WHAT: A very complicated family has an official reunion (Wanda is just super happy to be here) WHERE: Wanda's Cottage WHEN: Backdated to early October WARNINGS: None STATUS: Complete
Vision was, for lack of a better word, nervous. His palms weren’t sweating – he didn’t have sweat glands, so it would be very concerning if they were – and there were none of the physiological changes that humans generally went through when they were nervous, but he felt it all the same. It seemed as though his mind was processing three times faster than it normally did, getting stuck on points that Vision knew he didn’t need to think so much about, yet somehow couldn’t stop. He’d spent half an hour in front of the mirror phasing through different outfits: the red and blue one with the yellow cape he wore when he had official Avenger duties, a suit and tie, some sort of hideous ensemble with baggy cargo shorts and a loose muscle shirt that said Surfs Up in cursive (he’d very briefly had the thought of being the “Cool Dad,” but all it had taken was one horrified look at that particular ensemble to decide otherwise), and a dozen other choices before finally settling on a pair of dark slacks a navy sweater. He’d spent an inordinate amount of time wondering if he should shift into his more human appearance, until he’d finally asked Wanda and assured him that he was fine the way he was.
And now, as the door opened, he realized he’d completely forgotten how to stand. He suddenly felt like all his limbs were akimbo. What was he supposed to do with his arms? Perhaps he should try levitating? Would that seem more natural? He tried it, only for a moment, before remembering hat he was already quite tall and that floating a foot off the ground on top of that might make him seem intimidating. He dropped back to the ground, just in time to see the boys enter the house. He lifted his hand in greeting.
This was weird. But Tommy was used to shit being weird because that was their life—even before Vallo. However, Tommy wasn't used to being so personally affected by the weird stuff. Hearing that Wanda's version of Vision was here (yes, also dead, but alive now) just made Tommy skin crawl in that uncomfortable ugh, parents way. Tommy didn't want to spend time unpacking that, not yet, so what he did was focus solely on Billy who he absolutely knew was having a meltdown and saying he was fine fine fine.
"Take deep breaths or you're gonna pass out and leave me alone to deal with both of them and you know I get weird about family shit," Tommy said to Billy, shaking him by his shoulder. He should have brought a paper bag with him. But if Billy really needed one, he'd just make one into reality and so the fact that his hands were free of breathing apparatuses was a good sign. Maybe.
But the door was opening, and Tommy was speedily slapping Billy's hands down so that he didn't cling out of panic. They had to remain a united freaked out front without looking like a united freaked out front. His attention clocked Wanda immediately inside, and then Vision who was looking rather fatherly in slacks and a sweater.
Tommy raised an equally awkward hand to wave, but he added, "Yo, dude," which meant that he was cooler, more chill about the whole introduction. Right? He pointed at Billy, and helpfully supplied, "This is Billy."
“I’m fine,” Billy hissed, insisting (hisisting? Inhissting? Maybe he should pop over to the library and look up if anyone had a word for that!!! No, Tommy would straight up murder him, after he sped away and dragged him back by the actual scruff of his neck, never mind.). He was fine!! He. Was. Fine. This was Vision, the Avenger! …Who their friend Jonas was modeled after.
Jonas had died. Nate had killed him–Nate would have said that he technically took Jonas offline because Jonas wasn’t alive to begin with, but Jonas was his own person in and of himself, an android or not. Billy never really got over his death, even after all of this time. Steve Rogers had named them fully fledged Avengers, as they were standing in the shadow of the memorial of Jonas, Cassie, and Ant-Man. So there was that.
And then there was the other component. This was their alternate universe soul dad!!! …Who really didn’t want anything to do with either of them back where they were from. They had sort of hinted around that with Wanda, wanting to spare her feelings and honor her memories. And it wasn't like Billy or Tommy had any resentment towards their Vision for it, it stung a little bit but the entire situation was weird. But this Vision wanted to know them, his AU soul sons, so that was a good sign, right??
He glanced over at Tommy, who was usually, oddly, the calmer one in these situations (there had been TWO now) even though Tommy had more of a right to be panicked. “I’m fine. This will be great,” he said,, and maybe Billy’s magic of speaking things into being would make it so. The door opened, Billy waved back, his eyebrows arching at the sweater, and Billy jerked his thumb at Tommy. “This is Tommy, hey. Hi, Momda.”
