Disclaimer: Once again, the Avengers are not mine. Not in this universe, anyway.
J'adoube
The room Wanda had been given in Stark Tower had an incredible view of the New York skyline. Today it was rainy, and a light fog drifted between the skyscrapers.
She looked out the window for several minutes, feeling and thinking nothing, before forcing herself to get out of bed and face the day.
It had been 26 days. Twenty-six days since the city where she'd been born and raised had been destroyed. Twenty-six days since her world, her life, everything she'd ever known had crumbled.
Twenty-six days since Pietro died.
And that loss never left her for a moment. It saturated her every thought. She felt like a zombie, going through the motions of rising, dressing, brushing hair, brushing teeth, eating, drinking, living. But it was all an act, a pretense.
There had been things to do, especially in the first few days. The world demanded answers about what happened in Sokovia, about how Ultron had happened and how the Avengers had stopped him. Wanda was dragged in front of an international committee to answer questions about Ultron, which had sometimes felt more like an inquisition, like what they really wanted to know was how she could have helped Ultron with his schemes. What kind of person was she that she would trust and follow an artificial intelligence in a terrifying robot body?
She couldn't answer those questions. And many others.
Then there had been Pietro's funeral.
Next thing she knew, she'd been tucked away in Stark Tower while the Avengers dealt with the fallout of Ultron, harbored by the very man she'd spent over half her life hating. She accepted the situation because she had literally nowhere else to go.
She plodded her way to the room that served the Avengers as a kitchen, dining room, and entertainment room. The TV was on, tuned to the morning news, which—amazingly—was talking about something other than Ultron and the destruction in Sokovia. Something about some celebrity she'd never heard of saying something controversial.
She listened to it without caring, background noise while she poured some coffee and put bread in the toaster.
"In international news, the fifth day of the European Union's conference to address the Sokovian refugee crisis ended without..."
With a flick of red energy, she turned the TV off.
She smeared some butter on her toast and took it to the couch to eat. She paused for a second when she noticed the Vision sitting in a chair between a potted palm tree and a window. He was reading a book, and had been so quiet she hadn't realized he was there.
"Hello," he said.
"Hello," she replied. She was glad he hadn't greeted her with 'good morning'; whenever someone said that, it only led her to wonder if any morning could ever be good without Pietro in it.
She sat down and turned her attention to her toast, and he returned his to his book.
No one had really decided on his name. It might have been Stark who started it: initially, jokingly, refered to this being as "Thor's Vision" and then just as "The Vision." It hadn't been intended as an actual name, but the other Avengers hadn't been able to come up with anything else to call him, and somehow "The Vision" had stuck. The name seemed appropriate to Wanda, but she didn't think of him as Thor's vision so much as Ultron's vision: Ultron's idea for a perfect, invincible body to occupy, to rule over humanity, or what would be left of it if they opposed him.
But, like all dreams for the future, he hadn't quite turned out how his creator imagined.
No one knew exactly what to make of him. There were eyewitness reports and videos of him taken by Sokovians during the evacuation that had been all over the news. Stark had explained to the media that the Avengers had stolen a robotic form Ultron made from vibranium and had uploaded Stark's uncorrupted, benevolent AI into it to fight against Ultron. He'd been keeping Vision, as well as Wanda, out of sight for the time being. Steve, Natasha, Clint, and Rhodey had given several press conferences, which always included questions about the Vision and assurances that he wasn't a danger, and repeated explanations that the Avengers couldn't have saved the world without his help. But outside of the carefully worded press briefings, they all seemed a little vague and uncertain about what exactly the Vision was.
None of them saw what she saw in him. None of them had seen his mind, or the look of compassion and care on his face when he saved her in Sokovia. He was far from being a robot; in fact, he possessed a humanity deeper and more sublime than any human she'd ever met. But maybe she just thought that because he'd saved her life. Every time she looked at his face, it reminded her of that moment, of unexpected and entirely undeserved salvation. It reminded her that, in spite of how horrible her life was, she didn't want to die.
