The Hand of my Neighbor
By Larissa James
Yeah, so I'm nostalgic for the days of Wanda and Viszh as the ultimate couple. I suppose that since killing Wonder Man never does much good, I'll have to resort to Vision fan-fiction, instead...although killing Simon usually does get him out of the way for a while, at least. Hmm...(And no, this isn't the Vision piece I've been working on lately -- this is just a little oddity that the muse of Christmas Past inspired me to dash off today.)
Disclaimer: The Vision and the Scarlet Witch belong to Marvel Comics. The town of Leonia, New Jersey belongs to itself, I guess, although I hear Satan is about to make a good offer.
Continuity: This takes place on Christmas Eve, roughly seven weeks after the events in The Vision And The Scarlet Witch, volume one, number one, and definitely before issue number four of the same limited series. (You know, the one where Magneto finally discovers that Wanda and Pietro are his children? What? You mean you haven't read it??)
Dr. James' Prescription: If you're unfamiliar with the long-time romance of the Vision and the Scarlet Witch, it would greatly enrich your life to read both limited series by the same name, as well as almost any old issue of Avengers. As lovers, they make Scott and Jean look like first-graders trading ring-pops on the playground at recess. And I'm sorry, but Remy and Rogue don't even make the scale. Nope. Not even a single love-point.
An armload of packages dropped to the icy sidewalk, the dull crunch of something inside them breaking suddenly painfully audible in the cold winter silence, and the Vision stood staring, unbreathing because he had no need to breathe, and unspeaking because he could find no words to say that had not already been ripped from his throat by the dull lump of shock and hurt and anger that had replaced them.
His house. His and Wanda's house. Their home. Gone.
Even as the thought crossed his mechanical mind, he knew how absurd the sentiment was. It was the same house, all right. Without really trying, he could pick out all of the features that had become so familiar to him over the scant two months they had lived there -- all of the features that his eyes drank in eagerly each time he came up the walk, committing each and every detail to memory, the soul he never knew he had singing with joy and pride as he realized yet again that this place was his home. The shaded windows, rimmed with fresh new dark blue paint that he and Wanda had touched up barely a week before. The shallow overhang of the roof, lined with icicles of all different sizes. The cushioned swing that hung on the old porch. Yes, it was all there, all the same as he remembered it being, underneath what was new, underneath the words, spray-painted in ugly shades of red and blue, yellow and green -- a mockery of America, a mockery of Christmas, a mockery of him all at once -- that loudly declared the presence of mutant and synthezoid to be unwelcome. That morning, he had left a home. But in its place stood a sick and twisted shrine of hatred.
He didn't even realize that he had taken a step forward until he heard a soft crunch, and looked down to discover the piece of greenery, once so vibrant and cheerful, crushed beneath his foot. Briefly, his logical, orderly mind was confused by the sight of something so out of place on the sheet of ice that his sidewalk had become...until he looked around the pristine whiteness that had been his yard and saw the other small, withered curls of green scattered about, most lying crumpled at the bottom of heavy boot imprints, one still sporting the gay red bow that declared the mess to be the remains of the wreath that had once decorated the front door. Fake satin, blood red against the pure white of the snow, both soiled with dark, swirling mud left by the boots that had gleefully brought them low. When the snows had first come, Wanda had not wanted him to step out into the yard to clear the walk -- she had begged him not to destroy the newly attained perfection of the yard, not to mar the unchanging sheet of whiteness with his footprints, and so he had respected her wishes, as he always did, and gone to great pains to clear only the walk while leaving the yard on either side untouched. The symbolism of the memory did not escape him, even in that moment: how ironic that those who had desecrated their home had also been the ones to spoil paradise.
