Chapter 13: Awakening
There has fallen a splendid tear
From the passion-flower at the gate.
She is coming, my dove, my dear;
She is coming, my life, my fate;
The red rose cries, "She is near, she is near;"
And the white rose weeps, "She is late,"
The larkspur listens, "I hear, I hear;"
And the lily whispers, "I wait."
...
She is coming, my own, my sweet,
Were it ever so airy a tread,
My heart would hear her and beat,
Were it earth in an earthy bed;
My dust would hear her and beat,
Had I lain for a century dead;
Would start and tremble under her feet,
And blossom in purple and red.
...
~Alfred, Lord Tennyson, from "Maud"
Flashback
July 7, 11:05 p.m.
9 minutes before Westview Event
He couldn't follow, couldn't render coherent the sequence of events that brought him here.
There had been flashes, sensations, undoings...
He was dead.
Wasn't he?
Thanos had come. They couldn't stop him.
He hadn't been reconciled to the thought of his death so much as that he'd accepted it would happen whether he was psychologically prepared for it or not, and he didn't have time to waste readying himself for it. He'd convinced Wanda to accept that she had to destroy the Mind Stone for the sake of the universe.
The memories of what happened were muddled, a haze of pain, fear, sharp regret, flashes of images.
Thanos approaching.
Wanda's face contorted with grief...
But here he was: to the best of his reasoning, dead, but still in existence, as evidenced by his ability to think.
Was he still on the battlefield? Had he somehow survived Thanos taking the Mind Stone?
There was solid ground beneath him: rocks and dirt and grass. Rain. He could feel and hear rain. A loud peal of thunder. A scream.
Wanda's scream...
Wanda's scream the moment she destroyed the Mind Stone was all he could hear, all he could think or feel.
Someone touched his shoulder, trying to roll him over.
He sat up and heard another scream, a scream that echoed inside him.
It was dark. Night, pouring rain, no street lights, almost pitch black.
The light of the Mind Stone revealed a face in the rain, a beautiful, familiar face, staring and pale like she'd seen a ghost.
"Wa...Wanda?"
It took her a moment to find her voice. "Vision?"
"Where am I? What happened?" he asked.
"I don't know. How are you here?"
"I don't know," he answered, more confused than ever.
How was Wanda there? She'd destroyed the Mind Stone as Thanos advanced, a sequence of events that had seemed to point to her imminent death almost as inevitably as his. But she was alive. The way she stared at him convinced him that she had no more of an idea what was happening than he did.
She reached out and placed her hand on his cheek, as if making sure he was really there. He covered her hand with his, needing the physical connection.
She was there. She was real.
But how?
"Thanos?" he asked, not sure how to form the question more coherently than that.
"He's dead. Thanos is dead. You're safe."
Relief flooded through him at that news, closely followed by guilt for feeling relief at the news of anyone's death.
He was safe. He and Wanda were safe. He clung to that thought.
"Come on. Let's get out of the rain," she said.
She seemed to know where she was going. He let her guide him along a dark road into a dark house. She didn't turn on the lights, but wrapped a blanket around him and sat him on a sofa, then stood in front of him, looking dazed.
How was he alive? He couldn't answer that question. He'd died. He was almost sure of that.
He had considered heaven, hell, ghosts, reincarnation, and other iterations of afterlife beliefs, but mostly from the perspective of human psychology, as a way humans dealt with their own mortality, their hopes and fears. He had wondered, if there were an afterlife, whether he as a synthetic being would qualify for it.
"Is this...?" He was going to say 'heaven', but realized he would probably not have awoken so frightened and nearly frantic in heaven. It wouldn't be so dark, and Wanda wouldn't be soaked and trembling. It couldn't possibly be hell, because Wanda was there. Were they ghosts? In some kind of afterlife humans had not been able to conceive of? If that were the case, he had no reason to expect Wanda had any better idea what was going on than he did.
So he asked a different question. "How long has it been?"
She stroked his face, gazing at him in adoration. Her beautiful features softly illuminated by the light of the Mind Stone.
"It doesn't matter. You're here now." She leaned down and kissed him. They were not kisses of passion, but compassion, reassuring rather than arousing. Then she wrapped him in her arms, holding him tight.
His arms circled around her, feeling the contours of her back under her wet clothes. He felt a sense of peace and security wash over him, a sense that everything would be alright, everything would work out.
At the same moment, the rain stopped, and he heard some electrical appliances buzz to life in the next room. He opened his eyes and saw a street light illuminating the windows.
They just held each other for a long time. Wanda fell asleep in his arms.