#titania522

Wanda never thought she’d spend the final moments of her life floating. She’d always imagined her end would come by way of a fiery explosion, like her parents. Or lately, in a hail of gunshots, like Pietro.

Is it real? Is Pietro truly gone?

A black chasm opens inside her, forcing bile up her throat.

“If you stay here, you will die.”

“I just did. Do you know how it felt?”

Ironic that Ultron would worry about Wanda’s well-being when he had robbed her of the only person in the world who had meant anything to her. When Pietro died, so did she.

How does dying feel?

Like careening into a barrier, experiencing every shattered bone and burst blood vessel all at once but magnified beyond human endurance. The unspeakable agony of something being torn away, like the raw shredding of muscle fiber. Endless, bloody pain.

Then nothing.

Everything afterward is just one, big, uninterrupted nothing.

And now, with the city falling through space, she, too, has become nothing. Just a bag of flesh filled with the howling wind.

She floats. The city falls. And there’s nothing left to do but to let it happen.

So when Vision comes from behind and scoops her up into his vibranium arms, she can’t compute it. Can’t fit the synthezoid’s actions into the dead-end that she’s crashed into.

There is no floating anymore. They are flying. Hurtling away from the end of everything she’s ever known – her city, her childhood, Pietro - towards something different. A place where none of that can exist.

She considers struggling against her savior, considers a drop to the earth that is too sudden, too precipitous for him to outfly, but she knows before the idea comes to full fruition that it is futile. This new being Stark has created won’t allow her to fall – she doesn’t have to read Vision’s mind to understand this. He won’t let her shatter against the ground.

Earlier, Vision had barely materialized through the wall of the stone building she, Natasha, Steve, and Sam currently called home in Edinburgh when they found themselves wrapped around each other, hungry and aching as ever by their separation, each reunion a little more desperate than the one before. And kisses always lead to touching, to clothes phasing or falling off, to whispers and more kisses and thrusts and moans until the universe is compressed into the infinite space of two minds spiraling in tandem towards an inevitable peak. At its end is the gentle trajectory of their return to their individual selves.

Vision has learned too well the lessons Wanda taught him about the special ways bodies in love can dance and move. Sometimes, it's all they do.

She tosses the duvet aside, not bothering with a robe or her sweater, bracing herself for that peculiar combination of cold and humidity that only northern European homes can contain. She pads to the round table in the dimly lit room where the gorgeously wrapped box Vision brought her lies in orderly disarray. A pair of brand-new, dizzyingly-high, gold stilettos stands at attention on the table. But it’s the ruby-red dress she moves toward, long and serpentine as it hangs delicately on the door of the armoire. The fiery color, the sensuous material, the endless length paired with a plunging décolletage and shockingly high side split steals her breath away.

She lifts it, holding it against her, and turns, catching the look of undisguised admiration on Vision’s face as he observes her, unabashedly naked and barely covered by the lavish strip of red material as she sways to imaginary music.

“You can’t buy me such a dress and not expect me to dance in it,” she teases as she spins across the room, the material caressing her naked skin like a warm palm.

Vision smiles, leaning back against the pillows of the headboard. “I had hoped to take you out on a proper date. With all the safeguards in place of course,” he says hurriedly just as she opens her mouth to protest. He glances out the window at the rain that began as a drizzle and is now an outright downpour against the night sky.  “At least, that was my original intention.”

Wanda holds the material to her nose, taking in that unique fragrance that only new clothes have, especially expensive new clothes. And she has no doubt the dress is costly. She holds it away from her, ready to hang it up again. “We can save it for another time.”

Vision leaves the bed, moving effortlessly through the chill. Wanda forgets the temperature altogether as she watches his sculpted muscles and sleek seam of vibranium ripple with each step.  He used to be shy, inhibited by the belief that his body was too different from that of a human, too strange for Wanda to desire. But months of her sharing her wanting, flaying her mind open so that he can experience in real-time the way she feels when they reach for each other has purged him of those insecurities and she is proud of him, and herself, for his newfound confidence.

He takes the dress from her and removes it from the hanger. “Or we can still make something special out of it.” He carefully undoes the zipper and holds the dress. “Step inside.”

Wanda does as he says, letting him pull the straps up her arms and over her shoulders, the dress slipping wave-like over her body. She lifts her arm so he can slide the zipper up her side. It’s long, the edge of the dress sweeping the floor. But Vision is already ahead of the problem and picks up her shoes. Wanda holds the back of the chair as he kneels before her. Vision is taller than her by more than a head, wide-shouldered and long-limbed. But naked and kneeling at her feet, her body rages hot and furious at the fantasies his position inspires.

“Vis,” she whispers.

He must know how completely undone she is by the sight of him before her. It’s there in the bright knowledge of his eyes, the erection that twitches against his thigh as it comes to life. But instead of giving her the relief her body craves, he takes her foot and leaves small kisses along each arch before slipping on each shoe.

“You look good on your knees,” she says, her voice shaking.

He straightens, the smile he gives her a promise that sends electricity directly to the apex of her thighs.

“Incorrigible,” he gently reprimands as he shimmers, phasing before her eyes. He is no longer naked but dressed in a dark blue, single-breasted suit, white dress shirt open at his collar. Cuff links and polished, Italian leather shoes complete the ensemble.

“No fair,” Wanda says as he pulls out a cell phone from his travel bag. “I still have bedhead and you look like you stepped off a runway.”

“You exaggerate,” he answers, setting up his iPhone on the docking station he bought her. Bose speakers. Top of the line. He really is descended from Tony Stark. “You do not have to perform any improvements to be more beautiful than you already are.”

“Neither do you.” She reaches out to cradle his cheek, touched by his words, knowing that the utter sincerity with which he says everything makes each expression that much sweeter. “You’re just so dashing.”

He takes her hand, leaving a small kiss on her knuckle, and holds her against him as piano notes tinkle over the speakers, his blue eyes pure and unfathomable in a face she knows she can’t live without. “And you are everything.”