NOTE: Updates Sundays (or Mondays, depending on your time zone and my promptness).

New York State, U.S.A.

VISION

When he left London, Vision was surprised to find that his chest felt rather heavy and also very empty, like someone had ripped out his internal workings and replaced those with several oddly-shaped rocks. He assumed this feeling was what people meant when they referred to heartache. Vision's heart, like all of his other organs, was synthetic – besides that, the component which moves blood throughout the body has little if anything to do with the sensation of emotions. Nonetheless, Vision found he understood the widely accepted metaphor. His heart hurt.

This was a fairly new feeling. He had felt it only a few times before, and all in relation to Wanda. He felt it when Wanda first left the compound with Clint to join Steve and the others. She had pushed him through eight layers of concrete floor, which of course resulted in some physical pain. That didn't bother Vision very much, but the heavy-empty feeling did.

It came back when he saw her on the tarmac at the airport, where they fought to defend to opposing but complementary ideas of justice. It only went away when the worst of the fighting was over, and they were able to apologize to one another properly. The heavy-empty turning over into something more like contentment was a sudden and odd sensation. It distracted Vision, and he made a mistake.

Then, at the Raft, Vision caught a glimpse of security footage in which Wanda was wrapped in a straitjacket and collared like a dog. That was heaviness mixed with something else: anger? regret? guilt? A tear had even formed in Vision's eye – he had assumed he could cry, but had never had any proof – and he ducked into Wanda's vacant cell to avoid scrutiny. He tried to find some trace of her there – a remnant of a feeling that was her, some residual energy – but there was nothing.

Vision had never missed anyone or anything before, but he'd seen what loss looked like. He'd seen Wanda's grief when her brother was gone. He'd seen Colonel Rhodes' wild frustration over the destruction of his legs. He'd seen Tony pace faster and work harder and spit more sarcasm as he pretended not to feel the lack of everyone who had left. Then Vision saw all of their pain in himself, and he knew that he missed Wanda.

After London, the heartache lingered.

Though distraction had proved dangerous before, Vision now found it satisfying, so long as it was the right kind of distraction. He thought of Wanda, and a smile came to his face. There was power in memory: the afternoons sitting on the edge of Wanda's bed, watching sitcoms; joking through training and whispering loud enough that the others could certainly hear; sitting with Wanda while she ate; her hand on his face, and the pink light shining in her eyes. If he thought about her hard enough, Wanda was there with him, if only just for a moment.

Of course, she was not actually there. She was not in London any longer, either. Tony had been speed-reading national news when he came across a few paragraphs tucked somewhere in the back half of the Evening Standard. Some seemingly innocuous documents had turned up missing from an archive. Tony muttered, "Rodgers" and flipped faster through headlines.

Vision found Rhodes in the conference room, mid-conversation with a holographic Secretary Ross and a few other heads of state. He waited patiently until their meeting was over.

"Ross wants updates on our search for Steve Rodgers and the others," Rhodes said.

"There are no updates," Vision said quickly.

"That's what I told him. He didn't like that answer." Rhodes made his way to the nearest sofa and sat down. He had adjusted to his newfound robotic workings fairly quickly, but he still walked on his heels, and stomped as a result. To his credit, he never seemed to blame Vision for the accident. Vision did not quite blame himself either – it was not his mistake alone, it was a series of mistakes and hubris – but he nonetheless felt partially responsible for Rhodes' wellbeing in his recovery.

Vision asked, "Can I get you anything?"

"I'm alright," Rhodes said.

"Will you be needing me for anything tomorrow?"

Rhodes looked left and then right, as if searching the recesses of his own mind. "I don't think so. Are you going to sneak off again?"

"I'm just headed on day trip," Vision said. "Perhaps overnight. Nothing more."

"I'm beginning to think you have a secret girlfriend or something," Rhodes said.

Vision tilted his head. He loosened his jaw. He said, "I —"

"Relax," Rhodes said. "I was just joking. What you do on your own time is none of my business."

"Of course," Vision said, forcing a laugh.

If Rhodes saw past Vision's imagined innocence, he did not show it. He flipped on the TV and surfed through the sports channels.

Vision withdrew to a lower level of the compound, where a large room was stocked with Tony's overflow technology. Vision tapped a tabletop, bringing its holographic form to life. A map appeared, and Vision drew his hand through it. As he did, he felt something familiar. He had been this before – intangible data, floating through the air. He had been something that could not be touched.

Wanda had not asked Vision how he found her. If she had, he would have told her, but as it was, he liked to think of it as some marvelous magic trick. Really, it was just a clever manipulation of Tony's equipment. Vision tethered every microphone he could find – government-issues microphones, Wi-Fi-enabled video cameras, laptops, cellphones – and he scanned the greater part of the world all at once.

The onslaught of information that followed would have overwhelmed human senses, but Vision could pick through the birds and trucks and rainstorms to find the voices. It's about the way things sound, he thought. He listened for twenty minutes or more, waiting for something familiar, and then he heard it: Wanda's voice, soft and even. She said, I'm just going for a walk along the river.

Natasha answered. Fine, but stay close. Check in.

Yeah, I know.

Vision could listen to Wanda all day. He would have, but he felt that was an invasion of her privacy. He savored the sound, just for a moment, then he let the map spin as the computer tracked the signal: Paris. Wanda was in Paris.