Wanda/Vision

*** I own nothing. I'm just having fun. ***

Wanda felt like a broken wreck of a person. Pietro was gone now, life given up in a single act of heroism, and she had never been so alone.

A single thing kept her going. Her mark. The words that had once been black now almost glowed as a bright and shining red. Knowing whose words they were was little comfort. "Look again," he'd told her, but he avoided her now. She didn't know why, didn't understand what it was about her that made him so nervous, but it was an obvious and unavoidable truth. The Vision could barely look at her.

Still, these words were hers now. He was hers, and it kept her going to know that she wasn't truly alone. He was, quite literally, made just for her.

Weeks went by with him skirting away from her, keeping a careful distance between them, and she was sick of it. He was hers, and she needed him, and if he was going to tell her otherwise he needed to do so already.

It took her two more days to corner him. She found him alone in the library, engrossed in a book. He wasn't aware of her, probably hadn't expected she would show up here, but she'd skipped training to find him, made some lame excuse about not feeling well. Steve hadn't believed her, but he let her go anyway.

And now that she'd caught her wayward soul mate, he wouldn't be escaping her again.

Wanda approached him slowly and only broke the silence when she was a few feet away.

"That must be a very interesting book to hold your attention so," she said. Vision jumped, but quickly recovered and pasted a distant, polite smile on his face. She'd wipe that smile off him if it was the last thing she did. She hated it.

"Miss Maximoff. I apologize. I didn't hear you come in," he said quickly. Wanda smiled, but it wasn't kind.

"Obviously," she said. "You would have run otherwise. You are good at that."

"I beg your pardon?"

Wanda crossed her arms over her chest and sighed.

"You are my soul mate. I bear your words." She turned her palm over to show him. "May I see your mark?"

"I'm sorry, but I don't know what you mean. I have no soul mate." He said it so surely, so calmly. Wanda's eyes widened and her entire posture weakened.

"You... don't? You don't have a mark?" She didn't want to believe it. How could it be true? It couldn't, could it? She'd never heard of such a thing. If one person had a mark, so did the other. That's how it was. But he was artificially created. Maybe that made all the difference?

"I apologize if this has upset you," he said.

"Do you have a mark?" Wanda asked again. She needed to hear it.

"I do, but it must be mistaken. I have no soul." Vision looked at her impassively, but Wanda shook her head.

"Of course you have a soul. Everyone does," she said.

"I'm a synthetic being, and thus cannot possess a soul," he replied. Wanda thought she caught a hint of sadness in his voice, but it was too brief to be sure.

"Don't be stupid. It doesn't matter how you were made. Every living being has a soul, and you are a living being. Besides, I would be able to tell, don't you think? I'm the one who can see minds."

Vision looked unconvinced.

"Let me see your mark," Wanda said firmly, leaving no room for argument. Vision held out his hand, and she saw her words scrawled across his palm, almost invisible against the dark red of his skin.

Wanda held out her own hand, very aware of the mark on her palm that seemed to burn the closer they got.

"If you do not have a soul, this shouldn't affect you," she said quietly. He was staring at her with an unnerving intensity, but she forced herself to continue. She reached for him and their palms met.

It was overwhelming. The amount of sensory data that passed between them was unlike anything she'd ever experienced before. She could feel his longing for humanity, his every emotion that he doubted and dismissed as inhuman. His mind, his soul, his self... He washed through her in a tidal wave of feeling.

And she could feel herself being laid bare before him. Unnerving and frightening as it was to be so vulnerable, she welcomed it. Anything that could show him how alike they truly were, anything that could show him he had a soul as bright and fierce as her own, was worth it.

She released his hand only when the initial rush of feeling had faded, replaced by the sweet sensation of their minds brushing against one another. It was too tempting to remain that way, fused together so perfectly, but there was an important conversation to be had. He couldn't hide from her anymore. She knew him now.

The sense of loss when their hands parted, though, was enough to make her gasp. Wanda opened her eyes and looked at Vision, truly seeing him for the first time. His tics and subtle clues, every small signal that betrayed his confusion was now an open book to her. Then his cool visage collapsed into open pain as tears rolled down his cheeks.

Wanda moved closer, wrapped her arms around him while he cried, then wiped his tears away. "Do you see how human you are?" she asked, knowing he did but needing him to say it.

"Yes," he said, his voice a hoarse whisper. He raised a hand to her face and ran his fingertips gently over her cheek. Wanda leaned into the touch, needing the closeness, accepting his silent apology.

"Then stay with me," she pleaded. Her voice wavered and broke over the words, and his gaze softened.

"I will, Wanda. For as long as you'll have me."

Her only reply was to pull him down into a kiss.