A/N: IW SPOILERS. Most dialogue and action is taken from the movie, as best as I can remember it. First attempt writing MCU fanfiction. I just had to get it out of my system because this moment broke me.

Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! for the world, which seems

To lie before us like a land of dreams,

So various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Matthew Arnold, "Dover Beach"


He brought her hand toward his forehead. Pleading with her. It was wrong that he should beg her to destroy him. But he was right. They were out of time to come up with another solution. She complied, eyes locked on his face, attempting to memorize his features one last time.

The red light of her magic swirled around him until he disintegrated before her eyes.

The pain filled her up and bled through her pores. She only saw red. Though Vision had asked her to kill him and she knew there was no other choice, she would never forgive herself.

She had but moments to weep for him before Thanos approached her.

He looked at down at her where she lay, collapsed on the ground. "I understand, my child." She barely heard his words. She could not comprehend him through the haze that filled her mind. She was snapped out of her despair when a green glow surrounded the gauntlet he wore.

She could feel time rushing around her. Suddenly, Vision reappeared. "No!" she screamed. She pushed with all her might to keep Thanos away from him. But he swept her aside as easily as he might an insect.

He reached out and lifted Vision, whose face was a mask of blank terror, by the neck. Thanos then brought Vision close to his face. He pulled the stone from Vision's forehead, heedless of the circuits that tore away with it, before flinging his body to the ground. He put the stone in the remaining slot on the gauntlet. Then, he vanished.

She crawled over to Vision's body. She placed one hand on his shoulder and one on a cheek beneath his ruined forehead. His mouth was open in a strangled, horrified scream. It was so different from the peaceful, grateful look he had cast her before fading into nothingness.

It seemed like hours rather than minutes had passed since he had been mouthing words of reassurance and love as her powers worked to destroy the Mind Stone. She began to feel a strange sensation behind her navel. She felt herself drifting off and was almost glad. Then there was no more.