Hatred, he knew, was something that Wanda was very well accustomed to dealing with, perhaps even more so than he. It was also something, however, that he was determined that she wouldn't have to deal with, not as long as he was there to shield her from it. If someone on the street seemed to be giving them odd looks, those looks that were characterized by not the usual double-take of surprise, but rather something more resembling an outraged frown, he attempted to insinuate himself between the offending party and his wife's line of sight. Whenever the doorbell rang, he always managed to get there first, even if he had to float down through the ceiling from upstairs to do it (Wanda didn't find this odd or disconcerting at all, though she often teased him about being in such a seeming hurry). Every morning, he kept an ear out for the mailman, and hurried to get to the door as soon as he heard him outside. Soon after they had first moved in, Wanda had come across a very nasty letter addressed to them -- one that she had destroyed before giving him a chance to read but had fretted about for days -- and ever since, he had done everything in his power to keep her from ever reading such things again. They had received a good many such anonymous letters since then, and he was fairly certain that he had intercepted them all...then again, Wanda could be quite secretive about such things herself, so there was no real way of knowing for certain. Not knowing whether or not she was hurting was something that bothered Vision very much.
It only took him a moment to retrieve a bucket and scrub-brush and set to work. After all, he had attempted to prepare for every eventuality.
Grimly, he scrubbed at a particularly stubborn section of "R," reflecting on how easily his mind, a mechanical mind never meant to succumb to distraction, seemed to wander these days. He checked the time, trying to decide again how much time he had left before Wanda's return. If he was lucky, she would be late, delayed by the weather, perhaps. She had yet to find a perfect gift for Pietro (he had been through this particular rigmarole with her on Christmases and birthdays before: her unpopular brother's gift had to be absolutely, astoundingly perfect, both because he was so dear to her and because her gift was likely to be the only one he received at all), and so she might be kept late searching for that particular, all-important present. It seemed odd, hoping that she would stay away for so long when usually, every second they were apart seemed a second longer than he could bear. He always missed the little things: the sound of her light, indulging laughter, the sight of her auburn curls tossing when she turned to look at him, the feel of her arms around him when she greeted him as if they had been apart for a millennium rather than only a few short hours. Today, he almost dreaded the sight of her coming up the walk, for it was far too easy to imagine the look on her face when she saw.
Across the street, his artificial eyes could clearly glimpse the face of their neighbor, Mrs. Evans, appear in the window for a few moments, the closed curtains pushed aside just enough to allow her an unrestricted view. Mrs. Evans had always been distantly friendly, if perhaps a little nervous, when they had chanced to meet her in the park watching her children as they strolled along in the evenings, enjoying the autumn breeze...but tolerance, when applied to the victim rather than to prejudice itself, did not always mean acceptance. As surely as he knew that one of his own neighbors had done this thing, Vision knew that she knew, as well. The Rileys next door, who never let their children play outside when he and Wanda were in the swing out front, knew. Young Mr. and Mrs. Hutton from down the street, who had brought them a pie on their first weekend in their new home and had let Wanda hold their new baby; they knew, too. They all knew. Every man, woman, and child on the block had seen, or had heard what was being done to their newest neighbors. The street was deserted, quiet -- too quiet for a snowy Christmas Eve in a picturesque New Jersey neighborhood, too quiet to maintain the illusion of innocence, of blamelessness. Yes, they knew. Vision clenched his teeth, scrubbing harder.
