'In starlit nights I saw you
So cruelly you kissed me
Your lips a magic world
Your sky all hung with jewels
The killing moon
Will come too soon'
The Killing Moon- Echo and the Bunnymen.
"I just feel you."
He told her that she couldn't hurt him. That it was okay. He guided her hand, as the energy began to course and pulsate, a red glow at her fingertips. She wondered—through her distant fog, the grief and the panic—how he was so calm. Those who had never known him would say it was because he was a machine, that the human fear of death did not apply to him. Wanda knew that wasn't true.
He must have been calm for her. As the power coursed, the light—that had taken lives and given them, ruined them and saved them—cast over him, to its target, the jewel that powered them both. Maybe it was always meant to be this way. Both children of the gem, in love, in death, in war.
What sort of a god would do that to her? Leave her in a world without Pietro, without Vis, and leave it to her to mend what she had broken.
There was utter silence—she didn't notice the presence behind her, the utter power that ricocheted through them all. Her eyes were fixed on him, even as he went slack. He still moved. His mouth moved, his eyes gazed. There was nothing else there. No stones, no aliens, no names. Her and Him. In a way—in this way—they were together, forever.
She saw his words, how his jaw trembled with the utter exhaustion to just say those three words. I love you too, I love you too. If she could have said them, than he wouldn't have to waste his final breath on something that didn't need to be said.
He said it anyway. She barely registered the words, the deep-rooted instinct to say it back. It hurt too much to say it as she took away his ability to ever say it again.
I love you. Always.
His last words, and they were for her. It would always be for her.
The blast didn't hurt. She was made of the fire, and from it, she was reborn.
It was welcome, though—the slight pain that she felt, crouched to the ground. The world was spinning. She couldn't think. She didn't want to.
"I have lost more than you could know." He was lying. No one could lose more—could feel the pain, a deep, dull inferno, constantly dying and living and bursting at once—than her.
She couldn't muster up the strength to say it. Rage burned, pure anger, and yet it was not enough for words. It was beyond simplicity, flesh and bone.
Wanda felt, very dimly, his hand across her hair, stroking it as if it could fix the pain. Comfort, consolation. It disgusted her to be near him, much less to be touched, as if it mattered, as if it helped.
I can't do this.
But now is not a time to mourn." You don't understand. You don't understand.
There's no time at all." His deep voice—both untouched and claimed by the same, indescribable emotion she held—was the only thing she could hear, the only thing there. She was not in her body. She didn't have a body.
Until she was.
There was a change in the earth, in the ground...in time. Time itself, running, changing...
She screamed, a sinister, broken scream as the green light overtook her sight, overtook the clearing. Slowly, so slowly, she saw him, the blast, and she was not there. It was not a show—he was unfolding his past, before his death. Before she had killed him.
Mercy.
If she had been softer, she would have begged. If she had been harder, she would have stopped it. But she was tired, shocked, and broken. All she could do was advance—already knowing that she could do nothing—and be swatted away like a fly.
If it was a kinder world, she could have held him.
Mercy. Please.
He did not see her. Not her pain. She felt weak—earlier, she held back. If she wanted to, she could stop him. But even that could be a lie.
She wanted to avert her gaze; to let her tears fall and give into the inevitable fate. Steve, Rhodey, Sam, Buck...they were all out of action. So was she. But her eyes were irrevocably drawn to the sight, her Vis, brought back to be lost again.
Please.
The man—the Titan, the tyrant— held him. This was not mercy. Not the tears, the gaze and the love she gave to him. This was not death...it was waste. Wanda watched as he held him, this machine that she had learned to see, to adore, to love. She felt everything, she felt nothing.
All she could do was sob.
I love you. Please let him hear it. The words she couldn't say the first time. She mouthed them—as he had—over and over again, catching his gaze even as hands, hands that had stroked her hair and taken life, ripped into his head, his machinery, artificial flesh that had grown to be human, just as his soul. Even as his body grew stiff, grey, devoid. The blast could not mask his body this time. There was no blast.
I love you.
She lowered her gaze, and, just for a moment, forgot. It was a peace she could never afford, not when she was working or alone. There was always something to think of. There was always some worry.
But they had lost. She had lost, Vision had lost, and everyone else. So what was the point in anything except from peace? It was all she had left.
Because your life is his now. You feel for him.
Her peace was interrupted by a roar. Deep, like a lion, and all the ferocity of a predator. A noice she had heard before—from all of them, at the height of rage, fear and exhilaration. A symbol of hope.
Now, she didn't even know if she wanted hope.
"I told you, you would die for that." A voice. Gruff, hoarse, Male. A mixture between naivety and excitement. She raised her head from where she lay, aware of the dull, throbbing pain, the ringing that drove her away from the light within her ears. Observation came first, and emotion would only come crashing in when she let it.
Thor. Short hair, new axe. Satisfaction. Exhilaration. Sticking that very same axe, holding it with steady, muscled arms, into Thanos's chest.
Winning is not like this. Pain is not for nothing.
"Y-You..." She felt her mouth contorting to a smile—the sight of death, death that mattered in the moment, death that she had craved but not taken—was nothing but joy.
"You should have aimed for the head." His expression changed. Confusion. Always the sort of man to act before he thinks.
You should have aimed for the head.
Like he had with Vision.
Wanda knew, now, what was coming next. She heard it, trembling through her, the simple sound of the thumb and the finger rubbing against it, simple friction, physics. The power verberated through her, the sheer power that trembled and travelled; through space and time and soul and reality.
Over.
The words, the reality and her own thoughts of the situation dissipated completely. All she could feel was the pulling of her body, the dirt between her nails as she clawed herself to him. That was her only target, her only purpose now. To hold him.
Everyone was taking. Everyone was making too much noise. It travelled, the waves of sound, but she did not hear it. She could only feel—his body, cold and limp, between her hands. She could register a fading sensation, the ebbing of her own energy. She didn't care.
I want to be alone. I want to go. I want to go home.
As her tears fell, she felt the sensation overtaking. She was alone—and she realised, she was dying.
Her last thought was another's.
You'll die alone.