The other Avengers were gone these days as often as they were here. Clint had left a week ago to join his family. Before that, he'd looked out for Wanda, checking on her several times a day to make sure she was eating, to see if there was anything she needed, to ask if she wanted to talk. She knew he was just looking out for her because Pietro saved his life with his sacrifice and he felt guilty. It was to save him the trouble of worrying about her that she'd stopped hiding away in her room and started spending time in the common areas, making food for herself, taking care of her appearance, pretending she was going to be okay. She guessed it had worked, since Clint left, but now she missed him.
All day yesterday Wanda's only company had been Vision, everyone else being busy elsewhere. They 'd barely spoken. When he asked her how she was doing, he accepted when she said 'fine'. She didn't think it was that he believed her, but that he didn't know anything he could possibly say to comfort her. To be fair, she couldn't think of anything anyone could say that would make anything better.
The rain beat against the window, providing the only sound in the room, other than the occasional rustle of Vision turning a page.
Wanda peeked at him over the rim of her coffee mug. She realized suddenly that yesterday after he asked how she was doing it hadn't even crossed her mind to ask him back. He probably didn't mind; it was just a formality, anyway, a meaningless greeting. Besides, considering she was in mourning, her lapse in etiquette would surely be forgiven. But it bothered her that she hadn't asked. He might be feeling about as alone and adrift as she was, in a way. He was so new, still trying to figure out what he was, what he meant. She had been so consumed with her own loss, her own pain and hopelessness, she hadn't thought much about what he was going through. She hoped the others had talked to him.
Would it be strange to ask him now, just out of the blue?
He turned another page.
"How fast do you read?" she impulsively asked instead.
He tilted his head as he looked up at her. Far from seeming annoyed at the interruption, as she'd worried he would be, his face held a softness, an innocence, that made her wonder if he was capable of experiencing annoyance.
"Do you mean to ask how fast I can read, or how fast I do read?"
She wasn't sure she quite understood the difference. "I don't know. Maybe both?"
"I could record the information on these pages in a second. For that matter, I could find a digital copy and know the contents of the entire book in a matter of seconds. But if I did that, I would lose the experience of reading. I would miss the chance to consider the nuance and connotations of each individual word, the surprise and brilliance of what words the writer chooses to connect, the art of how one sentence flows into another. So much of the pleasure of a book, or even a single line, comes from not knowing how it will end. Getting the ending at the same time as the beginning, I've found, proves unsatisfactory. I pace my reading at approximately four words per seconds."
Wanda had never thought about the act of reading that deeply. She never would have guessed that an intelligence capable of absorbing an entire book in an instant would choose not to.
"What are you reading?" she asked.
"Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. Have you read it?"
"No. I've never heard of it."
"What are some of your favorite books?" he inquired.
"I haven't really read much." Which was true. And what she had read she would be embarrassed to admit to. At the orphanage, her reading had been limited to mostly tattered, outdated textbooks. During her years on the streets, she'd read the occasional discarded or shoplifted magazine. She'd liked reading about rich and famous people, especially if the articles had photos of their houses. She would fantasize about robbing them, or burning them down. During her time at HYDRA they hadn't been given much to read besides propaganda.
"I can see how your life before this point would not have been conducive to leisure reading. It was thoughtless of me to ask. I apologize."
"No, don't apologize. It was an innocent question. I'm not angry," she assured him.
"Good." He looked down at the cover of his book, using his thumb as a bookmark. His lips parted, then closed as he tried to think of something else to say to her. She could practically feel nervousness radiating off him. He wanted to talk to her, but was worried about saying something upsetting.
"Hey, I saw a chess set on the bookshelf. Would you like to play with me sometime?" she suggested, wanting to show him both that she didn't dislike his company and that she wasn't completely unsophisticated.
"I believe I would enjoy that," he said, "but...I don't know how to play chess."
"Really?"
He looked at her curiously. "Why does that surprise you?"
"I don't know. I guess, I just figured...with all the things you know, you'd know how to play chess."
"If JARVIS was ever programed to play chess, I do not retain the memory of it. Ultron didn't have the time or inclination to learn it. And since I have had no one to play it with, it didn't occur to me to acquire that proficiency. If you would like to play, I could access the rules now..."
