It'll Be Okay

So it's two separate ways
Or am I too late to say
I wanna fight for what we got
'Cause I believe
In family...

It was the first time Vision had come out of his room since Leipzig.

Avengers Headquarters felt suffocatingly empty nowadays. There were no more of Pietro's boisterous antics, no more of Wanda's musical laughter, no more of Dr. Banner's quiet wisdom or Thor's booming grandiosity. No more of Captain Rogers' confident leadership, no more of Sergeant Barnes' quiet humor, and even Barton and Wilson didn't drop by on occasion like they used to do.

Perhaps suffocating wasn't the right word; it was more like a strange hyperoxia, where the excess of empty air made Vision feel as if he'd float away and never return.

When he did emerge from the safe cocoon of his personal room, conversation was always tense. There was Mr. Stark, who'd led them all into this mess in the first place and still seemed to blame himself for it; Miss Romanoff, who had double-crossed them, and whose philosophy continued to force Vision to question his own; and finally, Colonel Rhodes. The same Colonel Rhodes whom Vision had shot out of the sky.

Yes, on the whole, it was much better to stay in his room. But as time went on, and the tension waned, he began to become inexpressibly lonely.

Human or not, he craved interaction with humanity. These people—flawed and volatile as they were—were the ones who had given him life. Like or not, they were his family; or the closest he'd ever get to such a thing. Though that family was but a meager splinter of what it used to be, he'd best begin to make amends with what he had.

So, on this day, he ventured out, and the common room of Avengers Headquarters hosted the greatest crowd it had seen in a long, long time.

A grand crowd of four.

It would be laughable, were it not painful instead.

The scene was friendly and domestic, if uncanny for that very reason. Colonel Rhodes still had sweat stains on his shirt from the afternoon's physical therapy, and he puttered around in his wheelchair with ease, loudly proclaiming that he was famished from the mere exertion of "getting all the way across the room!"

Mr. Stark responded in like humor—if without conviction and slightly phoned-in—that he'd had it quite up to the gills with all the whining and "don't even know why I put up with you, Platypus." Natasha Romanoff sat on the sofa next to Vision, sitting much too straight to be relaxed, but with a soft smile on her face nonetheless as she watched the scene.

Vision, for his part, was doing his best to hide behind a StarkPad and the pretense that he was busy reading something important. That, of course, did not last long.

"What'cha reading, Vizh?"

It was said casually by Mr. Stark, after a glance over his shoulder while he was still chucking blueberries into a blender, but the nonchalance and the fact that his back was turned felt entirely calculated. Vision's smile felt equally forced, and it took a moment for him to coax his voice to the surface.

"Conservative articles on economics."

"Sounds like a yawn." Mr. Stark was still banging around the cabinets.

"I find it relaxing." It was truthful enough, but difficult to say. To return to the usual gamut of teasing felt odd at this point.

"Of course you do." With that, Mr. Stark said no more on the topic, and Vision was almost relieved.

The reason he stopped, of course, was to turn and frown at Rhodes. The latter man had pulled himself up and out of his wheelchair, shakily supported by leg braces and one hand on the counter, as he struggled to reach the lowest shelves of the cabinets.

"Can I get the," stammered Mr. Stark, "the thing for you, or—?"

"I'm pretty sure I can make a sandwich by myself, man." Rhodes sounded out of breath, but fondly annoyed.

Mr. Stark's expression was running gymnastics. "Well, sure. No, I mean, that's not what I meant—"

"Tony." Rhodes' gaze, if not his stance, was steady and kind. "It's all right."

Mr. Stark exhaled softly. "Yeah. Sure."

The air felt heavy. Vision wanted to phase through the sofa and escape, but didn't, for fear it would call too much attention.

Mr. Stark recovered presently, looked around the room, and with half his usual abrasiveness decreed, "All right, I've fulfilled my social quota. Anyone who needs me, I'll be with the computers. Knock loud enough that I can hear it."

"Duly noted, Stark." Miss Romanoff seemed unfazed by what had transpired, her voice calm and almost friendly.

Mr. Stark grabbed his blueberry smoothie and strode off for the staircase. "You'd better."

The door clicked shut, and—if he'd had any need of breath—Vision would have felt like he could breathe again.

Rhodes wheeled over to the kitchen island and began to construct his sandwich. "He's got to stop with the whole apology and restitution thing," he grumbled.

Natasha shook her head, a gentle smile on her face. "You'd probably feel the same in his place, Rhodes."

He snorted. "Don't start."

Vision was still anxious, the earlier conversation weighing on him, and he wasn't sure if his voice would be intruding. "If anyone should be apologizing…" he began.

Rhodes waved half of a sandwich in his direction. "See," he cried, equal parts amused and annoyed, "and that's just what you shouldn't be starting!"

Natasha grinned until it revealed her teeth.

Vision felt a smile spring to his own face, even as he glanced between them in an effort to read the room. "Did I speak out of turn?"

