Chapter 11: Baggage
There was something about flying a stolen jet in stealth mode. The world couldn't see them, couldn't track them. It felt almost like they were disconnected from the world, in it but not a part of it, like they were ghosts.
Currently, Sam was at the controls while the others slept. They were over the central Pacific Ocean, nothing but ocean and clouds below, the blue sky above. The clouds looked like powdered sugar. The entire view had a hypnotic effect.
Sam put the plane on auto-pilot and went back to get some coffee. He pulled back the curtain delineating the cockpit, and was surprised to find Wanda up. She lifted her arm to shield her eyes from the sudden brightness.
"Hey. You're awake," he said.
"Yeah. I couldn't sleep."
He poured himself half a cup of coffee. "Nightmares?" He didn't want to pry, but he did want to invite her to share if she wanted to. Nightmares came with the job, and Wanda probably had more nightmare fodder than any of them.
She shrugged. "You know what's almost worse than nightmares?"
"What?"
"Good dreams. A nightmare, you wake up and you're relieved it was just a dream. I've had so many dreams where Pietro was back, where he's not dead. His death was just a silly mix up, one of his jokes. He's back, he's fine. Then I wake up, and he's still gone."
"I'm sorry. I can't imagine what it's like to lose someone that close."
"Thank you." She stood up and poured herself some coffee, stirring in sugar and creamer. "It get's easier, I guess. At least, you stop thinking about them so much. But then even that makes you feel guilty. Like, how can you be so insensitive as to be happy when they're gone?"
"It helps to remember they'd want you to be happy," Sam said.
"I know. I know Pietro and my parents would want me to be happy. But I still feel guilty. How can I move on with my life when they can't?"
Sam nodded. "Survivor's guilt. You know it doesn't make sense, but it still eats away at you."
"How do you deal with it?" she asked.
"You have to remind yourself every day that it's okay that you survived. It's not that you deserve to live, because that would imply they didn't; it's that you happened to live, and that's okay. You've got to try to live your life so that it means something. Not that their deaths mean something—their deaths are senseless tragedies, and there's no way around that. You live so that the fact that you survived means something. That's why I decided to help Cap in the first place."
She nodded. "That makes sense."
He leaned his head back against the wall, feeling the vibrations of the plane. "Isn't that why you joined the Avengers?"
"I joined the Avengers to try to make up for at least some of the harm I caused. And because I had nowhere else to go."
His heart ached for her. He wished he could say something to make the pain go away, but he knew from his past PTSD support groups that there was no single, simple answer, no magic words. "It gets easier, but there are always going to be bad days. When you need to talk, talk to me."
"Thanks, Sam. You're friendship has meant so much to me."
"We're family now. You know that, right?"
She smiled. She reached out and gave his arm a squeeze. "I know. And I hope you know you can talk to me, too. About anything. Your secrets are safe with me."
"I guess there's not much point keeping secrets from someone who can read minds," he said, half joking.
"I wouldn't say that. It's not like I can hear your thoughts or anything. I just pick up on emotions, sometimes flashes of images. But that's usually enough."
"I'm guessing that can sometimes be too much."
"That's one of the reasons I try not to do it anymore. I don't reach for other people's minds, but I still get ripples of strong emotions."
"How much have you read from me?" he asked.
"Nothing bad. I know you genuinely care about people, you want to help people. I know you feel protective toward me, that you think of me like a sister. I know you get sad, and lonely, and that you've trained yourself not to show it. I know you have regrets."
He dropped his eyes to his coffee cup.
"Like I said, your secrets are safe with me. And to be honest, I would have known most of that without my powers."
"Really?"
She shrugged. "Maybe half of it. Do you want to sleep? I could take the controls for a while."
"No thanks. I'm good. You should try to get some more sleep. We'll land in Laos in about five hours."
As if the suggestion of sleep triggered it, she yawned. "I think I'll try. This was a good talk. You gave me a lot to think about."
"Any time," he said.
She went back to the bunk room.
He wondered how much the talk had helped her. She'd seemed more troubled by the end than she had at the beginning.
...
Vision knocked on the door of Wanda's hotel room in Vientiane. Almost a minute passed before she opened it. Her hair was ruffled as if she'd just woken up, but she was dressed in a teeshirt and jeans.
"Sorry. I fell asleep,"
"I'm sorry it took so long for me to get here." He stepped inside the room and kissed her as he pulled the door closed behind him.
