It starts with nothing, no thought or feeling or life or death.
It – he – does not exist, cannot exist, because he is an impossibility that cannot be brought into a world made of set rules and immovable boundaries.
But then he does exist somehow, if only a little, and he is all alone.
There is darkness here, and no air; though life begins to dream within his head, thought is still something out of reach, and so there is no panic at being unable to breathe.
If he could think, perhaps he would be content; there is no need for consciousness here, no problem to solve or mission that needed doing. There is only the dark and the quiet, and that is not so bad.
And he is not bothered by the lack of free thought; he is at peace here, and perhaps if he could think he would consider this a good way to spend eternity.
But then something happens, and the black is peeled away by glowing crimson fingers, and he is not alone. She is suddenly here, and she caresses his fledgling mind with a gentleness that belies the strength underneath her surface.
He meets her soft red light curiously with his own dim yellow glow, and there is something in her he does not recognize – all the joypainloveragefeargreedcompassionkindnessferocitylife of a human being – and it is terrifying in its intensity, almost too much for his fragile mind to take, but the rush of the foreign thing – emotion – gives him such a heady rush that he dives straight in without a care in the world.
She is happy when the long road gives Pietro an excuse to haul her up in a piggyback ride despite her stubborn insistence to walk by herself.
She is furious at the man, Stark, for so pompously advertising himself as a man of peace when his weapons of war tore her family apart.
She is afraid of the thunder booming across the sky, the rumbling reminding her of bricks falling and hitting a large metal shell buried beside them with a clang, ready to kill them at any second.
She is kind to the cities orphans, the young ones so like her and her twin after the attacks; she gives them her extra bread when Pietro isn't looking, and smiles when their faces light up.
She is loving hugs given to only one person, the only person left who cares for her as much as she cares for him.
She is laughing through her tears as she lights the menorah alongside her brother, saying a quick prayer to request that their parents are kept safe.
She is Wanda Maximoff and she is the most beautiful human he will ever encounter, he is certain of it.
The time they spent connected could have been an instant or an eternity; it doesn't matter much, but for a time she is there, looking into his mind in kind despite there being near nothing in it, and then she's gone far more violently than she'd come, warm red ripped away by some unseen force, and his body – is it his? It feels so disconnected – spasms at the abrupt loss, his content half-life suddenly not enough, nowhere near enough anymore-
He wants to see the road she used to walk down to the market back home; he wants to see the lightning touching down to the ground on a stormy night; he wants to see bread being made and young children happily scarfing the loaves down; he wants to feel her arms around him in a hug; he wants to see the lovely decorations set out for Hanukkah and laugh at the ridiculous American Christmas specials on television; he wants to see her, smiling despite the terrible destitution she has survived all her life and the hardships yet to come.
He wants to live, and meet her, and be human.
But that can't happen if a meteor hits the earth.
He does not know where such an image comes from, but he knows if it happens, he will never see her.
And that is not an option.
A/N: Tried my best to express Vision's thoughts even though he technically isn't 'thinking' just yet; I know Ultron was the one being downloaded at that point, but I have a firm belief that those memories of before, those memories in the Cradle, were kept within the Mind Stone, which then transferred into JARVIS when they fused to create Vision. I don't know if that makes sense to anyone else, but it does to me. So, there you go.
~Persephone