“Hi, boys,” Wanda greeted with a calm, close-lipped smile as she stirred her tea. This was - yes, this was weird. It didn’t matter what universe they all came from. It was weird all around. She didn’t want to force anything on any of them. Vision hadn’t played a part in making them, this wasn’t the one the they knew and from the talks here and there she could surmise the situation was… complicated.
Complicated was them, in a nutshell.
But having them all under one roof, with her - there was this bittersweetness to it. An indulgent wish come true.
“Like I showed you - this Billy and Tommy are technically from a different universe,” she said to Viz, hips leaning into the couch. “But that does not matter to me. They are my family.”
“A pleasure to meet you both,” Vision said, wondering if he should shake their hands, and then wondering if that would be strange, and how would he choose whose hand to shake in the first place? He opted, instead, to stay exactly where he was standing and smile at them.
“I’m Vision,” he said, though, well, they obviously knew that. “But you can call be Viz, or,” he stopped there, suddenly aware how presumptuous it was to tell them they could call him Dad. They had, in Wanda’s memories, but those were different boys from a different universe. Vision had downloaded some books about parenting teenagers and young adults, and while none of them agreed on… well, anything, really, and none of them dealt with this particular situation, he felt like that would be crossing some sort of line. Besides, they didn’t even call Wanda Mom, but rather Momda, which was entirely endearing, except he couldn’t think up any paternal version of his name at all. And so, he continued, with hardly a pause at all, with “Vision.”
He cleared his throat. “But if Wanda thinks of you as family, then I hope you’ll let me think of you as the same.”
"Viz," Tommy drawled out, almost threateningly. But it was his buffer, his way to make the whole situation more palatable, because he was starting to feel like the whole night was going to be like walking a tightrope and Tommy was fast, but absolutely shit with balance. He tended to reach for the parts of him that were more prickly and defensive and annoyingly childish, because Tommy always had to be. Parents in general made him squeamish. Overall it had taken some time with Wanda too. He had only just started calling her mom.
Tommy zipped in, taking Billy with him, to sit on the couch. A blink and they were gone from the front door and sitting in the cottage living room where Tommy had felt the most comfortable. He slung an arm over the back of the sofa—to prove he was in his element, totally not freaking out. Not like Billy, who couldn't keep a secret to save his life at the moment.
"Yeah, you can think of us as family. You can call us whatever you want, but, you know, as family, Billy likes being called The Asguardian, and I'm The Speed PhD." Those were neither appropriate nor correct, but Tommy was testing Vision, and also testing Wanda and Billy to see how much they would let him get away with. "Billy really wanted to know if you liked being called The Vision, but I guess it's just Vision."
He sucker punched Billy in the arm. "Now what are you going to ask? Question one, solved."
“Sure, those are both…offerings,” Billy agreed, very much resisting the urge to quip ‘you can call me Bill or…Billy’ because he wasn’t sure if the humor would translate and because although sarcasm was his default when uncomfortable or uncertain, Tommy would also have that covered in spades and the one-two punch of the twins might have been too much right away for Vision. Hey, we’re your AU soul children and by the way we speak rapid fire in our own language of gifs and memes and emojis and insults, Vision would likely get the feel of them right away but Billy would spare him some.
Tommy had them gone in an actual blur, so fast that Billy’s floppy hair was still falling in his face when they sat. “You can call him The Idiot,” he corrected, quickly elbowing Tommy in the ribs, both for the comment and for completely throwing him under the bus in front of Vision. “So, I’m from New York, Tommy’s from New Jersey, the far lesser of the ‘New’ states, and that does include Mexico and Hampshire. I don’t know what Mom told you,” he said, with a glance at Wanda. “But we’re, uh, in a unique situation. Even back home.”
Wanda, for the most part, was content to observe. She had a lot of thoughts, a lot of emotions, but she seemed to use the motion of stirring her tea over and over to expel the nervous energy. Surely she wasn’t the only one whose nerves were a bit frazzled anyway; she could feel it come off Vision like waves, Tommy was masking his with sarcasm and walls of aloofness, and Billy wasn’t a total bundle of word vomit (which meant he was doing his best).