"No, Vizh, just listen. Nat can too, but you've got to hear this." Rhodes shifted in his wheelchair, leaned forward, and looked him in the eye. This was a peculiar human quirk, one meant to convey sincerity; Vision didn't quite understand it, but he appreciated it nonetheless.

"I don't hold it against anyone," said Rhodes, "not for anything that happened. I'll say 'you're forgiven' one time, five times, and five million times, however much you need, but at some point I'm gonna start recording it and playing it on my phone."

The sheer humor of that mental image—and the fact that he was clearly forgiven—brought a full smile to Vision's face. "My mistake."

"Watch it," smirked Natasha. "That's an apology."

"Nah," said Rhodes, "I get it. If I were any of you, I'd apologize the daylights out of everyone else too. Just don't feel like you have to."

"I'm doing my best," admitted Vision.

"We're all doing our best," Natasha said quietly, and with that, Vision almost felt he could be comfortable.

Miss Romanoff, ever the social engineer, deftly changed the subject. She leaned in to see the tablet screen and remarked, "Tony walked out before you could say which article."

Vision lifted the StarkPad from his lap and was surprised to find the screen blank. As he woke it up, his eyebrows furrowed.

Curious. Even his own body did instinctive things that he didn't quite understand.

"It's actually a speech on public policy," he said, as soon as the transcript itself was visible.

"As in, government policy?" Rhodes wheeled over, the freshly-made sandwich on a paper plate in his lap.

"In economic matters, yes," answered Vision.

"Who by?" asked Natasha.

"Someone named Reed. He's president emeritus for a five-oh-one-c-three organization under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code that provides council on—"

"Hey, hey." Rhodes waved at him, a deathly serious look on his face. "This is a verbal conversation. Speak in English."

"I was keeping up so far," said Natasha.

Vision smiled—a small one, which he realized too late probably revealed his embarrassment. He restated it as, "It's a not-for-profit organization that provides financial counsel. They're not funded or undergirded by anyone in politics."

"The voice of the people." Natasha leaned back and nodded appreciatively.

"Nice to hear that." Rhodes took a bite of his sandwich and pushed it into his cheek. "At least, when they're not at us with picket signs and pitchforks."

Vision's smile turned wry. He gave in to completely human mannerisms, setting his head in his hand and pinching the bridge of his nose. "To be honest," he admitted, "it's nearly devastating how often it comes back to the Accords, no matter how much I read."

Rhodes swallowed that bite and spoke a little clearer. "Economic publications mention the Accords?"

"Oh, no, no. But anything that deals with bureaucracy or regulation—you see." He gestured vaguely in the air with his hand.

"You come back around to the Accords." It might have been a guess, if Natasha had any less surety in her small smile.

"Yes." Vision sank back into the couch cushions a little bit, despite it being bad posture. "I can't help but feel that we—I might have made a terrible mistake."

He didn't wish to indict all of Mr. Stark's supporters in said mistake, given that he was speaking to two of them, but he couldn't quite shake the feeling that it was true nonetheless.

Rhodes didn't take it personally. He just gave a small snort of a laugh. "Don't get all dramatic and say 'terrible'. A mistake, yes, but it wasn't terrible. You said yourself that we can't dismiss oversight."

"Yes, but," Vision said, and pinched his nose again, "I overlooked something."

Natasha was patient. "What's that?"

Vision lifted his head and met her calm green eyes, and somehow, he found it easier to speak. Her calm was grounding and made him feel secure. "Exactly," he explained, "who is dispensing that oversight. Their motives. Their incentives. I took for granted that they would want the good of the people as much as we."

Natasha shrugged. "Ross was a dark horse. We took for granted that the oversight of the committee would serve to counterbalance any recklessness."

"But you didn't." It wasn't a particularly clever statement, but the nerves alone made a small smile appear on his face.

Natasha fixed him in a long, steady look, and then her lips twitched up into a little smirk.

"All right, I'll give you that one," said Rhodes. "Secretary Ross wasn't the man for the job. That doesn't make it a terrible mistake. I'd still consider it again if someone competent came to head the thing up."

"I worked under someone like that," said Natasha. "I know what you mean." With that, conversation between them veered off into just what such a system might look like, and Vision was left alone to his thoughts.

Captain Rogers had refused the Accords. It had baffled Vision at first. He couldn't see the logic in it. But he'd never known the Captain to be anything but a virtuous man; if he refused, it had to be on virtuous grounds, and there had to be something to the Accords worth unequivocally resisting.

It left Vision insatiably curious as to what that something was, but he'd have to think about it later.

"Vizh," said Natasha. "What does economics have to say about the Accords?"

"Oh." With a few taps to the touchscreen, Vision pulled it up. "It's actually more in the realm of economic policy, but it's one of the main points here. 'Sound policy requires that we consider the long-run effects and all people, not just the short-run effects and few people.'"

Natasha made a small, affirmative noise like "hmm" and sat back to think about it.

"Of course," added Vision, "this refers to things like Great Society welfare policies that put a drain on the economy in the long run."

"And you connect that to the Accords how?" asked Rhodes.

