Chapter 12: Pledged

Deep rolls the thunder

Beneath the southern hills.

Why is it, why must you be always away,

Never managing to be at home and rest.

O my true lord,

Come back to me, come back.

~ Anonymous, from The Book of Songs 19, trans. Arthur Waley

July 7, 10:50 p.m.

24 minutes before the Westview Event

The rain had been constant since last night. Lightning flashed in the windows about every minute or two. The electricity had been out since early afternoon.

That was the hardest part for Wanda: she didn't mind the gloomy skies, the rain, or the thunder, but without power she couldn't watch her old TV shows, or listen to music. Without voices to fill her house, she felt oppressively alone.

Her mood had been sliding all day. It was harder and harder to keep out the sorrow, the memories, the self-pity.

She'd kept herself busy working while she had enough daylight to see. There was a sewing machine in the house, but she rarely used it, instead using her power to levitate and arrange scraps of cloth, and float a threaded needle to sew them together. She did it to practice control of her power, and she imagined she was putting a little bit of magic in everything she made.

But after dark, she'd had nothing.

She couldn't fall asleep without music or shows to listen to, to distract her mind. Her memories, her sorrows, grew around her like strangling vines.

She missed the Avengers, she missed her parents, she missed Pietro, and most of all she missed Vision.

It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair that Vision had only had three short years of full life on Earth, that his life had been cut so tragically short, with such a horrible death.

She missed him so much.

The rain seemed to fall harder and harder the sadder she felt. She lay in bed listening to it, trying to let the patter of rain and rumble of thunder sooth her to sleep.

That's when she felt the universe begin to tilt again. She felt it in the core of her power, felt the things she'd hidden deep in the ground pulse to wakefulness.

She sat up in bed.

"No. I'm not ready."

It had been less than 24 hours since she had exhausted her power containing the explosion brought on by Jane Foster's presence. She wasn't going to be strong enough to contain another one.

But she had to try. Even if it killed her, she had to try.

She closed her eyes, took some deep breaths, and tried to calm down and focus. Where was the focal point? She couldn't discern its direction.

Until she realized it was inside her.

She ran outside into the rain, barefoot and dressed only in her pajamas. She ran down the road toward a cluster of vacant lots, getting as far away from inhabited houses as she could, getting away from the one she'd buried under her own yard to delay the explosion.

She activated her power, isolating the point where the fabric of the universe was beginning to crack. It pulsed against her sphere of energy, surging in strength in response to her.

She wasn't strong enough.

Rain poured down her face and hair, soaking her pajamas. Lightning crashed, for a moment blotting out the scene in a burst of brightness.

Wanda shook, straining to shield the world from what was coming. Once the Infinity Stone emerged into existence, local space would stabilize again.

She could feel the others, buried deep underground, could feel their power, bright points shining in the dark. Without quite knowing how, she drew on their power. A swirl of orange light joined the red glow of her own power, then a blue light, then a deeper red. Swirling together, they expanded and elongated, turning a brilliant yellow.

Her eyes closed involuntarily against the brightness, but she could still sense the shape of it. She felt like the energies knew what they were doing, like they knew what shape they wanted to take.

A burst of greater brightness flashed against her closed eyelids. A blast wall knocked her off her feet, flinging her back into the trees.

She opened her eyes slowly, and even more slowly her eyes readjusted to the low light, reassuring her that she had not gone blind. She crawled away from the tree line and struggled to her feet, feeling bruises and scratches all over, not being able to tell if she was bleeding due to the rain still washing over her.

Where was it? She had to find it, had to hide it.

It should have been right there.

A bolt of crackling lightning revealed her surroundings, and she screamed. There was a dark human form lying face down on the roadside.

But she had been alone. She was sure she'd been alone. Had a neighbor looked out their window in the middle of the night, seen her wielding her power, and come out to see what was happening?

Rallying her courage, she stooped down to the human shape she could just barely make out in the dark, and reached for his shoulder to turn him over.

But he was too heavy to move. His shoulder was hard as rock.

Abruptly, in response to her touch, he sprang up. Startled, she screamed again.

And then she froze.

Her thoughts stopped. Her heart seemed to stop mid thump.

Impossible...

Drops of rain glittered as they fell through the light shining in his forehead. His eyes, wide and wild, fixed on hers.

"Wa...Wanda?"

She swallowed. "Vision?"

"Where am I? What happened?"

"I don't know. How are you here?"

"I don't know."

It was impossible. Wasn't it?

It couldn't be real. This had to be some kind of bizarre dream. Vision was dead. She'd had plenty of dreams of him being back, this had to be just another dream.

But it felt so real. The rain pelting her face, the gravel under her knees, the way her lungs just couldn't seem to accept air...it all felt so real.

Vision seemed real. She could read him, his mind reverberating with fear and confusion.

She touched his cheek. He was solid.

He covered her hand with his and leaned into her touch. She felt the roiling emotions in his mind smooth out.

"Thanos?" he asked in a trembling voice.

"He's dead. Thanos is dead. You're safe."

He made no reply. He closed his eyes and stroked the back of her hand with his thumb.

"Come on," she said. "Let's get out of the rain."

Even though she was banged up and fatigued from expending her power, she supported him as they walked the short distance to her house. In her living room, she draped a blanket around his shoulders, forgetting that she herself was rain-drenched and chilled to the bone. She couldn't take her eyes off Vision's face.

She no longer doubted he was real. She wouldn't let herself doubt. But she was still afraid to look away.

He stared back at her. "Is this...?" He trailed off, and instead he asked, "How long has it been?"

She took his face in her hands, running her fingers over the contours of vibranium. "It doesn't matter. You're here now."

He nodded slowly.

She kissed him once to calm him. She kissed him again to calm herself. She kissed him a third time just to kiss him. Then she embraced him, cradling his head to her shoulder as his arms wrapped around her.

He was here now. Vision was safe, and she would do everything in her considerable power to keep him that way.

She wouldn't let anyone or anything ever hurt him again.