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Vision is still passed out when she reaches him, and her hands are quick in mending him back together, bringing him back to her. She’s getting good at this: getting him back despite all odds. All the time, she hums the old Sokovian lullaby, that her mother used to put her and her twin to sleep, back when they were children and air raids would steal hours upon hours of their night. The old Sokovian lullaby that she sang to her new born twins: a home wrapped in comfort. The words are familiar on the top of her tongue, soothing her mind as she works, as she tries to come up with her next move.

She’s so tired she cannot even think.

He wakes to the motion of her thumb against his chest, calming circles over where his heart would be, if he had one, a reminder of him being alive. His head resting in her lap, the smile on her face when seeing him awake so divine that for a second, Vision can forget all about what he was doing, what was going on.

His eyes fly wide, scrambling out of her reach. She frowns, hand hanging in the air. Wanda tilts her head at him, quizzically.

“Do not,” he spits, and when her face flushes with hurt, he checks the tone of his voice. “Do not erase my memories again. You know I’ll just find out again.”

“Careful, my dear husband, that sounds a bit too close to a challenge.”

She leaves her hand drop in her lap, where it’s obvious to the both of them that it’s trembling. She cannot make it still, no matter how much she stares at it, wills it to.

“I just want the truth.”

“Trust me, you don’t.”

“Wanda.”

“Vision.”

“Please.”

One thing about Vision: he never asked something of her, not like this, entirely hers. She’s suddenly horrified, painfully aware that he knows now too, how much at her mercy he is. He does not understand, quite yet, what happened with the barrier, but now the only way to know is… well, from her.

He sits up, extending a hand to his wife, helping her up.

“Let’s talk about it,” he says, and at her defeated nod, his arms tighten around her body, and before she has time to say something else, to change her mind, they’re in the kitchen of their home. Everything around them is eerily silent. The city is still stuck on the pause; the twins asleep upstairs. In here, they’re just as they’ve ever been: domestic to the core, if just a bit strange for the neighbourhood.

Vision pushes a warm mug of tea in-between her fingers, because Wanda looks like she is about to collapse any second. They’re wearing something different from their earlier Halloween get-up, which he cannot pinpoint or recognize, but it doesn’t seem to bring any kind of joyful memory to his wife. The scarlet leather sticks to her like a second skin, and he just gets the ghost of a feeling that this is somewhat the right look, just the wrong setting.

“What is real here, Wanda?”

“Everything,” she sighs, and Vision frowns in surprise.

The tiny body of his wife, his soulmate, the love of his life trembles under his questioning, with exertion and, he realizes, with the strain of pumping life and purpose to an entire town. For a second, pride surges in his heart, overwhelming, knowing her to be strong, stronger than him, stronger than anyone else he’s ever met.

What an honour to die at her hand-

Die?

And the thought disappears as soon as it appeared.

“Are you alright, dear?”

“I am dead,” he says.

It’s not a question, and Wanda’s mug collapses to the floor, the hot tea seeping into her shoes, the ceramic spread across the floor. She brings it all up together again, perfect form and no sign of break, much like she’s mended things back again to perfection in this town for a while now. She tries to smile.

“No, you’re not.”

“Wanda,” he sighs, moving to place the mug back on the counter, because it looks like it’ll break soon again, this time from the pressure of her fingertips against it. She cannot meet his eyes. “I just need you to trust me.”

“You didn’t believe me when I told you I don’t know how we arrived here. So why should I?”

“Because you cannot carry on like this forever. And if your own husband, your family cannot help you, then who can?”

She knows she’s being played. Direct confrontation didn’t work – it never works with her, because she just slams down and shut her opponent, so now he’s getting under her skin, in the way that only a person who truly loves her can do. What a terrible thing, to love and be loved in return. What a terrible thing, to be the one that loves more, so easily at the mercy of the person you’d do anything for.

“No one,” and Wanda stops, taking in a shaky breath, having to lean against the kitchen counter; Vision struggles with his upset, wanting to reach out for her, help her stand. “No one bothered to even think if I am okay, let alone make sure of it. And I’m not and I don’t think I will ever be without you. So please, Vis, don’t make me continue, because I’ll lose you,” she stops, before she allows the again to slip out, because it would make it real, “and I won’t be able to bear it.”

“Wanda, love-”

She sobs at the pet name, closing her eyes, trying to stifle her want to erase this all, to bury the pain and the knowledge and keep on going, smiling and living the perfect little life no one thought she was worthy of, before. It chips away at her, holding together the larger barriers of Westview, and things are beginning to stop making sense, even for her. She’s tired of keeping it together, but she’s even more tired of keeping it a secret from the only one other person who could potentially understand.

“I don’t want you to hate me,” she says, and meets his eyes for the first time.