“I’ve told him that the two of you were reincarnated into other families and were part of a new Avengers team,” she answered as she made herself comfortable on an ottoman. With a wave of her hand, a spread materialized for them to pick at on the coffee table - the nuggets she had promised Tommy (done in the oven, not the dryer) with dipping sauces, bagel bites (also not a dryer product), and itty-bitty pumpkin pie bites. Junky comfort foods from the frozen aisle. “But that is the extent. Your stories are your own.” Wanda looked at the twins, biting the inside of her cheek. “I didn’t think it was my place to really give too much detail beyond that.”
There were some things, too, that took them a while to open up to her about. Those were moments of trust she didn’t want to betray.
She patted the empty spot next to her. “This thing is wide, Viz, come sit.”
Vision was more than happy to come sit next to Wanda. For as strange and as uncomfortable as this entire situation was, Wanda was like a lighthouse in a storm, a beacon home. He reached for her hand once he sat down.
“I think I’ll stick with Tommy and Billy, if that’s alright,” he said, “though if you insist, I might be able to manage Dr. Tommy.” If Tommy wanted to claim a PhD then Vision could play along. It was a joke, of course, though Vision’s sense of humour was decidedly underdeveloped.
“Do you two have any questions?” Vision asked, latching onto Tommy’s insinuation that there were some, because answering questions was something that Vision was really quite good at and would, at least, put him on more familiar footing and would maybe give him a chance to decide which of the hundreds of questions he could ask. Humans were so incredibly complicated, and he was worried about stumbling onto the wrong question and scaring them off. “You have a Vision – or, The Vision?” – had he understood that right? What a terribly awkward name – “in your world as well, didn’t you? Were you close?”
Were you close? Tommy let out a loud exhale, blowing a raspberry for theatrics. What a loaded question. Was this a family dinner topic? Was he going to scare off this Vision? Tommy was used to parents popping out of his life or not caring, but Billy would lose his shit and Wanda would be sad and fuck, he did not want to be the reason for all of that.
"Depends on what one you're talking about, there's a lot of you, dude," Tommy said, like copies were normal. Being reincarnated into other bodies and stuff was old hat for the Maximoff twins, but maybe their AU world where Wanda and this Vision came from was not so cool with clones. "I mean, the first you, no. He was—" Okay, could he say dead? He exchanged a Twin Look™ with Billy, then barrelled on before Billy nonverbally talked him out of it.
"Then there was another you. Jonas. We were cool with Jonas because he was like a young you. Our age. And then he—" Oh shit, was he, like, doomed? Was every iteration of their soul dad going to die? They were three for three at this point. "Yeah, IDK." That's how Tommy said it too, eye dee kay.
“Died,” Billy supplied, and somehow that word came out of him. It had been more than two years now but it was still hard to say. But he looked at Tommy, he looked at Wanda, and Billy took a deep breath. This was important. And as much as looking at Vision was hard, it wasn’t near as hard as it was for Wanda, and his twin-sense intuition was kicking in hard for Tommy, so. He made a decision to hold himself together and picked up a mini pie, popping it in his mouth.
“We weren’t close,” he answered, shrugging. “We sort of only just found Wanda, in our timeline, and our Vision wasn’t super keen on knowing us while he was around. But I’ve always liked Vision from afar. Ask Tommy, I know literally everything there is to know about our Avengers, I had a dream team going–actually, a few dream teams, depending on the situation.” Geeze, what was it about Wanda’s baking that even these little pies were delicious?
“I know this is probably weird for you,” Billy said, after a moment. “And Wanda said you guys hadn’t talked about kids or anything like that, so it’s doubly weird, because, here we are, these basically adults telling you that we’re your kids. And I’m really sorry that you two didn’t get that chance, because she’s been an incredible mom to us, and we’re not even her version of her kids. But she is our mom, and we are her sons, and being family means that we push through all of the awkwardness and weirdness and stupid jokes that Tommy will make, which,” Billy leaned in, conspiratorially. “He will make so many stupid jokes, I’m just issiuing a blank apology for them right now, do not take 99% of what he says seriously. So I don’t really have any questions, except, I guess…what do you want to happen? Have you thought that far?”
Jonas. That name again. Wanda knew that their history with Vision was complicated, a lot less favorable than their history with her but - to have one supposed to be a father figure (and not be interested), and one as a friend that was killed (they hadn’t specified that but how else, no one around them had the luxury of dying of old age unless you were Steve Rogers and cheated the timeline) really upped it.
