Chapter 30: Crumbling
I used to have fiery intensity,
and a flowing sweetness.
The waters were illusion.
The flames, made of snow.
Was I dreaming then?
Am I awake now?
~Rumi, trans. Coleman Barks, from Birdsong
Vision looked at his reflection in the bathroom mirror as he tied his cape around his neck. This Halloween he'd chosen a costume that would allow him to be seen with his true face. He wasn't entirely sure why. Perhaps he was tired of hiding.
He was in the living room in time to see Wanda descend the stairs in her sorceress ensemble: red leotard, red crown, tights. Even after all these years of marriage, he was still frequently struck by her beauty. Today, the sight of her looking so uncannily beautiful caused him to feel even more lost and conflicted. How was he ever supposed to confront her about her secrets when he couldn't bear the thought of upsetting her?
"You look wonderful," she said to him.
"So do you," he replied, hoping she would misconstrue the tightness in his voice.
"Are you ready to go?"
"Shouldn't you bring a jacket?" he asked.
"It's not too chilly today. And if it's cold on the walk home tonight, you can wrap me up in your cape," she added suggestively.
He couldn't help but chuckle and wrap an arm around her.
"Boys, are you ready?" Wanda called.
Tommy and Billy came out of their rooms, both in their costumes. They looked so grown up, Tommy in particular. They were only a couple of years away from graduating high school, after which they would perhaps go off to college. It was bittersweet to be faced with the reminder that their children weren't children anymore.
"You both look amazing!" Billy said.
"Mom, don't you think you're a little old to be dressed like that? It's embarrassing," said Tommy.
"Don't listen to him; I think you look beautiful," Billy argued.
Wanda smiled. "Thank you. Let's get going. We want to get to the party before they run out of doughnuts."
Agnes waved to them from her yard as they passed.
"You going to the party?" Wanda asked.
"In a bit. Your costumes look great!"
It was warm for an autumn evening. All their neighbors seemed to be out and about, heading to the party or getting an early start on trick-or-treating. The twins soon ran ahead to join up with some friends.
"You're being quiet today," Wanda noted.
"I'm sorry. I'm just thinking," Vision said evasively.
"I have always loved how thoughtful you are." When he didn't laugh, she asked, "Is it anything you want to talk about?"
"Not just yet." It was a night to socialize and enjoy themselves; he didn't want to bring down the mood. Besides, if she could keep secrets, so could he.
"Okay." After a minutes, she said, "I think I'm going to dart back home and change into some flats. These shoes are killing me."
"Would you like me to go with you?"
"No. Go on ahead. I'll meet you at the party."
Normally he might have insisted on accompanying her, but Vision didn't mind a few minutes alone to think.
Several people he passed wished him Happy Halloween. Some greeted him by name. Rather, by his alias. Everyone in Westview was always so friendly. Neighbors were always eager to help each other, the twins had never been bullied in school, they had never been made to feel unwelcome in any way. Everything about it seemed perfect.
He kept thinking about what Agnes said yesterday: something that seemed too good to be true probably wasn't true.
"I think something's wrong here," he muttered aloud to himself.
No one had ever asked him why he didn't eat. No one who shook his hand had ever commented on his skin being harder than typical human skin. It was as if they were incapable of noticing anything odd about him.
Suddenly feeling like he needed to get away, he floated up into the air, wondering if anyone would spot him and point him out. No one did.
He flew higher, getting a bird's-eye view of their idyllic town.
There was something there, a layer of some kind of energetic static. He flew through it curiously, trying to figure out what it was.
And then suddenly the sky changed from early evening twilight to star-studded black. The air was colder. All was quiet.
He looked around.
Beyond the edges of town he could see razor-wire fences and floodlights. Beyond those, he saw a car parked on a road in the woods with its headlights on.
He flew closer to investigate. He saw someone in the car, apparently asleep at the wheel.
It was Agnes, wearing the witch costume he'd seen her in a few minutes ago.
He flew to her. The driver's side window was open.
"Agnes?"
She didn't wake up.
He reached toward her to rouse her. Something like electricity zapped from his fingertip to her head.
She jolted awake with a gasp. She stared at him, eyes wild.
"Am I dead?" she asked.
"No," he assured her. "Why would you think that?"
She looked at him pensively. "Because you are."
The way she said that—both authoritative and amazed—convinced him she knew something he didn't.
It terrified him.
"What do you mean?"
"What are you doing here?" She asked him instead of answering. "How did you get out here?"
"I flew," he answered without thinking about it. This all seemed so surreal he was staying to wonder if he was having some kind of nightmare.
"You flew?" she repeated.
He realized how strange that must sound. Agnes didn't know about his powers.
But she just started laughing, like that was the funniest joke she'd heard in years.
