Home Fires

Disclaimer: Disclaimed

Chronology: Begins after the events of Captain America: Civil War.

Chapter 1: Scorched Earth

Tony found Vision floating in front of a window at the Avengers compound. He often did that. He'd spend hours just watching the world with the appearance of complete serenity, and seemingly no capacity for boredom.

Except he didn't look serene now. He looked troubled.

"Mr. Stark," Vision said in greeting, acknowledging his presence without turning away from the window.

"I just heard there was a break-in at the floating prison. It was Cap. Wanda, Sam, Clint, and that guy who can change his size have all escaped."

Vision slowly turned toward him. "Was anyone harmed?"

"No. Cap used some kind of sedative to knock the guards out."

He nodded. "Good."

"You're happy they escaped?" Tony asked, suspecting the answer already but surprised by the blatant admission.

"Captain Rogers and the others were acting in the interest of protecting the world, in accordance with their best information. They did not deserve to be imprisoned for it."

"We were acting on our best info too."

"Yes. This was a conflict in which both sides were right."

"Were you thinking of breaking them out yourself?"

Vision looked away, considering his answer for a moment. "I had not been able to devise a plan that would avoid the possibility of casualties."

"But you were thinking about it?"

"Yes," he admitted. "Weren't you?"

"I was looking into legal avenues to get them out. But if that hadn't worked, yeah. They didn't belong in there. But I am glad it was Cap and not you."

Vision's response was a slight nod, unconvincing.

"You don't agree?" Tony asked.

"It should not have been his responsibility. I promised Wanda we would protect her. I failed her."

"You tried," Tony reminded him. "You ended up at the bottom of a hole in the floor."

"I should not have attempted to detain her against her will."

"That was the only way to protect her from any more bad press."

"I should have spoken to her. I knew she was conflicted about the accords. I should have encouraged her to talk about it, perhaps convinced her that signing the accords would be in our best interest. But I didn't wish to upset her further, so we avoided the subject. If I had not..."

"I didn't think you were the kind of person who gets caught up on what he could've done differently."

"Perhaps I am not as infallible as people seem to believe," Vision said, and Tony had the impression he was thinking of something else.

This was a mood he'd never seen Vision in. It made him reflect on the differences between Vision and the J.A.R.V.I.S. program. He'd programmed J.A.R.V.I.S. to be good-natured but aloof, with a dry wit. Over the years, J.A.R.V.I.S.'s adaptive programming had produced personality traits he hadn't originally intended, and he'd often wondered how self-aware the artificial intelligence had become. Vision was different. He had J.A.R.V.I.S.'s voice, intellect, and memories, but the differences in personality were clear. Vision lacked J.A.R.V.I.S.'s sense of humor, and had a philosophical bent and a solemnity that the A.I. hadn't.

And J.A.R.V.I.S. had never developed a crush. Vision's focus on Wanda, the fervor with which he'd promised they would protect her, the near delight he'd exhibited when Tony had asked him to stay with Wanda at the compound, and the forlorn tone of his voice when he'd called to inform him that she'd left with Clint all pointed to the android having particular feelings for her.

"Wanda made her own choice. It's not your fault."

"What happened to Colonel Rhodes is."

Tony looked away. "Yeah. But... Friendly fire. It happens. You were busy making sure Wanda was okay."

"In regards to her, my priorities may be skewed," Vision confessed. "I believe I'm in love with her. And now I may never see her again."

There were tear stains on her left cheek.

Steve hadn't seen them in the dim light of the Raft, after he'd broken into it to free the unjustly imprisoned. He could tell they weren't fresh. They streaked her left cheek in roughly horizontal lines, indicating the tears had fallen while she'd been lying down, and she'd been sitting up the entire flight in the borrowed Wakandan stealth jet.

Her face was wan, her eyes distant.

"You should try to get some sleep," he said. "It will be a while before we get there."

"Get where?"

He could tell from her tone that she wasn't expecting an answer.

They'd all agreed it would be safer to split up for the time being. They'd dropped Scott Lang off in California, where he'd assured them he could hide out. Clint, master spy that he was, had a contingency for exactly this sort of situation: a safe house and false IDs for his entire family in Canada. Sam and Wanda had agreed to wait for Steve at a safe house in Europe while he ran a vague errand: going to Wakanda to return the jet and check in with Bucky.

He hadn't told them where the safe house was, but he knew that wasn't what Wanda meant. She meant after that.

The Avengers compound had been her home for a year, and before that she'd lived in a cell at a Hydra lab. Before that, a slum in Sokovia that had been destroyed by Ultron. She had nowhere to go.