"Or I could teach you."
The way he looked at her at that suggestion—a mix of surprise, incredulity, and hope—made her think that was the first time anyone had ever offered to teach him something.
"I would like that. If you wouldn't mind taking the time to teach me."
"I'd be happy to," she said.
Minutes later, Wanda and Vision sat across from each other, a chess set on the table between them. Wanda explained the movements of the pieces as she placed them on the board.
"When you've got a piece that could capture your opponent's king in one move, you say 'check'. If your opponent can't move the king or move any other piece to get the king out of check, you say 'checkmate' and you win."
"So you never actually capture the king?" Vision asked curiously.
"That's right. It's more like, when the king sees he can't escape, he surrenders."
"Seems simple enough."
Wanda knew he could just connect to the internet and access the rules of chess, but she believed that he hadn't. The intent way he listened to her explanation, looking at the chess pieces as if considering them, convinced her that he was treating learning chess the same way he treated reading: as a journey to experience instead of a destination to arrive at.
He was absolutely fascinating.
"Since this is your first time playing, I'll let you be white. White moves first, which gives you a little bit of an advantage."
"Thank you." He looked over his row of pawns contemplatively. He lifted his king's pawn.
"Oh, I forgot to tell you: on a pawn's first move it can go two spaces forward instead of just one."
"Thank you," he said again, advancing his pawn two spaces.
Wanda mirrored his move.
"I very much appreciate you taking the time to teach me how to play chess," he said, advancing his queen's pawn.
"Well, it's not like I have much else to do today," she replied diffidently, moving a knight.
He nodded, and moved out his own knight, copying her. "It has been rather quiet, for the two of us."
"The others have been hiding us."
"To give you time to mourn, and prevent me from becoming a lab specimen," Vision stated.
"To keep us both from becoming lab specimens," Wanda said. "I'm sure there are people about as interested in cutting me open to figure out how I work as you. And yes, I also think they're trying to just give me time to mourn." It felt somehow wrong to say 'time to mourn'. Mourning implied a process, something with an end. The grief of losing her twin, her last remaining family, her Pietro...that grief would never end. Perhaps it would be better to call it 'time to adjust'. To adjust to surviving in a world without him.
Without him, mere survival was all she could ever really aspire to.
She realized it was her move. Vision had grown silent and still, watching her but not intruding on her thoughts when she zoned out.
"Sorry." She brought forward her queen, and immediately regretted it. Distracted as she was, she knew she wouldn't be playing at her best. She should probably go for a more defensive strategy.
"There is nothing to apologize for," he assured her.
They played in silence for a few minutes. And then Vision picked up his bishop, reconsidered, and placed it back down.
"Another rule I forgot to tell you about," Wanda said, "is that if you touch a piece, you have to move it, unless you say you're just adjusting it first. It's to keep a player from reading their opponent's faces to see if they think the move is a good idea."
"I see," he said thoughtfully. "I'm curious, are you capable of looking into my mind to determine my strategy?"
"I could probably sense if you think you're winning, or if you feel like you just made a mistake, but I won't. I'm not going to read you; that would be cheating."
"Thank you."
A few minutes later, Wanda cornered Vision's king with a rook.
"Check."
Vision examined the board critically. His only move was to pull his king behind a pawn to get it out of the rook's file, which he did, knowing it wouldn't save him.
Wanda brought her queen up to the king's rank. "Checkmate."
"Indeed. Congratulations." He raised his eyes from the chessboard to her face. "Thank you for the lesson."
"Vision, can I ask you something?"
"Of course. Anything."
"Okay—and please tell me the truth—were you going easy on me?"
His head tilted sideways. "I was...consciously refraining from accessing chess strategies online. I was also limiting my analysis to seven data points at a time, and only predicting your possible moves one move ahead. But I don't feel as though I was going easy on you, so much as...that using my full processing power would be...cheating?"
Wanda thought about it, and nodded. There were several chess variants where the superior player was handicapped in some way. This seemed fair. "Would you like to play again?"
"I would love to."
They set up the board again, Wanda playing white.