"You just flew out? You mean you could have left Westview any time you wanted this whole time?"
"It seems so," he answered. "Can't anyone?"
"Almost no one has been able to enter or leave Westview in over a year," Agnes said.
"But...how did you get out? I saw you only a few minutes ago."
"I've never set foot in Westview in my life, Vision."
"How... How do you know my real name?"
Agnes took a deep breath. "Okay. You must be so confused. You want to know what's really going on in Westview?"
"Yes. Very much," he answered.
"I'm not the best person to answer that. But I know who is." She took out her phone and made a call. "Hey, sorry to call you this late. I mean, this early, but I need to meet up with you right now. You are not going to believe this."
She got out of her car, put her wrists together, and circled her hands in a way that reminded him of Wanda when she worked her powers.
A circle of light appeared in the air in front of her. Through it, Vision could see a room containing what looked to be advanced scientific equipment.
"Come with me," Agnes said as she stepped through it.
Vision did. He was uncertain if it was a good idea, but he needed answers.
The room they emerged in was some kind of lab. Vision was trying to figure out what they could be studying in this room when a door opened. It occurred to him too late that he should perhaps assume his normal human disguise.
But he found himself facing someone just as conspicuous as he was. It was the Hulk, wearing custom-made oversized pajamas.
"Oh my God," he said. "Vision?"
"I told you you weren't going to believe it," Agnes said.
"Doctor Banner?" Vision said, desperately trying to figure out what was going on.
"You can call me Bruce. How did you get out of Westview?"
"He flew," Agnes answered for him. "Apparently, he can go right through the energy barrier."
"Your appearance has changed since last I saw you," Vision noted.
"Yeah, I found a way to integrate both side of myself. That's not important right now. Vision, how much do you know about what Wanda is doing?"
He shook his head. The question didn't make sense. "Wanda is not doing anything."
"Do you know how you got to Westview in the first place?" Agnes asked.
He was about to answer with a simple 'Of course', but realized he didn't. It was a long time ago, and he hadn't thought about it for a long time, but he remembered the rainy night when he woke up on the side of a street with Wanda beside him.
"Did Wanda ever tell you?" Bruce asked.
'How are you here?' That was what Wanda asked him, mystified, that night.
"She didn't know," Vision answered. "We have never known."
Bruce rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "How much do you know about Thanos?"
Vision felt as if his memories had been frozen in ice, and now they were coming to him in thin thawing trickles. "He was after the Infinity Stones. He was after me."
"Do you know what happened then?"
He'd died. Wanda had killed him by destroying the Mind Stone. Did she remember that? She must not; such a memory would torment her.
But he was alive. The Mind Stone was right there, in his head.
"No," he answered. "I presume you found a way to stop Thanos?"
"Kind of," Bruce said. "We brought back the people Thanos dusted. But Thanos destroyed the Infinity Stones."
He reached up to his forehead automatically, as if to make sure the energy source that powered him was really there. "I don't understand."
Bruce nodded. "I think you might benefit from seeing what we've been able to figure out so far." He turned on one of his computers, and brought up an isoline model labeled with mathematical functions. "The Infinity Stones emerged from the Big Bang. They were singularities of six different forces that interact to form the universe." He pulled up six different models on the screen, each labeled with similar functions. "Do you see how destroying them might be a problem?"
Vision looked at the models and nodded slowly. "Each acted as an anchor point for one universal force. If this model is correct, removing them would cause those forces to become untethered, becoming increasingly chaotic."
"Increasingly chaotic?" Bruce repeated, distressed. "So you think the longer the universe went without the Infinity Stones, the more unbalanced it would become?"
"That is the logical extrapolation," Vision said, waving at the computer screen. Without those anchor points, the laws of physics governing the universe would begin to unravel, with unpredictable but likely apocalyptic results. "But my own existence indicates the Infinity Stones are not permanently gone. Doesn't it?"
"Yeah. That's...kind of what I was trying to get at. The Infinity Stones leave their imprint on anything in their proximity. The longer the exposure, the stronger the imprint. Those imprints persisted after the Infinity Stones were destroyed. When objects carrying a strong imprint come close enough to each other, the force manifolds interact."
"That could cause a collapse in the foundation of the universe," Vision realized. "And that collapse...would become a new force singularity. The Infinity Stones would be reborn. Chaos reaching a breaking point, begetting balance."
"That's what's been happening," Bruce explained. "It's a long story, but Westview has become a hub for the Infinity Stones' cosmic imprints." He clicked through a few slides on the computer screen, stopping on an image that showed three focal points surrounded by overlapping ripples coded in different colors: orange, yellow, and violet.