She didn't kiss him back with her usual vigor.
He smoothed her hair back. "Jet lag?"
She smiled apologetically. "This playing hide and seek around the globe, trying to keep one step ahead of Ross, a UN special taskforce, and German intelligence is catching up with me, I'm afraid. Thank for coming."
"I don't know how long I can stay. I told Tony I wanted to do some sightseeing now that I have the means. I didn't tell him where I wanted to go, but I did promise him I would return as quickly as possible if we're needed."
"I don't know how long we'll be here, either. We're waiting to hear back from one of Nat's old contacts. Once we do, we may have to move out fast."
He nodded. They might have a few days together, or a few hours.
They sat down at the edge of the bed. "Have you eaten?" he asked.
"Yeah. We all went out for pho after we landed."
"How did the job in New York City go?"
"Not that great. Natasha identified the gang's enforcer, I stole his phone, Sam hacked into it and checked the GPS history to figure out where they dumped the body, Steve gave everything we had to the police as an anonymous tip, and we split. Fortunately Nat asked for half the payment up front, so we got some money out of it."
"You've been put in a difficult position. It forces you to make difficult choices," Vision said, reflecting ruefully on his part in putting them in that position to begin with.
"Yeah." She stared off into the room.
He was starting to suspect her distance wasn't just due to fatigue. She was troubled by something. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing."
He placed one finger on her chin and turned her head toward him. "Please, Wanda, confide in me."
"Nothing's wrong," she repeated, taking his hand. "But there is something I need to talk to you about."
Those words scared him. It sounded like the kind of words people used when they were about to break it off with someone.
He tried to brace himself for the worst. "About what?"
She sighed, looked at her hands. "Vision, you are the most incredible, amazing person I've ever met..."
His heart sank further.
"I want you to be happy. You deserve to be happy."
"Do you think I'm not?" he asked in confusion.
"Are you? Meeting secretly every month or two if we're lucky, me being on the run, you risking getting caught every time you see me. It's hard. But...that's not even the point."
"At least I get to see you," he said.
She sighed again, and ran her hands through her hair in agitation. "What I'm getting at...I don't know how to say it." She rubbed her forehead, took a deep breath, then looked at him. "Vis, you're how old, about a year and a half now?"
"If you count my age from when Tony first activated the J.A.R.V.I.S. program, I'm twenty. If you count my age from the creation of the Mind Stone, I'm thirteen billion eight hundred million years old."
"But you as a living, breathing...well, not technically breathing, but autonomous being, you have a year and a half of experience. And for most of that, your experiences were limited by not being able to move among humans as a human. You can do that now. You're going to meet new people, and they look at you and see a man. A smart, polite, kind, handsome man with a sexy accent. You'll meet women who are going to be interested in you."
"Wanda..."
"I have no illusions that I deserve you. With my past crimes, my life on the run, my emotional baggage that, let's face it, I'm never going to be completely over. I'm always going to have bad days. You shouldn't have to deal with any of that."
"Wanda, please..."
"I'm just saying, if you meet someone you'd be happier with than me..."
"Wanda..."
"I want you to do what would make you happiest." It came out in a tight, slightly creaky rush of words, as if it were physically painful to say it and she just wanted to have it over with.
He stared at her for a moment. She was serious.
She looked down, no longer able to hold eye contact.
"But you do still want to be with me?" he asked quietly.
She abruptly looked back at him, eyes widened, as if it hadn't occured to her until he asked that that he could possibly believe otherwise. "Of course. Of course I want to be with you. All I'm saying is...you have more options now. I don't want you to feel obligated to me. I want you to be happy."
"That's you," he stated. "You make me happy. You're the one I love."
She stared at him. "You love me?" she breathed.
He'd assumed she knew that, but in retrospect, he understood why she wouldn't take it as a given. "Yes. I love you so much, Wanda. I felt a connection to you from the first time I saw you. You understand me in ways no one else ever could. You took the time to try to understand me. You have no idea how much that meant to me. I can't imagine I could ever love another as much as I love you."
"I love you too, Vision," she said in a daze.
He reached out and cupped her cheek. She leaned into his touch.
"Would you like to get some sleep? I'd be happy to just hold you."
She looped her arms around his neck and smiled mischievously. "Actually, I don't really feel like sleeping right now."