to consider it or bring it up. Most of the time people knew things about her before she even had the chance to know them, and considering her infamous tantrum of reality-altering grief she had just - assumed.

(Probably because more people knew about that here than they did at home, come to think of it.)

That was going to be a talk with him later. “He is,” she said, clearing her throat and flashing a smile. “Just had his birthday so he’s technically an adult - but I’ve adopted him a little. He’s lost a lot back home.” Vallo allowed some normalcy, though; that was good for Peter. “But let’s get going? I am… eager to get all the official stuff taken care of so I can bring you back here and relax.”

Maybe she could reach out to Tony about fixing him up quickly too.

Vision felt a flush of warmth toward her. So many people back home had lost a lot, and perhaps grief called to grief. Vision wouldn’t know: the only love of his own that Vision had known was for Wanda. As much as he loved humanity, and learning all the things that made humans human, Vision had never known grief. But he loved Wanda all the more knowing that the choices she made here in Vallo were to care for others who were grieving.

“Yes, let’s,” Vision said, taking her hand.

There was, no doubt, a lot to learn about this world. But right now, nothing sounded better than getting the necessary paperwork out of the way, and coming home again with Wanda. The sooner they could get all that out of the way, the sooner he could learn everything he possibly could about Wanda.