A/N: I wasn't sure if I shipped ScarletVision at first, but after Civil War, I'm sold. Here's a character study on the Vision and how he's handling his "distraction", Wanda Maximoff.
A Flaw in the Code
He's run through the battle over a thousand times.
His memory is perfect, pristine, like watching a video recording in high definition. He can even project his memories, flash them forward, twist the angle, rewind the same moments over and over and over again until he has every single detail memorized. And every time he watches himself fire the beam that sends Colonel James Rhodes spiraling out of the air and crashing to the ground, he can only find one discrepancy.
Wanda Maximoff.
Hours spent watching the same few minutes, and she is the only thing he finds himself coming back to. Even watching the battle played back, as she lies there, vulnerable on the concrete, he has the same urge to protect. The notion is involuntary, his system working without his permission, his programming screaming assist, assist, assist! He spent so much time with her when Mr. Stark put her under house arrest. Running through those memories, he's started to question if his eagerness to guard her was due to more than just a willingness to follow orders.
He's never had to doubt himself before. It's strange to say the least.
He wasn't designed to be like...this. He wasn't designed to have his attention drawn away from orders. He wasn't designed to welcome compassion and emotion and other human weakness. And perhaps that came from the lingering parts of him that were initially designed by a homicidal AI set on annihilating humanity, but that didn't change the fact that he was completely machine. There was no man inside to become distracted, and yet, he wonders...
What made Wanda Maximoff so special?
She was wildly unstable, a power to rival the Mind Stone lodged in his forehead. She had little training and bucked authority. She was still deep in grief, and that made her dangerous, especially to those she decided were enemies. She was a formidable foe, something he knew first hand, the feeling of her magic deep inside his mind still lingering. And yet, there was something beautiful about her untamed nature. She could be so many things. She was capable of so much; not even she knew her own potential.
Perhaps what he was feeling - if he dared even use the word - was admiration. They were both unexplored, unexplainable forces of nature. In many ways, they were the same, and he admired her for what she was. But none of those similarities mattered when he shouldn't even be focusing on them in the first place. She was human and he was machine.
Though he supposed that even the best machines acquired flaws in their codes.
"What the hell happened out there?" Mr. Stark came storming his way, barking out an accusation more than a question. He couldn't be faulted for that. He had every right to be furious.
"I became distracted."
A weak excuse for the destruction he'd caused. Behind the glass, James Rhodes was lying for an MRI, more than likely facing the grim diagnosis of paralysis, and it was his fault. There was no explanation he could give that would be worthy of forgiveness, even if his beam did hit Rhodes on accident.
"I didn't even know that was possible," his creator spat back, unbelieving.
A few hours ago the Vision himself would've said the same thing. But yet, there they were.
"Neither did I."
Solemn words filled with more meaning than the man in front of him could comprehend. Apparently he didn't care to stick around to decipher them either, going off to find the next outlet in which to channel his anger.
This...this distraction wasn't Mr. Stark's problem to deal with. He was no longer the electronic butler his creator could tinker and toy with and upgrade whenever something else came along. He was better, or at least he needed to be better so that another accident such as this one never happened again. He was designed to be better, and next time, he would be.
Because in battle, there was no room for flaws.