Because if he’ll hate here, that’s where it will show. But Vision just stares at her, torn between wanting to comfort his obviously distressed wife and finding the truth, for the sake of the thousands of people who are stuck in a sitcom they didn’t audition for.

“I love you,” Vision says, but in this context it sounds like a threat, nothing like a certainty.

Love that could slip away. Once, which now feels like ages ago, she held his life in her palms and he promised nothing she’ll do will ever hurt him. She is painfully aware that all the time she played house, she’s been twisting a knife in his heart and trust in her at the same time. Now the curtain has fallen and her story comes crushing down.

“The world is safe, all is done, threat dealt with – at the price of your life, Vis. It’s not something I agreed to pay or let go or give away.”

His face twists, confusion for a couple of seconds. It’s hard to comprehend the reality of his death, when he’s here standing and alive – and a husband and a father. He is living on stolen time.

“What did you do, Wanda?”

And here it is: the horror, the blooming of the hate. Just because she expected it, it doesn’t make it any easier to bear. But it’s too late now, the dam has been broken, her despair immeasurable and she cannot hold it in anymore.

“Why does everyone get to live their life, and I get to only put in the grave the people I care most about on this earth? This is mine now and I will not let anyone or anything take another thing from me, no matter what. You know damn well I mean it.”

Vision has never doubted Wanda, not even in the tender first days when they met. He knows, with the same certainty that he knows he still loves her, despite all of this, that she means it entirely. He’s not sure how to go about making sure she changes her mind.

“But all these people here, Wanda, they’re in… they’re in pain.”

“It’s not their pain, Vision! Do you think I’d be able to stand here, scrub tiles and wash clothes, give birth and smile pleasantly at every single person I see, if I had to carry all there is in me? They’re cracking under my grief!”

Her fingers crackle with the power, tension taut in her body. Vision’s hand finds hers, tender and gentle as he lifts it to his mouth, kissing her palm, her knuckles. He remembers all those barely-moving figures, tears streaming down their face – tears they were spilling over the bottomless well of sadness inside his wife’s heart. He’s both the source and the ointment for the hurt, so he stays where he is, whispering sweet nothings against her skin, until she pulls herself back together long enough to not immediately need it.

“Wanda, you know, too, that this is wrong.”

He drops his forehead against hers, it’s the closest they came to an embrace since their silent mind war started, two episodes before.

“It sure doesn’t feel wrong, Vis,” she sighs, and she nuzzles her face at the crook of his neck, so much comfort in the embrace, now that he knows what he tries to comfort her over. He is warm against her and he is alive and for her, this is all that matters. She has him, and they have the family they built. She looks at him, determination so strong on her face.

Wanda and Pietro give up everything searching for a simple answer: why them? The answer, of course, never comes; the rage builds up, painful in her bones, bitter on her tongue, strong in her powers. There’s no real answer anyway. Pietro seems to find peace in the notion of “them, so it wasn’t someone else.” But Pietro is all goodness and brains, her brother, her twin, all she has left. Of course he can find a purpose in the anger and the pain. Wanda has always been the spoiled one, the one shaking her head and putting her foot down when she dislikes something. And Wanda dislikes so many things, but never him. With Pietro, all is bearable. Even the powers. Even a war.

Wanda is fighting in a war herself, her back straight and determination bubbling at her fingers, so of course any sacrifice is acceptable. It’s what one signs up for. If there was any signing involved, Wanda would have added a special clause: you can take anything from me, but not him. But she thought it obvious, her brother who held everything together with one single phrase, We will survive.

So why didn’t he? Wanda feels half of her body go down. The only person that has always been right by her side, the only person she had left, the only person who deserved to truly get out unscathed, after all the pain he had endured and carried. And Wanda explodes.

It shouldn’t have been him, but it was. Like this is any form of consolation, when she’s pushed from house arrest to house arrest, when they’re looking at her like their fear would hurry her arrival to wherever her brother is now. Nowhere. Dead.

Wanda closes her eyes, willing her powers to calm down to the dull hum under her skin. She knows they’re afraid of her, but she only knows she misses her twin, her dead twin and at the end of the day, she’s a criminal, and not a grieving young woman who lost everything. Again.

At least Vision pretends. Actually, she’s quite sure he is not afraid of her – not in the way the others are: for their lives, for the lives of who they love. Maybe it is because they share a bit of their origin, a familiarity in their powers. Maybe it is because his words and thoughts are all logic and sense, things that she does not possess, and nor does she wants to hear right now. But he pretends nonetheless, to care. It annoys her more than she likes, because in actuality it hurts her. The roll of the name of the dish that reminds her of home, on his tongue, is unfamiliar but full of warmth.