He sat down across from her. She'd sacrificed the only home she had, the only family she had, to help him save his friend. He had no way to make that up to her.

Not that she expected him to. He could see it in her expression, a blend of resignation and determination, and that the tear streaks weren't fresh.

He recalled a day, a few weeks after Wanda had joined the Avengers, when he'd paid her a visit in her apartment to see how she was settling in.

"Come in."

He'd opened the door to find her sitting on her sofa, tears streaming down her face, an hourglass on her coffee table.

She stood up quickly. "Captain Rogers. I didn't know it was you." She made no effort to hide her tears.

"I told you to call me Steve. Are you okay?"

"Yes. It's just my hour to mourn."

"Your hour to mourn?"

She gestured to the hourglass, sand pouring through it. "I give myself an hour a day to mourn for my brother. I don't let myself think about it the rest of the time."

He'd wondered about that, about how focused she was during trainings, how she avoided talking about Pietro in her conversations with the team.

"So you just sit and think about him for an hour every day?"

"Yes."

"How long are you going to do it for?" he'd asked curiously.

"For as long as I need it. When my mind starts wandering to other things during that hour, I'll cut it down to half an hour. Then I'll go down some more, maybe someday to ten minutes. Pietro and I came up with this after our parents died, because no matter how much you hurt, you need to find a way to keep going."

"I understand," he said. "I lost my parents too. And my best friend, who was as close to me as a brother. I watched him fall to what I thought was his death. He'd risked his life to protect me. I understand how it feels to lose someone."

"It feels like it should kill you. Like your body could not possibly survive that much pain. But you find a way to make it through a day, and then another day and another day, and you survive. The sad doesn't really get less, but after a while it hits you less hard and less often."

Her cell in the Raft had been her hour of mourning; now she was focused on dealing with whatever would come next. But Steve had to wonder just how many hits one person could take.

"I'm sorry I dragged you into this," he said.

"You didn't drag me. But thank you for being sorry."

She kept staring out the window. He wanted to ask if she was okay, but being okay after what they'd just been through was too much to ask from anyone.

"I know what you gave up to be on my side. I'm not going to forget that," he said, because he had to say something.

She continued staring out the window, at the near pitch dark of the night, and when she spoke it sounded like she was talking to herself. "When Clint came to get me, I almost didn't go with him. Do you know why I did?"

"It wasn't fair to keep you locked up. What happened in Lagos was a tragic accident; you didn't deserve to be punished for it."

"I didn't want to sign the accords. Not the way they were written. The Sokovia Accords. Named after my homeland. And yes, I was partly responsible for that destruction, because I was partly responsible for Ultron, because I helped him, but that was when I was fighting against the Avengers. We saved everyone that we possibly could in Sokovia. We saved the world, and they blame us for not saving everyone. We risked our lives to save as many people as we could. Pietro gave his life to save two people. Two. My brother died, and they say it wasn't enough." She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

"The accords were wrong."

"But so were we," Wanda said. "We fought our friends for what turned out to all be a trick. This was a fight where both sides were wrong. I don't think I deserved to be locked up for the accident in Lagos, but I shouldn't have left. I shouldn't have done that to Vision."

"He shouldn't have helped keep you locked up." The injustice of what had been done to her still burned, and he had been surprised that Vision would have any part of it.

"It wasn't like that," she said. "Vision was trying to protect me."

"You don't protect people by locking them up."

She looked back out the window sharply. She took another deep breath, ragged with swallowed tears. "There is being in physical danger, and then there's feeling like the whole world is turning against you."

"I know that feeling," Steve said. "That's what it was like when S.H.I.E.L.D. wanted me dead."

"And when that happened, there was one person by your side, one person who believed in you."

"Yeah. Nat. I don't know what I would have done without her."

"Vision was that for me. He made me feel like...like whatever happened, I wouldn't face it alone. He would never turn against me. And then I turned on him."

She sounded so miserable about it. Steve knew that Vision had been her first friend on the team. She'd gravitated toward him from the start. Maybe it was partly because they were both new, but Steve thought it was more than that. In contrast to the rest of them, Vision had a serious nature: he didn't tease, he didn't joke, he didn't trivialize the risks they took. He neither avoided talking about Wanda's past with Ultron nor held it against her. For whatever reason, he'd been exactly what she needed during that difficult period, and their closeness had persisted even after they'd adjusted and integrated with the rest of the team.

"He's Vision; he's not going to hold a grudge," Steve assured her.

She shook her head, not negating what he said, but denying its relevance. "With my power, people are afraid of me. Viz wasn't. But after what I did to him, I don't think that's true anymore. I don't think it can ever be true again."