And with the way Billy was talking about her - oh no, she felt that pressure in her throat like she wanted to cry but kept herself in check. Instead she shoved a mini pie into her mouth, the whole thing, and it filled her cheeks. Could she choke like this? Perhaps. Choking on dessert would distract her from being a puddle of emotions.
“Don’t worry about our feelings,” was what Wanda was trying to say but it came out very incoherent. Talking with your mouth full was rude, yes, fine, sorry. It wasn’t cute. “Sorry -” she coughed, swallowing. That was embarrassing. “You can be honest. Or take some time to think more.”
Vision had literally shown up to discover that not only had his girlfriend gotten married, but he had died and in his absence she lost her mind and made a magical version of him and then knocked herself up in a fantasy sitcom world. He did not ask for any of this.
It was all rather a lot, and it would take a bit to fully process it all, Vision thought – his processors were fast, but this wasn’t just information, and emotions, he’d learned, took longer. It was a little disconcerting to learn that every iteration of him that the people in this room knew of was potentially doomed to die, but not so concerning as it might have been – dying, he thought, was simply a risk of being a hero. Living was the more concerning bit.
He was distracted, a little, from his thoughts when Wanda attempted to speak with an entire pie in her mouth, concerned for a moment before he was sure that she wasn’t going to choke, and he couldn’t help but smiling fondly at her. It was cute, no matter what she thought.
“It is all rather more than I was expecting,” he admitted. “And I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve not had much experience living, as it were, with everything that comes with it. But if there’s one thing I’m certain of, and it’s that I love Wanda. I can’t say I precisely know what I would like to happen, but I think it starts with getting to know the both of you.”
Getting to know them? Tommy loathed the idea. The more someone got to know him they either hated him or loved him—and sorry mom and Billy, family were biased. This was why he was acting all casual, and absorbing all the shit that was coming off Billy in waves. Or pretending to at least.
But this Vision had never disowned them, or called them fake, or whatever crap their Vision had. And he was making heart eyes at his mom in a way that seemed different than the one they knew. Granted, this was the most he had spent between these two, ever, and Tommy wasn't exactly the pinnacle of romance, so he wasn't sure if he could make those snap judgements. But unease trickled over him, and he fidgeted in his seat that he hid under speedster jitters at not zooming around like a cat at three in the morning.
"Yeah I mean, we can do that. That's why we're here for dinner and stuff, right? But if you start to be like ugh, yikes, kids, you guys suck, you have to write a very formal letter to Billy, in high Elvish to let him down easy because he's going to be too distracted that you know some fantasy shit to be sad." He elbowed Billy, because he was making a joke, and Billy was supposed to laugh.
Look, Billy knew being rejected by this Vision, or having him disappear, or any number of things could happen. But when he looked at Wanda and the burning hope so evident in her gaze, he wanted to try. And he had to admit, when he looked at Vision, it wasn’t like the few times they had seen their Vision. He was…confused, yes, but Billy thought that was pretty normal, really. How many times had he and Tommy said that the Maximoff family tree was more like an orchard? Vision had shown up, worn a sweater that Billy was pretty sure his own father had worn a few times, and he wanted to try.
Billy would too.
He elbowed his brother back and just because he could, he messed with Tommy’s hair. The twins never looked more alike than when they were teasing each other. “Do you know Elven? Because if you do, all you really need to know about me is that I think that is the coolest thing, and we’re automatically cool, welcome to the family.”
Wanda took a deep breath. Okay - they were trying. All of them. No expectations, no pressure. They weren’t a conventional family at all, but the fact that the four of them had agreed to meet up and communicate in some way meant a lot to her. Vallo was unpredictable in a lot of ways and could pull the rug beneath their feet again (like it had done to her only a few months ago), though she wanted to hope for the best. The three of them in this living room with her were the reason for that hope.
“So,” she said, slapping her hands over her thighs before standing up. “I’m going to make myself some more tea, and Viz will probably download everything in Elven and then learn it for you in about five minutes or less?” Five minutes might be an insult to how he processed things but give or take. “Tommy, you can come to the kitchen with me - I have more dessert.”
Tommy looked unbothered, though she was sure he was probably breaking out in some emotional hives. He seemed like he could use a breather, and Billy was chatty enough and Vision was being receptive and–