She wants to do something. Stop the pity, push at his body until there’s nothing standing between her and the outside. It’s unfair of him, to be so calm when she’s so close to entirely losing it. It’s unfair of him, to become the rock that grounds her to reality when all she wants is to slip away.

Wanda asks herself often: what would Pietro do? And then she argues against it, until she reaches the conclusion that she wanted in the first place. It’s the sigh of agreement that she imagines in her head that she desires, the only support that she seems to get nowadays.

“I can’t control their fear, only my own.”

And Wanda has been terrified. Afraid to do more harm, afraid to lose something else, though she’s not sure she has anything left to lose. But she’s been there before, thinking that, and the universe proved it to her that there are, still, things and people that it can take away from her.

So she pushes against Vision. She wants to say: thank you for not being afraid, but I’m going to be fearsome and in it will be my strength. Thank you for trying to find another path, but we both know it will not fit me. I’m sorry for the hurt. Instead, she tightens her jaw and leaves him behind.

It’s hard. Not as hard as what she’s been through so far.

Wanda has nightmares, often. She wakes up in the morning, her throat raw, the glass of water on the bedside table a haven of respite. All the books on her shelves flown to the floor, her desk in disarray. The pillow on her right, on the other end of the corner. Fixing it all is just a matter of a flick of her wrist, but the hollowness remains, settling in her bones, and she’s weary and tired.

Wanda never has nightmares when she’s with him. She steals moments in Vision’s embrace, scattered across the globe, when their missions find them in the same place – and, somehow, it works. She had told him “I won’t apologize,” and he smiled, warmly, in that way that only he can, and replied “I didn’t expect you to” and that was that. When the next time he attempted cooking, he actually had all the right ingredients, Wanda flushed with pleasure. That was his apology alright.

And from then on, they just made things work. Sometimes she shivers with her fear, that this can’t be this easy, that disaster is waiting around the corner to strike. Wanda is happy, but she’s happy with the awareness of grief. It took her a year to allow herself to tell Vision she misses him, breathless over the phone, hands tights around the device, counting in her head to stop herself from smashing it to pieces. Does she have any right to miss him, when he’s just a mere thousands of kilometers away, and still alive? Vision chuckles, all pleased.

“I love you, Wanda.”

It is the first time he tells her that. The line goes silent.

“How?” she blurts out, and she wants to finish the call, embarrassment almost unbearable, but what she wants to know is: why me?

“Because you are you,” Vision says, so certain, like it’s obvious to absolutely everyone else, and not just to him.

Wanda wants to tell him all the reasons why he ought not to. Things are easier with him, so much easier, and she’s sure he can tell too, how much of a lifeline he became to her, overwhelmingly so. She’s not sure she ought to love him too, so much, but she does. She loves him too, and she’s an only child now and she can be selfish for once, she can hope, she can allow herself this.

“You’re so unfair,” she sighs, and she hears him repeating it again, before she ends the call.

Contrary to popular belief, Wanda does not like fighting. She has fought since she was 10: to stay alive, to find a purpose, to keep people alive, to stop the world from ending. Just because she’s been doing it for so long, just because she’s so good at it, it does not mean that she enjoys it. The colour red haunts her: inescapable in a battle. The irony of it being the colour of blood as well does not escape her.

Wanda fights because she has something worth protecting. It’s as terribly easy at this. Wanda is merciless when she decides to go all out, because she’s revenging her losses with each kill. Vision, kind and peaceful man of her heart, does not understand it. Vision, who only destroys for the goodness in what remains. Wanda would like to learn from him, but does not know how. Sometimes, she catches the questioning glances of some soldiers, who have heard the rumours but cannot understand how come the Scarlet Witch can be loved, and loved by him.

She wants them to know: Pietro’s name is the only word she still pronounces with an accent. It’s an I love you wrapped in less words, and the proof that he’s still alive, in her and their language and thanks to the place they come from, the memories they share together. There’s only one shade of red that will never bother her, because it’s the colour of her love, and it suits her so much to find solace and pain in the same thing. And…

“It shouldn’t be you, but it is.”

Wanda sees half of her soul go down. Even worse, she’s the one who has to kill him: for the survival of the universe. She knows he can read it on her face, in her tears, in the anguish at the corner of her mouth, that she’d let the entire universe die, to hell with it all, if he is still left in it at the end. But maybe in the years they’ve been together, Wanda did learn a thing or two from him, so she wields her power, and has him as her target.

As always, Wanda is not allowed to grief. She has no time to grief, even as now, fully and entirely, she has lost it all. Her twin, the person she’s shared a home with ever since before they were born. Her soulmate, the man who has smoothed all her edges and who saw and loved and kissed all of her ugly. Wanda fights in a war but what she wants is to scream and scream and scream and cover the entire world in red.