If Vision was really as inexperienced as he seemed, she might be able to pull a scholar's mate on him. It probably wouldn't work, but it was worth a try. She advanced her king's pawn.
He mirrored her move.
She moved her queen to f3. He advanced his queen's bishop's pawn. She moved her king's bishop to c4.
He moved his queen's pawn forward, threatening her bishop. She took his pawn, trusting that Vision wouldn't trade his queen for a bishop.
At this point, about half the moves he could make would render her attempted scholar's mate impossible. He could avoid it entirely by chance.
He brought his king's rook's pawn forward two, likely planning to move his bishop to endanger her queen on his next turn.
She took his king's bishops's pawn with her queen. "Checkmate."
He blinked, frowning at the board, scanning it to figure out what had happened, or if there was some way out.
"I see." After a long moment, he looked up at her. "May we play again?"
"If you would like."
"I would."
They set up the board again.
"If you don't mind me asking, when did you learn to play chess?" Vision inquired.
"My parents taught me when I was very young. And at the orphanage where Pietro and I went after our parents died, chess was one of the only things they really taught us. That and English. Competitive chess is big in Sokovia, and the people who ran the orphanage hoped they would discover a prodigy to boost their prestige. They figured teaching us English made us more adoptable."
Vision looked at her sympathetically. "How long did you live at the orphanage?"
"Pietro and I were there about three years before we ran away."
"Why did you run away?"
"In Sokovia, teenage orphans are sent to boarding schools that are separated by sex. Pietro and I would have been separated, and probably never would have seen each other again. So when we were thirteen, we sneaked out in the middle of the night. We took care of ourselves after that, until we signed up for the HYDRA experiments."
"You lived on the streets since you were thirteen?" he asked in concern.
"Not on the streets, usually. Abandoned buildings, people would let us sleep on their floors for a few dollars, sometimes cheap hotels for special occasions."
Vision clearly didn't know what to say, and she regreted revealing so much.
"It was fine. It was a long time ago," she insisted. Even though it wasn't really that long ago, and it hadn't been remotely fine.
"Didn't the orphanage send anyone to look for you?"
She shrugged. "They never really did, when kids ran away. One less mouth to feed, and if they didn't report us gone they kept collecting money from the government for us. In the months it actually got sent, anyway."
She said it in a jocular tone, meaning to make light of her past miseries. She hadn't realized how pathetic it made her sound until it was out of her mouth.
"Sorry," she said. "This is supposed to be a chess game, not a Wanda pity party."
"I owe the apology to you; I should not have pried," he said.
"Not everything has to be your fault, Vision."
"Not everything has to be anyone's fault," he said thoughtfully. "A great many things people are blamed for, or blame themselves for, are the results of circumstances beyond their control."
"In a way, that's even worse. I think I would rather feel guilty about things I've done than feel like I was helpless."
"Being forced into difficult choices doesn't mean you are helpless. And just because you feel guilty doesn't mean you are."
Those words struck her. She did feel guilty. She felt guilty for Pietro's death and every single thing that led to it, for volunteering for HYDRA, for following Ultron, for helping the Avengers fight Ultron, for staying behind to guard the switch while Pietro helped with the evacuation, for surviving when he didn't. But only some of those things had been her fault, and she couldn't have know any of them would lead to Pietro's death, or her own survival.
Her mind occupied with those considerations, she couldn't concentrate on the game, and Vision won it easily, pullinh his queen to the first rank, where her king was trapped behind a row of other pieces.
"I believe that is checkmate?" He sounded almost apologetic for winning.
Wanda gave him a weak smile. "Yes it is." She extended her hand. "Good game."
He looked at her hand for a moment before realizing she meant him to shake it. He took her hand loosely, as if he thought she might change her mind and wanted to give her the chance to slip away. "Thank you. I enjoyed it immensely. Perhaps we could play again sometime?"
She nodded. While her sadness had not abated during the game, focusing on something else for even a few minutes made her feel lighter, like maybe it was still possible to enjoy things she used to love. "Let's play again tomorrow," she suggested.
He nodded. "Perhaps...we could make it a daily activity, while we're otherwise unoccupied."
"I'd like that," she said.