Vision reached out to the computer screen, touching the center of the yellow ripples. "That's how the Mind Stone gave Wanda powers. She carries its signature."
"Exactly. And Clint Barton carries the signature of the Soul Stone after having prolonged contact with it during our mission to undue Thanos's snap. When Clint and Wanda went to Westview, they entered the sphere of influence of someone who carried the imprint of the Power Stone, a woman named Mary-Jo Altman."
"Mary-Jo," Vision gasped.
"You know her?" Bruce asked uneasily.
"Yes." Vision sank to the ground, covering his face with his hands. That was what happened the night he and Wanda had dinner with her: what he'd witnessed was the Power Stone breaking through into the universe.
And Wanda had known what it was. She'd known to contain it, created a forcefield around it and hidden it away.
Because she'd done it before.
"Five of the six Infinity Stones are now in Westview," Agnes stated. "Well, I guess right at this moment it's four of the six, since you're here."
"For fifteen months, Westview has existed inside a bubble dimension. As near as we can figure, it's being generated by an interaction between the Space Stone and the Reality Stone. Time inside the bubble dimension is passing more quickly than outside, about one nineteenth the speed of regular time."
"So an hour here is about nineteen hours there," Agnes clarified. "But that's really just my best guess."
Vision stared at the computer screen. "This model suggests the closer in proximity the Infinity Stones are, the more powerful they become. Five on the same planet, much less the same town, presents an unacceptable risk."
"We completely agree," Bruce said.
The implications were beginning to coalesce in Vision's mind, and they were devastating.
Wanda had been there when the Power Stone emerged.
Wanda had been there when he woke up on the dark street on a rainy night. She had been right there.
"If the Reality Stone and Space Stone are interacting to create a stable sub-dimension," he said slowly, "I believe there must be something deliberately facilitating that synthesis."
"Someone," Bruce replied. "We don't think she's doing it on purpose, but it's Wanda. Since she facilitated each Infinity Stone's re-emergence, she's connected to each of them. She's tapped into their power. The fact that the interdimensional energy field around Westview doesn't weaken when she sleeps indicates her control of it is entirely subconscious."
"Why would she do this?" Vision asked himself.
"It's a protective shell she's built around herself," Bruce speculated. "After everything she's suffered in her life, she's just trying to protect herself."
Agnes shook her head. "Not quite. Even after she had the Soul Stone, the Space Stone, and the Reality Stone, the dimensional barrier didn't go up until after the Mind Stone emerged. She's not doing it to protect herself..." She looked pointedly at Vision. "She's doing it to protect you."
"Me?"
"And now your children."
Vision's head was swirling. "This is what she's been keeping from me, all this time."
Bruce hesitantly added, "We know from battling Thanos that the Reality Stone can be used to alter and even create physical matter. We know Wanda's used it."
Agnes added, "She used it to create the house you live in, the college where you work..."
She trailed off, leaving something unspoken dangling in the silence.
It dawned on him. "And me. You believe she created me."
"Re-created you," Bruce corrected. "And Natasha."
He looked at Agnes. "Why did you never tell me this?"
"Would you have believed me?"
Bruce continued his explanation. "We believe Wanda's mind powers are influencing everyone in Westview. She wants them to be nice and happy and not question what's going on, so she's subconsciously making them. Since her control of the Infinity Stones isn't conscious, she wouldn't know how she's doing it, so even if we could convince her it's in everyone's best interest for her to relinquish that power, she wouldn't be able to. We've developed an anesthetic cocktail that, when injected in a human, temporarily and harmlessly shuts down all but autonomic brainwaves, which would sever her control of the Infinity Stones and should shut off the energy field creating the bubble dimension, but we've had no way to administer it—no way to safely get it inside Westview and get close enough to anesthetize her. Until now."
They meant him, Vision realized. This was why Agnes had brought him here, why she'd told Bruce he could pass through the energy barrier.
"You're asking me to turn against my wife, the mother of my children."
"Not really turn against her. But it's too dangerous for any one person to control the Infinity Stones, no matter who that person is."
"The people of Westview are trapped there. They deserve the freedom to leave, the freedom to remember what's outside their town, the freedom to know what's real," Agnes added.
Vision considered that point. He felt a lump in his throat, and something cold and poisonous in the pit of his stomach.
"If we sever Wanda's connection to the Infinity Stones, what would happen to the things she used the Reality Stone to create? If I do this, will I cease to exist?"
Bruce didn't answer for a long second. "We don't know. We don't know enough about how the Infinity Stones work to be able to answer that."
"What would happen to our children?" Vision wondered. He had thought it miraculous that he and Wanda were able to have children together. Had she used the Reality Stone to bring about their existence as well?
Bruce didn't answer at all. He knew Vision wasn't asking him.