The work absorbed him as the minutes and hours dragged by. There was no way that he could get rid of it all before she came home, even using his heat vision carefully, oh so carefully, to help chip away the stubborn outline that remained no matter how determinedly he scrubbed and scraped. Too much, and he would damage the exterior of the old house, and she would notice anyway -- Wanda had an eye for things out of place around the places and people she loved, like a mother wolf protecting her cubs and den, always on guard lest someone come to steal it all away. He thought about the Hutton baby down the street, and the wistfulness and longing evident in Wanda's eyes whenever she gazed at it. Yet another reminder that he was not a normal man. Not meant to marry a flesh-and-blood woman, as one line of the graffiti (nearly gone now; please let it be gone before she comes home, please, please, please...) suggested, albeit utilizing much cruder terminology than even he, with his years of human experience, understood? The logical, robotic portion of his mind knew marriage to be a function promoting procreation for the continuation of the species. Something else -- brain, heart, soul? -- protested strongly, the thought, the feel of Wanda throbbing deeply in and about the tone. It was a tone he knew, and knew well; a tone woven with all of those things that he loved and missed at once. Love was a beautiful thing, the best thing, and something these people, these monsters could never possibly have known and still done what they had. The artificial man that they disparaged as cold and unfeeling, the creature that they declared a sin and an abomination, knew love as something so large and all-encompassing that it extended beyond the bounds of marriage, to every being, so strong and full of joy that it wouldn't allow him to hurt another, and so optimistic that it shrank away from atrocities inflicted on it, shocked that everyone else in the world was not feeling it. Sometimes, it was painful, as when the thought of Wanda's tears at the sight of this came to him, twisting something sharp and agonizing in his guts, making him desperate to avert the pain. More painful, still, was the thought of spending the eve before Christmas in silent mourning rather than in shared adoration, the soft, multicolored glow of the Christmas tree lights blinking steadily on and off against their faces as they held tightly to one another in the midst of their own little world. No, these people could not know love -- and for that, the Vision wondered if he could hate them.
The sound of the bus churning to a stop at the corner was far too loud, even to ears that had been attuned to the sound, and he felt the bitterness that had been growing within him suddenly dispel, crowded out by the returning, overwhelming nervousness that suddenly brought to mind the image of his artificial heart jumping around in his chest like a panicked rabbit. The bus meant only one thing: Wanda. Never mind that buses stopped at the corner every hour or so, and that it wasn't certain that she would be on this particular one; somehow, in his heart, he knew that she would be, for everything that could ever happen badly for them always seemed to, and he wasn't sure that who or whatever was in charge would be so merciful as to allow him to spare his wife the pain that was sure to come.
Feverishly, he began scrubbing at the remains of "Savior," determined that she wouldn't see. What could possibly be finished, he would finish in time. Maybe a sudden burst of speed would see him through to the end; maybe she would be so happy and package-laden that she wouldn't notice at all; maybe--
A soft step behind him revealed the folly of his thoughts.
Guiltily, he turned, knowing the face he would see, simultaneously joying in it and dreading it, knowing the familiar amalgam of feelings -- warmth, love, regret, sadness -- that would lance through him at the sight of her frown. But she did not frown. She didn't look at him at all. The house so lovingly chosen and admired, the home so carefully cultivated within the four walls, all broken and shattered before her, the words, YE WHO LIVE IN SIN, still clearly visible, an ugly tear across the fabric of what she had struggled to build. She didn't need to read the rest of it to know, he knew; the words, though they stung bitterly, didn't matter any more than they had really mattered to those who had written them.
Slowly, she took it all in -- the Vision noted sadly that her boot was pinioning the exact same remnant of greenery on the sidewalk that his had earlier -- unblinking, her mouth open at first in a surprised "O" of shock, then morphing steadily into the frown he had expected, her expression betraying all that he, himself felt. At last, her eyes came to rest on him where he stood on the porch, bucket in one hand, brush in the other: an artificial man engaged in a labor far beneath what he was created to perform, and yet, in its loyalty and dedication, far above that which many flesh-and-blood men would ever achieve. She opened her mouth to speak, but her throat seemed suddenly too dry to open up enough to allow words through to her tongue, and so she merely shook her head slowly in the barest of movements, eyes overly bright as, at last, they teared up, allowing her some reaction beyond the mere silence of shock.
He met her halfway, somewhere in the middle of the sidewalk leading to the shadow of the house that they had built together, near the forgotten red bow of the Christmas wreath, and embraced her, words that he had practiced over and over in his mind for this moment failing him as certainly as he had somehow known they would. There would be other words, on some other day. But there, amidst the first gently drifting flakes of the new snow that had only just begun to fall, synthezoid and mutant, man and woman, husband and wife, merely held to one another and wept.