Takes place after Civil War, non-canon from there out. Established friendship. Slow burn. Dark. Mentions of non-con, torture, and trauma; mostly in the abstract and memory sequences. Mostly hurt/comfort, healing, eventual fluff & smut, etc. You've been warned.

It's been a while since I've written, so hopefully this isn't complete trash. Clearly, I own nothing.

Chapter 1: Complications

The night hangs thick with clouds around him, hiding his wraith-like descent upon the Raft. The Vision lands silently on the giant metal contraption, his cape blown back by the whipping winds of the open sea. With a thought, he phases his body and slips through the roof into the building below. He moves with calculated determination, taking in his surroundings as quickly as he can analyze them.

When he first got the call from Captain Rogers at the Avengers' Compound, Vision was delighted. The previous month's battle in Leipzig had left him alone with his thoughts and more time than he needed to overanalyze them. It had taken mere moments of standing in the airport field for him to realize his grave error in signing the Accords, in taking part in the fight. It had taken even less time to agree to assist the Captain in his plans to break out their interred teammates.

Now, fourteen days since he answered that call, Vision delves deeper into the compound, exploring the Raft. He compiles a blueprint of each level to the best of his approximation. Sending the files off to Captain Rogers in the stolen quinjet circling miles away via their secured link.

Phasing further levels below, he finds what appears to be the epicenter of the facility: the control room. The room is the largest the Vision's mapped yet, with monitors lining the walls and smaller display panels at every workstation. He counts at least 24 personnel in total, six in the control room with him, and the remaining 18 scattered throughout the facility at various checkpoints and stations.

It doesn't take long for him to spot the monitors with his teammates on them. He watches as the guard seated behind the desk yawns widely and jots something down in a notebook. From his view, he can see Clint, Sam, and Scott sitting in their respective cells. They look healthy, despite their circumstances, and he allows himself to release a silent breath of relief. Assured that his friends are safe, he resumes his scanning of the various monitors in search of her.

Vision had assumed that Wanda would be uniquely restrained. Unlike the others, her power couldn't be separated from her physically, so she would be deemed more dangerous. What he hadn't considered, however, was that she would be isolated from the other members of the team. He's sure that he's seen every display, but there's no sign of Wanda.

His anxiety intensifying, Vision makes a split second decision. Keeping his form incorporeal, he slips a hand through the closest workstation and grants himself access into the Raft's mainframe. It's risky, and he just manages to pass the system defenses without alerting anyone to his presence within it.

Precious seconds pass as he rifles through the vast data banks of information. He sees every monitor display, arrest record, inmate behavior log, interviews and more, and files copies of it all away for later. There's only one he needs at the moment. The others can wait until later when everyone is safe, together.

Vision finds Wanda's file to little avail. It has a brief history, an overview of her powers, and the same basic information he's seen on all the other inmate files. It does state the cell and floor where she's being held. Unfortunately, he can clearly see through the CCTV system that she isn't there. He's about to give up and return to the roof when he catches something moving in one of the video feeds.

He brings the footage to the forefront of his consciousness and watches as a guard backs into view. The rest of the hallway appears empty, with no doors leading away from the expanse. He can see the man struggling with something just out of view, something that seems heavy. The guard takes what looks to be a heaving breath and pulls, hard. That's when Vision catches his first glimpse.

He realizes that the something the guard is struggling to pull down the hallway is actually a someone. The someone he's looking for, as a matter of fact, and, from what he can observe, she's fully unconscious. Wanda. Virtually limp, head lolling back and forth sickeningly over the thick mechanical collar around her neck.

Distracted, he loses control of his powers. The next thing Vision knows, he's re-solidified in the middle of a desk that's ripping apart around him. He doesn't register the shouts of the guards as he springs from the debris of the destroyed computer. The flashes and sparks explode around him, unnoticed and uncared for as he swiftly knocks the two people closest to him into each other, leaving them out cold. Their coworkers do notice the sudden explosion, though, and Vision hears something whizzing by his head before turning around, already changing his density to withstand the onslaught.

He hears more than he feels the bullets ricochet off of his diamond-hard body as he stalks toward the remaining personnel in the room. It doesn't take much to incapacitate his far out-matched opponents. Two fall like dominoes after his first blows, with the others requiring only slightly more effort to take down. An alarm somewhere sounds and he knows he's losing time, that he's blown this mission, that all his and Steve's hard work could now be for naught. It would be his fault. He knows it to be true, but he can't stop now.

As quickly as he can manage, he grants himself into the Raft's computer systems once more. He silences the alarm and sees the guard that was dragging Wanda already managed to return her to her cell in the time he's lost fighting. He releases the locking mechanisms securing his teammates' doors, and figures out how to locate her cell before taking off in her direction.

They had a plan. A good plan. A plan that he and Captain Rogers had spent hours upon hours crafting and perfecting to the point of exhaustion. Vision was to get into the Raft for recon, unnoticed. After acquiring all of the information he could steal and confirming everyone's location, he was to return to the quinjet. Once they had time to regroup, they were going to return once more to retrieve their teammates from custody. No traces left behind. They'd discussed every detail at length, so that they'd both have it memorized to the last minute.

At the time, the relentless repetition had been more for the benefit of Captain Rogers than for Vision. He finds the irony of it all less than amusing as he breaks their previously uninterrupted radio silence.

Steve chances a glance at his watch under the lime green and neon blue lights of the quinjet's navigation system. He lets the pencil in his hand tap against the control panel in a worried song. He knows it's been too long and that something might have gone wrong. But, he also knows that checking in with Vision could be equally dangerous and jeopardize his ability to move through the Raft undetected.

Consumed by concern for his teammates, Cap startles when the Vision's clipped British accent crackles out of the communications array.

"Captain Rogers, I regret to inform you that there have been some complications."

Steve can hardly stifle the groan trying to claw its way out of his throat, "What kind of complications?"

Vision runs as quickly as he can, phases through walls and doors without regard. He has only just finished apprising Steve of the situation when he rounds the corner into the hallway he saw on CCTV.

He tries to make sense of the scene before him when he arrives outside her cell. Then, he does something he's never done before and speaks before he thinks. Barely a whisper, and to no one in particular, "It's only been a month and a half."