"I can see it." Natasha had been staring at the ceiling in thought, but she turned to Vision. "The Accords only dealt with a few people, and things we've already done. Retroactive laws don't have any vision for the future."

He nodded. "And it's in the future that these laws take effect, for better or for worse."

"Exactly."

Rhodes made a face to the effect of 'well, that's true', and nodded.

Vision sat forward, pointing at the screen. In his excitement, his words came quickly. "Also, to look at 'all people' instead of 'a few'. From what standpoint were the Accords created—the Avengers' actions alone, or from the needs of the world at large?"

"See, that's a loaded question," interjected Rhodes. "First you have to decide whether or not the world is better off with us out there. Only Rogers seemed pretty bent on that."

Vision nodded slowly. "I suppose it is a judgment one would have to make for themselves."

"You wanna know what I think?" asked Natasha.

Vision turned to her. "Of course."

"Sounds like we're gonna," said Rhodes.

Natasha ignored him. "You mentioned challengers," she began, sitting up straighter. "And a causality. Maybe they come because we're here. Maybe they come in spite of us. But there's one thing I do know." A glint sprang to her eye. "When the world needs defenders, we're the only ones who can fight and win."

Rhodes simply shook his head at what he must have perceived as dramatics, but Vision's mind was sent whirling. He'd been created as a superhuman to destroy humanity, and had chosen to protect it instead. Ever since he'd first touched consciousness, he'd struggled with his unique place in the world.

That simple statement—"we're the only ones who can win"—held so much meaning and weight. It said something profound about his right, his privilege, and his responsibility to existence at all. It spoke to the core of who he was; what he was here to do; what the future would look like going forward.

But all those things were thoughts for another discussion, and another time. In the meantime, he simply smiled, and said, "I recall that you said something similar in a press conference." He'd watched a recording not long after things settled in the wake of Ultron.

"'You need us,'" Natasha echoed softly, and Vision wondered if she was thinking about the challenge she'd issued to Capitol Hill that day. 'So go ahead—put me in jail. You'll know where to find me.' She smirked. "I still believe it, too."

"Is that truth, justice, and the American way rubbing off on you?" teased Rhodes.

"I like Rogers," she shot back with her head held high. "I'll take that as a compliment."

Vision looked around the room at what was left of his family, and noted with a sinking heart that Mr. Stark was absent.

Perhaps it shouldn't have bothered him so much, but Mr. Stark was his closest thing to kin. It was the best conversation he'd had in weeks, too. If only he'd been there.

"Everything alright, Vizh?" There was calm concern in Natasha's eyes.

Vision was taken aback. "Oh—it's nothing. Excuse me."

She nodded and sat back against the couch cushions, not pressing the issue.

Rhodes finished his sandwich and wheeled back into the kitchen to throw away the paper plate and napkin. When he began to wash his hands in the sink, Vision sighed.

"I may have lied, Natasha," he whispered under the noise of the faucet.

"Oh?" she asked, still calm.

"It's," he stammered, "well, it's troubling that Mr. Stark insists on sequestering himself after all this time."

She thought it over, and then smiled gently. "Bit of a pot calling the kettle black there, aren't you?"

He mirrored the smile. "I suppose you're right." He moved to put the tablet away.

Natasha put her lithe, flesh-and-blood fingers over his magenta ones, and somehow, the contact was soothing. "Hey," she said softly. "Don't worry about him, Vizh. He needs time. So did you."

He nodded slowly. It wasn't an easy thing to do, but her words were comforting nonetheless. "Of course."

"However…" She smiled, patted his shoulder, and then slouched backwards in breezy affability. "He did give an invitation to the computer lab. As long as you can stand AC-DC."

He met her smirk with an equally mischievous smile. "It's not Bach, but I'm sure I'll survive."

Natasha threw her head back and laughed, loud and clear and happy, and goodness alive did it ever feel good to make someone really laugh.

Rhodes butted his head back in to ask what was going on, just as Vision also dissolved into laughter.

Yes. Everything was going to be okay.

A/N: Natasha is everyone's Team Mom, and that's *clap clap* the tea!

While I was recovering from Civil War, I was also taking a high school Freedom Economics course. Like Vision, I saw parallels. The Reed guy is (probably; it's been a few years since I wrote this script) Lawrence W. Reed, president of the Foundation for Economic Education. Sound familiar? It might, if you've read Fixed Pie Fallacy. That fic was inspired by their Youtube video on Thanos. This concludes Order's Economic Soapbox for today.

Special message for guest reviewer(s):

On Chapter 2: So sorry I forgot to leave you a note on the last chapter! I hope you see this. Your uncles sound like wonderful people, and it just makes me smile to think about people who got older and still stayed good friends with their siblings. I hate that the words "achingly lonely" describe Steve so well; he deserves better than that. The brotherhood of Bucky and Steve is criminally underrated, but at least we can enjoy it together!

On Chapter 3: I would just like to thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for the phrases "Battle of the Murderbot" and "Enhanced Family Feud". I'm cackling in this Wendy's. Thank you.

Reviews are blueberry smoothies.